During the 1950s and 60’s there was a huge transformation of political parties throughout the United States. Before there was a huge influence from the democratic liberal parties in government where these parties were in control of most of the government. In the 1950’s there was a shift in that the Republican conservative party started to take more control over the government. Many different people took advantage of this shift of government to preach their own beliefs. The radio became a mainstream device that people used in order to listen to the news and different events around the world. Carl McIntire was one of those people to take advantage of this in order to preach his beliefs. Carl McIntire was an outspoken anticommunist, and preacher, and was a highly charged symbol of the conflict between religions and forces of modernity. Throughout his career in the radio business, he would fight many battles between different organizations like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 1973, the FCC would invoke the “Fairness Doctrine”, which stated that “to operate in the public interest, broadcasters were expected to provide commentary on controversial issues of public importance”(Hendershot,376). This means that if someone wanted to talk about something controversial on their radio show, they needed to have someone on the opposite side to argue with. McIntire was the first person to lose his license from the Fairness Doctrine, but he was very influential in the formation of the Christian Right. He was able to bring attention to the Christian right which got a lot of people to join in their similar beliefs of how the government should be run under a Christian platform. Due to his extreme views, he personally lost his followers, but he was able to influence other people to do similar things. One of these new groups that he influenced was the “Neo-evangelicals”.
The Neo-evangelicals were very influential in the rise of the “Conservative Consensus”. There were many factors that influenced the rise of this new movement. One of them was the election of John F. Kennedy who was the first Catholic president. This caused many people to fear that the Pope would now have control of the US government. There was also the debate over abortion and gay rights. Also the election of Jimmy Carter in the 1970’s had effect on the popularity of this “New Evangelical” movement. Carl McIntire gave huge amounts of attention to this new movement. People started to label McIntire as the “old right”, due to his tactics and different interpretations of the bible. All these different factors led to the fall of McInture and the rise of this “New Right” across America.
Will Wright 