That February, Buckley wrote a second editorial that called Welch’s “views on current affairs … far removed from common sense.” Goldwater affirmed Buckley’s attack and added that in his opinion, Welch’s views did not “represent the feelings of most members of the John Birch Society.” In other forums, Goldwater denounced Welch as “extremist,” called his ideas about Ike “stupid,” and said, “I don’t recall speaking to Bob Welch other than ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ over the last nine years or so.” (He claimed that Buckley, not Welch, had asked him to serve on the Committee Against Summit Entanglements, a Birch front group opposed to the Eisenhower-Nikita Khrushchev summit, in 1959.) In a surreal echo of 1950s liberals explaining their youthful flirtation with communism in the 1930s, Goldwater issued a roundabout mea culpa when he said, “All of us in public life sometimes lend our names to movements that later we wished we’d taken a little more time to find out about.”
When a Birch acolyte criticized National Review for its anti-Birch stands, Rusher responded by sending a copy of the February 1962 editorial and inviting him “to point out to me, anywhere in its first five pages, a single word of criticism of the John Birch Society.” Buckley sounded similarly defensive a few months later, when he wrote to Birch founder T. Coleman Andrews, “I don’t think in my life I have made a single unfavorable reference to any members of the John Birch Society.”
For decades, conservatives and liberals have praised Buckley for those two (and subsequent) editorials. They celebrated him as a model of sobriety and rationality for panning the Birch Society and expunging the far-right fringe from conservative ranks. Over the past decade, however, the legend has come under scrutiny. Historians now argue that Buckley’s vaunted excommunication of the fringe is a myth. They are not impressed by his supposedly Solomonic decision to repudiate the low-hanging fruit of Welch and his conspiracy theories while sparing the society’s rank and file. By welcoming them into the fold both before and after National Review’s supposed break with the society, Buckley and his magazine continued to benefit from Birchers’ political activism, funding, and engagement.
Ideologically, Buckley was not as far from the Birchers as has been claimed. He wrote a book defending McCarthy, supported massive resistance to civil rights in the late 1950s and gave the conspiracy theorist cranks intellectual cover. Moreover, there was significant overlap between his supporters and the Birchers: many National Review subscribers also subscribed to the John Birch Society’s magazine, American Opinion; Buckley’s 1965 Conservative Party campaign for mayor of New York drew Birch and fringe support; and Buckley maintained professional and personal relationships with some of the most extreme Birch leaders, such as Revilo Oliver, who promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Nevertheless, by late 1965, Buckley’s broadsides had infuriated some Birch leaders. Even though Buckley never excommunicated the Birch Society from the conservative movement, his criticisms of it didn’t exactly endear him to Birch leaders. One of the original 12 founding members of the society, Louis Ruthenburg, for example, excoriated Buckley for his “defamation of the John Birch Society.”
Overtly engaging with the Birchers remained an even thornier issue for a presidential candidate. By the time the campaign of 1964 was underway, Goldwater continued his awkward pas de deux with the society. While renouncing some of the views and incendiary rhetoric of Welch and other Birch leaders, as Buckley did, Goldwater gingerly tried to avoid alienating the membership. As numerous historians have recently argued, Goldwater and other prominent conservatives sometimes welcomed the society’s rank and file — and many of their ideas — into the fold. He lost to incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson by such a huge margin it set a record.
