'Among the Republicans' - V.S. Naipaul in 1984

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My initial reaction was 'who is Naipaul and why did he sue the Republicans in 1984?'

Edit to add: I'm not making a lame joke here either.  This is one of the reasons I don't like initials or acronyms. 

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In regards to the article itself. 
1.It definitely captured the spirit of the 1980s and the Republican Party's place in it.  'The Greed Decade.' 

2.The religious aspect fits into the 'Puritan Prosperity Gospel' that very much fit into that time, especially the televangelists.  (I know the Puritans themselves claim they have nothing to do with any Prosperity Gospel.)  This was especially evident with the ostentatious displays of wealth in the 1980s.

3.The line at the time was "you can tell if you're a liberal or a conservative by whether you think that the 80s is the worst decade or the 60s is the worst decade."

4.I do think however, that V.S. Naipaul was unfair to the Republican Party with his analysis of the convention. He didn't seem to understand that unlike in the 1960s when the convention nominated the President and the policy platforms were seriously debated at the convention itself and not essentially hammered out prior to the convention, that even by this time, presidential nomination conventions were for nothing more than free television advertising for a political party.

So, his criticism of the hollowness of the Republican Party's positions (except on foreign policy) are really besides the point. The Party's slogan in 1984 was 'it's morning again in America.'  It would have hardly made sense for them to have come up with an economic platform that went 'everything is wonderful, but here are 100 things that we need to do. (or even 10 things.)'

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For point 3, the idea was the that those who thought the 60s were the worst decade (the Conservatives) did so because of the hippies and the Great Society Programs, the liberals thought the 80s was the worst decade because of the greed and the repeal of the Great Society Programs.  

Part of this argument may have also been due to the largely false notion that many 60s hippies became 80s corporate types and conservatives like Jerry Rubin (I don't know if Rubin became a conservative) who used to be famous for something in the 1960s with another person named Abbie Hoffman.

Back when Rolling Stone was still somewhat important in the 1980s they had on the top of one of their covers a question along the lines of "have the hippies sold out?"

However,  I think this was largely a misunderstanding of young people in the 1960s.  I remember reading a poll of young people in the 1960s that only about 10% of them considered themselves as hippies and when I mentioned that previously one person replied to me "any young person in the 1960s who had long hair was considered a hippie and pretty much every young person then had long hair."

It is certainly true though that those who were teenagers in the 1960s are now by a far bit the most conservative cohort in the United States.