Bill Berkowitz
February 17, 2006

Phyllis Schlafly's 50-year crusade

Smart, savvy and steadfast, the anti-feminist conservative icon has used the politics of accusation and paranoia to transform the political landscape of the U.S.

She's not celebrated during women's history month and she's never been elected to public office, but for the past 50 years, Phyllis Schlafly has been a major force within the conservative movement and the Republican Party, and she has left her mark on the political landscape. However you may view her -- as an "Aunt Tom," as the late Betty Friedan once heatedly labeled her, an oddball out of step with her times, and/or a conservative icon who helped pave the way for the Reagan Revolution, the Christian Coalition and George W. Bush -- Schlafly's emergence as a major conservative political figure was due to a confluence of political circumstances, and her intelligence, uncompromising tenacity, a grin that often paralyzed opponents, and a willingness to lead.

Although she played a huge role getting Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican Senator from Arizona, the party's nomination for the presidency in 1964, Schlafly exploded onto the national political scene during the 1970s when she waged an uphill, yet ultimately successful, battle against the Equal Rights Amendment.

"Few living Americans have done as much to shape the nation's direction as Phyllis Schlafly, who is arguably the most important woman in American political history," Ralph Z. Hallow recently opined in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times.

Schlafly has "been a one-woman right-wing communications empire. Through her speeches, books, radio addresses and monthly newsletter, 'The Phyllis Schlafly Report,' she has supported the nuclear arms race, Barry Goldwater, the Strategic Defense Initiative and phonics, and has bashed whole language learning, Communism at home and abroad, strategic arms limitation treaties, Nixon's diplomatic overtures to China, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Roe v. Wade and 'Eastern elites,'" Judith Warner wrote in her review of a new Schlafly biography by Donald T. Critchlow titled "Phyllis Schlafly And Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman's Crusade."

Warner, the host of "The Judith Warner Show" on XM satellite radio and the author of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety," noted that Schlafly "saved her special venom for the 'anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion' feminist movement."

In the 1970s, Schlafly turned her attention away from the battle against Communism and focused on stopping the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) -- a fight that political pundits at the time would have labeled fruitless.

The simple straight forward ERA read: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

In October 1971, the U.S. House passed the ERA by an overwhelming 354to 23 vote. Five months later, the Senate passed the ERA by a lopsided 84 to 8 vote. It was now up to the states for final ratification. Some states were so hot to get on board that they rushed to ratify before it had been officially submitted. In Kansas -- a state that these days embodies the hard right political conservatism of the past 25-plus years -- passed the ERA after only a 10 minute debate.

Watching these events unfold from her suburban St. Louis living room, Schlafly "decided that the ERA was a bad idea," The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in her review of the Critchlow book. Despite having no political organization to speak of, she launched her attack on the ERA by essentially claiming that it was an example of excessive liberal social engineering.

Severely misunderestimated by both the mainstream politicos and the feminist movement that supported the ERA, Schlafly was frequently treated as a crude joke or a crank: "Exactly what seemed most ridiculous about Schlafly in the early seventies -- her antiquarian views, her screwball logic, her God's-on-our-side self-confidence -- was by the end of the decade revealed to be her political strength," Kolbert wrote.

Even veteran feminist the late Betty Friedan, the author the powerful feminist primer, "The Feminine Mystique" was flummoxed by Schlafly: "I'd like to burn you at the stake," Friedan blurted out during a debate in Bloomington, Illinois. "I consider you a traitor to your sex. I consider you an Aunt Tom."

By the end of the decade as it became apparent that the ERA would fall short of the number of states needed for ratification, Schlafly was becoming a conservative icon.

Schlafly's life, as laid out by Critchlow, a history professor at St Louis University, parallels the rise of the modern conservative movement. The product of an anti-New Deal middle class family, Phyllis Stewart received top honors at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, an elite Catholic school, went on earn a degree in three years at Washington University in St. Louis, and received a master's degree from Radcliff.

