Christian Reconstructionism is silly wishful thinking and worrying about it is sillier.
The gist is that Biblical principles should govern all of life, public and private, by legislative fiat where necessary.
How popular is it? It is, of course, the dream of every religious devotee that the whole world would come to the same personal conclusion as they did. This makes Christian Reconstructionism automatically popular with huge audiences.
But what exactly are the principles of Christian Reconstructionism? Well, they are the principles which one can derive directly from the Bible–this notion is the core of fundamentalist belief.
Since no two fundamentalist Christians have ever agreed what those principles are, I wouldn’t bother to get too hysterical about it. So far in history every fundamentalist Christian group has self-destructed nicely by arguing over what the Bible says, and eventually split itself up. No need for outsiders to feel like they need to break them up–they’ll do it on their own.
Dig under the covers a bit and you won’t find “a” movement. You’ll find a zillion “leaders” of bands of the Faithful, each guaranteed to splinter into additional bands. There will never be enough cohesiveness to represent any real threat.