The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism

by Matthew Continetti

A magisterial intellectual history of the last century of American conservatism

When most people think of the history of modern conservatism, they think of Ronald Reagan. Yet this narrow view leaves many to question: How did Donald Trump win the presidency? And what is the future of the Republican Party?

In The Right, Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism’s evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism’s past, the more one becomes convinced of its future.

Deeply researched and brilliantly told, The Right is essential reading for anyone looking to understand American conservatism.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, American History, American, Sociology, Political Science

Audiobook

Published April 19, 2022

Reviews

[Roger Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a liberal and a Democrat ever since I had any political understanding at all. I disagree with Republican policies in general, and I'm on the exact opposite side of the culture war issues that have driven Republican politics for the past fifty years or so. All that said, I never regarded figures like Nixon, Reagan, or the Bushes to be threats to the democratic institutions and procedures of the United States. I may have disagreed with them on the issues, but I took it for granted we were all playing by the same rules. Donald Trump's refusal to concede his loss in 2020, and his subsequent attempts to overthrow the election, changed all that. The continuing refusal by many on the Right to admit that Trump lost the election, nearly two years later, as well as the number of Republican candidates who run for office embracing the "Big Lie," leads me to believe that democracy in the U.S. is in real danger from the Right.

So I thought I would read Matthew Continetti's book The Right to see if it would help me place the Republican party's embrace of Trumpism in the past six years into some kind of historical context. Indeed, now that I've read it, I think the takeaway from this hundred-year (1920-2020) history of the Right in the United States is that the Republican party's current turn toward national populism really is a return to impulses the party has exhibited since the turn of the last century.

If you're like me going in, you probably don't know much about Republican Warren Harding's campaign to defeat Democrat Woodrow Wilson's successor, but it entailed disavowing internationalism, rolling back progressive domestic policies, installing strict constitutionalist judges, opposing immigration, and recognizing the importance of "religious piety." All of this sounds familiar in the context of today's political dynamics. It should also be noted that the Harding/Coolidge administration (Harding died in office) saw the rise of the second Ku Klux Clan and the Tulsa race massacre on "Black Wall Street." For what it's worth, his campaign pledge had been to bring back a "return to normalcy."

Then as now, political philosophies were divided between the elites and the populists. The 1920s saw the rise of intellectual groups such as the New Humanists and liberal theologians who promoted what they called the Social Gospel. At the same time, a religious group who called themselves Fundamentalists came to prominence. They saw the Social Gospel (i.e., a Christian social justice movement) as back-door Marxism. Liberalism, they said, is inherently opposed to religion. Cue the Scopes "Monkey Trial."

In 1930 a group of Southern writers wrote a defense of agrarianism, conservatism, and religiosity, which were values embodied by the Old South that they romanticized. The group became known as the Southern Agrarians, and today, they are regularly lauded in conservative media. The Agrarians, unsurprisingly, failed to reckon in any way with Black slavery or the need for Black civil rights in their lament for the loss of traditional Southern culture. Continetti further writes: "Agrarians flirted with another danger implicit in radical critiques of America: an openness to authoritarianism."

Continetti gives short shrift to Hoover's one-term presidency, which coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt defeated him by a landslide and inherited the depths of the Depression along with a brewing war in Europe. The Right maintained its isolationist stance. Meanwhile, members of the even-farther Right held a rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939 to express their support for Hitler. The America First Committee was formed in 1940 to oppose the U.S. taking an active role in World War II. Its most prominent member, Charles Lindberg, spoke about the divided loyalty of Jews, who were in his estimation "not American." Pearl Harbor would, however, put an end to the Right's isolationist stance for a while.

After World War II, recognizing that withdrawal from world affairs wasn't tenable, the Right found its raison d'etre for the next forty years in fighting "godless" Communism at home and abroad. "Anticommunism provided a shelter where free marketers, traditionalists, foreign policy realists, and Cold Warriors united to oppose Communist activities and bureaucratic centralization. Eventually all of these groups would find themselves on the side of the GOP," writes Continetti.

