Stopping history in New York.(Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party)

Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party By George Marlin St. Augustine's Press, 434 pages, $28

If the idea of a Conservative Party in New York, of all places, strikes you as a gutsy-but-futile attempt at fighting modern liberalism, George Marlin will set you straight. New York's Conservative Party, Marlin points out, is "the only legally recognized conservative political party in the nation," and it has redirected state and national politics to the right on numerous occasions. Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party is a diligently researched book that describes in fine detail how a dedicated group of traditional, steadfast Americans have achieved inspiring, against-all-odds triumphs over ravenous political machines.

Founded in 1962, the Conservative Party of New York aimed to save the Empire State from its Republican Party --dominated by liberal, big-spending RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Jacob Javits. Throughout the Conservative Party's history, Marlin says, it "has been the guardian of working-class New Yorkers, men and women who subscribe to the belief that to be good citizens it is essential to love family, neighborhood, country, and God, and just as important to respect an ethic of hard work."

References throughout the book make clear the importance that Conservative Party members place on faith and God-given rights in maintaining freedom and democracy. Marlin includes an entire chapter on the Conservative fight against abortion and libertine sexuality. Fighting the Good Fight is an unabashedly ideological book about an unabashedly ideological party. And without firm convictions the Conservative Party would never have been able to force New York's Republican Party to return to its principles, rather than being a Siamese twin to the Democratic Party.

How could an organized conservative movement have been born in what Marlin calls "the most left-wing city in the nation"? It was precisely because the Empire State had gone so overboard with tax-and-spend policies and scorn for traditional values that a Conservative Party became not just possible but desperately needed. As early party organizers put it in a statement of purpose: "Perhaps in no other state has the conservative voter been more completely disenfranchised."

The earliest members of the Conservative Party included co-founders J. Daniel Mahoney, Kieran O'Doherty, Charles Edison (son of Thomas), as well as William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley supported the nascent party in the pages of National Review, and in 1965 embarked on his famed run for mayor of New York City on the party's ballot, emphasizing the need for lower taxes, stricter crime-fighting measures, welfare ...