Saw an interesting perspective the other day re: universities and students leaning liberal.

[JHB]

36. I still maintain that what people today think of as "the conservatism of William Buckley" is...

...a lot more flattering to him than the actual conservatism of William F. Buckley. It was a lot nastier and less principled than people remember, mostly because those aspects were not the face he showed on The Firing Line.

He was a radical, not merely "conservative," despite labels. He's one of the people whose goal was to wipe out the New Deal and everything after and before it that made the government work for ordinary people instead of the wealthy. As far as he was concerned those were socialism, Marxism, communism. Not such an out-of-place view these days, thanks to the success of his acolytes in dragging definitions far to the right.

He's one of the people who considered the Rockefeller Republicans to be traitors and quislings, and set about radicalizing the Republicans to make it an exclusively conservative party. Anyone who was Conservatively Incorrect was targeted for ouster or isolation until they retired and were replaced with a more ideologically acceptable candidate. He encouraged divisiveness in order to eliminate a safe middle ground. Compromise with the enemy (us) was always "Munich".

The Republican Party is what he put it on the course to become: a party elite playing the part of statesmen while using every nasty trick and tactic to get enough votes to take power and use that power to push an agenda straight out of Buckley: fill the courts with conservative judges, cut taxes, deregulate, undermine or wipe out labor and environmental laws, etc.

He simply had to operate in an environment where he was an outlier, and had to use that Ivy League education, manners, and connections of his to make headway. If he didn't, he'd have been dismissed as just another crank who could go rant at the country club bar over his gin and tonics.

He's remembered better because of the better presentation he needed then, and because of the hot mess he created has come to fruition.