MERRIMACK – Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist best known for her role in stonewalling the Equal Rights Amendment, spoke about the conservative movement to a group of supporters yesterday at Newick's Seafood Restaurant.

Schlafly rebuked the Republican Party for supporting globalization and open-door immigration policies that she said have hurt the middle class.

"The multinationals see the world as a single economy, and look for the cheapest labor they can get," she said. "Big money wants cheap labor, and it is depressing wages in this country."

NAFTA, CAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America have, among other free trade policies, led to the export of millions of manufacturing and technology jobs, while immigration policies let more than a million people into the country on H-1B and L-1 visas, she said.

"We are selling our country for a pile of money right now," Schlafly said. "Presidential nominations are being bought, and I'm not having it. I don't think that any of the big three candidates are acceptable," she said, speaking of John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Schlafly said the only candidate she had seen standing up to globalization was California Rep. Duncan Hunter.

Schlafly co-founded the Eagle Forum in 1975 to combat the Equal Rights Amendment, which she said was a farce, and would give activist judges more power to interpret the Constitution.

"We need an informed electorate," she said. "We can't simply accept whatever some judge says is the law of the land."

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Schlafly recently re-released her 2004 book, the Supremacists, a repudiation of judicial activism, and urged her audience to read the book and form discussion groups to discuss the values of conservatism over tea and breakfast.

"The way the conservative movement got going in the 1950s and 1960s was with study groups on communism," she said, noting there are a whole new set of issues now and that study groups could once again be effective.

Eagle Forum has since provided a forum for the conservative movement that has worked to serve as the conscience of the Republican Party, imploring GOP candidates and legislators to stick to the core values of the movement, as exemplified by Barry Goldwater and later Ronald Reagan.

Schlafly said Republicans will need to stay committed to values, including the sanctity of life and traditional marriage, and she has expressed continued suspicion of groups like the ACLU that want to secularize the country and "treat Christians like smokers."

Republicans may do the best by returning to an older conservatism that predates the Cold War, which emphasizes the value of family, community and local economies, she said.