Conservatives Stumble Into the Future

Some conservatives believe that when Ronald Reagan leaves office he will take the conservative movement with him into retirement. Kevin Phillips, author of Post-Conservative America, writes, “The tides that began launching the conservative era twenty years ago are old and beginning to ebb.” New Right activist Paul Weyrich complains that “the ‘Reagan Revolution’ turned out to be not a revolution at all, but rather a temporary bloodless coup.” But others believe that the Reagan years laid the foundation for a conservative America. A future historian, writes Irving Kristol, could define the Reagan years “as the first critical stage in the evolution of a conservative majority in American politics....