When Roosevelt died in office, his vice-president Harry Truman served out the remainder of his final term and won the succeeding election in 1948. Truman presided over the beginning of the Cold War, as well as a hot war in Korea. Truman's firing of Douglas MacArthur led to calls for his impeachment from then-Senator Robert Taft (son of the former Republican president William Howard Taft). Robert Taft would become a thought leader in the Republican party whose influence is felt to this day. The unpopularity of Truman's handling of the Korean conflict had a lot to do with the election of his successor, Republican war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. But Eisenhower also opposed the isolationist attitudes of Taft, who was against NATO. Eisenhower was also a moderate who continued the New Deal policies of his predecessors. Thus, you don't hear a lot of conservatives today citing him as a hero of the movement. ("Movement conservatives" are those who argue that big government is the root of all problems. Reagan was the first movement conservative to be elected president.)

Eisenhower was certainly anti-Communist, but he wasn't a rabid "red-baiter" like his vice president Richard Nixon or the Senator from the great state of Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy. In time, McCarthyism would come to be seen by most Americans as the real threat to liberty and the rule of law in this country. "McCarthy's demagogy pushed the political system to the limit," says Continetti. "He fed off conservative alienation from government, from media, from higher education."

After the death of Robert Taft and the censure of Joe McCarthy, an emerging conservative thinker named William F. Buckley Jr saw that the Republican party needed intellectual grounding. For that purpose, he founded National Review in 1955. Throughout the rest of the book, besides looking at the political fortunes of prominent politicians such as Barry Goldwater, Pat Buchanan, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, Continetti also devotes a lot of space to the internecine struggles of conservative writers and thought leaders such as Russell Kirk, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Jeane Kilpatrick, Leo Strauss, and his father-in-law Bill Kristol in the pages of magazines such as National Review, the Weekly Standard, Claremont Review, and others. Along the way, he touches on the many divisions within conservative thought, including movement conservatism, new conservatism, neoconservativism, paleoconservativism, nationalism, populism, constitutionalism, fusionism, traditionalism, libertarianism, reform conservatism, and so on, and so on. If I have a criticism of this book, it's that you sometimes feel that you're reading lots of names of people and publications and political philosophies without really getting a clear grasp of them.

Did The Right answer my questions about fitting Trump into a historical context? In many ways, I believe it did. The chapter dealing with Trump's presidency is titled "The Viral President," which works on many levels. Trump seized upon those pre-War themes of the Republican party going back to Harding and Coolidge: isolationism, protectionism, and immigration restrictions. But he was also a populist demagog who used the power of the modern "attention economy" and social media to whip up anger and backlash among self-proclaimed anti-elitists in red states and rural areas. Theocratic law professor and Trump appointee Adrian Vermeule wrote that the Right should now embrace a common-good constitutionalism whose object is "to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well." Evangelicals, always a force in American politics, seized on Trump as their Cyrus. Meanwhile, as Continetti notes, "In some precincts on the right, Trump, Brexit, and Muslim immigration contributed to a reevaluation of strongmen." In their embrace of Orban, Putin, Salvini, and other rightwing autocrats, some Republicans today are beginning to conjure memories of the 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden that extolled George Washington as "America's first fascist."

Trump's support among the faithful never wavered, but COVID came along and Americans began to die, the pandemic brought down the economy, and Charlottesville and the BLM protests spread unrest across the country. Biden won the election. But it's important to remember that he won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by a total of fewer than 45,000 votes. The nationalist populists who once embraced Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace, are waiting to lift Donald Trump back up onto his pedestal again. I fear we may not recover if they do.

