Fascination with the history of the conservative movement

Historian Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland and Before the Storm:

I've been absolutely riveted by the right-wing response to [Nixonland] [...]

Exhibit A--the first side of the coin--came in its purest form from Mark Hemmingway of National Review. He interviewed me for the magazine's web site. It was a surreal experience. First question: "It's my general sense that liberal or popular historians don't seem to be very interested in conservative history and ideology. Why are you?" In other words: why is the left--except for Perlstein!--so condescending that they refuse to take the right seriously.

As Perlstein points out in his stellar essay (go read it all), the question was absurd precisely because it was 100 percent wrong. In fact, it's surprising that Hemmingway has failed to see that the new progressive movement is being specifically built on the Goldwater model. Perlstein's Before the Storm is essentially my Bible, a fact that was perceptibly picked up by Crooked Timber blogger Henry Farrell as well as long-time New Republic nemesis Jonathan Chait:

The intellectual genesis of the netroots analysis lies in a book called Before the Storm by left-liberal historian (and tnr contributor) Rick Perlstein. He argues that the conventional narrative of the '60s pays far too much attention to left-wing activism. After all, he observes, the '60s ended with the left smashed by a rising conservative tide that has continued to this day. The real story is that of the grassroots countermobilization on the right, which took its most public form in the Barry Goldwater campaign. This movement built counterparts to the dominant liberal institutions, slowly took control of the Republican Party from the moderates who had been running it, and jerked the national agenda sharply to the right. Perlstein's book, wrote blogger and George Washington University political scientist Henry Farrell in a Boston Review essay, "enjoys near-canonical status among netroots bloggers."

I've mentioned the book here and there over the years, but here's a good summation of my thoughts on it circa 2004:

It's a brilliant look at how Goldwater founded the modern conservative movement.
The parallels to today are startling, a sort of Dean bizarro world stuck on opposite day -- a Republican Party that was trying to be "Democrat-lite" and an establishment hostile to "outsider" forces. With Goldwater railing against his party's establishment and the special interests that controlled it. Throw in innovative use of tactics and technology (Goldwater pioneered the use of direct mail) and a crushing defeat, and you've got the Dean phenomenon.

The big question is whether the Dean movement can survive Dean's demise. The conservative movement not only survived Goldwater, but used his defeat to fuel their current dominance. I'm hoping the parallel doesn't end at "crushing defeat".

Of course that big question has been answered, satisfactorily I may add. And all because we have studied the ways of the Right and their rise to power, and have sought to replicate their efforts -- whether it's the building of new institutions like Media Matters and the Center for American Progress, or the funding of the these institutions by big money donors, or the rise of left-wing media institutions like the progressive blogosphere, or the creation of a small-dollar activist donor base. It's a new millennium, so we're using technology to more efficiently put together what took conservatives decades to build. But at the core, what we're doing is little different from what they did.

They were the pioneers, but they've atrophied over time, a victim of their own successes and inherently flawed governing philosophy. We're building on their tactics with our own innovations, and doing a pretty darn good job of it. It helps that we're right on the issues, but that wasn't a big advantage until we had a machine to start neutralizing theirs.

So yes, it's true. Rick Perlstein isn't the only progressive fascinated with conservative history. This entire new progressive movement, in fact, is built on it.