Conservative lament

The conservative movement has scored historic gains but has yet to achieve several of its basic goals.

That’s the verdict of some of its founding fathers (and one important mother).

“We won the battle against communism, but I guess we’ve largely lost the battle against big government,” says Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly, 79, who defied conventional wisdom by leading a women’s crusade that defeated the Equal Rights Amendment in the mid-1970s.

“And we’ve lost lots of our liberties,” says Mrs. Schlafly, a national leader of the conservative movement since 1964, when Sen. Barry Goldwater ran for the presidency as the Republican nominee.

Although Mr. Goldwater was soundly defeated by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, the Arizona Republican’s campaign was a watershed for political conservatism. Mr. Goldwater championed small government, lower taxes and global anticommunism.

Mrs. Schlafly is one in a small coterie of surviving founders who struggled for many years to popularize conservative politics and finally to elect Ronald Reagan as president for two terms beginning in 1980. They agree that Mr. Reagan remains the most admired figure of modern conservatism.

These movement founders also concur with the observation of William Rusher, former publisher of National Review magazine, that one of the most significant achievements has been that the “conservative movement has come to dominate the Republican Party totally.”

The growing conservative trend among Republicans has had an ironic effect on the Democratic Party, Mr. Rusher says, prompting a largely successful effort by liberal Democrats “to wipe out the last vestiges of conservatism” in their party.

At 80, Mr. Rusher, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship, is optimistic about the future of the conservative movement. This sentiment is echoed by Edwin J. Feulner, 62, president of the Heritage Foundation, who says that the conservative movement has achieved many of its original aims — both at home and abroad.

“The biggest achievements have been helping the people of Eastern Europe to become free, cutting taxes, reforming welfare and transforming the military,” says Mr. Feulner, who began his involvement in the movement 33 years ago as a young activist aide to Rep. Philip M. Crane, Illinois Republican.

Losing steam

Despite its successes, some of these leaders are troubled by the failure of the conservative movement to secure one of its major goals: the rolling back of big government entitlement programs.

“What attracted me to conservatism in 1959 was the idea that maybe we could turn back the leviathan government that was taking away our liberties,” says Donald J. Devine, 66, an official in the Reagan administration.

“How little did I know we were living in a system with less federal presence and interference than we have now — 44 years later,” Mr. Devine says.

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