[Stetson · Rating 5 out of 5]

tl;dr: The Right illustrates how and why the rise of Trump has a historical predicate in conservative politics. It is a bit of a return to the ideas of Harding and Coolidge paired with the aesthetics and rhetoric of its difficult-to-control conspiratorial elements

The Right by Matthew Continetti is a sociopolitical history of right-wing politics in America from 1920 to 2020, focusing specifically on the tension in the conservative movement between elites and populists. Readers should note that this isn't an intellectual history. He is not particularly focused on the evolution of or philosophical origins of right-wing ideas in America or other places, though he does at times outline right-wing frameworks and define ideological terms. The central theme connecting the work, to the extent there is one, is that conservatism was piecemeal unseated as the establishment mode of governance and dominant elite ideology during the early 20th century, which led to a guerrila type of movement conservatism with varied ideologies and tactics. These competing factions were largely held together in coalition by the Cold War, left-wing radicalism, and cultural tumult but have fragmented during the rise and fall of Donald Trump. Continetti describes and analyzes these trends with admirable dispassion given his obvious proximity to many of the historical players involved here and his own political preferences (I haven't read of a lot of Continetti before, but he is Bill Kristol's son-in-law and is likely some flavor of neoconservative).

Although Continetti argues that much mid-20th century conservative politics was a response to the New Deal (and the associated growth of the federal government), he starts the history of modern conservatism with the presidencies of Harding and Coolidge. This era is portrayed as consistent with Harding's campaign slogan and enduring malapropism, "a return to normalcy," where the nation turned inward after the tumult of the Great War and Spanish Flu pandemic. These administrations paired isolationism with some protectionism to support internal nation-building yet embraced a Spencerian economic ethos, enabling aggressive entrepreneurship and speculation along with indulgent consumption. Of course then comes the controversial history of Hoover's presidency, which in response led the public to exile the right from the oval office for two decades. However, the start of the Cold War and the election of Dwight Eisenhower led to a major conservative renewal spearheaded by elites and intellectuals, specifically William F. Buckley Jr. Surprising to some, a large part of this renewal was driven by displeasure with the Eisenhower administration, specifically its continuation of Truman's containment strategy for international communism.

After Buckley and his crew (Burnham, Kirk, Meyer, Kendall, Oliver, etc) at National Review arrive on the scene, they organized conservative politicking and thought leadership under Frank Meyer's fusionism (i.e. a merger of traditionalism, neoliberalism, and anti-communism) and started to build political, cultural, and intellectual heft. Their ranks were eventually fortified by neoconservatives, i.e. former left-wing intellectuals, namely Irving Kristol, Robert Kagan, Daniel Bell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Norman Podhoretz, disenchanted with the radicalism of the New Left and the countercultural movement, who eventually became well-known for their hawkish foreign policy. During this growth, National Review and WFB worked hard to gatekeep their movement, criticizing the John Birch Society and other conspiratorial or bigoted elements. They also held economist-type neoliberals, libertarians, and especially objectivists are arms length (see Chamber's review of Atlas Shrugged). Continetti is careful to catalog both their successes and failures in this effort. This movement reached its acme with the election of Ronald Reagan and enduring political successes throughout the 90s, including NAFTA and the passage of the crime and welfare reform bills during Clinton's presidency.

Fractures of course began appearing during the New Right's heyday. The invasion of Iraq and the 2008 recession catalyzed the complete cataclysm of elite and populist factions across the right-wing, while sending conservatives back into the wilderness. During the 21st century, the populist and paleoconservative groups became more ascendant with the Tea Party activism (which still was nominally neoliberal in policy) and subsequently the election of Donald Trump. Interesting, this populist contingent has begun to attract left-wing populists (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/...).

The Right foregrounds the people and political events that shaped the conservative movement while still providing sufficient detail about the ideas in play. It helpfully dissects the real factions that exist on the right, illustrating the long tradition of populist ideas in right-wing activism in addition to the more high-minded and ideological approaches. The book forgivably glosses over the more liberal players in the Republican party (e.g. Norman Rockefeller or Richard Lugar), who were usually just adjacent to conservatives for tactical reasons. It also has to skip over a lot of the action on the left that the right and conservatives were often in dialogue with or reacting to. Unfortunately, Continetti's granular and detailed style doesn't lend itself to a sweeping historical narrative or pithy top-line takeaways. In fact, it may be quite difficult for readers who are not familiar with the actors, ideas, and events to glean resonant takeaways from the work. For reader who aren't political junkies, I would recommend pairing this work with Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy, and Liberalism and Its Discontents as accessible companion works that will walk readers through the history of political idea relevant to Continetti's history.

