Federal Expression: 'Fearless American Dan Smoot'

Source:Federal Expression- 1960s Tea Party leader Dan Smoot.

Source:The New Democrat

"Dan Smoot discusses the need for courageous leaders in the fight for liberty.

Funny anecdotes about the man who helped launch his Television program."  

From Federal Expression 

"Howard Smoot, known as Dan Smoot (October 5, 1913, in East Prairie, Mississippi County, Missouri – July 24, 2003, in Tyler, Smith County, Texas), was a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a conservative political activist. From 1957 to 1971, he published The Dan Smoot Report, which chronicled alleged communist infiltration in various sectors of American government and society."  

From Wikipedia 

"Thereafter, Smoot published his weekly syndicated The Dan Smoot Report. He also carried his conservative message via weekly reports over radio. The Dan Smoot Report started with 3,000 paid subscribers; at its peak in 1965, it had more than 33,000 subscribers. Each newsletter usually focused on one major story. One issue, for instance, was devoted to the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956, which Smoot claimed was a communist conspiracy to establish concentration camps on American soil. Another issue lionized Douglas MacArthur after his death in the spring of 1964.

A subsequent 1964 issue opposed a proposal by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to transfer sovereignty of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama. Johnson failed in his attempt, but President Jimmy Carter in 1978, with bipartisan U. S. Senate support led by Moderate Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee, prevailed by a one-vote margin to extend control of the Canal Zone to Panama. It was Moderate Republican support for many Democratic proposals that particularly angered Smoot, who gave up on the national Republican Party as a viable alternative to the majority Democrats of his day.

In 1962, Smoot wrote The Invisible Government concerning early members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Other books include The Hope of the World; The Business End of Government; and his autobiography, People Along the Way. Additionally he was associated with Robert W. Welch, Jr.'s John Birch Society and wrote for the society's American Opinion bi-monthly magazine."  

From Wikipedia

To me at least, Dan Smoot at the activist and media level was the Tea Party leader of the 20th Century. And for anyone in the Tea Party movement who is smart enough to understand who he was and familiar with him Dan Smoot is one of their inspirational leaders. Because a lot of Tea Party members use the same rhetoric that Smoot did and go after what they call moderate Republicans the same way. 

Far-Right (or New-Right, if you prefer) Republicans, accusing Republicans who are simply not looking to destroy the Democratic Party and work with Democrats from time to time as fake Republicans or RINOS. (Republicans in name only) And what they believe that they needed was were Republicans who fight for their so-called conservatives causes at all costs even if that leads to gridlock.

The early 1960s, was certainly a bad time for Conservatives in or outside of the Republican Party. Progressive Democrats had a lot of the power in Washington even with the right-wing Southern block that they had to deal with in their party in Congress. 

The early 1960s especially was bad for the right-wing in America, but the mid-1960s even with more Republicans and Conservative Republicans getting elected in 1966, wasn't a good time for right-wingers in and out of the GOP as well. The Republican Party, was in transition. They still had their Eisenhower/Rockefeller progressive wing, but they also had a growing Southern and Western conservative wing in and outside of Congress. Senator Barry Goldwater, was an example of this.

Dan Smoot was one of the biggest and most important activists in the conservative movement in the 1960s. And a reason my Mr. Conservative Barry Goldwater was able to win the 1964 Republican nomination for president. Because the Goldwater Conservatives had grown so much in the GOP that Senator Goldwater was able to get the votes and delegates to win the GOP nomination for president. And Dan Smoot and his Dan Smoot Report which was both a publication as well as radio/TV program was a part of that. 

Dan Smoot was the Tea Party leader of his time and deserves a lot of credit for that wing of the American right-wing, or conservative movement gaining the success that they did in the late 1960s and into the 1970s and 80s.