THE LONGEST CON: HOW GRIFTERS, SWINDLERS, AND FRAUDS HIJACKED AMERICAN CONSERVATISM by Joe Conason – A Review

An astute journalist explains how greed and grift destroyed the conservative movement, poisoning our political culture and bringing us Donald Trump.

American democracy is severely imperiled. The rise of Donald Trump and Trumpism has poisoned the political environment and has stood moral norms on their head. The foundations on which we stand have become wobbly and unstable. The reality we live in is gut-wrenching and mind-bending. Tens of millions of Americans have seemingly lost their minds as conspiracy theories abound and people believe what is easiest for them to believe while throwing to the wind facts, the rules of evidence, and even the claims of reason.

When we assess Donald Trump we can ask, how can one man do so much damage? But Trump is by no means alone. He has become the head of a cult which is the Republican Party and legions of acolytes. Even a tyrant needs the cooperation of followers, and Republican officeholders now follow him in the quest for petty power while jettisoning conscience, adherence to constitutional governance, and truth itself. The GOP is no longer a political party. Yet Trumpism in the broader sense is hardly new, as Joe Conason in his latest book, The Longest Con, amply documents.

How did we get to this point? Recent volumes abound on how democracies fail. Many sound the warning of fascism and tyranny, elucidating apt analogies to the rise of Hitler and the 1930s. Most look at ideologies and policy changes in the Republican Party, and decisions rendered by major actors. In the recent past, Republican politics was centered on a cluster of conservative ideas - economic and political - expanding individual freedom while cutting taxes and limiting the role of government. It was pro-business and anti-social welfare. It was skeptical of government regulation. It was hard on crime, and in foreign policy, it heralded American military power. The Republican Party saw itself as the vanguard of patriotic virtues and as the defender of liberty.

It is this conservatism that serves as the foil for Joe Conason's The Longest Con. Conason comes to analyze the erosion of conservatism with an impressive legacy of journalistic accomplishments. He is editor-in-chief of The National Memo, a daily political newsletter. His articles have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian, The American Prospect, and others. Two of his previous books on contemporary political issues were New York Times bestsellers.

While most treatises, as noted, provide manifestly political analyses, Conason looks at the transformation and erosion of conservatism through a different and original lens. His analysis describes what we may arguably call a tradition for which the scheming, manipulative, and thoroughly immoral attorney, Roy Cohn, serves as the role model. Conason's treatise leads to, and ends with, Donald Trump. It's a tradition comprised of a huge cavalcade of grifters, swindlers, and frauds. They were con artists who made huge fortunes by arousing fear and hate in their gullible constituencies. These fraudsters were able to hitch their schemes and machinations to larger movements of the day, be it anti-communism during the Cold War or evangelical Christianity, especially since the late 1970s. The flip side of their capacity to make quick bucks in huge tranches was their ability to coral hordes of vulnerable Americans willing to open their wallets to underwrite their false causes.

The Longest Con features a steady stream of very bad actors and their fraudulent schemes. Despite being packed with information, the text is written in clear and engaging prose. It is a highly informative but brisk read. Its style is the mark of a highly skilled journalist, and its message could not be more relevant to our current moment.

Among multitudes of scammers several of the figures are more prominent than others. The book starts with Roy Cohn, who served as a young counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy, who made his career in the search to find and expose communists hiding behind every tree, was a lesson in hollow fraudulence which Cohn learned well. An important fact, unknown to this reviewer, is that Cohn helped send Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, through meetings with the sentencing judge with whom he was able to gain access. It was a grisly achievement in which Cohn prided himself, but no less an index of his abject immorality.

In a way that sets the tone for the book, Conason says the following with regard to what Cohn had learned from McCarthy:

“From his experience with McCarthy, Cohn developed the philosophy of impunity that he lived and taught his acolytes, who would shape right-wing politics in the decades to come, even beyond his death. It was not only possible but admirable to lie, cheat, swindle, fabricate, and then deny, deny, deny- and get away with everything. He remained consistent in purveying untruth and contesting the incontestable. Rather than acknowledge what he had cost McCarthy – or that McCarthy had lost the confidence of the Senate – he would insist throughout his life not only that he and McCarthy had acted righteously but they were always the victims of a liberal conspiracy.”

If this sounds like the Donald Trump we have come to know, the similarity is no coincidence in that Trump became Cohn's favorite client.

Conason makes the linkage and the learning of reprobate lessons clear:

“In a city where real estate is a dominant industry and too often a corrupt racket that thrives on abusive practices, tax chicanery, and political favoritism, Cohn also represented several of the leading landlords. By far, his favorite was a flashy and ambitious developer from Queens named Donald J. Trump, for whom Cohn was not just counsel and friend but also the single most influential mentor. What the awestruck younger Trump saw in Cohn was an all-powerful public figure, who had lived, until then at least, a life of lying, bribing, cheating, stealing, swindling, - and never apologizing – without any lasting consequences. The lesson Trump learned was that he could get away with anything.”

