placing Sharron Angle into the historical context of the last half a century
The story goes that Barry Goldwater and William Buckley conferenced together and decided to exile the John Birch Society out of the respectable “Conservative Movement”. Which was just as well for the Birchers regarding National Review — what use did they have for Skull and Bones henchman Buckley and his crew of CIA spooks and Catholic theocrats?
There are a number of strangling odd nuggets of ideological definition and “into and out of the tent” decisions that seem ripe to fit into a historical framework. I take the following from Rick Perlestine’s books. The early backers pushing Goldwater for President took stock of him after Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus declined to be pumped up and primed. The Republican Party in 1964 was strongly pursuing a party switch from George Wallace when Strom Thurmond switched. Goldwater stood proudly next to Thurmond at his press conference announcing the switch, a tact he would not have done for George Wallace — for whom he disdained and found personally no ideological affinity.
Move forward to the third party apparatus that George Wallace left behind after his 1968 presidential campaign:  the American Independent Party. In 1972, John Schmitz was their candidate.
Schmitz was notable for his extreme right-wing sympathies. By one measure, he was found to be the third most conservative member of Congress between 1937 and 2004 and the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, of which Schmitz was a longtime leader, later expelled him for extremist rhetoric.
In 1976, as the grassroots Conservative Movement failed to oust Ford with Ronald Reagan, they considered their plans for the future. Remember, Richard Nixon was our nation’s last Liberal President, and Gerald Ford was the last good president. In this disgruntled atmosphere, your Richard Vigueries and Howard Philipses made their voices heard on issues most Americans could care less about — Panama Canal ownership, anybody? And Phylys Schafly made the rounds against the ERA.
On the more mainstream edge of this bunch, and in this case either to the right of William Buckley, or at least to the more revolutionary and less establishment-oriented focus, National Review editor William Rusher considered the taking over of the American Independence Party, overwhelming the kooks that made up that party. William Buckley dismissed this idea out of hand — they’re not going to rejoin the Birchers they exiled.
Four years later, they nominated and elected Ronald Reagan in the Republican Party, and to the more establishment-focused of this bunch, everything was fine for them. Howard Phillips would grouse, later running for president several times on a third party when they turned to the Yalie Yuppie ex CIA spook George Bush.
The party’s goal as stated in its own words is “to restore our government to its Constitutional limits and our law to its Biblical foundations.” The party puts a large focus on immigration, calling for stricter penalties towards illegal immigrants and a moratorium on legal immigration until all federal subsidies to immigrants are discontinued. The party absorbed the American Independent Party, originally founded for George Wallace‘s 1968 presidential campaign. The American Independent Party of California has been an affiliate of the Constitution Party since its founding, however, current party leadership is disputed and the issue is in court to resolve this conflict.
In the year 2010, flushed into the stream by the “Tea Party Movement” in a year where the John Birch Society co-sponsored the “Conservative Political Action Committee” National Convention alongside a national television spokesperson bringing pieces of those ideas into prominence, the current Republican Senate candidate in Nevada — Sharron Angle — who jumped from the party Buckley considered a mass of kooks for electibility’s sake.
Yes, I’m familiar with this logic. A little bit less this.