My work, however, shows that a visible current of conservative isolationism persisted through the high years of the Cold War, both on the right flank of the Republic Party and within conservative political culture more broadly. This poster presentation will utilize a computational analysis of congressional voting records and congressional demographic data to make this argument. Using computational methods on data from these records has revealed significant gradations of Cold War policy thinking within the Republican party and particularly within its right-wing.
Why does this distinction matter? A longer collapse of right-wing isolationism suggests that the advent of interventionism and the embrace of an American-led international order was not an inevitable response to the material conditions of the world destroyed by World War II, but rather a conscience political and cultural process. The persistence of right-wing noninterventionism challenged the essential role of militarism in the formation of American conservatism and the centrality of anticommunism in the construction of Cold War foreign policy.
This presentation will illustrate that the sunset of right-wing isolationism was generational and was not completed until a new crop of conservative politicians took office, took the reins of conservative media, and transformed the American right.
This generational thesis poses a new set of questions about the formation of American political thinking on foreign policy. What were political and media mechanisms arrayed against right-wing isolationism? Was this attrition a consequence of lost general elections or primary nominations? If right-wing isolationism could survive into the Cold War, why could it not perpetuate itself and survive? This poster presentation will explore these possibilities and shed new light on the formation of American thinking on foreign relations and the development of American conservatism.