At 25 she married Fred Schlafly, a lawyer 15 years her senior. In the early 1950s she was persuaded to run as a Republican for Congress in Illinois' 24th district, against veteran Democratic Congressman Melvin Price. Like many other Republicans at the time, Schlafly played the Communist card, accusing Price of championing "big government and big spending": "The New Deal party was extremely slow in realizing the dangers of Communism, but my opponent...was even slower than most of his party."

Although she lost the election, she didn't lose her political zeal. According to Elizabeth Kolbert, "She and her husband shared an obsession with the Communist menace, and took to entertaining friends with after-dinner showings of 'Operation Abolition,' which portrayed students protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee as violence-prone radicals, and 'Communism on the Map,' which showed red ink slowly spreading across the globe until just a few countries, including Switzerland and the United States, remained."

The Schlafly's helped found the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, an organization that aimed to organize Catholics to resist the Communist threat. To the Schlaflys, even the Eisenhower Administration was not zealous enough in the fight against Communism.

Unenthusiastic about Richard Nixon, Schlafly turned toward Senator Goldwater. She composed "A Choice Not an Echo," a short book that sold well over 3 million copies and, according to Kolbert, "mixed fact, sensational accusations, commonsensical truths, and elaborate conspiracy theories into a compelling but evidently bogus narrative." The book was a sensation among Republicans, particularly those that attended the 1964 convention in San Francisco.

After President Lyndon Johnson handily defeated Goldwater, Schlafly took to blaming the GOP's failure on the Eastern establishment wing of the party. (It would not be an exaggeration to note that over the course of several decades, Schlafly did as much as anyone to drive so-called Eastern establishment liberals out of any positions of power within the Republican Party.)

In 1972, despite the ERA appearing to be well on its way to ratification, Schlafly launched STOP (Stop Taking Our Privileges) ERA. The Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision intensified Schlafly's organizing efforts. Tying the abortion issue to the ERA, she was able to bring evangelical Christians to her side.

Within a short time, STOP ERA was to become both a training ground for future conservative activists, as well as a test-bed for a host of political strategies and tactics: "She organized 'training conferences' where she instructed her followers on how to hold press conferences, run phone banks, and infiltrate pro-ERA organizations," Kolbert wrote.

Schlafly, an accomplished organizer and political strategist earned the growing admiration of even her enemies: "I think what Phyllis is doing is absolutely dreadful," said Karen DeCrow, then the president of the National Organization of Women (NOW). "But I just can't think of anyone who's so together and tough. I mean, everything you should raise your daughter to be...She's an extremely liberated woman."

No matter who she was attacking or which issue she was trumpeting, Schafly maintained a high degree of control: She was "unfailingly well groomed and cheerful, even when taunting her opponents," the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert pointed out. But behind her grin lurked a political toughness that might even make such right wing hardballers as David Horowitz and Sean Hannity blanch.

Before it became a right wing weapon of choice, she perfected character assassination: "Starting with Melvin Price, back in 1952, her opponents have invariably been not just wrong or misguided but downright evil," Kolbert wrote, "From the Communists and 'perverts' who infiltrated the State Department to the Republican kingmakers, who used hidden persuaders and psychological warfare techniques,' and the women's libbers,' who placed 'their agents and sympathizers in the media and the educational system,' Schlafly's foes have always aimed at nothing less than the destruction of 'civilization as we know it."

And, lest you think that Schlafly, who founded the still-potent Eagle Forum back in the early 1970s, is merely a relic of the past with little relevance for today, think again. She's still drawing a crowd: In recent columns Schlafly took on President Bush over his immigration policies and railed against feminists who attack men's sports on college campuses.

Her monthly newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report is now nearly 40 years old and is still going strong; her syndicated column appears in dozens of newspapers across the country, and her radio commentaries are heard daily on 450 stations. Moreover, as a living legend within the conservative movement, Schlafly is always an invited speaker at most significant conservative gatherings.