Conservatism in The United States - 1945–1951

1945–1951

The modern conservative political movement, combining elements from both traditional conservatism and libertarianism, emerged following World War II, but had its immediate political roots in reaction to the New Deal. In 1946, conservative Republicans took control of Congress and opened investigations into communist infiltration of the federal government under Roosevelt. Congressman Richard Nixon accused Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official, of being a Soviet spy. Based on the testimony of Whittaker Chambers, an ex-Communist who became a leading anti-Communist and hero to conservatives, Hiss was convicted of perjury.

President Harry Truman (1945–53) adopted a containment strategy against the U.S.'s World War II ally, the Soviet Union, through the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO (1947–1949). Truman's Cold War policies had the support of most conservatives except for the remaining isolationists. The far left (comprising Communist Party members and fellow travelers) wanted to continue détente with Russia, and followed FDR's vice president Henry Wallace in a quixotic crusade in 1948 that failed to win broad support and, indeed, largely destroyed the far left in the Democratic party. Truman was reelected but his vaunted "Fair Deal" went nowhere, as the Conservative Coalition set the domestic agenda in Congress. However, the Coalition did not play a role in foreign affairs.

In 1947 the Conservative Coalition in Congress passed the Taft Hartley Act, balancing the rights of management and unions, and delegitimizing Communist union leaders. However, the major job of rooting out Communists from labor unions and the Democratic party was undertaken by liberals, such as Walter Reuther of the autoworkers union and Ronald Reagan of the Screen Actors Guild (Reagan was a liberal Democrat at the time).

A typical conservative Republican in Congress was Noah M. Mason (1882–1965), who represented a rural downstate district in Illinois from 1937 to 1962. Not nearly as flamboyant or well known as his colleague Everett McKinley Dirksen, He ardently supported states' rights in order to minimize the federal role, for he feared federal regulation of business. He distrusted Roosevelt, and gave many speeches against high federal spending. He called out New Dealers, such as Eveline Burns, Henry A. Wallace, Adolph A. Berle, Jr., and Paul Porter, as socialists, and suggested their policies resembled fascism. He fought Communism as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee(1938–43), and in 1950 he championed Joe McCarthy's exposes.