1. See, for example, William A. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Chicago: Dorsey, 1975), and Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978).

2. The most important works used here for reconstructing the history of the conservative movement from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s include the following: Rusher, Rise of the Right ; Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement ; Miles, Odyssey of the American Right ; David W. Reinhard, The Republican Right since 1945 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, Danger on the Right (New York: Random House, 1964); F. Clifton White and William J. Gill, Why Reagan Won: The Conservative Movement, 1964-1981 (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1981); M. Stanton Evans, Revolt on the Campus (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961); James C. Roberts, The Conservative Decade—Emerging Leaders of the 1980s (Westport, Conn.: Arlington House, 1980); Erling Jorstad, The Politics of Doomsday (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970); Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1977 , 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); K. Phillips, Post-Conservative America ; Viguerie, New Right ; and John T. Saloma III, Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984).

3. Reinhard, Republican Right , p. 153. break

4. Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right , p. 212.

5. Reinhard, Republican Right , p. 140.

6. Jorstad, Politics of Doomsday , p. 80.

7. Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right , pp. 11-46; Bell, Radical Right , p. 422.

8. Reinhard, Republican Right , p. 155.

9. Evans, Revolt on the Campus , p. 110.

10. Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement , p. 293.

11. Evans, Revolt on the Campus , p. 38.

12. Rusher, Rise of the Right , p. 161.

13. Rusher, Rise of the Right , pp. 119-121, 189-190; Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement , pp. 292-293; Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right , pp. 217, 197-202, 108, 230; Group Research Reports 24 (1985): 25, 33. Rusher and Nash both play down the role of the Birch Society.

14. Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement , pp. 293-294.

15. Viguerie, New Right , pp. 26-27.

16. Rusher, Rise of the Right , pp. 154-155.

17. William F. Buckley, Jr., Inveighing We Will Go (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1973), p. 63.

18. Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement , pp. 293-294, 334-335.

19. K. Phillips, Emerging Republican Majority ; Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, The Real Majority (New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1970).

20. The classic statements of a status politics theory of the postwar American Right are found in Bell, Radical Right . Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , extend the basic argument from the 1950s and 1960s backward and forward in history. Critics of the status politics thesis as applied to McCarthyism include Rogin, Intellectuals and McCarthy ; Nelson W. Polsby, "Toward an Explanation of McCarthyism," Political Studies 8 (1960): 250-271; Thomas C. Reeves, "McCarthyism: Interpretations since Hofstadter," Wisconsin Magazine of History 60 (Autumn 1976): 42-54. For a good summary of the literature on status politics, see Clarence Y. H. Lo, "Countermovements and Conservative Movements in the Contemporary U.S.," Annual Review of Sociology 8 (1982): 107-134.

21. Bell, Radical Right ; Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason .

22. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , p. 497. After an exhaustive examination of survey data on right-wing movements since the 1930s, Lipset and Raab concluded that right-wing leaders and organizations appeal to varying combinations of three groups: economic conservatives, whose high socioeconomic status gives them an interest in opposing the growth of government; status preservatists, continue

whose changing or inconsistent social status gives them a desire to return to an idealized past; and the less educated, whose values give them what Lipset and Raab call "low democratic restraint." See Politics of Unreason , especially pp. 474, 496.

23. I am not denying the real diversity of support for right-wing movements. I merely want to direct attention as well to a foundation of common support that is often ignored in the preoccupation with diversity. According to a 1954 Gallup Poll, those favorable to McCarthy were more likely than those unfavorable to have voted for Eisenhower in 1952 (76 to 49 percent), to intend to vote Republican in the 1954 Congressional elections (53 to 29 percent), and to consider themselves Republicans (46 to 24 percent). Polsby, "Explanation of McCarthyism," p. 262. See also Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , p. 225. Seventy-two percent of Birch Society supporters in a 1962 California Poll (compared to 41 percent of the entire sample) were Republicans, as were 43 percent of supporters in a 1962 national Gallup Poll (compared to 28 percent of the entire sample). Seymour Martin Lipset," Three Decades of the Radical Right," in Bell, Radical Right , pp. 425, 429. Two-thirds of those attending a 1962 anticommunism school in Oakland, California, sponsored by the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, called themselves Republicans, and 92 percent of those who voted in the 1960 presidential election supported Nixon. Raymond E. Wolfinger, Barbara Kaye Wolfinger, Kenneth Prewitt, and Sheilah Rosenhack, "America's Radical Right: Politics and Ideology," in Ideology and Discontent , ed. David E. Apter (New York: Free Press, 1964). A 1960 survey of ISI members found that about 63 percent reported that their parents were Republicans and 70 percent called themselves Republicans. Evans, Revolt on the Campus , pp. 46-50. A 1967 study of campus political activists found that YAF members were disproportionately Republican in comparison to a control group of inactive students (though not in comparison to a sample of Young Republicans). Richard G. Braungart, "Family Status, Socialization, and Student Politics: A Multivariate Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 77 (1971): 108-130. A study of the 1964 California delegation to the Republican National Convention found that Goldwater delegates were significantly more likely than Rockefeller delegates to have served on county (86 to 24 percent) and state (82 to 34 percent) committees, to have contributed more than one thousand dollars to the party in 1962 (51 to 17 percent), to have been a delegate to a previous national convention (41 to 21 percent), and to have been involved in the Republican party for twenty or more years (41 to 28 percent). Edmond Constantini and Kenneth H. Craik, "Competing continue

