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But for other conservatives, such arguments didn't go far enough. On the far right, the John Birch Society was founded by Robert Welch in 1958. Within a few years, the group numbered thousands of devoted followers: men and women who gave their time to raise funds, arrange speakers, show educational films, and write and distribute tracts, all intended to ensure America's continued opposition to communism. Both Schoenwald and McGirr suggest that the impact of the Birch Society on the postwar conservative revival cannot be overstated; in McGirr's words, "No one initiative gained such notoriety or was more important in channeling grassroots fears of liberalism than the John Birch Society, whose resources and inspiration were crucial for right-wing mobilization."

At first glance, this reading of the rise of conservatism is strongly counterintuitive. After all, while the Birch society did experience rapid growth in its early years, the organization and its excesses—its fanaticism, its racism, its profound lack of "cool"—gave conservatism a bad name with many Americans, providing liberals with a heaven-sent opportunity to taint conservative opponents with guilt by association.

Nevertheless, our authors argue, the pressure exerted from the Right by the Birch Society and their kindred spirits prepared the way for Barry Goldwater's nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. And in turn—here again the logic is counterintuitive—despite his staggering defeat in the election, Goldwater galvanized a generation of activists who would ultimately carry a conservative to the White House.

"Scratch a conservative today," Perlstein writes,

—a think-tank bookworm at Washington's Heritage Foundation or Milwaukee's Bradley Foundation. … a door-knocking church lady pressing pamphlets into her neighbors' palms about partial-birth abortion; the owner of a small or large business sitting across the table from a lobbyist plotting strategy on how to decimate corporate tax rates; an organizer of a training center for aspiring conservative activists or journalists; Republican precinct workers, fund-raisers, county chairs, state chairs, presidential candidates, congressmen, senators, even a Supreme Court justice—and the story comes out. How it all began for them: in the Goldwater campaign.

The organizations that conservatives built to elect Goldwater would not collapse; they would be the same organizations that conservative candidates relied on in subsequent elections, for the rest of the decade and, indeed, the rest of the century.

It was the Goldwater campaign, of course, that gave a big boost to a little-known actor-turned-activist named Ronald Reagan. Reagan began his political life as a Democrat. During the 1950s, in part because he chose as his second wife the daughter of an outspoken Chicago conservative, he moved rightward, eventually taking work as General Electric's spokesman against "government encroachment." In 1962, he formally switched his party affiliation, and in 1964, he served as state cochair of the Committee for Goldwater-Miller.

Near the end of the campaign, in a last-ditch effort to revive Goldwater's chances on the national stage, Reagan gave a televised 39-minute speech called "A Time for Choosing." He railed against LBJ and the liberal policies he promoted, criticizing everything from agricultural policy to welfare, and suggested that the only answer to America's ills was electing Barry Goldwater.

The speech was a stunning success—commentators said it was the most electrifying political oration since William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold"—though it did far more for Reagan's political prospects than for Goldwater's. Reagan was flooded with letters from thousands of Californians, begging him to run for office, and before long, he did. He would not only inherit Goldwater's organizational network but also his mantle as the conservative standard-bearer. He won the California election as handily as LBJ had won the presidency two years before: Reagan defeated Edmund "Pat" Brown by almost a million votes, with the incumbent Democratic governor winning only three counties.

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