Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton and Mark Levin Are All Apoplectic That Kevin McCarthy Has Been Removed

Several factors are responsible for the decline of the influence of mainstream conservatism.

* The increasingly radical successive Democrat administrations of Clinton, Obama, and Biden. Each President has been more leftist than his predecessor.
* The focus of the George W. Bush Administration on extended and ultimately unsuccessful wars in the Middle East to the detriment of a conservative domestic agenda.
* Extended defeats of Republicans in the culture war battles in the 2010s, such as LGTBQ "rights" and the return of permissiveness toward street crime that wrecked cities like Detroit in the 1970s and almost wrecked New York, pre-Giuliani.
* The increased success of the Left in taking over old and traditional American institutions like the Boy Scouts, Federal law enforcement, the armed services, and the Fortune 500 board rooms in the current century.
* The rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, a populist insurgence far more effective than George Wallace, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, or Ron Paul had been.
* The blatant election fraud in the 2020 Presidential election and the inaction of the courts and elected Republican officials in Georgia and Arizona toward correcting the fraud.
* The extreme reaction of the Biden Administration and the Democrats to the January 6th protests and the persecution of Donald Trump and his associates and supporters.
* The virtual absence of control of the southern border, leading to an influx of immigrants that has even exceeded the massive waves of the 1880-1914 period.
* The whole COVID debacle, in which Trump acquiesced and was double crossed, wherein a once respected field of mainstream medicine was exposed to be fraudulent, pushing ineffective techniques like Remdesivir and suppressing effective measures offered by alternative medicine.
* The shutdown of small businesses, schools, and churches for extended periods and the repressive measures used, especially in blue states, followed by attempts to mandate the COVID shots.
* The acquiescence of most Republican officials to the advances of the leftist agenda, and a string of weak Republican leaders like Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Mitch McConnell.

Starting in the mid-2010s, conservatives entirely abandoned the mainstream media and walked away from the talk show conservatism epitomized by Rush Limbaugh. Joe Rogan reportedly has an audience of 11 million; Tucker Carlson on Twitter 8 million. Alex Jones’ numbers are harder to determine, but a hostile source (Southern Poverty Law Center) estimates it is in the millions. In contrast, Sean Hannity has an audience of 2.7 million. Mark Levin’s TV show averages about 1.5 million. The heavy handed repression of Big Tech, encouraged by the Obama and Biden Administrations, only drove conservatives to the alt-right media and Google, Facebook, and Microsoft alternatives. Thus, Carlson now has over double the audience on X/Twitter that he had on Fox, from which he was fired.

All these factors led to the radicalization of the conservative base and the replacement of the "curated" conservatism of Buckley and Limbaugh with people formerly considered fringe. The conservative movement that was born with the fall of Joseph McCarthy may have died with the fall of Kevin McCarthy. As the British Empire began with Elizabeth and ended with another Elizabeth, the modern conservative movement began with McCarthy and ended with another McCarthy.

Supposedly, at the execution of Louis XVI, a French revolutionary said, "Jacques DeMolay, thou art avenged". It may be too soon to say, "Ayn Rand, Robert Welch, Murray Rothbard, Joe Sobran, ye are avenged". However, even as the Democrats are trying to make this country another Venezuela, the conservative opposition has broken away from the controls of Conservatism, Inc.

But how does Former Louisiana House Representative David Duke figure into this since he won 65% of the White voters in Louisiana when he ran for governor? He had Duke rallies like Trump rallies all over the state when he ran. The establishment when George HW Bush was scared the living hell of him since he decapitated a incumbent Governor named Buddy Roemer.

David Duke tried going somewhat mainstream when he made his foray into electoral politics. By mainstream, I mean that he did not emphasize his belief in white separatism or his blaming the Jews for many of the world's problems. He ran an anti-establishment campaign in a state with a culture unique in the South. Louisiana has had some experience with populism with the Longs.

Duke's campaign was something of an outlier but its success indicated an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the status quo from which Ross Perot benefited. Perot might have done better had he not been so mercurial.