As the 2012 elections approach, the Republican Party is rocketing
rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in
Congress threaten to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt
default. Tea Party activists mount primary challenges against
Republican officeholders who appear to exhibit too much pragmatism
or independence. Moderation and compromise are dirty words in the
Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seems, has suddenly
become a party of ideological purity. Except this development is
not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that
the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the
Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's
farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and
right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and
progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil
rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton,
battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike.
But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the
moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of
the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's
conservatives who are "Republicans in Name Only." Writing with
passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation,
Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched
with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans
opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney-father of Mitt
Romney-conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from
Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to "listen to the voices
from the ghetto." Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched
history that reorients our understanding of our political past and
present. Today, moderates are marginalized in the GOP and
progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and
elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has
left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire
consequences for all Americans.
General
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