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The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon)
Wiley
April 2008
On Sale: March 31, 2008
256 pages
ISBN: 0470182407
EAN: 9780470182406
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Political
In Bill Press's funniest and most astute book yet, he drives
the final nail into the coffin containing the ideas of the
so-called party of ideas. And it's a coffin many Republican
presidential candidates have been using as a campaign bus. Conventional conservative wisdom holds that somehow, during
the first seven years of the twenty-first century, the
Republican Party lost its way and abandoned core
conservative principles while maintaining absolute control
of all three branches of government. Is this true? Or are
unnecessary wars, ballooning deficits, rampant corruption,
incompetent governance, inadequate public services,
crumbling infrastructure, and repeated attempts to deceive
the public the inevitable consequence of any government
based on conservative political philosophy? In Trainwreck, one of America's best-known progressive
commentators reveals that, far from betraying conservative
ideals, the administration of George W. Bush has behaved
exactly as anyone would expect of a group that believes
government is evil and always doomed to failure. Why, asks
syndicated radio host and newspaper columnist Bill Press,
would people whose primary message is that government
doesn't work want to prove otherwise? Press traces the history of the modern conservative movement
from the rise of Robert Taft in the 1940s, through the glory
days of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, to the long and
agonizing fall of George W. Bush. He examines the movement's
intellectual underpinnings in the writings of Russell Kirk
and William F. Buckley Jr. and its national political birth
with the nomination of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964. This in-depth analysis reveals three very salient facts:
hatred of government has been a core value of the
conservative movement from its inception; the behavior of
the George W. Bush administration has mirrored that of the
Reagan administration in every important way; and, until
Hurricane Katrina revealed in 2005 that the emperor had no
clothes, movement conservatives were the president's
strongest supporters and closest allies. Press demonstrates that, while constantly changing and
evolving, conservative positions have remained consistently
wrong, and that, from its inception, the movement was
dedicated to tearing things down, not building them up. Trainwreck will convince you, once and for all, that the
conservative movement has remained on track for decades—and
that, from the beginning, those tracks were headed for
disaster.
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