New Right (United States)

{{uspolitics}}
:''For the extreme-right movements in Europe and the U.K., see [[New Right (Europe)]]. No, they're not the same.''

The '''New Right''' (a.k.a. '''Movement Conservativism''' or '''[[Ronald Reagan|Reagan Conservatism]]''') refers to a [[conservative]] movement that brought key elements of the [[United States of America|American]] Right under the banner of 
[[red-baiting]]
 anti-communism. The movement was so named because it set itself apart from the [[isolationism|isolationist]] and [[laissez-faire]] "Old" Right.

The New Right had its roots in the post-[[World War II|WWII]] era, beginning with the [[McCarthyism|McCarthyite]] scare of the early 50s and the death of [[Ohio]] Senator [[Robert Taft]].  Its origins are often traced to [[William F. Buckley]] and his ''[[National Review]]'' magazine, founded in 1955.  The term "New" Right was coined in 1962 in an article for "Young Americans for Freedom" and became a popular descriptor for them in 1975.<ref name=viguerie>Viguerie, Richard. ''The New Right: We're Ready to Lead''. Caroline House, 1981. {{isbn|0960481427}}.</ref>{{rp|53}} Other writers also cite such [[New Deal]] opponents of the 1950s as Clarence Manion and L. Brent Bozell, Jr. (who first attempted what later became the [[Southern Strategy]]),<ref name="perlstein">Perlstein, Rick. ''Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus''. 2001, Hill and Wang.</ref> Peter Viereck, who may have been one of the immediate intellectual forebears of the New Right (but would soon denounce what it became),<ref>[http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2007/jun/18/00024/ Viereck Revisited], ''The American Conservative''</ref> and [[Friedrich Hayek]].

Some commentators have called it the "Three Legged Stool": big biz, the [[Religious right|Christian Right]], and [[Neoconservatism|foreign policy hawks]].  

==Origins==
Modern conservative thought began in the '50s as a reaction to what many considered the consensus liberalism of post-WWII America and the onset of the [[Cold War]]. F.A. Hayek's ''The Road to Serfdom'' (1944), William F. Buckley's ''God & Man at Yale'' (1951), an early critique of [[liberal academia]], and Russell Kirk's ''The Conservative Mind'' (1953) were important texts, along with the founding of ''National Review''. Throughout the mid to late 1950s, this new-model conservatism gained momentum among college students and twenty-somethings; M. Stanton Evans documented this trend in his 1961 book ''Revolt on the Campus'', which prematurely proclaimed the '60s a conservative decade.

Manion and Bozell first attempted to build a coalition fusing anti-New Deal fiscal conservatism with an inherently anti-[[civil rights]] "[[states rights]]" platform and discussed forming a third political party during the late 1950s. The 1956 independent presidential campaign of T. Coleman Andrews running on such a platform went nowhere, carrying only one county each in [[Virginia]] and [[Tennessee]] and 0.17% of the nationwide popular vote.<ref>[http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1956&off=0&f=1 1956 Presidential General Election Results], David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections</ref> Under the influence of Buckley, they soon dropped the third party talk and set out to draft [[Barry Goldwater]] to run as a [[Republican Party|Republican]].<ref name="perlstein"/> Another meeting was sponsored in 1959 by Kent Courtney and endorsed by several others on the right ([[Utah]] governor J. Bracken Lee, Dan Smoot, Thomas J. Anderson), also calling for a new conservative party; Courtney would also soon get on the Goldwater bandwagon but continue advocating for a new third party on the far-right.<ref>[http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=17740 Kent Courtney], Our Campaigns</ref>

1960 proved a banner year for the New Right. In September, Buckley, Bozell, Evans, and several other conservatives issued the Sharon Statement, setting down a series of principles for the conservative movement.<ref>[http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/the-sharon-statement The Sharon Statement]</ref> These conservatives also founded Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a student organization that remained a powerful national organization through the mid-'70s.<ref>There was a major split in YAF in the late '60s, due to the rise of the [[libertarianism|libertarian movement]] within its ranks and disillusionment over [[Vietnam War|Vietnam]] and [[Watergate]]. YAF [http://www.yaf.org/ still exists today], but in a much-diminished capacity.</ref> The same year saw the publication of [[Barry Goldwater]]'s book, ''The Conscience of a Conservative''. Actually ghostwritten by Bozell, it became a best-seller and introduced conservative ideology to a broader audience.