Cohn's influence on Trump was pervasive and went beyond sole mastery of fraudulent behavior. It seemingly molded Trump's political persona more broadly. As Conason illustrates:

“Although he cultivated the image of a swashbuckling right-winger, Cohn was less an ideological partisan than an influence peddler, a fixer in pursuit of graft and grift. His politics revolved around money and power more than policy or philosophy. Of course, he never abandoned the 'conservative' posturing that had lifted him into the limelight during the fifties. Baiting liberals and flapping the flag were intrinsic to the bullying persona that undergirded his business.”

McCarthy's anti-communism found fertile ground among a roster of grifters who combined fear and foreboding within a dubious Christian framework to rake in formidable profits. Conason first recounts the success of an Australian physician named Frederick C. Schwarz, who founded the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. Starting from humble beginnings, Schwarz's venture brought together rosters of speakers and drew larger audiences. Listeners would learn that many of the nation's teachers were communist operatives who were taking over the minds of little children and that the Boy Scouts had been completely taken over. Communists were training 900 Asiatics to be the executioners of boys and girls in America. The way to combat this menace, needless to say, was to contribute generously to the Crusade. Through seminars and lectures, as Conason notes, the Anti-Communism Crusade was the largest single-issue right-wing organization of its day. Seven years after its founding in 1953, it was amassing $1.1 million in annual gross income. While trucking in fringe ideas, Schwarz's audiences were primarily middle class, and certainly not composed of marginalized individuals. As an example, Conason notes,

“With the Crusade's increasing visibility, Schwarz was able to put together a spectacular rally in October 1961 at the Hollywood Bowl, presented in prime time on West Coast television stations, boasting sponsorship by Schick and Technicolor. The three-hour program featured major stars like John Wayne, Dale Evans, Pat Boone, and Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, as well as a B-list actor named Ronald Reagan.”

Arguably better known was the radio preacher Billy James Hargis from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Armed with dubious advanced degrees, he preached the imminent communist takeovers to tens of thousands over the airwaves. An admirer of Strom Thurmond and Barry Goldwater, Hargis, as Conason notes, enjoyed hating liberals as he hated labor unions, Ivy League Universities, The United Nations, the NAACP, and mainstream media, which he accused of aiding the Kremlin.

For those of us who are bewildered by the malicious nuttiness of contemporary conspiratorialists, Conason reminds us of the incredible conspiracies fostered by the wealthy candy manufacturer Robert Welch and his John Birch Society. Today's blather of MAGA cohorts that rant about elitists and globalists has merely mimicked the name-calling of the Birch Society. And if we find Trump's condemnation of Democrats and liberals as “communists” outrageous, we need to recall that the John Birch Society went so far as condemning Dwight Eisenhower of being a communist. Welch supported the campaigns of Hargis and Schwarz as part of his own mission, as he was financed by top corporate executives. It's an ironic historic turn that J. Edgar Hoover, known for aggressively hunting down communists, despised these non-governmental hucksters whom he derided as “professional anti-communists.” Despite his own sins, Hoover correctly recognized the destructive nature of the grift of Schwarz, Hargis, and many others of their ilk. But they were path-breakers. As Conason concludes “... profiteering from smears and fables became a career path on the right, (and) those unwholesome tactics were certain to proliferate – and they did.”

A name retrieved from the past is Richard Viguerie. Borrowing from, and categorically expanding, the promotional work of Hargis, Richard Viguerie mastered the art of direct mail to reach mass cohorts of right-wingers while making a fortune in the process. Viguerie discovered that the failed Goldwater candidacy generated lists of millions of conservatives. Conason points out that Viguerie's primary tools were not technological but emotional. By 1971 he employed 250 people to promote fear, anger, and resentment, encouraging donors to open their wallets. Viguerie enraged his contributors by invoking the menace of the liberal “enemy.” The menace included “union bosses,” “federal bureaucrats,” “radical feminists,” or “homosexual activists.” Viguerie's approach was aggressive, strident, and devoted to gaining power at the expense of any nuance. His mailings raked in millions of dollars for the outfit bearing his name, little of which was spent on programming. It was a slash-and-burn style that led to the poisoning of our political culture.

Viguerie paved the way for the crowd that billed itself as The New Right. It included such characters as Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker, Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, who was also a Cohn acolyte, and others who found new ways to sucker the credulous while building on the base that Viguerie had forged. These figures of the New Right were aligned with the sleaze that the Nixon administration had attracted. Much of its activities centered around the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) which brought in more than any other right-wing PAC, though only 16% percent of its revenue was spent on candidates. Through rampant populism and appeals to fear and hatred, the NCPAC inserted themselves into the political fray at the expense of mainline conservatives. The Roe decision became the basis of the attack on liberals as “baby killers,” the “homosexual agenda,” and the alleged grooming of children by gay teachers. Such was the basis of appeals devoid of any decency. But it served as a method to rake in big bucks in which emotion replaced policy and legislation.

