The Need to Understand the Conservative Identity

By MICKEY EDWARDS

Shortly after conservatives took control of Congress in 1994, a few of my obviously perplexed colleagues began to ask me questions about what might happen next. They wanted to know, "Who are these people?" "Where did they come from?" "What do they want?"

I had joined the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard two years earlier, after 16 years as a Congressman and more than 30 years as a conservative activist -- years during which many people in both the academy