The nascent New Right coalesced around the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater.  William F. Buckley got to work purging elements such as [[Ayn Rand]] and her followers, [[Willis Carto]] and his supporters, and the [[John Birch Society]] from the pages of ''National Review'', effectively reading them out of the New Right (while modifying their ideas). Meanwhile, a new batch of personalities came out of the Goldwater campaign.  They included:

*[[Phyllis Schlafly]], whose book ''A Choice, Not An Echo'' was widely distributed to promote Goldwater
*[[Ronald Reagan]], whose last-minute "TV for Goldwater-Miller" ad<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY "A Time for Choosing Poorly" by Ronald Reagan]</ref> established him as an up-and-coming conservative politician
*Richard Viguerie, pioneer of political direct mail

==Post-Goldwater==

{{cquote|Apparently, the rich had had it. They weren't going to take the likes of us anymore. They also were in no mood to respect their former president, [[Dwight Eisenhower|Eisenhower]], who was nearly booed down until the crowd finally got a look at his scarlet face and raging eyes. One furious look from the ancient lion shut them all up. He said something and then turned his back on a people he'd never much cared for.|||[[Gore Vidal]] on the 1964 Republican National Convention, ''Point to Point Navigation''}}
After Goldwater lost in a landslide, some of the New Right again flirted with third-party strategies, most notably the [[American Independent Party]]. This turned out to be a sideshow.  Most of the New Right set out to take over the Republican Party and remake it from the bottom up, bringing in new allies as part of the conservative coalition. Although the [[New Left]] got much of the attention on college campuses, William F. Buckley's youth group, Young Americans for Freedom, was also very active.<ref>For all the details see Rebecca Klatch, ''A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s'', University of California Press, 1999</ref>  After the social changes of the 1960s, the [[Religious Right]] and [[neoconservatism]] formed in reaction and were both added to the mix.  [[Supply-side economics]] was also influential.  Several groups were founded during this period, such as:

*National [[Pro-life|Right to Life]] Committee - formed 1968, formally incorporated 1973 following ''[[Roe v. Wade]]''
*National [[Right to work|Right to Work]] Legal Defense Foundation - 1968
*[[Accuracy in Media]] (AIM) - 1969
*[[Eagle Forum]] - 1972, whose original name was STOP [[Equal Rights Amendment|ERA]]
*[[American Legislative Exchange Council]] - 1973
*[[Heritage Foundation]] - 1973
*The Conservative Caucus - 1974, founded by Howard Phillips, who would later found the [[Constitution Party]]
*National Conservative Political Action Committee - 1975
*Committee on the Present Danger - revived in 1976
*Free Congress Foundation - 1977
*[[Moral Majority]] - 1979
*[[Concerned Women for America]] - 1979
*The Religious Roundtable - 1979
*''The [[Washington Times]]'' - 1982
*[[Accuracy in Academia]] - 1985

The movement got a big boost when a [[tax protestor|tax revolt]] in the 1970s culminated in [[California]] Proposition 13 in 1978, rolling back property taxes.<ref>[http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5682 "Proposition 13, Then, Now and Forever"], [[Cato Institute]]</ref>  Viguerie asserted that the biggest boost, even more than the late 1970s tax revolt, was public opposition to the [[Panama]] Canal treaties and the New Right's ability to mobilize that opposition.<ref name=viguerie />{{rp|65-72}} He also cited as another big boost the influence of the Religious Right in flipping [[evangelical]] voters, a key constituency, from voting overwhelmingly for [[Jimmy Carter]] in 1976 to overwhelmingly for Reagan just four years later.<ref name=viguerie />{{rp|123-128}} The New Right soon had its biggest success when one of its own was elected president in 1980.

