Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism - From Goldwater to Trump and Beyond

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 GOP s fracturing - from 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 Goldwater s worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. The radicalism of today s 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 Party - it beat back alternative definitions of conservatism. Since 1968, no conservative administration not Nixon not Reagan not two Bushes - could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater... ISBN:9781476763804