The Red Scare of the 1950s gave birth to a fast-rising right-wing movement, the John Birch Society. Its rise was aborted when the society's leader, Robert Welch, made a statement that was deemed so outrageous by the media establishment as to place the Birchers beyond the pale of respectable discourse: Welch called President Dwight Eisenhower a "Communist dupe." In December 1987 Howard Phillips, the head of the Conservative Caucus, made a statement that topped Welch's for absurdity: Ronald Reagan had become a "useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda." But instead of ridiculing or repudiating him, the media rewarded Phillips with regular [...]