McKinley, Coolidge, Goldwater, Reagan (first term), and Senator Phil Gramm would all work for me. Newt Gingrich, also, until he was hit by a tidal wave of ethics complaints and criminal investigations and abandoned by the Republican Party.
My two most important Conservative publications have come and gone. National Review before Buckley died. And, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal until 1995, when it moved from pro-immigration to open borders and universal Amnesty.
Commentary was an excellent neo-Con, center-right, pro-Israel magazine until about 1990. “Neo-Con” used to mean former Democrat intellectuals who defected to the GOP.
American Spectator has always been excellent, but somehow it never quite graduated into the Conservative mainstream.
Re: “Trump could not have been elected without alternatives to the legacy media, and his attacks on the legacy media.”
I agree.
Re: “Are you saying you saw the Media as the dominant political power in 1964?”
Not really.
I am saying that the all consuming goal of the Political Left has been the TOTAL destruction of American Conservatives and the Republican Party since at least 1964.
At least.