Elites within a Political Party: A Study of Republican Leadership," Western Political Quarterly 22 (1969): 879-903. See also James McEvoy III, Radicals or Conservatives: The Contemporary American Right (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971).

24. McCarthy's support among Texas businessmen, especially oilmen H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Roy Cullen, was legendary. He visited the state so often and received so much financial support from it that he was sometimes known as Texas's third senator. Charles J. V. Murphy, "McCarthy and the Businessman," Fortune , April 1954, pp. 156-158, 180-194; idem, "Texas Business and McCarthy," Fortune , May 1954, pp. 100-101, 208-216. See also Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , pp. 227-228, 310-312; Alan F. Westin, "The John Birch Society," in Bell, Radical Right , pp. 249-250; and Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right , pp. 8-9, 272-280.

25. Studies of Birch Society and Christian Anti-Communism Crusade activists in the mid-1960s found that from 17 to 40 percent (depending on the sample) earned more than fifteen thousand dollars a year (compared to 4 percent of all Americans), 30 to 52 percent were college graduates (compared to 10 percent of a national sample), and 31 to 58 percent had professional or managerial jobs (compared to 23 percent of a national sample). A 1962 California Poll found that Birch Society supporters tended to be of higher than average socioeconomic status: 36 percent had three or more years of college, in comparison to 27 percent of Birch opponents and 20 percent of the entire sample; 35 percent were classified as of a high economic level, in comparison to 23 percent of opponents and 26 percent of the entire sample. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , pp. 288-326, especially pp. 298-299; Lipset, "Three Decades," pp. 425, 429. See also Barbara S. Stone, "A Profile of the John Birch Society," Journal of Politics 36 (1974): 184-197. In a 1965 ad pitched to potential advertisers, the National Review claimed on the basis of a marketing survey that its subscribers had an average annual income of $19,500 and an average net worth of $151,000, that two-thirds were college graduates and one-third had postgraduate degrees, and that more than half owned two cars. National Review 17 (October 19, 1965): 903; Evans, Revolt on the Campus , p. 61.

On the Conservative party, see Robert A. Schoenberger, "Conservatism, Personality, and Political Extremism," American Political Science Review 62 (1968): 868-877. On McCarthy, see Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , pp. 226-229. A 1960 study of ISI members found that about half came from families with annual incomes greater than five thousand dollars, half from families with incomes below that level. continue

Evans, Revolt on the Campus , pp. 46-50. A 1967 study at one major university classified 28 percent of YAF members as from upper middle-class families (defined by occupational status and education), about the same as for a control group (25 percent), but much less than for any other group of campus activists (Young Republicans, 59 percent; Young Democrats, 41 percent; Students for a Democratic Society, 55 percent). Braungart, "Student Politics," p. 119. See also David L. Westby and Richard G. Braungart, "Class and Politics in the Family Backgrounds of Student Political Activists," American Sociological Review 31 (1966): 690-692. Studies of national YAF samples gave similar results, but studies of YAF members at Harvard and other eastern universities showed them to be a more affluent lot. See summary in Student Politics , ed. Seymour Martin Lipset (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 213-224. For one way of reconciling these findings with theories of status politics and older theories of authoritarian personality, see Schoenberger, "Conservatism," who distinguishes "political" conservatism (conservative political affiliation) from "psychological" conservatism (conservative political belief).