Podcast Interview with the Author
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[Brandon Westlake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great overview of conservative American thought in the 20th century. For many readers, I don't think the overall story is anything particularly new, but to put these changes in a readable narrative is what makes this book stand out. One might understand the differences between conservatives and liberals in the 1920s-1930s, but to see how these larger transitions function through the 1960s and past really paints a picture on a grand scale.

In my view, the best chapters were the middle chapters on the 1960s and 1970s. Continetti does a great job describing Buckley and the rising conservative movement in the face of 1960s liberalism and Vietnam. It might be the history that is least known to general readers. Everyone who picks this up will know Reagan's appeal and the Trump phenomenon, but the "grassroots" of the project often gets left behind.

Continetti also does a great job trying to explain the transition to Trump. Although such recent history when written should always been seen as a first draft, he does a great job of starting a larger conversation for historians.

If someone is looking to understand how we go from small government Hoover to small government through large government intervention with Trump, I think this can lay out a great answer.

[Kushagra Mahaseth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Continetti's stated goal was to write a book that describes "how the varieties of American conservatism differed from one another, how big those differences were, why the disagreements began, and what their effect was on American politics" by focusing on the intellectuals who were driving these ideas. However, the book ended up just becoming a long list of events that unfolded within the conservative intellectual and political circles. There is perfunctory treatment of most strands of conservatism (including an insouciant treatment of paleo-conservatism). The author does treat movement conservatism (classical liberalism anchored on defending the ideas of the Constitution) and neoconservatism comparatively well (by the book's standard) by explaining how these strands of conservatism originated and developed over the decades. Otherwise, it is mostly a list of events with some limited commentary sprinkled in every once in a while. So this book is not the best resource to understand the historical and philosophical reasons behind the internal divisions within the right.

Continetti would have been better off starting in the late 1960s instead of 1920s. Starting the book in the 1920s is novel and he does present some interesting ideas by examining the pre-Depression politics. Unfortunately those ideas are not relevant to ideological battles within the Right . Huey Long, Tom Watson, Father Charles Coughlin etc. were populists BUT they were not competing with the Right to define or shape the conservative ideology. The struggles within the Right (ideologically and politically) that is relevant today really begins once the ethnic blue collar workers in the North ("hardhat" types) gravitate towards Nixon and southern Whites shift en masse to Wallace in the '68 election. Starting then would have given Continetti more time and space to tease out the differences between this emerging New Right with the movement conservatives and neoconservatives (who were in the process of shifting from the left to the right around this time as well).

A second issue that dogs Continetti is the lack of attention paid to politcal economic developments of the '70s. Deindustrialization and concomitant social ills played a major role in shaping the philosophy of populist right figures (ex. Buchanan, Perot, and Trump). Evading this schism, especially the role played by establishment conservatives in supporting and implementing these trade policies (and ignoring its consequences) makes Continetti's overall narrative significantly weaker.

His overarching argument is further enfeebled by his unwillingness to critically examine the rhetoric of politicians. He begins the book by making the disclaimer that he is not interested in the influence of lobbying and donors on the Right. He is only interested in how ideas/ philosophy shaped the Right. However, his chronicle becomes unpersuasive when he takes ideas advocated by politicians at their face values. For example, he describes the early Bush presidency as being driven by the philosophy of "compassionate conservatism" i.e. essentially utilizing the state and market to further moral and ethical policies. But Continetti does not stop to ask if this was the actual philosophy of the administration or just political spin. In a recent article (https://www.politico.com/news/magazin...) Patrick Brown of Ethics and Public Policy Center points out that aides within White House viewed compassionate conservatism "less like a philosophy than a marketing slogan". Marketing slogans do not effect politics or policies and should be treated as such. As the article notes, the Bush White House killed a $6 billion (per year!) tax credit proposal to fight poverty to make room for estate tax cuts. Yet Continetti never challenges the assertion that the true ideas driving the presidency wasn't "compassionate conservatism" but most likely pro business sentiment. Thus, his book uncritically furthers political propaganda instead of sketching an accurate picture of early 2000 establishment conservative philosophy. This is just one example of the type of oversight littered throughout the book.

