SPECTATOR's JOURNAL: Upstream... and Uphill

...The visitor must pro- FinDing the log Cabin in virginia’s Blue Ridge ceed south from Sperryville, turn left at a country store, take the next right, go about a mile down the gravel road, and then… “What kind of car do you drive...

...Later on, you have all these people who figure it’s probably a pretty good political thing to do...

...George Bush...

...The point is, if conservatives get together and have a common interest, and they use their resources, they’ve got a huge amount of power, demonstrated by the fact that they got nominated and confirmed two of the most conservative Supreme Court justices in history,” Regnery says...

...Running a magazine is a lot different than running a book publishing company...

...You have permissiveness that these people had never encountered before...

...The book also highlights the role of the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, in spurring conservatives into action...

...It was a tough battle to elect him...

...We’ll lose some battles, and we’ll get up and fight back, and we’ll win some battles...

...that Regnery did much of the research and writing of Upstream, based on the idea of “a narrative It Was at his Cabin in the blue riDge, however, history of conservatism,” an idea that evolved over the course of several months...

...When he got to the White House, he had an agenda...

...What I wanted to do was to show that there’s a handful of people who really are the ones who started this log rolling down the hill, and it kept gathering momentum, and now you’ve got something that is really very significant...

...Instead, the book was published by Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint run by Republican media adviser Mary Matalin...

...the second, I was getting my education, doing my military [he served in the Coast Guard...

...Even liberal Democrats now acknowledge Reagan’s greatness, although during his presidency, 3 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 says...

...Despite the rustic modesty of its rough-hewn log exterior, the cabin is surprisingly spacious inside, with four bedrooms and plenty of shelf space—most of which is devoted to books...

...Conscious of the movement’s strength, Regnery is confident of conservatism’s future, regardless of short-term political difficulties...

...John Connally, Tennessee Sen...

...The drive is worth it, though...

...I knew what the issues were and I knew what kinds of things people wanted to see...

...It’s been an uphill fight, and it always will be an uphill fight,” Regnery says...

...Paul Laxalt, the Nevada Republican who was a close ally of Ronald Reagan...

...Of course, Upstream chronicles Reagan’s role in converting conservatism from an intellectual niche into a governing philosophy...

...The benefits of hindsight are also beginning to bring into focus the successes and failures of the “Republican Revolution” that began in 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the GOP to capture control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years...

...It’s always easier to see those things 20 or 30 years later, when you look back on them, than at the time,” Regnery says...

...Why not do something different?’ I’d had two careers, and I figured I could have a third...

...A major focus of Regnery’s narrative is the roles played by the individual activists and intellectuals who built the postwar conservative movement...

...That’s why the title of the book is Upstream...

...Regnery asks...

...The first of the 15, I was a child...

...The book chronicles the conservative movement’s long struggle from its beginnings with a relative handful of intellectuals in the late 1940s to its triumph in the Reagan administration and onward into the 21st century...

...Regnery notes that in 1980 Reagan faced a crowded field of rivals for the Republican nomination— including Texas Gov...

...I grew up with the conservative movement,” says Regnery, noting that his father published and was friends with William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, and many other early intellectual stalwarts of the conservative movement...

...Warren “had been an activist governor in California and he was used to exercising executive authority,” Regnery says...

...So when they get to Congress or wherever they go, they’re pretty easily dissuaded...

...The driveway is steep, narrow, and unpaved, and Regnery advises most visitors against attempting to drive all the way up to the cabin...

...It was not clear at all that [Reagan] was going to be the nominee,” Regnery says...

...Once elected, Reagan faced enormous difficulties, including a military weakened by years of post-Vietnam neglect and an economy that was “horrendous,” as Regnery recalls...

...Gingrich’s installation as Speaker set off a series of high-profile confrontations with the Clinton administration...

...lectual foundations to its political achievements, including the 1964 Republican Upstream ConneCts the movement’s intelpresidential campaign of Sen...

...Upstream has been praised as “fascinating” (Phyllis Schlafly), “a thorough history of the movement” (David Limbaugh), and “essential reading for anyone interested in conservatism” (Washington Times ). Tmarking a successful start for the first-tim s m a r g o r p n i s i v l o d r s n d o h n e ne o W ze boo o k f h a as i la a n n D d e D t e R e egne o ry interview e s , author embarking at age 65 on what is, by his own count, his fourth career...

...I was the state chairman for Young Americans for Freedom in Wisconsin, and I presented him with a big brass elephant.…I remember having my picture taken with him—I lost the picture, I don’t know what ever happened to it,” he says...

...They were about to go under...

...Regnery says...

...the third segment, from 30 to 45, I was practicing law and working in the government...

