The modern conservative movement can be traced back to the Heritage Foundation, which was founded by Edwin Fuelner and Paul Weyrich, who had significant backing from billionaire trust fund kids Joseph Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife.
The Heritage Foundation basically served the purpose of how can we sugarcoat racist policies so that voters still vote for us despite being racists? They spent a tremendous amount of money on transforming the public discourse to convince Americans that the government intervening to desegregate public schools was fascism (its not), raising taxes on billionaires to pay for public services was communism (its not), and that it is the Christian duty of every American to oppose these things.
They used abortion as their dog whistle issue and changed their platforms. Instead of cutting public services for Blacks, they changed it to stimulate the economy by putting more money in the hands of job creators. Instead of school segregation, it became school vouchers so that less funding would go towards public schools and more money would go towards expensive private schools, and these views are essentially endemic amongst all evangelicals.
Not changing this sig until the Knicks win the NBA Championship! Started 4/23/2010!