I attended two CPACs back in 1978 and 1979 where Schlafly was a speaker. The next CPAC I attended was in 2009 and Phyllis was scheduled to speak but cancelled due to health problems.
She pulled off one of the gigantic political upsets of my lifetime. When the ERA had momentum and was sailing through the ratification process (needing only three more states) she organized real opposition and stopped it.
One of Schlafly's insights was that powerful elected officials tended to have a weak grasp of political organization and were often indecisive because, being politicians, many of them habitually wanted to keep their options open. The result was that dedicated activists -- especially women who knew what they were doing -- could have a decisive effect on who got elected and how issues were decided.
For example, at a key moment, as a young law graduate working in Tallahassee, I was at a small dinner one night with colleagues when a Democrat operative who was a guest incautiously bragged that they had a deal to slip the ERA through the Florida Senate the next morning. A weak GOP opponent had agreed to take a walk and be physically absent when the vote came up. Following the advice of a GOP legislative aide who was an old friend, I called one of Schlafly's Florida team and related what I had heard.
Within an hour, they had a counter tactic that applied feminine cleverness to the problem. They got the staff of a Florida Senate ally to place small bottles of Elmer's glue on the desks of every one of their Senate allies with a message to the effect "to please stay glued to your seat" so that the Democrats could not slip the ERA through.
The message applied to every one of their allies, but the potential turncoat was seen to react with a start and a guilty look when he saw the bottle of glue and read the attached message. In effect, Schlafly's gals had publicly called him out without embarrassing him. The result was that he stayed put and the ERA was voted down again in Florida.