Phyllis Schlafly's Final Book: The Conservative Case for Donald Trump



Phyllis Schlafly, who passed away Monday at age 92, left behind a remarkable body of literature to influence the conservative movement and America. From her seminal 1964 work A Choice Not An Echo, to her final book, The Conservative Case For Donald Trump, (originally set for release the day after she passed away) Schlafly left an indelible mark on conservative thought.

Yet, if one were to believe the postings on social media and the inside-the-Beltway navel-gazers of establishment “conservatism” the late First Lady of the Conservative Movement couldn’t possibly be a




conservative because she – horror of horrors – was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump’s.

However, in The Conservative Case For Donald Trump, Mrs. Schlafly triumphantly faces down her critics in one final and incisive case for the “radical redirection” that Trump offers to set America back on the path of Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution.

In ten defining points, Schlafly zeros in on the Trump agenda to demonstrate to Republican voters that Donald Trump – improbable as it may seem – is the true conservative we’ve been waiting for.

In the Introduction to The Conservative Case For Donald Trump Mrs. Schlafly laid down the ultimate challenge the book offers to establishment “conservatives”:

I know that some well-meaning conservatives find Trump puzzling or even offensive, but I trust that this book – the culmination, for me, of more than seventy years of active involvement in Republican politics – might help sway them… not only can Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the general election, but that he could be the most conservative president we’ve had since Ronald Reagan. The stakes are unmistakably high. President Obama’s effort to fundamentally change America is on the brink of success – despite our having elected Republican majorities in both houses of Congress… What will Hillary Clinton do if elected president? She will take Obama’s transformation of America to the next level.

In this Mrs. Schlafly is undoubtedly right, and to those not immune to facts she presents 250 pages of facts and quotes to justify her faith that Trump will deliver.
While Schlafly and co-authors Ed Martin and Brett M. Decker review a great body of material to make their case, my favorite part of the book is the part on rotten trade deals and their effect on America’s working families:

Before Donald Trump, says Mrs. Schlafly, there had been no effective national political spokesman for the American worker. Now there is.

Trump states unequivocally that, “Trade deals are absolutely killing our country.” An increasingly large majority of Americans agree with him. According to a June 2015 New York Times/CBS News poll, 63 percent agreed with the statement that, “trade restrictions are necessary to protect domestic industries,” and only 30 percent felt that, “free trade must be allowed even if domestic industries are hurt by foreign competition.” A growing number of Americans no longer feel the economic system works for them and are expressing frustration that they are being locked out of the global economy by our own corporations and our own politicians.

In this analysis Donald Trump and Mrs. Schlafly are most certainly correct, but they take the case for Trump and a radical reassessment of our trade policies to the next and most politically important level.

By blithely trading away American jobs, especially blue collar jobs, in order to pursue free trade and its alleged benefits for the consumer, our political class has left many Americans no longer believing that the American Dream is within their grasp; instead, they find themselves shunted out of well-paying manufacturing jobs and into lower paying service jobs.

This is a slightly more concise, but no less compelling statement of what Donald Trump said in his great economic speech in Monessen, Pennsylvania:

America became the world’s dominant economy by becoming the world’s dominant producer. You know that from right here, right in this plant.

The wealth this created was shared broadly, creating the biggest middle-class the world has ever known. But then, America changed its policy from promoting development in America — in, in, in America — to promoting development in other nations. That’s what’s happening and that’s what’s happened.

We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements and cheat in every way imaginable, and our politicians did nothing about it. Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result. I have visited cities and towns across this country where one-third or even half of manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years. Today, we import nearly $800 billion more in goods than we export. We can’t continue to do that. This is not some natural disaster, it’s a political and politician-made disaster.

In restating Trump’s economic message in political terms Mrs. Schlafly was most certainly true to the political and philosophical roots she first stated more than 50-years ago in A Choice Not An Echo; the corrupt and self-interested “kingmakers” who have made free trade a goal divorced from its effects on their fellow citizens have, in large measure, made the economic disaster that has befallen America’s country class working families.

Until Republicans and conservatives break free of that dogma and embrace the “radical redirection” Donald Trump offers on trade, jobs and economic growth the American economy will continue to decline, as will American international standing and domestic tranquility.

The Conservative Case For Donald Trump is the definitive statement of how Donald Trump’s politics fit in the larger conservative political corpus from one of the individuals who defined modern conservatism.

We urge our fellow citizens who have yet to make-up their minds about the election, especially conservatives who may find Donald Trump, as Mrs. Schlafly put it, “puzzling or even offensive,” to keep an open mind and read The Conservative Case For Donald Trump before Election Day, we believe that in it they will find, as we did, a persuasive case for voting for Donald Trump.


http://www.conservativehq.com/node/24020