Those who witnessed the 2006 elections might dispute the notion of a “conservative ascendancy” in American politics, but they’re still likely to find interesting material in Donald Critchlow’s latest book.
The Saint Louis University historian reminds us that the status of conservative politics changed substantially from the closing days of World War II through the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004.
The Bush presidency marked the culmination of a fifty-year campaign to transform the GOP into a majority party and a voice of conservatism. The result was far from what the founders of the conservative movement had envisioned when they called for overturning the New Deal welfare state. The post-war infusion of European thought deepened the Right’s criticism of modern-day liberalism and excited followers with a new awareness of the American republican tradition. These early founders of conservatism espoused the virtues of unfettered capitalism, individualism, and small government. They warned of the threat that Soviet Communism posed to the United States and the West. Conservatism was then a negligible force, marginalized, politically powerless, and restricted to a small band of intellectuals often given to internecine argument, esoteric and idiosyncratic to outsiders. Joined by a grasssroots anti-Communist movement, these conservatives seemed unlikely to achieve electoral success.
If the topic interests you, click here for more information about Critchlow’s recent speech for the N.C. History Project.
