Why the Right Went Wrong

From the author of Why Americans Hate Politics, the New York Times bestselling and notably fair-minded (The New York Times Book Review), story of the GOPs fracturingfrom the 1964 Goldwater takeover to the Trump spectacle.Why the Right Went Wrong offers an up to the moment (The Christian Science Monitor) historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwaters worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. The radicalism of todays conservatism is not the product of the Tea Party, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne writes. The Tea Partiers are the true heirs to Goldwater ideology. The purity movement did more than drive moderates out of the Republican Partyit beat back alternative definitions of conservatism. Since 1968, no conservative administrationnot Nixon not Reagan not two Bushescould live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics fifty years ago. The collapse of the Nixon presidency led to the rise of Ronald Reagan, the defeat of George H.W. Bush, to Newt Gingrichs revolution. Bush initially undertook a partial modernization, preaching compassionate conservatism and a Fourth Way to Clintons Third Way. Conservatives quickly defined him as an advocate of big government and not conservative enough on spending, immigration, education, and Medicare. A return to the true faith was the only prescription on order. The result was the Tea Party, which Dionne says, was as much a reaction to Bush as to Obama. The state of the Republican party, controlled by the strictest base, is diminished, Dionne writes. It has become white and older in a country that is no longer that. It needs to come back to life for its own health and that of the countrys, and in Why the Right Went Wrong, Dionne expertly delineates where we are and how we got there (Chicago Tribune)and how to return.