TLDR: The book fails at its stated aim of understanding the ideological schisms within conservatism/ the Right in many important ways and is mostly a recount of major political events of the last 100 years.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most political science histories tend to look at the ideas that shaped politics and parties across time. Matthew Continetti's book, The Right looks at the history of the American right wing as a movement. You'll hear plenty about American Right thinkers, from the Hoover Institute and William F. Buckley, Jr., to Bill Kristol and George F. Will. However, they're not the main focus. Instead, he looks at how the Right in America has always been a hodgepodge of ideologies, some of which aren't conservative so much as simply in opposition to the Left. And more often than not, these different "rights" have not coexisted peacefully.

Starting in the 1920's, Continetti shows the reader how for the past one hundred years, the American Right has been pulled in two very different, broad directions. There's the intellectual side made up of the political elites that staff the think tanks, defend traditions and institutions, and tend to support free-trade economics, sometimes to the point of extreme laissez-faire. Then there's the more populist side that tends to reject modernity, including corporations, equality for minority groups, immigration, secularism, new movements in art and literature, and sometimes even liberal democracy itself.

The current GOP may have adopted "an adversarial and catastrophizing attitude toward the government that it never quite shook off" during the New Deal years, but the paranoid, isolationist, conspiracy prone, xenophobic element has been in American politics from the the start. It's not limited to either Right or Left. In the 1920s, populism was associated with the Left and figures like William Jenning Bryan.

"Antiwar populists and Progressives joined forces. They assailed the intervention [of America entering WWI]. They said that shadowy business and political interests were behind it. They lamented the changing demographic makeup of the nation caused by immigration from eastern and southern Europe."

The "mix of nostalgia, melancholy, and pessimism" has also been "a constant temptation for the American Right." With a few updates of which overseas intervention, immigrant's country of origin, and the names of political groups, the above block quote fits right in with current events.

Continetti lays out the history of the Right as it gained, lost, and gained power again. The narrow Constitutionalism of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Robert Taft lost all credibility with the American public by failing to deal with the Great Depression. In turn, the New Deal birthed the Chicago School brand of laissez-faire founded on religious beliefs and movement conservatism as the Right reacted against the changes. (A surprising amount of early movement conservatives were ex-Marxists.) Isolationism was discredited by the attack on Pearl Harbor and WWII, so the various factions of the Right unified around the fight against global Communism with the start of the Cold War. This contributed to the Right's advances in the 1960s and 70s that culminated with Ronald Reagan's presidency. With the end of the Cold War came the end of conservative unity, and the more the conservative elites cemented their economic and policy victories, the more the populist dissent grew.

"What began in the twentieth century as an elite-driven defence of the classical liberal principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States ended up, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, as a furious reaction against elites of all stripes. Many on the right embraced a cult of personality and illiberal tropes. The danger was that the alienation from and antagonism toward American culture and society expressed by many on the right could turn into a general opposition to the constitutional order. That temptation had been present in the writings of the Agrarians, in the demagogy of Tom Watson, Huey Long, and Father Charles Coughlin, in the conspiracies of Joseph McCarthy, in the racism of George Wallace, in the radicalism of Triumph, in the sour moments of the paleoconservatives, in the cultural despair of the religious Right, and in the rancid anti-Semitism of the alt-right. But it was cabined off. It was contained. That would not be the case forever—as Trump and January 6, 2021, had shown."

While Continetti is conservative, and therefore thinks that many of America's problems today stem from "too much liberalism," he has a point about different viewpoints balancing each other. Whenever one party, left or right, has too much power, there's a tendency to keep getting pulled to extremes by the party's radical wings. Having a functioning opposition provides checks on this type of groupthink, and can prevent the extremists from dominating the conversation. The keyword here is "functioning."

