I do wonder why movement conservatism is collapsing in the GOP at this particular moment. Why not in '12, '08, or earlier?

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

In the late '80s / early '90s there was a GOP civil war and what was called by R. Emmett Tyrrell, among others, the "conservative crack-up."

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

In the GOP, the civil war was between moderates, some of them the old WASP elite, and Western/Southern/econ-social conservatives.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Basically, movement conservatism reorganized itself in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming less philosophical and literary, more political, and…

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

…in the the 1980s and 1990s, movement conservatism took control of the GOP, after uprooting the "Eastern establishment" and similar types.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

It took a longer time than most liberals imagine: the antiabortion plank in the '96 convention, for example, was hard-won.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Only by about 2000 were movement conservatives apparently in control of the GOP. Colin Powell didn't run because he knew it.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

At the same time movement cons were taking over the GOP in the '80s & '90s, however, movement conservatism was split between neos and paleos

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

A lot of movement cons were neither neos nor paleos, but the neocons and paleos established the poles of debate.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The paleocons were more restrictive on immigration, skeptical of free trade, restrained in foreign policy, and provocatively anti-PC.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

At the time, the paleos also were more pro-Southern and explicit about America as a Christian country than the neocons preferred to be.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Neocons were economically neoliberal, pro-free-trade, pro-immigration, favored an activist foreign policy, & were culturally more sensitive.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

There were a lot of similarities between the neocon-paleocon wars of the '80s and '90s and the movement cons vs. Trump struggle today.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

But in the intervening 20 years, the neocons actually adopted a lot of paleo accents. @BillKristol defended the Confederate Flag last year.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The paleos themselves were extremely fractious & idiosyncratic. They were easily marginalized, and self-marginalizing too.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Movement conservatism in the 1990s and 2000s, which was a neocon-ized movement, seemed very effective. Took over GOP, won elections.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Although the first big win for the GOP after the conservative wars started, the 1994 congressional takeover, was not about the neocons.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

1994 was not about the paleocons, either. It was a bit of both, a lot of populism, and the collapse of '80s-style liberalism.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

What people forget about Bill Clinton's first term, or at least first two years, is that it seemed very left-wing to a lot of Americans.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Bill Clinton's first two years, with gays in the military, gun control, FACE, etc., seemed like McGovernism. There was a backlash in '94.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The Republican Congress had paleo elements, including Ron Paul after 1996, but the leadership was allied with the neocons.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The neocons made peace with the South and evangelical Christianity. And why not? The South tended to be warlike, evangelicals pro-Israel.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The 1990s paleocons never did figure out how they'd lost their own supposed base to the neocons. But it's pretty obvious.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The South and the evangelicals were not "conservative" in the way paleocons wanted them to be; they liked neocon respectability & wealth.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Just what the palecons were offering the South or evangelicals was never clear anyway. The Latin Mass? Reliving George Wallace's defeats?

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

1990s paleoconservatism was mostly literary and quasi-philosophical. It was romantic, not political. Neocons were very political. They won.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

The conditions of the mid- to late-90s also favored the neoliberal ideology that neocons & Clintonite Democrats embraced.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

With so much high-tech wealth and get-rich-quick schemes booming, who wanted to think about industrial policy or immigration?

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Movement conservatism crushed its paleo foes. It crushed its moderate GOP rivals as well. South, and West/Midwest, much bigger than NE.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Evangelical Midwest and solid South were a united bloc that Northeast Republicans or Westerners like Pete Wilson, Goldwater, couldn't beat.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

(I should revise my earlier inclusion of Western Republicans in movement conservatism. Those Goldwater types were an earlier con movement.)

