34 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Graham preached that it was time for America to return to its founding principles, a nation built on the Bible and biblical mandates that the Founding Fathers established. Believing the nuclear holocaust was imminent, the Los Angeles revival launched Graham into worldwide fame and set the stage for other conservative groups to emerge.23 In 1960 Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater fought for the Republican Party’s nomination. Nixon was the Republican establishment candidate, and Goldwater was the grassroots candidate.24 In her book Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Du Mez notes that “conservative evangelicals were drawn to his [Goldwater’s] hard-edged, bombastic style, and to the ‘cowboy conservatism’ he embodied.”25 He also gained the attention of Phyllis Schlafly, who invited him to speak at the Illinois Federation of Republican Women, one of his first national speeches. Goldwater, however, lost the Republican Party’s nomination. Goldwater’s loss to Nixon as the 1960 Republican candidate infuriated Schlafly, who interpreted the win as the Eastern elite's control over the Republican Party. In 1964, she self-published her book A Choice, Not an Echo to help educate California’s delegates on how the Republican establishment, or “secret kingmakers,” used political tactics to cheat non-establishment candidates out of political primaries.26 Heralded as the turning point for the 1964 Goldwater presidential campaign, Schlafly’s book precipitated his nomination as the Republican Party’s candidate. Although Goldwater overwhelmingly lost the 1964 election to Lyndon Johnson, his candidacy started a grassroots conservative movement within the Republican Party and catapulted Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan into the political spotlight.27 The 1980 presidential election of Ronald Reagan revealed the evangelical grassroots’ power over the Republican Party. After the turmoil of the 1970s, white conservative evangelicals were more concerned about ending abortion, promoting family values, denouncing communism, curbing the homosexuals’ influence, and pushing back feminists than they were about religious and denominational differences.28 Most surprising, however, was that conservative evangelical women, motivated by Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA campaign and Beverly LaHaye’s fight against the radical feminist movement, influenced and supported the Republican Party
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