After the NCPAC faded in 1984, its kingpins, Charlie Black, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and a Democrat by the name of Peter Kelly, founded a consulting and lobby group with the initials BMSK. As Conason notes, its clients included “Republican politicians of all stripes, corporate clients, and even tin-pot foreign dictators.” Donald Trump, who owned casinos in Atlantic City, became an early client. The firm drew in $70,000 in today's dollars in monthly retainers, and each partner cleared more than $1.5 million annually. In the assessment of this reviewer, who has long worked in the human rights field, BMSK's most ethically heinous clients were the tyrants who headed authoritarian regimes. As noted,

“Soon millions poured into the firm's accounts from a different sort of clientele. Numerous authoritarian regimes overseas hired BMSK to lobby both the State Department and Congress to increase their shares of American taxpayer largesse. Indeed, the worse their human rights records, the more those foreign dictatorships required the kind of persuasion that lobbyists could exercise. The roster of murderous despots whose remittances enriched Stone, Manafort and company ranged from Asia and Africa to South America, which eventually resulted in BMSK gaining a reputation as 'the torturer's lobby.'” The firm's foreign clients included repressive and corrupt governments like those that ruled Kenya and Nigeria, which spent millions on BMSK lobbying and reaped tens of millions in US foreign assistance.”

Needless to say, beyond schemes that led to the enrichment of immoral operatives through the employment of dupery, the chieftains of BMSK, two of whom have served as Trump's closest enablers, have a great deal of blood on their hands.

The most powerful engine of grift has been the lure of right-wing religion, Christian swindlers and right-wing demagogues have long and often shared common purposes. George W. Bush set the tone for the empowerment of Christian operatives who mastered the art of earning massive fortunes. Having declared himself a born-again Christian, Bush proclaimed that he was chosen by the grace of God to lead in the moment. It was Bush who was the first president to promote and bring around him so-called prosperity gospel ministers who preached that material wealth was a sign of God's grace. It was an appeal to greed that had no use for charity, and it attracted a sleaze factor that paved the way for such figures as Jim Bakker, John Hagee, and Rod Parsley. As such, it opened the door which attracted Donald Trump.

While Conason cites the political influence of Jerry Falwell and the exploitation of the faith-based initiative engineered by the preacher-business tycoon, Pat Robertson, it is Jerry Falwell Jr. whom he credits with the most far-reaching swindles. Falwell Jr. inherited Liberty University from his father. The institution, which Falwell Sr. envisioned as a “Protestant Notre Dame,” by admission was more of a business than an institution of higher learning. Liberty made a fortune through online courses while procuring a huge amount of federal funding. Only five universities nationwide received more.

Falwell's downfall came in a widely publicized sex scandal. But his entire lifestyle was a maelstrom of corruption. As Conason notes,

“Just as Jerry Jr. had built an 'educational' enterprise that vacuumed up billions in student loans and grants while delivering little academic value, he had continually siphoned off university funds to enrich himself, his family, and his cronies. The preacher's son became a master grifter, creatively abusing his executive power in ways that would never be tolerated in any honest business, let alone a supposed non-profit devoted to Christian education.”

“Once the Falwell grifts began to unravel, they seemed almost endless. The founder's son had run the university as a hub of crony capitalism, much like the Philippines under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.”

Falwell's annual salary reached $1.25 million, with perks such as the use of the university's aircraft for frequent personal travel as well as cushy jobs for family members.

Falwell's corruption was politically emblematic and highly consequential in that he gave his endorsement to Donald Trump. As such, it revealed the unholy nexus between evangelicalism and Trump. Many have been puzzled by the support by evangelicals of a man who is totally irreligious, biblically illiterate, and flagrantly immoral. Conason explains how:

“To put it bluntly, the religious leaders most inclined toward grift and greed (not unlike Trump himself) were also the most eager to join his campaign – and to invent a variety of excuses for an irreligious, profane, and brazenly immoral politician.”

“What drew the prosperity preachers and their congregations to Trump, eventually joined by millions of white evangelicals, was how much he resembled the televangelists who were the most successful among them.”

Conason's final chapters explicate the rise of Trump through the swamp of grift and sleaze in details too numerous to cite. Speaking of Trump's victory in 2016, the author notes that “...hate drove politics on the right, not morality or even ideology.” “Before Election Day, nearly every conservative who had denounced him as a narcissistic fraudster would crawl like 'servile puppies,' as Cruz put it, acknowledging him as their master. His political triumph completed the transmogrification of the American right into a shameless hustle devoid of principle and fully devoted to exploitation.”

And so American political culture had been corrupted and rendered ominous, strange, dark, and unrecognizable not so much because of failed policy or losing ideological battles, but because of the triumph of greed, fear, hate, and credulity. It is a sad and tragic story after almost 250 years of the American experiment. We can thank Joe Conason's insightful and detailed analysis for illuminating a powerful dynamic that has brought us to this point.

As I complete this review, I read that at a recent Trump rally in Detroit, the warm-up act from the event's sponsor was an Alexander Spellane. Spellane was pitching the audience to invest in gold and silver they could purchase from his company Fisher Capital. For the past fourteen months, the government has been attempting to shut down Fisher Capital for selling its wares at deceptive and exorbitant prices that ensure that customers would suffer dramatic and immediate losses.

After reading Joe Conason's The Longest Con we have no reason to be surprised.