The MAGA New Right

Phyllis Schlafly

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Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016)

Illinois conservative activist; author of A Choice Not an Echo (1964, self-published, ~3 million copies); founder of Eagle Forum (1972); leader of the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment (1972–1982); the bridge figure between Goldwater’s 1964 grassroots insurgency and the Reagan-era social-conservative coalition; an early-and-late endorser of Donald Trump (March 2016 endorsement just before her death).

Why She Matters Here

Schlafly is the wiki’s principal example of a grassroots organizational entrepreneur in postwar American conservatism. The intellectual histories the wiki tracks (Bradford-Jaffa, NR Catholic Iberianism, Bozell-Vermeule postliberalism) are predominantly elite-male-Catholic-academic; Schlafly was lay-Catholic, female, suburban, and operational. She is the figure who built the organizational layer that made Goldwater’s 1964 nomination possible and the Reagan coalition possible.

Three contributions specifically:

  1. A Choice Not an Echo (1964). Self-published, ~3 million copies, distributed at scale into delegate mailboxes — some delegates received more than 60 copies. Argued that “secret kingmakers in New York” had stolen previous Republican nominations for moderate “Wall Street Republicans.” This is the wiki’s prototype of the populist-conservative anti-elite-conspiracy framing that runs through Yarvin’s “The Cathedral,” Anton’s The Flight 93 Election, and Project 2025’s “deep state” rhetoric. The structure is identical even though the cast of villains has rotated.
  2. The Stop ERA campaign (1972–1982). The single most successful right-populist organizing campaign of the 20th century. Defeated the ERA after it had passed both houses of Congress and 35 of the required 38 states. Is the operational template for later social-conservative campaigns — and arguably the proof-of-concept that lay-Catholic + evangelical + Mormon women could be mobilized at scale across confessional lines.
  3. The grassroots-to-elite transmission. Schlafly’s Eagle Forum was the first large-scale conservative organization that did not depend on the *NR* / Buckley elite circle for direction. It is the prototype of the autonomous-grassroots-organization form later replicated by Heritage Action, Rufo’s anti-CRT operation, and Bannon’s War Room network.

Career

  • Born Phyllis Stewart, St. Louis, 1924. Catholic; Washington University (BA), Radcliffe-Harvard (MA in government, 1945, age 20); JD from Washington University 1978 (age 53).
  • 1945–46: research assistant at the American Enterprise Association (precursor to AEI).
  • 1952: first Republican congressional run (lost).
  • 1958: married Fred Schlafly, conservative attorney; settled in Alton, Illinois.
  • 1964: A Choice Not an Echo. Self-published with $5,400. Sold at GOP grassroots events; hand-distributed to delegates; widely credited as a key driver of Goldwater’s nomination.
  • 1967: lost her bid for National Federation of Republican Women presidency to a moderate-establishment candidate — the operational moment that crystallized her shift from inside-Republican-Party politics to parallel-organizational politics.
  • 1972: founded Eagle Forum as a Stop-ERA umbrella; the organization persisted as a permanent right-populist institution.
  • 1977: National Women’s Conference in Houston; Schlafly’s parallel “Pro-Family Conference” same week was the operational prototype for the right’s later parallel-public-square strategy.
  • 1972–1982 ERA campaign successfully defeats ratification.
  • 2016: endorsed Donald Trump on March 11, 2016 (her hometown of Alton, IL); she was 92. Died September 5, 2016, two months before Trump’s election. The Phyllis Schlafly Eagles continued under her son Andy Schlafly.

A Choice Not an Echo and the Wiki Synthesis

The book’s structural argument:

  1. The Republican Party’s presidential nominations from 1936 to 1960 were not democratic outcomes but the products of a small elite (“a few secret kingmakers in New York”).
  2. The kingmakers nominated moderates (Landon, Willkie, Dewey twice, Eisenhower) who could not provide a real ideological alternative to the Democrats — a choice, not an echo.
  3. The 1964 convention is the moment the grassroots could break the kingmakers’ grip.

This is the prototype of the counterrevolutionary frame the wiki reads through the post-2016 right. Substitute the “kingmakers” with “the Cathedral” (Yarvin), “Conservatism, Inc.” (Anton), or “the Davos class” (Limbaugh-via-Anton); the structural argument is identical. Schlafly anticipated by 50 years.

The ERA Campaign as Wiki-Relevant

The Stop-ERA campaign matters for the wiki because it established the cross-confessional women’s coalition that becomes the structural backbone of later right-organizing:

  • Lay Catholics + evangelical Protestants + Mormons unified around opposition to abortion and feminism.
  • The model later transferred to Susan B. Anthony List (1992), the contemporary anti-abortion legal infrastructure (Alliance Defending Freedom, etc.), and the post-Dobbs movement.
  • This coalition is what Christian Nationalism later codes as a theological unity but was originally an operational and political unity built by Schlafly.

Trump Endorsement (2016)

Schlafly’s March 11, 2016 Trump endorsement, given at his St. Louis rally in her hometown of Alton, was a significant operational event. She was the surviving senior figure of the 1964 grassroots insurgency endorsing the figure she identified as the 2016 reincarnation. Conservative establishment commentary (including some of her own Eagle Forum board) was scandalized; she defended the endorsement to her death six months later. Her endorsement is one of the wiki’s clearest intentional generational transmissions: the figure who built the 1964 grassroots delivered the imprimatur to its 2016 successor.

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