1. CHAPTER 30 Conservative America in the Ascent 1980–1991
James A. Henretta
Eric Hinderaker
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History Eighth Edition America: A Concise History Sixth Edition
CHAPTER 30
Conservative America in the Ascent
1980–1991
Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

2. I. The Rise of the New Right
A. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan: Champions of the Right
1. The Conscience of a Conservative – Goldwater’s 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, attacked the reforms of the New Deal; book was widely distributed and celebrated by those in the Republican Party who wanted a conservative candidate in 1964; Goldwater further enchanted conservatives with another book, Why Not Victory? , in which he criticized the containment policy— the strategy of preventing the spread of communism followed by both Democrats and Republicans since 1947—as weak.
2. Grassroots Conservatives – The John Birch Society, Young Americans for Freedom, and the Liberty Lobby all campaigned for Goldwater in 1964; Phyllis Schlafly’s book, A Choice Not an Echo, accused Republicans of being “Democrats in disguise”; Goldwater won nomination but was defeated by Johnson easily; Goldwater people now supported Ronald Reagan’s campaigns for California governor in 1966 and 1970; supporters viewed Reagan as successor to Nixon as party leader and potential president.
I. The Rise of the New Right

3. I. The Rise of the New Right
B. Free-Market Economics and Religious Conservatism
1. A three-legged stool – The burgeoning conservative movement had three main components: anticommunism, free-market economics, and religious traditionalism; vision was propagated by William F. Buckley in the National Review and Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago.
2. The Religious Right – Conservative Protestants and Catholics joined together to condemn divorce, abortion, premarital sex, and feminism; charismatic televangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson emerged as champions of a morality-based political agenda during the late 1970s; Falwell established the Moral Majority in 1979 with 400,000 members; following Vietnam, counterculture, and the women’s movement, the New Right found a willing audience for its message.
I. The Rise of the New Right

5. I. The Rise of the New Right
C. The Carter Presidency
1. Hostage Crisis – Challenges in foreign relations during late 1970s included Carter’s struggle to maintain a policy of human rights abroad while fighting the Cold War; turned Panama Canal over to Panama (effective December 31, 1999); negotiated peace agreement between Israel and Egypt; boycotted 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow; provided covert assistance to anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan (including Osama bin Laden); problems in Iran (U.S. ally) began when the U.S.-supported shah (king) was ousted by a revolution, bringing Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. When the U.S. admitted the shah into the country for cancer treatment, Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking sixty-six Americans hostage for 14 months; Iraq invaded Iran; hostages were released the day after Carter left office.
2. The Election of 1980** – Carter’s popularity fell to 21 percent with high inflation, stagnant wages, crippling mortgage rates, and unemployment near 8 percent; Reagan won 51 percent of the vote to Carter’s 41 percent, and 6.6 percent went to Independent candidate John Anderson
I. The Rise of the New Right

7. II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age
A. The Reagan Coalition
1. The core of the Republican Party – Under Reagan’s leadership, the core of the Republican Party remained the relatively affluent, white, Protestant voters who wanted balanced budgets, opposed big government, feared crime, and favored strong national defense; Reagan also found support among middle-class, suburbanites who endorsed the conservative agenda of combating crime and limiting social-welfare spending; also attracted southern white voters who had previously voted with the Democratic Party until Johnson’s support for civil rights alienated them in the 1960s.
2. Moral Majority – The Religious Right proved crucial to 1980 victory; Republican Party platform called for a constitutional ban on abortion, voluntary prayer in public schools, and a mandatory death penalty for certain crimes; also demanded an end to court-mandated busing to achieve racial integration in schools; opposed Equal Rights Amendment; attracted blue-collar Catholics (which many called Reagan Democrats) in industrialized areas (heavily industrialized Midwest states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois).
II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age

8. II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age
B. Conservatives in Power 1. Reaganomics – Supply-side economics emphasized investment in productive enterprises; believed that the best way to bolster investment was to reduce the taxes paid by corporations and wealthy Americans, who could then use these funds to expand production; supply-siders maintained that the resulting economic expansion would increase government revenues and offset the loss of tax dollars; presumed that future tax revenue on produced/sold goods would make up for tax cuts. The 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) reduced income tax rates for most Americans by 23 percent over three years, slashed estate taxes, and cut the taxes of corporations by $150 billion over five years; a desire to cut government expenditures was harder to achieve because of reluctance to cut Social Security or Medicare; David Stockman (Reagan’s budget director) admitted in the Atlantic that Reaganomics was based on faith, not economics, including the “trickle-down” notion that helping the rich would eventually benefit the lower and middle classes; military spending continued, and national debt skyrocketed; by 1989, the total federal debt had tripled. 2. Deregulation – Deregulation of prices had begun under Carter, but expanded under Reagan; cut budgets of agencies that protected workers (OSHA and EPA); appointed agency directors hostile to the mission of the agencies (ex: James Watt at the Department of the Interior who viewed environmentalism as “a left-wing cult”).
II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age 8

