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This moment of history, despite a new year and a new Administration, is not likely to go down as particularly noteworthy. Except, perhaps, as it affects the conservative movement. As we saw in an earlier installment, the opportunity for a conservative maneuver is not as clearcut as one might have hoped after a Kennedy victory—the survival of Nixon and the election’s failure to discredit Republican me-tooism being the main points of clutter. Still, the movement has an essentially new strategic situation today, and it’s a fundamentally healthy one. For eight years, the movement has necessarily been on the lead-strings of the Left. With Eisenhower Republicans in power, conservatives were, from every point of view, a captive faction. They could protest, but there was no requirement on anyone to listen. They could counsel, but could not develop any direction of their own. They could plot, but as long as the GOP—their natural vehicle to power—was still running and was in the opposition’s hands, any direct bids for power were bound to fail. Worse still, they could not even build; for powerful forces among them fostered down-the-line support of the Republican leadership, as a lesser evil. Now the movement is provisionally emancipated. What it does and where it goes are essentially matters of its own choosing.

Bozell

LB

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L. Brent Bozell Jr.

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Presidential Election

This moment of history, despite a new year and a new Administration, is not likely to go down as particularly noteworthy. Except, perhaps, as it affects the conservative movement. As we saw in an earlier installment, the opportunity for a conservative maneuver is not as clearcut as one might have hoped after a Kennedy victory—the survival of Nixon and the election’s failure to discredit Republican me-tooism being the main points of clutter. Still, the movement has an essentially new strategic situation today, and it’s a fundamentally healthy one. For eight years, the movement has necessarily been on the lead-strings of the Left. With Eisenhower Republicans in power, conservatives were, from every point of view, a captive faction. They could protest, but there was no requirement on anyone to listen. They could counsel, but could not develop any direction of their own. They could plot, but as long as the GOP—their natural vehicle to power—was still running and was in the opposition’s hands, any direct bids for power were bound to fail. Worse still, they could not even build; for powerful forces among them fostered down-the-line support of the Republican leadership, as a lesser evil. Now the movement is provisionally emancipated. What it does and where it goes are essentially matters of its own choosing.

Bozell