For data on Wallace, see Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , pp. 358-390, esp. pp. 380-382. In the 1964 Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland, Wallace carried working-class districts in which Goldwater failed miserably a few months later in the general election. In his 1968 presidential bid Wallace did best among the lower strata. He got 17 percent of the vote of manual workers but only 9 percent of the vote of nonmanual workers; 19 percent of the vote of those with a grade-school education but only 9 percent of the vote of those with at least some college education; and about 18 percent of the vote of those with incomes of less than seven thousand dollars but only 6 percent of the vote of those with incomes of more than fifteen thousand dollars. All in all, this pattern of support is different from that of the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Three qualifications need to be noted to this analysis of the class basis of the Wallace vote. First, in one instance, the Wisconsin Democratic primary in 1964, Wallace did run better in middle-class neighborhoods than in working-class ones, but that appears to have been an idiosyncratic result. In the Indiana and Maryland primaries that year the bases of his support were similar to those in the 1968 general election. Second, in 1968, outside the South, Wallace did a better job of winning the vote of middle-class sympathizers than of working-class sympathizers. Third, middle-class Wallace supporters tended to be more conservative in racial and economic views than his working- hard

class supporters. Michael Rogin, "Wallace and the Middle Class: The White Backlash in Wisconsin," Public Opinion Quarterly 30 (1966): 98-108; Michael Rogin, "Politics, Emotion, and the Wallace Vote," The British Journal of Sociology 20 (1969): 27-49; M. Margaret Conway, "The White Backlash Re-examined: Wallace and the 1964 Primaries," Social Science Quarterly 49 (1968): 710-719; Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, "The Wallace Whitelash" Trans-action 7 (December 1969): 23-35; Richard F. Hamilton, Class and Politics in the United States (New York: Wiley, 1972).

26. Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift: The Rise of the Southern Rim and Its Challenge to the Eastern Establishment (New York: Random House, 1975).

27. Murphy, "Texas Business and McCarthy"; Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right , p. 39; Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , p. 305.

28. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System , pp. 245-274.

29. Among white voters in presidential elections from 1944 to 1964 Democratic candidates on the average did 22 percentage points better among union members than nonmembers, 20 points better among voters from blue-collar families than among those from white-collar families, and 24 points better among Catholics than Protestants. (In each case, however, one exceptional year inflates the average—1948 for union membership and class, 1960 for religious affiliation.) In 1968 those differences were 13, 10, and 30; in 1972 they fell to 1, 2, and 13. In 1976 and 1980, however, they recovered much of the lost ground. See Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde, Change and Continuity , p. 105.

30. Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind (New York: Free Press, 1983).

31. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason , p. 348; William F. Buckley, Jr., The Governor Listeth (New York: Putnam, 1970), pp. 57-71. See also Meyer, The Conservative Mainstream , pp. 285-288. As reported by Buckley, the Human Events poll had only 8 percent of conservatives supporting Wallace against Nixon and 23 percent supporting him against Rockefeller. About three-quarters of respondents said Wallace's candidacy would hurt the conservative movement in America.

32. Rusher, Rise of the Right , pp. 239-252. For the opinions of two later leaders of the New Right, see Howard Phillips, "A New Right Perspective," in The New Right at Harvard , ed. Howard Phillips (Vienna, Va.: Conservative Caucus, 1983), pp. 3-13, and Viguerie, New Right , pp. 31-32.

33. Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., Where Have All the Voters Gone?: The continue

Fracturing of America's Political Parties (New York: Norton, 1982), p. 13; Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 5, 240-241.

34. Viguerie, New Right , p. 51.

35. Ibid., p. 52.

36. Ibid., pp. 32, 52, 53, 49.

34. Viguerie, New Right , p. 51.

35. Ibid., p. 52.

36. Ibid., pp. 32, 52, 53, 49.

34. Viguerie, New Right , p. 51.

35. Ibid., p. 52.

36. Ibid., pp. 32, 52, 53, 49.

37. The cover of the October 1980 issue of Conservative Digest , published until 1986 by Viguerie, pictured eight persons marching under a banner proclaiming "The New Right: We're Ready to Lead"—Viguerie, Phillips, Dolan, Weyrich, Helms, Blackwell, Schlafly and Falwell. In his insider's view of American conservatism, Burton Pines identified the "small circle of the movement's founding fathers" as including Viguerie, Phillips, Dolan, Weyrich, Feulner, and Blackwell, as well as Schlafly Helms, McAteer, and Billings. Burton Yale Pines, Back to Basics: The Traditionalist Movement That Is Sweeping Grass-Roots America (New York: Morrow, 1982), p. 293. The September 1983 Conservative Digest reported that Crane, Helms, and McDonald topped a preference poll of its readers as leaders most suited to succeed Reagan. Falwell, Buchanan, Crane, Helms, McDonald (posthumously), Kemp, and Schlafly all ranked high in Conservative Digest 's tenth anniversary list of "most admired conservatives of the decade" in its May 1985 issue. (Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Buckley, James Watt, Jeremiah Denton, Beverly LaHaye, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Sandra Day O'Connor also made it into the top five in one of the three categories: conservatives in Congress, conservative men not in Congress, conservative women not in Congress.) Crane and Helms have perennially won among the highest ratings from conservative organizations for their congressional voting records. See, for example, Washington Times , November 14, 1986, p. 3A. Well into 1986 Kemp topped presidential preference polls of Conservative Digest readers. See, for example, Conservative Digest , April 1986, pp. 23-26.