10. II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age
B. Conservatives in Power (cont.)
3. Remaking the Judiciary – Reagan appointed 368 federal judges, most with conservative credentials, and three Supreme Court Justices (Scalia, O’Connor, and Kennedy); elevated William Rehnquist to Chief Justice ( ); the Court remained relatively moderate despite these conservative appointments.
4. HIV/AIDS – Another conservative legacy was the slow national response to HIV and AIDS epidemics; deadly pathogen developed in Africa when a chimpanzee virus jumped to humans; immigrants brought to Haiti and then to the United States during the 1970s; identified as HIV in 1981 as it was killing hundreds of gay men; AIDS took nearly 100,000 deaths in 1980s; administration did not act until 1987.
II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age 10

11. II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age
C. Morning in America
1. Election of 1984 – Reagan promoted his tax policies and economic recovery; ran against former vice president Walter Mondale and Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (NY); Reagan won in a landslide; his campaign slogan, “It’s Morning in America,” projected the image of a new day dawning on a confident people.
2. Return to Prosperity – By 1985, U.S. was importing more than exporting; the country became a debtor nation; recovery in late 1980s resulted from growth in financial services, medical services, and computer technology, not manufacturing.
3. Culture of Success – Wealth was celebrated in second half of 1980s (ex: Lee Iacocca at Chrysler, Donald Trump in NYC real estate).
4. The Computer Revolution – Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak were four entrepreneurs who pioneered the computer revolution in the late 1970s and 1980s, including advent of the personal computer (PC); Apple Computers was founded by Jobs and Wozniak in 1976; Microsoft was founded by Gates and Allen in 1975.
II. The Dawning of the Conservative Age

13. III. The End of the Cold War
A. U.S.-Soviet Relations in a New Era 1. Reagan’s Cold War Revival – Rejected the Nixon-era détente with the Soviet Union; instead rearmed U.S. to force the Soviets into a prolonged arms race that would damage their economy; supported CIA initiatives in Angola, Mozambique, Afghanistan, and Central America; aided repressive, right-wing regimes in blocking Soviet influence but at great costs. 2. Iran-Contra – Administration sold arms to Iran in an effort to gain assistance in negotiating hostage releases in Lebanon; did so without congressional approval; used the profits to overthrow democratically elected government in Nicaragua (Sandinistas), despite a ban on aid to the CIA-supported Contras passed by Congress in Gorbachev and Soviet Reform – Beginning in 1985, Soviet leader Gorbachev introduced policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring) in Soviet Union; met Reagan in 1985; within two years, the two nations were negotiating the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe; Reagan favored a renewal of détente; Gorbachev then began to focus on domestic reform; series of peaceful uprisings in eastern Europe (“Velvet Revolution”) led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; military uprising in August 1991 was quelled by popular opposition led by Boris Yeltsin (president of the Russian Republic); on December 25, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formally dissolved.
III. The End of the Cold War

15. III. The End of the Cold War
B. A New Political Order at Home and Abroad 1. Election of 1988 – Vice President George H.W. Bush received Republican nomination with Indiana senator Dan Quayle as his running mate; defeated Massachusetts governor, Michael Dukakis, by labeling him a “card-carrying liberal”; Bush won 53 percent of popular vote. 2. Middle East – U.S. under Reagan had attempted to persuade Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to accept Israel, while seeking Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state; was unsuccessful during Reagan years; remained a divisive issue in Bush years. 3. Persian Gulf War – In August 1990, Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait, believing U.S. would support, and threatened to invade Saudi Arabia; Bush convinced UN to use force against Iraq; coalition of thirty-four nations undertook military action; UN Resolution 687 imposed economic sanctions against Iraq unless it allowed unfettered inspection of its weapons systems, destroyed all biological and chemical arms, and unconditionally pledged not to develop nuclear weapons.
III. The End of the Cold War 15