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Timeline of modern American conservatism

This timeline of modern American conservatism lists important events, developments and occurrences which have significantly affected conservatism in the United States. With the decline of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party after 1960, the movement is most closely associated with the Republican Party (GOP). Economic conservatives favor less government regulation, lower taxes and weaker labor unions while social conservatives focus on moral issues and neoconservatives focus on democracy worldwide. Conservatives generally distrust the United Nations and Europe and apart from the libertarian wing favor a strong military and give enthusiastic support to Israel.[1]

Although conservatism has much older roots in American history, the modern movement began to gel in the mid-1930s when intellectuals and politicians collaborated with businessmen to oppose the liberalism of the New Deal led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, newly energized labor unions and big city Democratic machines. After World War II, that coalition gained strength from new philosophers and writers who developed an intellectual rationale for conservatism.[2]


Richard Nixon's victory in the 1968 presidential election is often considered a realigning election in American politics. From 1932 to 1968, the Democratic Party was the majority party as during that time period the Democrats had won seven out of nine presidential elections and their agenda gravely affected that undertaken by the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, but the election of 1968 reversed the situation completely. The Vietnam War split the Democratic Party. White ethnics in the North and white Southerners felt the national Democratic Party had deserted them. The white South has voted Republican at the presidential level since the 1950s and at the state and local level since the 1990s.


In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan rejuvenated the conservative Republican ideology, with tax cuts, greatly increased defense spending, deregulation, a policy of rolling back communism, a greatly strengthened military and appeals to family values and conservative Judeo-Christian morality. His impact has led historians to call the 1980s the Reagan Era.[3] The Reagan model remains the conservative standard for social, economic and foreign policy issues. In recent years, social issues such as abortion, gun control and gay marriage have become important. Since 2009, the Tea Party movement has energized conservatives at the local level against the policies made by the presidency of Barack Obama, leading to Republican success in the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections, and the 2016 election, in which Donald Trump was elected president.

Date

October 27, 1964 (1964-10-27)

29:33

Los Angeles, CA, United States

"The Speech"

Televised campaign speech

Ronald Reagan

Video clip, audio, transcript

Opposition to New Deal policies first takes shape as the . Led by conservative Democrats such as Al Smith, it fades after Roosevelt's 1936 landslide and disbands in 1940.[7][8] Businessmen begin organizing their opposition especially to labor unions.[9]

American Liberty League

Bibliography of conservatism in the United States

Allitt, Patrick. The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (2009)

Carey, George (2008). "Conservatism". In (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 93–95. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n61. ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.

Hamowy, Ronald

Carlisle, Rodney P. (2005). . Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1452265315.

Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right

Congressional Quarterly. Congress and the Nation: 1945–1964 (1965); Congress and the Nation: 1965–1968 (1969); with new volumes every four years, 1973, 1977... etc. Highly detailed nonpartisan timelines of political activity in Washington.

Crane, Michael (2004). . SP Books. ISBN 978-1561718917. elaborate details on hundreds of political groups and media across the spectrum

The Political Junkie Handbook

Critchlow, Donald T. The Conservative Ascendancy: How the Right Made Political History (2nd ed. 2011)

Cunningham, Sean P. (2010).

Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right

. Dictionary of American Conservatism (Philosophical Library, 1987)

Filler, Louis

et al. eds. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2006); the most detailed reference

Frohnen, Bruce

Nash, George H. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (1976)

. Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right (Anchor, 2012) 544 pp; popular history

Sandbrook, Dominic

Schneider, Gregory. The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (2009)

Story, Ronald; Bruce Laurie (2007). Rise of Conservatism in America, 1945–2000: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin's.