Most Influential Conservatives

Telegraph.co.uk is presenting its second list of the 100 most influential conservatives. Conservatives are people identifiably – though not always self-described – as right of centre. The lists go by intervals of 20: 100-81 80-61 60-41. I'm going to just point out one or two people that I have been influenced by, but I suggest you look over the entire list and see who inspired you:

84. THOMAS SOWELL (64 on 2007 list)
Economist and commentator. Currently the Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and one of America’s most prominent black intellectuals, Sowell, 77, writes mainly about economics, history, race and social policy. A prolific columnist, he criticised Obama from almost his first day in office, accusing the president on his Townhall.com blog of “dismantling America”. Strongly free-market, against abortion, gay marriage and affirmative action and in favour of racial profiling to tackle terrorism, he has a pronounced libertarian streak and favours de-criminalising narcotics.

71. DICK ARMEY (- on 2007 list)
Chairman, FreedomWorks. An author of the 1994 Contract with America and former House Majority Leader, Armey now leads FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy organisation.

A Texan libertarian and former economics professor well versed in Washington’s rougher political arts, he was forced to give up an lucrative consultancy with DLA Piper when FreedomWork’s links to populist opposition to health care reform created difficulties with the law firm’s clients. The 69-year-old chain-smoker is a major influence on the tea party movement, which could become the conservative powerhouse in 2010.

66. VICTOR DAVID HANSON (58 on 2007 list)
Military historian and columnist. Although registered as a Democrat, Hanson strongly supported the Bush administration, particularly on foreign policy, and reluctantly accepts the label (though he acknowledges it is also a slur) of “neo-conservative”, arguing that the Democrats do not have a morally responsible foreign policy. He rejects, however, the jibe from paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan that he was the “neocon court historian”, arguing he had hardly ever visited the Bush White House and had never been in the pay of a government.

“I came to support neocon approaches first in the wars against the Taliban and Saddam, largely because I saw little alternative,” he wrote in 2008. Three years earlier, he had argued that that Democrats were like Republicans in the mid-1960s – “impotent, shrill, no ideas, conspiratorial, reactive, out-of-touch with most Americans, isolationist, and full of embarrassing spokesmen".

His verdict on the current president, when much of the country was in the grip of Obamamania a year ago, could turn out to be prescient: “If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.”

44. CLARENCE THOMAS (85 on the 2007 list)
Supreme Court Justice. Thomas has been on the Supreme Court for nearly two decades, making him one of the longest serving justices in history as well as a reliable conservative vote on virtually every issue. Only just in his 60s, he could be on the court for at least two decades more. Adored by the Republican party establishment, a candidate is guaranteed a round of applause when he cites Thomas or Antonin Scalia as model jurists. Thomas shrinks from the limelight and is renowned for hardly ever asking a question during hearings. But his judgements are lucid and often tart.

He endured contentious confirmation hearings that threatened to stop him becoming the second black Supreme Court justice, running the gauntlet of accusations of sexual harassment. The indignity of this still burns and in his autobiography he described the experience as being “pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony". An originalist, he believes in strict interpretation of the constitution and also describes himself as having “libertarian leanings”.