...One publisher he didn’t approach with the book proposal was Regnery: “I told them I was going to write a book, but I’m still on the board.…I told them I wasn’t going to give it to them because I didn’t think it was right to have a book published by your own company...

...The result was the formation, in 1978, of the Rev...

...But it had a lot of new challenges, too...

...The acquaintance continued over the years, including Regnery’s tenure on the staff of Senator Laxalt, who was Reagan’s national campaign chairman for three presidential bids beginning in 1976, when Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination...

...They’re thinking, ‘We need foot soldiers to go out and help us win some battles.’ And so they realize there are all these evangelicals who are getting upset about the fact that the world is turning left...

...You look back in the earlier times, there were no opportunities, so there were no opportunists,” Regnery says, noting how liberals heaped abusive epithets on Buckley, Goldwater, and other early conservative leaders...

...I knew those people and I’d gotten involved in conservative politics and Young Americans for Freedom and done various battles through the Reagan administration.… I had a feel for it...

...Yet Reagan’s successful image may be misleading in some ways, Regnery says...

...Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which played an important role in helping Reagan defeat President Jimmy Carter in 1980...

...T R o b e R T s T a c y M c c a I n there were many Republicans who did not understand or appreciate what Reagan was doing...

...Many of them became convinced, I think, that to stay in office, they need to do what liberals had done, which was to spend money...

...I’m a conservative, but I’m not going to do that, so we’re going to go ahead and spend a lot of money, just like liberals would.’” While clearly not a fan of the current president, Regnery does grant Bush credit for cutting taxes and making conservative judicial appointments...

...He’s sort of perceived as a giant now, so people like to think that he came sweeping in and that everybody stood aside and let him go to the White House...

...Robert stacy Mccain is co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Thomas Nelson...

...It wasn’t that way at all...

...You’ve got these left-wing values that are becoming pretty prominent, and [evangelicals] didn’t like it,” he says...

...His ninth-floor corner office overlooks the Potomac River, with a view of the skyline of Washington, D.C., in the distance...

...George W. Bush is “a classic example” of this tendency, Regnery says...

...Reagan’s success in reviving the economy, countering the threat of Soviet expansionism, and restoring public faith in America has inspired a generation of conservative activists...

...The world’s not going to stop if the Democrats mind, he says, to remind the rising generation of conservatives of the against-the-odds struggle to build the movement they will someday inherit...

...Naturally, the former president of Regnery Publishing has copies of the famous titles published by the company his father started in 1947, including William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale (1951) and Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953...

...Despite the Christian influence that had been present in the conservative movement since the 1940s, it was not until after the upheavals of the 1960s that evangelical Protestants became involved in conservatism in an organized way, Regnery explains...

...Yet he also notes that Bush would have made Supreme Court justices of two Texas cronies—Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers—had it not been for concerted pressure from a well-organized group of conservative activists...

...The transformation of the federal judiciary into an engine of liberal activism began with President Eisenhower’s M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 3 7 s P e c T a T o R ’ s J o u R n a l 1953 appointment of former California Governor Earl Warren to the Supreme Court...

...You have the courts banning prayer in the schools...

...Regnery’s weekend retreat is somewhat notorious among Washington conservatives as the site of the annual bacchanal known as The American Spectator Pig Roast...

...After Reagan was elected president, Regnery joined the Justice Department, spending two years as a deputy assistant attorney general and three years as administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice...

...For the Clintons, [the Republican victory in the 1994 mid-term election] was probably the biggest blow they had in their eight years, because they knew they needed the House to get their agenda passed and to get their programs funded,” Regnery he Republican congressional majority eventually lost its conservative impetus...

...In 1986, Regnery started his second career when he became president of Regnery Publishing...

...In 2003, he left that behind to take up a third career as pub“I had just turned 60,” Regnery says, recalling the decision...

...The story of the effort to get John Roberts and Samuel Alito appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court forms the final chapter of Upstream...

...After all, the Clinto r e h T . e c a l p t n e l i s e r . S . e h T . e r f e s e m i y n ma a n i e B “ . s ce c u s v t r s n o o u r p ar od t of c t the f P c robl e em v , a h i e e says, is a s n ironic g by- win th t e pres b ide o ntia l elec U tion is ,” a he say i s. “It’s hap pene n d e and so there were a lot of opportunists who joined years were great for the conservative movement— who said they were conservatives who really weren’t,” it grew by leaps and bounds...

...Now, Regnery spends his weekdays meeting those challenges in The American Spectator ’s offices in Arlington, Virginia...

...Barry Goldwater, a defeat that sowed the seeds for Reagan’s eventual triumph...

...He didn’t really have any core principles except that he wanted to get elected.… He said, ‘I’m a compassionate conservative.’ In other words, ‘I want to say I’m a conservative, but I really don’t want to go quite that far, because conservatives are cruel and they’re mean and they’re willing to let people starve to death...