While it might seem that the Right is dominated by its current version of radical populism, while figures from that faction repeatedly declare that their current victory is cemented forever and this is conservatism's only future, the history says otherwise. While history doesn't exactly repeat, it cycles, and Continetti's history clearly shows that every consensus is a temporary solution. When the world changes and the consensus breaks down, populism often rises, but the populist side can't deliver a consensus. Much as Americans currently bemoan the confused state of the Democratic party, the Republicans are in a similar state, with a flimsy facade of unity being held up by bluster. It can't hold. The question is more one of how long before a new consensus is reached, and which direction it will go in.

Continetti's book was published in 2022, so his concluding musings on a likely way to reach a new conservative consensus were written when it still seemed possible that the party could depersonalize the Right, focusing more on principles than personalities. "The alternative would be a national populist GOP dominated by a single man whom not only educated elites but also a majority of the American people view with contempt."

"'The proper question for conservatives: What do you seek to conserve?' George Will wrote in The Conservative Sensibility (2019)." Continetti comes down on the side of the Constitution and rule of law. Let's hope the Right finds its way back to that.

See also
Stephen Prothero's Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections): The Battles That Define America from Jefferson's Heresies to Gay Marriage gives a history of American culture wars, going back to the 1801 election. Apparently, if the incumbent John Adams didn't win and that "atheist" Thomas Jefferson became president, the American government was going to invade private houses door-to-door and confiscate people's Bibles. We can chuckle now, as it obviously didn't happen, but plenty of people believed it. Since Prothero is a professor of religion, the culture wars he examines revolve around religious issues.

Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition by Edmund Fawcett expands the scope to start in the nineteenth century, and looks at not just the U.S., but Great Britain, France, and Germany's conservative history as well. The Right in all these countries have conflicted histories of bickering amongst themselves of what to defend and preserve, and how much to compromise with liberalism and democracy.

Continetti goes into the writing of Senator Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative in chapter 5. In 2017, Senator Jeff Flake published his own version, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle to protest the rise of populism among the GOP. My review is here.

Cory Robbins examines the Right in The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump, a series of essays that looks at their disagreements and quarrels. He argues that the only thing that many of them are trying to conserve since the French Revolution is existing power structures.

[Wick Welker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of power, exile, and then back again.

The Right is a mostly objective historical account of the ecstasy and agony of the American conservative movement starting with Harding and ending on Jan 6. 2021. We get a disimpassioned analysis of how the conservative movement in the United States went from the status quo before the Great Depression and then went into cultural exile for basically decades only to roar back when conditions were finally right during the 1970s.

The book starts with a quick overview of how Harding, Coolidge and Hoover basically maintained an isolation and protectionist order (along with their pal Andrew Mellon as Secretary of Treasury during ALL those presidents). The winds obviously changed after the Great Depression with the ushering in of more of a social democracy model with FDR and New Deal era policies. The American left enjoyed cultural and political power for decades thereafter with conservatism mostly existing as a cultural fringe ethos that sprouted up in different forms over the following decades with various factions.

The neoconservative comeback with Eisenhower was almost kind of fracturing for the right because there was much antipathy toward the president from conservatism. The National Review and John Birch Society became different camps of conservatism with the JBS being almost an ostracized faction due to its bigotry and anti-semitism. Continetti casts the JBS as an anti-elite faction and conspiracy theory hatchery. The offering of Barry Goldwater as a presidential candidate wasn’t necessarily a failure on the right because he helped bring back the more far right, libertarian ideals back to mainstream. Whenever there was liberal policy or presidential failures, the right enjoyed more cultural power that started to consolidate in the 1970s where conservatism began to become a little more unified and popular over the backdrop of the perceived cultural chaos and moral failings of the left during that time. Reagan brought together neoconservatives with libertarian ideology and made being anti-communist cool again. For me it was during his administration where the most potent neoliberal policies were started and continued from henceforth with every American president to current day. Now with the entire American political spectrum now dragged to the right, democrats like Bill Clinton implemented some of the most harsh social austerity measures in recent history as well as repealing Glass-Steagall act. If it wasn’t for his scandal, Clinton probably would have privatized social security with his pal Gingrich.

