Table of Contents

* Athwart History * Houston: Wall-to-Wall Ugly * The Failure of the Reagan Gambit * Optimists: Wrong but Wromantic * Moralists: The Threat from Above * Nationalists: Whose Country Is It Anyway? * The Pseudo-Menace of the Religious Right * 1996

About the Author

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.

Reviews

Why did the hoped-for new Republican majority never materialize despite the party's electoral success in the 1980s? Drawing on interviews with party leaders, pollsters, direct mail specialists, and journalists, Forbes columnist Frum paints a picture of a party that forgot its historic conservative message in order to position itself in the middle of the American political road. Noting that the government grew apace under Reagan and Bush despite rhetoric to the contrary, Frum takes Reagan to task for letting entitlements get out of hand and criticizes Bush's federal aid programs as more big government. Frum contends that the GOP's job is to reduce federal bureaucracy to the minimum size feasible under present political conditions. Aiming at that goal will spell success for the party. Philosophically deep and politically cogent, this is recommended for academic and larger political science collections.-Frank Kessler, Missouri Western State Coll., St. Joseph