History of the Conservative Movement, Part 11: Building the Political Foundations

Gary North - June 05, 2021

In 1964, Goldwater won only five states. He won his home state of Arizona (barely), and the five "deep South" states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The Democrats' loss of the deep South states broke the party's control over the South that had prevailed ever since the end of Reconstruction in 1877. It marked a new Republican strategy that became visible in 1968. In July 1969, Kevin Phillips' book, The Emerging Republican Majority, described this shift. The book became the first best-seller of the tiny five-year-old conservative book publisher, Arlington House. The book immediately began to shape political opinion. Phillips was a staffer in the Nixon administration. Nixon had defeated Hubert Humphrey the previous November in a close election.

Ronald Reagan's speech for Goldwater at the end of the campaign became the foundation for his political career. He had been on the payroll of General Electric for over a decade. He gave pro-free enterprise speeches for the company. He was popular with its blue-collar workers. He had been an anti-Communist Democrat when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild, but he had not been conservative. His years with GE changed him. He read and spoke his way out of the Democratic Party. That would change America.

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