Influence of the John Birch Society on the Republican Party

In an interesting Oct. 2020 article by The Progressive Investor (TPI), THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY IS NOW THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, some history of the fascism and radicalism of John Birch Society (JBS)[1] influence on the GOP is discussed. TPI writes:

When Trump held the Republican Party Convention in August 2020, the media and political pundits said the convention did not produce a party platform. They were wrong.

The convention had an old, dusted off the political platform. It was the one the Republicans resurrected from the John Birch Society, the ultra-right-wing group that has morphed itself into the far-right Libertarian and Tea Parties. It is a transformation that never made it into the mainstream media.

This right-wing coup was accomplished over decades by significant donations from right-wing think tanks and wealthy white men who worked to [displace] old democratic beliefs.

Then, they replaced them with subverted philosophies that vilified bi-partisan political co-operation and even patriotism and exchanged those beliefs for blatant, cold corporatism and selling the government to the highest bidder.

Even worse, this was all done in the open and was spelled out by a chief coup leader, David Koch, who ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980.

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:

• “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.

The extremism of the JBS alarmed the old GOP, and under Ronald Reagan, the JBS was purged from the party. The Washington Post discussed this bit of history in a Jan. 2021 article: 

In 1962, some of America’s most influential conservatives met to talk about a growing threat: the rise of paranoid conspiracy theories on the right.

In a hotel suite in Palm Beach, Fla., Buckley and Kirk found themselves giving Goldwater advice about how to respond to the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society’s surge in popularity. The society, founded in 1958, was fiercely anti-communist — and fond of crackpot theories. Its founder, candy manufacturer Robert Welch, had accused most of the U.S. government — including former Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower — of being under secret communist control.

Although Welch had been an early donor to Buckley’s National Review in the 1950s, Buckley had come to believe that Welch’s feverish rants threatened the conservative movement’s credibility and its future.

“Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn,” John B. Judis wrote in his 1988 biography, “William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives.” Buckley told Goldwater, according to Judis, that the John Birch Society was a “menace” to the conservative movement.  

Within weeks, Buckley wrote a 5,000-word National Review editorial criticizing Welch. “How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are … so far removed from common sense?” Buckley asked. “The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false.”

Questions: Is it reasonably accurate to significantly or mostly equate the modern mainstream Republican Party mindset and political agenda with that of the old John Birch Society? 

Footnote: 

1. In 2013, the SPLC touched on the racial bias of the JBS:

Charges of racism and anti-Semitism have dogged the John Birch Society since its earliest days. It opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s, saying the African-American freedom movement was being manipulated from Moscow with the goal of creating a “Soviet Negro Republic” in the Southern United States. The society was a close ally of Alabama’s segregationist governer George Wallace and reportedly had 100 chapters in and around Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, as well as chapters across the rest of the state. Thompson, the group’s CEO, said the society has never been either racist or anti-Semitic, going so far as to add that once a member is discovered to harbor such views he or she is immediately “booted out.’’

The modern JBS denies that it harbors any racial or religious animus