...Tsomeone who called himself a conservativ e m i t s ’ t ha s va r c r f o p he i n r t e o aga o n n s P e resiD ti en m C . y “ T mark s e t D h e a fir tur t ning e was elected president,” Regnery says...

...Religious faith had been a major force in conservative thought going back to such pioneering intellectuals as Buckley and Kirk...

...By 2003, after an expensive legal tangle with the Clinton administration and ownership changes, The American Spectator had reached a crisis, Regnery says...

...Regnery first met Reagan in 1965, when Reagan gave a speech in Milwaukee...

...They believed that Christian doctrine was responsible for Western civilization and, of course, the traditional conservatives were very concerned about preserving Western civilization...

...He decided to start changing the way the world worked, and he did...

...Taking over as publisher “did offer a lot of opportunities,” he says, “because in many ways, I could use the skills I’d developed publishing books...

...Regnery’s position at the Justice Department gave him an opportunity to observe how Reagan focused on his presidential priorities...

...When he was finally nominated, it wasn’t clear at all that he was going to beat Carter...

...then I spent more or less 15 years publishing books...

...He wrote the book with younger readers in That is in stark contrast to the movement’s beginnings, when conservatives were a tiny band of writers and activists with very few political allies...

...M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 3 9...

...It was the Supreme Court’s 1960s decisions against prayer and Bible reading in public schools, as well as the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, that helped fuel the rise of the so-called Religious Right, Regnery says...

...s P e c T a T o R ’ s J o u R n a l Upstream … and Uphill The personal is political in Al Regnery’s conservative chronicle...

...Yet the books on the cabin’s shelves are not there for nostalgic display, they’re research—among the more than 150 titles cited in the endnotes and bibliography of Regnery’s new book, Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism...

...A Chicago native and a lawyer by profession, Regnery spent years in private practice before coming to Washington in 1978 to join the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen...

...Online map services offer only limited assistance, and so Alfred S. Regnery (just “Al” to his friends) gives directions over the phone...

...The two-story cabin sits atop a ridge, offering a dramatic view across the valley to Old Rag Mountain, a 3,300-foot peak with a rocky crest that is a favorite ascent for hikers in Shenandoah National Park...

...I knew most of the people in the conservative movement...

...R o b e R T s T a c y M c c a I n segments...

...Among the office decorations are framed pages from an antique Arabic prayer book, which Regnery purchased in a Damascus street market during a visit to Syria in the 1990s...

...You look at this whole picture and what you see is that, in 60 years, the country has been transformed politically in a way that I don’t think it’s ever been transformed before,” he says...

...I divided up my life into 15-year segments, and I’d just closed the fourth of the 15-year 3 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 lisher of The American Spectator...

...He would listen and he would ask good questions, but he wasn’t going to do anything about it...

...I don’t know if they ran out of steam fighting Clinton—it’s hard to know exactly what it was,” Regnery says...

...Meanwhile, by the mid-1970s, a coterie of conservative activists known as the New Right—including Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, and Howard Phillips—had grown tired of “not winning anything,” Regnery says...

...And so they start talking about being conservative when they’re running [for office], but they really aren’t...

...The new Republican majority “was a huge deal, because the House of Representatives is the most powerful body in the United States,” says Regnery, discussing how the change in Congress impacted liberals...

...Bob Dole, Illinois Reps...

...Howard Baker, Kansas Sen...

...Having had complete control over it for so long, it was a bank account for liberals, and it was the way they got things done...

...Upon hearing the answer, he then asks, “Is it four-wheel drive...

...That was before 9/11,” he notes...

...In addition to an extensive bibliography, Up stream also draws on interviews that Regnery conducted with more than two dozen people who played pivotal roles in the conservative movement, including Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, William Rusher, Richard Viguerie, Patrick J. Buchanan, Edwin Meese, Milton Friedman, David Keene, Midge Decter, Robert Bork, and Newt Gingrich...

...Phil Crane and John Anderson, and former Texas Rep...

...He knew what he wanted to do and it was just a few things.… I remember sitting with him in the White House in these meetings in the Cabinet Room, and people would be talking about an initiative other than the things he wanted to do...

...by Robert stacy McCain Mountains is a challenging task...

...You’ve got these student radicals who are making a terrible hullabaloo...

...The secret of Reagan’s ultimate success was his “understanding that he couldn’t do everything,” he says...

...The courts became the institution that conservatives were reacting to.…The courts had been considered a key component of conservative government, and all of a sudden they become the enemy...

...Pconservative became politically expedient, are a lot of things we can do...

...I thought, ‘There’s got to be one more of these segments left before I’m done...

...The courts were quite innocuous until after World War II.…Nobody paid too much attention to what they were doing,” Regnery says...