I can’t help that. Its a very well known term amongst conservatives. You have never heard of Frank Meyer, its leading proponent? How about the National Review which Meyer was one of its original editors? Or William F Buckley, who worked with Meyer to expound on the benefits of fusionism for almost two decades within the pages of the National Review. How about The American Conservative Union Foundation the online sister organization to the ACU from which I culled that article on fusionism in my original post. No offense but its astounding to me that you haven’t heard about fusionism.
“If that’s true, why bother using it, since no one else has ever heard of it?”
Again, every conservative politician and wonk and a great deal of Main Street conservatives and quite a few liberals have heard of it. Actually Meyer didnt invent the term fusionism and didn’t like it and didn’t use it much to identify his method of looking at the whole of conservatism and finding ways that its disparate factions could come together. Much like neocons didnt invent that term and originally didn’t embrace it as a term for themselves. But the term fusionism stuck. I am including a section of an article thats titled “The Conservative Consensus: Frank Meyer, Barry Goldwater, and the Politics of Fusionism”. Its dated January of this year. Its a good article. Oh and it was done by the Heritage Foundation. You’ve heard of them haven’t you?
“Fusionist Renewal and the Future of Conservatism
Today, in the wake of the 2006 elections and the escalating debate among neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, libertarians, and just plain conservatives about the future of conservatism—with some arguing that it has none—a “new” fusionism has been proposed as a solution. It is time, some say, for Republicans and conservatives to return to their small-government roots and get away from so-called religious extremism. They point to Barry Goldwater as the historical model, claiming that he had little interest in the moral side of the political equation.
As we have seen, this is a serious misreading of Goldwater’s fundamental views as best-selling author and presidential candidate. Goldwater consistently offered a blend of traditionalist and libertarian ideas. In 1964, for example, he said that “it is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.” A little earlier, he wrote that if the Christian Church doesn’t fight totalitarianism, “then who on earth is left to resist this evil which is determined to destroy all virtue, all decency”? Jerry Falwell couldn’t have phrased it any better.
Republicans and conservatives must remember, says Dick Armey, House Majority leader from 1995 to 2003 and himself a libertarian, that “the modern conservative movement is a fusion of social and fiscal conservatives united in their belief in limited government. [We] must keep both in the fold.”
Frank Meyer, the intellectual father of fusionism, and Barry Goldwater, the first political apostle of fusionism, sought to unite, not divide, all conservatives. Their goal was a national movement guided by constitutional principles of ordered liberty. The solution for the American conservative movement in these challenging times is not a new but a renewed fusionism.
Donald Devine of the American Conservative Union, an old-line fusionist like M. Stanton Evans, has called for “utilizing libertarian means for traditionalist ends”—the ends being the return of political power to states, communities, and the people. His proposal, applauded by traditionalists and libertarians, is a response to the Big Government conservatism of recent vintage. In his latest book, Getting America Right, President Ed Feulner of The Heritage Foundation lays out a six-point program to begin rolling back the welfare state and reinforcing traditional American values. As governor of our most populous state and then President for a total of 16 years, Ronald Reagan demonstrated conclusively that fusionism works.
But fusionism requires more than a consensus as to goals: It needs a foe common to all conservatives. Militant communism served as a unifying threat from the late 1940s through the late 1980s. In the early 1990s, without the soothing presence of Ronald Reagan and with the collapse of communism, large fissures appeared in American conservatism. These fissures produced paleoconservatives pining for the isolationist 1930s and neoconservatives resurrecting Wilsonian dreams of a world made safe through democracy.
Leviathan’s lengthening shadow across America did not suffice to bring conservatives together until Newt Gingrich and his merry band of congressional revolutionaries offered America a Contract that was fusionist in spirit and helped them win a majority in the House of Representatives. President Bill Clinton countered with his own brand of Democratic fusionism, proclaiming that the era of Big Government was over and signing a conservative welfare reform bill.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the jihad proclaimed by Islamic fundamentalists temporarily united the nation and the conservative movement, but political partisanship quickly reemerged to make prudential governance and reasoned discourse difficult if not impossible.
The impasse can be broken with a renewed fusionism based on limited government, the free market, individual freedom and responsibility, a balance between liberty and law, and a commitment to moral order and to virtue, both private and public. These are the core beliefs, bounded by the Constitution, on which American conservatism rests and by which its leaders have always sought to govern.”
http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/fp8.cfm