The Republican National Platform of 2012 "may be the best one ever adopted" according to Phyllis Schlafly.

That's high praise for a party that once demanded the "utter and complete extirpation" of slavery from America's soil.

But if the Schlafly is guilty of shortsightedness, she holds a longer view than most Americans. 88-years-old and vigorous as ever, Schlafly was one of the conservative pioneers who first nudged the G.O.P. to the right many years ago. At that time, few would have imagined the radical platform that the the Republican Party has just endorsed. Schlafly's success reveals how it came to be.

In 1972, she was still an ordinary housewife, unremarkable but for a book she had written about Barry Goldwater and a right-wing newsletter she penned every month for a few thousand subscribers. That was the year that Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have guaranteed equal rights for women.

It seemed as if the bipartisan amendment would pass easily. It sailed through the House and Senate by votes of 354 to 23 and 84 to 8, respectively. The Republican Kansas legislature deliberated for all of ten minutes before voting to ratify. Republicans in Delaware were so enthusiastic that they ratified the amendment before Congress officially submitted it. By the end of the year, thirty states had ratified, only eight more to go.

But then Phyllis Schlafly launched her living room crusade, Stop ERA.

"In the last couple of years, a noisy movement has sprung up agitating for 'women's rights,'" she wrote in October 1972, "It is anti-family, anti-children, and pro-abortion. It is a series of sharp-tongued, high-pitched whining complaints by unmarried women. They view the home as a prison, and the wife and mother as a slave."

Schlafly's "pro-family" rhetoric and anti-abortion stance appealed to evangelicals, a previously apolitical demographic, and sparked a groundswell of grassroots opposition. The progress of the ERA slowed, then stalled, then reversed. By 1977, thirty-five states had ratified the amendment, but Indiana would be the last. Five ratifying states rescinded their votes, and the amendment was dead by 1981.

Before Schlafly's campaign, the Republican Party had enthusiastically championed the ERA. Its 1972 platform pledged to continue "our support of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, our Party being the first national party to back this Amendment." Indeed, the Republicans had promoted the amendment in every platform since 1940. But by 1980, the they began to doubt. "We acknowledge the legitimate efforts of those who support or oppose ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment," the 1980 platform mumbled.

Meanwhile, Democratic support became even more emphatic. The 1980 platform virtually shouted, "Now, the Democratic Party must ensure that ERA at last becomes the 27th Amendment to the Constitution." The party threatened to withdraw funding from any candidates who failed to support the ERA and urged a boycott against states that refused to ratify.

To modern sensibilities, it seems natural that the Democrats backed the ERA while the Republicans soured on it, but it was not obvious at the time. The Democrats had long been concerned that the amendment would damage labor protections, and the ERA's staunchest supporters were middle-class Republican women.

But the parties were changing. The trauma of Vietnam incited a leftist revolt in the Democratic Party, while disaffected Southerners began to abandon the party because of its position on civil rights. The conservative Democratic establishment fought a bloody battle to maintain control during the 1968 convention, but by 1972, the left emerged triumphant, and the Democrats fully embraced the feminist movement.

Meanwhile, the simmering Goldwater insurgency in the Republican Party received an energy boost from grassroots organizers like Phyllis Schlafly. The "New Right," as she and her allies were called, injected social issues like abortion, school prayer, and integration into Goldwater's anti-government ideology.

The left-wing Democratic insurgency proved short-lived, culminating in the 1972 nomination of George McGovern. The party establishment regained control in 1976 and began creeping right in a desperate effort to broaden the Democrats' fading appeal.

By contrast, the right-wing Republican insurgency spread like a barbarian invasion with Phyllis Schlafly's Stop ERA campaign at the vanguard. Strikingly, her efforts were most successful in Democratic states--particularly in what was still known as "the solid South." The Stop Era operation dovetailed perfectly with Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," which used coded race appeals to attract the support of Southern whites. In short, Schlafly's campaign was an exquisite recruiting tool for the Republican Party.

As the conservative revolution gained force, it began purging its opponents in the party. Schlafly despised the left-leaning "Rockefeller Republicans," deriding them as "kingmakers" who employed "hidden persuaders and psychological warfare techniques." Her organization, the Eagle Forum, joined other right-wing fundraising groups in drumming liberals out of the GOP by challenging them in primary campaigns.

By the turn of the century, liberal Republicans were extinct in Washington. Most of their seats had gone to Democrats, but that did not bother Schlafly, for new Southern conservatives more than made up for the losses in the Northeast. More importantly, the right wing had taken the liberals' place as the new "kingmakers."

Still, the purges continued. Organizations like Stephen Moore's Club for Growth and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform took over where Schlafly left off. With liberals purged from the party, these groups moved on to moderates. In 2010, Tea Party challengers finished off the moderates and turned on conservatives who they deemed insufficiently orthodox.

As of 2012, the heirs of Phyllis Schlafly's original right-wing insurgency have become the new Republican establishment. They control the party and the party's agenda. They wrote the platform. It should come as no surprise that the grand dame of the revolution has blessed it.

This year, the right wing lacks only a presidential candidate, having settled for a moderate who panders to the right. But he will be the last compromise. For there is no one left in the Republican Party to compromise with.

Michael Wolraich is the author of Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual