ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 offers a concluding analysis of the long-term impact of the service model on the organizational and political development of the Republican Party, as well as on the country. The service party proved critical to the rise of the conservative Right within the Republican Party in the years between the Goldwater debacle and the Reagan victory. It not only helped reshape the politics of the Republican Party, but, by extension, that of the country, during the fitful years between the 1960s and 1980s and beyond. It helped take the partisan politics of the Right from the margins of US politics to the very epicenter of political power: the presidency. It was a transformation that would have an indelible impact on the ideological contours of the nation’s politics. But it is a change that cannot be fully understood without an appreciation for how Republican politics during this period, specifically the rise of the Republican Right, was facilitated institutionally by the introduction of a service approach to party-building.