==Post-Reagan==
{{cquote|Gingrich assumed that when he became speaker, he could co-opt the radical outsiders he brought with him to Washington. It never happened. Their disdain for Washington, government, and Congress continued, even during their majority status. And, as Sean Theriault writes in ''The Gingrich Senators'', many of them migrated to the Senate, making its culture more partisan and combative.|||Norm Ornstein<ref>Ornstein, Norm, [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/the-eight-causes-of-trumpism/422427/ "The 8 Causes of Trumpism"], 1.4.16.</ref>}}

The break with Reagan-Bushism has been in the offing for a long time. After the fall of the [[Berlin Wall]] and the effective end of the [[Cold War]], the New Right coalition turned on each other. The Old Right was revived (under the [[paleoconservatism]] label) by people such as [[Pat Buchanan]]; a new [[populism]] fed into movements such as the [[Reform Party]], whose members included a young [[Donald Trump]]; the Goldwater Republicans were effectively supplanted by a newer, some would say nastier, brand of conservatism typified by [[conservative talk radio]], [[Pat Robertson]]'s [[Christian Coalition]], and in 1994 by the [[Newt Gingrich]]-led Republican takeover of the [[United States House of Representatives]]. This brand of conservatism influenced the [[George W. Bush]] administration.

Ronald Reagan is no longer relevant to anybody apart from Christian [[Dominionism|Dominionists]] like [[Ted Cruz|Cruz]] and [[Sarah Palin|Palin]] or tax-cut maniacs like the staff of the ''National Review''. Note how those forces insisted on fealty to "Reaganism" during the primary, while Trump scarcely namechecked Reagan at all. This indicated that the "3-legged stool" was coming apart, which not many people saw coming. (Remember how bullish so many liberal writers were on Rubio winning the 2016 primary?)

One of the lingering successes of the New Right was to make "[[liberal]]" a [[snarl word]] as it drove the [[centrism|center]] of American politics away from the left. The New Right's style once got them far but has not [[New Left#The Tea Party: the right's New Left?|aged well]]. One reason for this is its fondness for [[creationism]], [[homophobia|anti-gay]] [[bigotry]], and continuing to use Cold War-style [[red-baiting]] two decades after the fall of [[Communism]] — things even many conservatives today consider embarrassments. Groups continuing to hearken back to the New Right style come across today as [[Poe's Law|possible parodies]]; examples might include the AIM website, the [[Tea Party]], and anything coming out of the mouth of [[Rick Santorum]]. Recently the [[alt-right]] has been the incarnation of paleoconservatism fused with [[identitarian]]ism, [[nationalism]], [[racialism]], [[Men's_rights_movement|men's rights activism]] from the [[manosphere]], the [[New Right (Europe)|European New Right]], [[monarchism]], [[Libertarianism#A_brief_attempt_at_.28right-.29libertarian_taxonomy_in_the_US|right-wing authoritarian libertarianism]], [[Postmodernism#Common_criticisms|anti-modernism]], and deep ecology.<ref>[http://altright.net/ "What Is The Alt Right?"]</ref><ref>[https://www.counter-currents.com/2016/03/the-fight-for-the-alt-right/ "The Fight for the Alt-Right: The Rising Tide of Ideological Autism Against Big Tent-Supremacy"]</ref><ref>[http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html "Vox Popoli: What the Alt Right is - Vox Day"]</ref><ref>[http://www.radixjournal.com/the-red-pill/2016/7/27/the-alt-right-and-the-impossibility-of-conservatism "The Alt Right and the Impossibility of Conservatism"]</ref>

==External links==

*For fun, [http://conelrad.com/index.php Conelrad.com], a website cataloguing all things atomic and civil defense from the Cold War, has some archived ephemera from the Goldwater-era New Right.  See [http://conelrad.com/greene/index.php conservative folksinger Janet Greene] and [http://conelrad.com/media/atomicmusic/sh_boom.php?platter=25 The Goldwaters Sing Folk Songs to Bug the Liberals]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:United States politics]]
[[Category:Right-wing politics]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

Categories: United States politics, Right-wing politics