38. "Conservative Cry: Our Time Has Come," U.S. News and World Report , February 26, 1979, pp. 52-54; E. J. Dionne, Jr., "Fund-Raising Data Worry Democrats," New York Times , September 25, 1980, p. 8; Adam Clymer, "Conservative Political Action Committee Evokes Both Fear and Adoration," New York Times , May 31, 1981, p. 1; Lee Edwards, "Paul Weyrich: Conscience of the New Right," Conservative Digest , July 1981, pp. 2-8.

39. Viguerie, New Right , pp. 32-33; Rusher, Rise of the Right , pp. 263-290.

40. Conservative Digest , October 1980, p. 17. For a more detailed discussion of the New Right and the social issues, see Jerome L. Him- soft

melstein, "The New Right," in The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation , ed. Robert Liebman and Robert Wuthnow (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine, 1983), pp. 13-30. By the late 1980s the emphasis on social issues was being recycled as "cultural conservatism." See Paul Weyrich, "Reshaping the Political Debate: Cultural Conservatism and American Politics," Election Politics 4 (Fall 1987): 15-16.

41. Dudley Clendinen, "TV Evangelists and Small Group Lead 'Christian New Right's' Rush to Power," New York Times , August 18, 1980, p. 14; "Roundtable's President Ed McAteer Is Music Man of Religious Right," Conservative Digest , January 1981, pp. 2-7; James L. Guth, "The New Christian Right," in New Christian Right , ed. Liebman and Wuthnow, pp. 31-45.

42. Conservative Digest , November 1980, pp. 4, 5, 7, 40; Roberts, Conservative Decade ; Rusher, Rise of the Right , p. 310.

43. K. Phillips, Post-Conservative America , p. 14. "During the 1960s and 1970s," wrote Phillips in the same work, "the nature of 'conservatism' underwent a transformation—not complete by any means, but substantial. . . . Conservatism . . . increasingly took on the coloration of popular, even populist, animosity" (pp. 31-32). "The 'New' Right," he added, "did then and still does represent a major cultural and tactical departure for a 'conservative' politics" (p. 47) See Post-Conservative America , pp. 31-52. Others who made the neo-populist argument include Crawford, Thunder on the Right ; Gillian Peele, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); John L. Kater, Jr., Christians on the Right (New York: Seabury Press, 1982.); Pines, Back to Basics ; and Nicholas Lemann, "The Evolution of the Conservative Mind," The Washington Monthly , May 1981, pp. 34-41. Blumenthal, Rise of the Counter-Establishment , also flirts with the populist analogy, though he confesses that if the New Right is populist, it is "populism turned on its head" (pp. 321-323). The irony of using a populist analogy to distinguish a new Right from an older one is that a prior generation of social commentators had used the same analogy to characterize the Old Right of the 1950s. See especially Hofstadter, Age of Reform , pp. 3-22, and Peter Viereck, "The Revolt against the Elite," in Radical Right , ed. Bell, pp. 161-183. The analogies are about equally misleading, drawing heavily on superficial similarities in rhetoric rather than real historical continuities or commonalities in policies. Certainly Rogin, Intellectuals and McCarthy , convincingly showed the flaws in that earlier use of the populist analogy. Others have criticized the neo-populist analogy as applied to the New Right, especially Saloma, Ominous Politics , pp. 38-49. break

