1980's Government and Politics | The New Right

Resurgence of Conservatism.

Conservatism went into a temporary decline after Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater in the presidential election of 1964 and the accompanying defeat of many conservative senators and House members, but a "New Right" emerged as a potent force in American politics during the late 1970s and early 1980s, reenergized by the increasing hostility of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late 1970s. Conservatism was also bolstered by a reaction to the social upheavals that accompanied the civil rights and antiwar movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The New Right pointed to the sexual revolution and the hippie drug culture as proof of the break-down in traditional social values. They decried the rapid expansion of government power that began in the mid 1960s, labeling federal initiatives such as busing for school desegregation, affirmative-action programs, the...