The GOP's Founding Father

In Republicans' own telling, their party's modern heritage begins with the libertarian campaign of Barry Goldwater in 1964. In today's Los Angeles Times, Neal Gabler suggests a different lineage: "[T]he real father of modern Republicanism is Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the line doesn't run from Goldwater to Reagan to George W. Bush; it runs from McCarthy to Nixon to Bush and possibly now to Sarah Palin." Before McCarthy, the GOP was "bland, temperate, and feckless." McCarthy made it so "conservatism would be as much about electoral slash-and-burn as it would be about a policy agenda." His legacy is a keystone of Republican strategy: "[T]o build support by playing on the anxieties of Americans, actively convincing them of danger and conspiracy even where these don't exist." The tendency has entered the GOP's genes: "[T]he Republican Party, despite the recent failure of McCarthyism, is likely to keep moving rightward, appeasing its more extreme elements and stoking their grievances for some time to come."