Enter Trump who spouted a lot of the same anti-elite conservatives ideology that has been coming from the right for decades except remove the intellectualism and add a populist twist. What you get is something closer to nihilism for the sake of power rather than an ideology. Continetti is certainly no fan of Trump populism and seems to lament the demagogic turn that has taken place in American conservatism. Only toward the end of the book does Continetti valorize American conservatism as some sort of bastion of American ideals and preserving constitutionalism. I didn’t really agree with him there because he doesn’t really explain what he means, he just kind of states at face value that conservatism is responsible for much good in American history. My response to that is conservatism is what it is right now with all its toxic anti-intellectualism and populist nativism. Trying to argue otherwise is basically using No True Scotsman fallacy. In my opinion, I do not care about the virtues of an espoused ideology. Impact is the only thing that matters and the current impact of American conservatism is a net negative for various reasons that I won’t get into in this review.

What I learned from this book is that American conservatism is not a monolith like it can appear. It can be just as fractured as the left. However there are a few main driving forces that have formed American conservatism into what it is: anti-communism, moral piety, trust in free market solutions and Christian nationalism which together function as social darwinism These principles continually guide and shape American conservatism.

I recommend this to all readers regardless of your political ideology. It’s mostly a very good, objective historical accounting of the last 100 years of American conservatism.

A great companion piece to this book is Goliath, the 100 Year War of Monopoly Power and Democracy. My review for that book is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Kemp · Rating 3 out of 5]

A long history of America’s conservative movement that starts during the Roaring Twenties and progresses administration by administration up to the 2020 elections and Biden’s early term.

The transformation of the Republican party and those adhering to it is the most interesting aspect of this book. Subplots within the story show how different factions enmesh themselves in party leadership to strengthen their cause. A good example is the religious right and their work to influence party decisions that began in the 1950 and continued through the election of Donald Trump.

Isolationism dominated the party’s policy up to entry in World War II. The shift to the south during Nixon’s campaign was explained and, slightly, debunked. Reagan’s stamp on the party is examined and the reader is left with the impression we’re still feeling it’s impact.

The far right is a place I can’t go but it was interesting to read how its movement caught on and grew to where we stand today. The book stays clearly on the right and doesn’t examine possible movements to a less confrontational political environment. That would be an interesting area to examine.

High marks for the educational aspect it brought me. Mixed marks for readability. The book runs chronologically over time so the informed reader could jump ahead to specific time periods and/or events. Lots of names and people. Readers should recognize key figures but not necessarily the plethora of people behind the scenes.

[Aaron Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continetti is a well known and respected writer of the conservative intelligentsia. Here he has a written a much needed history of the movement and its politics. Written during a period of significant internecine debates between various subgroups within conservatism, this book aims to be a corrective to a lot of the false arguments that get thrown out there, from both within on the right and from outside on the left. It is a solid work and Continetti knows his stuff and did his research. While it is not a polemic, it is a history, there will certainly still be portions that different people will disagree with for different reasons depending on their own politics. And that's okay. Even if I disagreed with some of the conclusions, it is still an excellent read and I learned some history I hadn't known. I think that is more than enough to merit a recommendation.

[Lauren Gallina · Rating 1 out of 5]

"In some ways, the problems America faces today are also the result of too much liberalism - an out of control egalitarianism, an unwillingness to maintain public order, a culture that silences politically incorrect views"

How idiotic do you have to be to write this in the society that overturned Roe v. Wade and is protecting gun rights and school shooters? The Right is not a minority, they hold all the power, and, as proven by this book, consist of easily offened, sensitive boomers.