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

In fact, the West has not been notably strong in the GOP or movement conservatism since Reagan.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Reagan, Goldwater, Nixon, others like Pete Wilson & Sandra Day O'Connor, weren't Eastern establishment, nor Southern/evangelical cons.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

But in any case, movement conservatism, as a compound of the South, the evangelicals, neocons, and everyone allied with them, conquered all.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

And that's my guess as to the prime difference between then and now: it's the difference between seizing territory and governing it.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Movement cons were great movement infighters, they could beat paleos in conservative institutions and moderate GOP in the party itself.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

And movement conservatism kept growing and experimenting, strengthening its media arms, talk radio and eventually Fox.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Like a shark, as long as it kept moving, movement conservatism kept itself alive.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

But even in its heyday, movement conservatism didn't succeed like Eisenhower, Goldwater, and Reagan had succeeded. Lost to Clinton.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

A GOP piloted by movement conseratism also lost the popular vote in 2000 to Al Gore.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

So movement conservatism had limitations. It was a pretty narrow base of people, in fact. Yet it touted red maps w/more dirt than people!

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

When you are proud of how red a national map looks, even though the population centers are mostly blue, you have a long-term problem.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Federalism gives dirt a vote, or at least modifies how much human votes count, but that only goes so far. Human voters en masse are more.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

That's part of why movement conservatism lost to Obama. Those blue population centers were growing, as dirt doesn't, and they went for O.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

But losing to Obama, twice, didn't mean movement conservatism had to collapse within the GOP, did it?

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

If anything, the smaller the GOP got, as it lost and shrank, it should have been easier for cadres of ideologues to keep control.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

And in fact they did mostly keep control.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

One could say they're now losing control of the presidential nominating process because they were so used to being big fish in small pond…

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

…that the sheer number of non-"conservative" voters, even in the GOP, has come as a massive shock. In a lake, pondfish become small fry.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

If you'll pardon my strained piscatological metaphor.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

But there's more to say. Trump, as he's gone along, has brought in a little of everyone, maybe a lot, who has been screwed by movement cons.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Trump does indeed get support from "paleo" Buchananites and Ron Paul libertarians. But he seems also to get moderates, pragmatists.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

And Trump even gets the parts of the evangelical right that are sick of the way the Club for Growth and neocon priesthood treats them.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

So Huckabee is basically a Trump guy, and Ben Carson officially is.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Immigration restrictionists were humored by the conservative movement run by neocons, for strategic reasons. But only humored, not served.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

So immigration restrictionists, including among Southern conservatives, have abandoned the movement con coalition for the Trump insurgency.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Here's the key: as long as neocons & movement cons were moving forward, didn't yet control everything, they could promise everyone something

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

That's how they kept their coalition together & growing. Christian right, immigration restrictionists, others all got promises of power.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

But once neocons and movement cons, basically the same, had full control of the GOP and "conservative" brand, it was clear who was in charge

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Movement conservatism couldn't survive by winning, it could only survive by fighting. Once it won the GOP & right, it began to die.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Or it began to weaken, to the point where someone like Trump, who owes the con movement nothing, could rip apart its component pieces.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

I wish more of the groups who bought into movement conservative had listened to the critics all along. But the critics were often cranky.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

And even if critics had been more persuasive, movement conservatism had enough of a head start on any rival that it could still promise more

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Now those promises are all revealed as worthless. What does anyone actually believe electing "Reagan 2.0" will do in the 21st century U.S.?

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

For God's sake, Reagan's challenges were the Cold War & getting U.S. economy away from the LJB era. Nothing like today's issues.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Movement cons tell fairytales connecting themselves to Reagan, Goldwater & '50s National Review: but replacement, not continuity, is notable

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

If you actually talk to old Goldwater, Reagan, '50s-'60s conservatives, they're al over the map. A lot are for Trump–or Obama!

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Already during the Bush and early Obama years, I was hearing from a lot of these grand old figures who hated what the right had become.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

They had been exiled from and replaced within their own movement. Even Jeane Kirkpatrick felt displaced at movement con AEI.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016

So, that's it in a nutshell. Movement conservatism of the past 20 years was good at infighting and promising spoils of victory.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016

And movement conservatism was more damaged not by its defeats but by failing to distribute meaningful spoils when it did win.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016

What part of the movement conservative coalition came out of the Bush years more satisfied than when it went in? Ironically, not even neos.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016

Movement conservatism is a jobs program. Those who have the jobs in DC are happy. No one else is.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016

But is Trump really the end of movement conservatism? When the storm passes, either at the convention or in Nov., does all return to normal?

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016

That I'll have to take up another time, maybe in a real essay instead of a Twitter burst.

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 12, 2016