For what has emerged during the electoral process is that the so-called "warlords" who run the party are determined to shift the country in a conservative, indeed reactionary, direction.
"Hagan, unlike a lot of the other Southern Democratic senators, has the ability to drive home the point that Tillis is taking North Carolina in the wrong, reactionary direction," McCorkle said.
Protestantism, they write, tends to veer off either in a mainline, liberal direction or in a reactionary, anti-modern one - evangelicalism must be understood as rejecting both.
Today, however, almost all Democrats would regard any effort to repudiate the Party's post-L.B.J. history, or even to tweak it in a direction more amenable to reactionary Southerners, as morally abhorrent.
We should expect and ask more in the way of thoughtful intervention from those who have been propelled into a position to make a real difference to public opinion, and by extension the editorial directions of the more reactionary titles of Fleet Street.
Anxieties can lead us is different directions, making us more reactionary.
Conason wonders what a Molière or Mark Twain would make of the "phony Puritanism" of today's "reactionary clowns," and bows in Mencken's direction.
In the immediate aftermath of the Snowden revelations, the hysteria in American public discourse reached a fever pitch, with exaggerated claims coming from every direction, as the shrill cries of reactionaries crowded out more reasonable voices.
Their role could become even more reactionary if Mr. Putin decided to move in an authoritarian direction.
By failing to lead our nation in a new direction, Mr. Obama has given rise to a tidal wave of reactionary conservatism while at the same time alienating his base of progressive support.
That kind of policymaking — a step in one direction, then a step in the other — has critics decrying what they call a reactionary approach.