44. Richard Viguerie, "Money, Message, and Marketing," in New Right at Harvard , ed. H. Phillips, p. 116.

45. Roberts, Conservative Decade , p. 7.

46. The brief political biographies in the following paragraphs are drawn from a number of sources. On Viguerie: Viguerie, New Right , pp. 19-37. On Phillips: H. Phillips, New Right at Harvard , pp. vii-viii, 3-10. On Dolan: Milton Ellerin and Alisa H. Kesten, "The New Right: What Is It?," Social Policy 11 (March-April 1982): 54-62. On Weyrich: Ellerin and Kesten, "The New Right"; Edwards, "Paul Weyrich." On Schlafly: Carol Felsenthal, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981); Sasha Gregory-Lewis, "Stop-ERA: A Choice or an Echo?," The Advocate , November: 2, 1977, pp. 12-15, and November 16, 1977, pp. 6-8. On Crane: White and Gill, Why Reagan Won , p. 76; Viguerie, New Right , p. 74. On Buchanan: Rusher, Rise of the Right , pp. 197-198; White and Gill, Why Reagan Won , p. 77; Crawford, Thunder on the Right , p. 190. On McDonald: Newsweek , September 12, 1983, p. 27. On Blackwell: H. Phillips, New Right at Harvard , p. 133. On Feulner: ISI Campus Report , Spring 1981; Saloma, Ominous Politics , p. 42. On Kemp: Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "Is He the GOP's Future?" Reader's Digest , June 1982, pp. 108-112; Washington Post , August 12, 1984, p. B8. On Helms: Elizabeth Drew, "Jesse Helms," The New Yorker , July 20, 1981, pp. 78-95; Bill Arthur, "Helms, Outspoken Symbol of the Right," Charlotte Observer , February 12, 1984, p. 1A. On Falwell: Dinesh D'Souza, Falwell: Before the Millennium (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1984); Frances Fitzgerald, "A Disciplined, Charging Army," The New Yorker , May 18, 1981, pp. 53-141. On McAteer: "Roundtable's President McAteer."

47. Roberts, Conservative Decade , pp. 19-35; ISI Campus Report , Spring 1981.

48. Viguerie, New Right , pp. 21, 39, 11, 41.

49. Conservative Digest , March 1981, pp. 2-7.

50. Ibid., p. 26.

51. Ibid., pp. 28-29.

49. Conservative Digest , March 1981, pp. 2-7.

50. Ibid., p. 26.

51. Ibid., pp. 28-29.

49. Conservative Digest , March 1981, pp. 2-7.

50. Ibid., p. 26.

51. Ibid., pp. 28-29.

52. Rebecca Klatch, "Perceptions of Gender among Women of the New Right," paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, 1983. See also idem, Women of the New Right (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). In the latter work Klatch divides New Right women into "social conservatives" and "laissez-faire conservatives" and rightfully argues that most research has focused on the former. She exaggerates the division, however, by ignoring the ample number of hybrids and by lumping members of the Libertarian party among the laissez-faire group. Some observers continue

have seen in the traditionalist themes invoked by antifeminist women a nascent critique of both capitalism and patriarchy. See, for example, Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women (New York: Putnam, 1983). There is, however, nothing inherently anticapitalist or antipatriarchal in traditionalist themes; their broader implications depend on the overall political position into which they are integrated. In Chapter 2 I have shown how conservatives have long since expunged the critical elements of traditionalism.

53. For a discussion of supply-side economics as part of conservative ideology, see Jerome L. Himmelstein, "God, Gilder, and Capitalism," Society 18 (September-October, 1981): 68-72. For detailed accounts of how it developed, see John Brooks, "Annals of Finance: The Supply Side," The New Yorker , April 19, 1982, pp. 97-150; and Blumenthal, Rise of the Counter-Establishment , pp. 166-209.

54. For the selling of supply-side economics to Republicans, see David A. Stockman, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 47-76. For the conversion of Ronald Reagan in particular from a traditional Republican emphasis on austerity, balanced budgets, and painful solutions to the more optimistic approach of tax cuts and instant economic growth, see Robert W. Merry; "Growth Agent: Reagan Transformed," Wall Street Journal , September 13, 1985.

55. Cavanagh and Sundquist, "New Two-Party System," p. 37.

56. George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1980).

57. Viguerie, New Right , p. 59; National Review 1 (November 19, 1955), p. 5; John Dillin, "U.S. Conservatives on the March: Economic Philosophy and Outlook," Christian Science Monitor , March 18, 1986, p. 22.

58. John Judis, "Pop-Con Politics," The New Republic 191 (September 3, 1984): 20; Richard A. Viguerie, The Establishment vs. the People: Is a New Populist Revolt on the Way? (Chicago: Regnery Gateway; 1983). For a summary of conservative use of populist rhetoric, see Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement , pp. 250-251, 338. For another instance of the New Right playing up its populism, see Whitaker, New Right Papers .

59. See almost any issue of Conservative Digest between 1981 and 1988 for criticism of the Reagan administration, but especially February 1981, August 1981, February 1982, April 1982, July 1982, and September 1983. Human Events , March 7, 1981; National Review 35 (March 8, 1983): 294; Conservative Digest , May 1985; Group Research Report 24 (October 1985): 35. break