Overview

A Forbes columnist discusses the ideological breakdown of the Republican Party, its failure to diminish the deficit or the size of government in twelve years of control, and outlines a plan for renewal through a return to basic issues. Part reportage, part manifesto, Dead Right leads readers on a witty and opinionated tour through the chaos of post-Reagan conservatism. It explains why the Religious Right"" is a phony menace , why President Reagan failed to eliminate even one major spending program , why the 1992 Republican convention, originally conceived as a cunning ploy, backfired , and much more. David Frum analyses the conservative movement's turn away from the economic issues that dominated the 1980s to a new preoccupation with race, ethnicity, and sex. He explains how and why conservatives decided to stop fighting Big Government and start using it. And he warns that a conservatism that loses its anti-Big Government faith is doomed to futility. Dead Right dissects the new conservative position on issues ranging from education to workfare, immigration to enterprise zones, and ruthlessly scrutinizes the leadership of the conservative movement. Always lively and provocative, this is the one book that conservatives and their critics must read to understand the past and future of the American Right.

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9780465098255

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Reviews

A young tory's unsparing critique of political conservatism in the US and the divisive shambles its putative partisans have made of their cause. In his morning-after analysis, the Canadian-born Frum (a sometime Forbes columnist who now writes for The Financial Post) casts a cold eye on the 12-year span during which Republicans tenanted the White House. During the 1980s, he asserts, the increasing incidence of drug abuse, ethnic balkanization, family breakdown, and allied ills tempted some conservatives to cultivate new constituencies while others cursed the dark. By the time the Bush administration had petered out, he concludes, Reagan's bedrock supporters had split into three mutually contemptuous factions: optimists like Jack Kemp, who believe they can steer the ship of the welfare state on a rightward course; moralists like William Bennett, the former secretary of education; and isolationist nationalists, of whom Pat Buchanan is the ranking exemplar. Having done with internecine warfare, Frum goes on to dispute the notion that the so-called religious right poses a threat to the body politic, let alone to the secular left. As a practical matter, he argues, fundamentalists view their deity in much the same way as Great Society liberals thought of government: a distant benevolent agency that showers goodies upon all who ask, without demanding anything much in return - except for the occasional campaign contribution. Looking ahead to 1996 and beyond, the author sees little future for the conservatives unless (probably at the cost of immediate electoral gain) they return to their ideological roots, which stress minimal government intervention, individual freedom, self-reliance, personal probity, fiscal responsibility, and actual (rather than rhetorical) cuts in federal spending. A clear guide to the current fault lines in American conservatism by an author who laments that the conservative revival has stalled. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

David Frum is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor for the Weekly Standard. He is also the author of Dead Right.

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