[Vance Christiaanse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Continetti is refreshingly frank, calm and clear in this very helpful survey of the history of the American right. The book explains the many conflicts between different conservative personalities and schools of thought over the past 100 years.

[Richard]

I’m not planning on reading this, but I’ll pass on why I’d recommend it.

I’m increasingly disengaging from ‘doom scrolling’:
• the collapse of democracy throughout the the world;
• as well as the concomitant and interrelated inability of global society to cooperate to prevent the implosion of cooperation;
• which will result in economic collapse;
• soon dooming the human race to a at least few centuries of immiseration.

(The good news is that the respite might heal much of the ecosystem, and that whatever society rises from our ashes won’t have access to fossil fuel, the accelerant of toxic capitalism.)

Anyway, the analysis of The Right is germane for those still struggling with that first bullet point. The Economist reviewed this book and two others, concluding persuasively that it is the best at explaining how Donald Trump is “the latest manifestation of a recurring anti-establishment spirit in America.”

The entire article is Three books probe Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party, but it’s behind a paywall, so I’m going to quote the pertinent portion.

❝Of the three books, Matthew Continetti, a conservative journalist, comes closest to achieving that clarity and thoughtfulness. For him, understanding Mr Trump’s grip on the modern Republican Party requires assessing the past century of right-wing thought. His thoroughly researched intellectual history, “The Right”, reveals many antecedents to Mr Trump in the margins of conservatism: Father Charles Coughlin, whose populist diatribes against Franklin Roosevelt were spread by radio (then a newfangled medium); Charles Lindbergh and his “America First” isolationism; the strongman Huey Long and his embrace of the welfare state; the paranoid conspiracism of anti-communists like Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society; George Wallace and his politics of white racial grievance; and Pat Buchanan and his angry politics of cultural revanchism.

❝What held the party together throughout this period of warring ideological factions was a common enemy, sometimes internal and sometimes external: the New Deal, communist saboteurs, the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, and Islamic terrorism and the “axis of evil”. The brilliance of Mr Trump was to recognise the demise of the last common enemy after the failed “forever wars” in the Middle East. He reforged a winning, lasting coalition to counter a new enemy: the modern left and its allies in the media.

❝However crisp, Mr Continetti’s writing is not casual. There is a fondness for categorising and subcategorising various ideological cliques (as well as cataloguing the spats among them). But the careful historical preparation makes the eventual turn towards explaining the modern malaise of the Republican Party all the more convincing. “Heralded as a transformational president who would enact a second New Deal, Barack Obama ended up the midwife of an anti-elitist, isolationist politics of national populism,” he writes. “Donald Trump was the latest manifestation of a recurring anti-establishment spirit in America.”

❝Though Mr Continetti is no Democrat, his faction—the bookish writers who once staffed the now-defunct Weekly Standard—has been largely ostracised from the modern Republican Party. Partisan allegiances are not as strong in the wilderness, and his analysis is intellectually honest as a result. That lucidity, already in short supply, may grow even scarcer. The temperature of American politics is rising as Mr Trump’s return to the party’s helm beckons.❞

No book I’ve seen captures my conclusion about why the inherent flaw in human psychology that makes all of this inevitable. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this review is too narrow to contain.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Continetti's "The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism" is a compelling and meticulously researched exploration of the conservative movement's evolution in the United States over the past century. With remarkable clarity and insight, Continetti delves into the key figures, events, and ideas that have shaped the conservative landscape, offering readers an illuminating journey through the ideological battles that have defined American politics. One of the book's strongest aspects is Continetti's ability to weave together a cohesive narrative, seamlessly connecting disparate events and personalities. He skillfully traces the movement's origins, from its intellectual roots with figures like Edmund Burke to its modern-day manifestation. By examining how conservatism has responded to changing political, social, and economic contexts, Continetti demonstrates the movement's adaptability and resilience. What sets "The Right" apart is the author's impartial approach. While clearly sympathetic to the conservative cause, Continetti avoids falling into partisan bias, offering readers a balanced perspective on the movement's strengths and weaknesses. This even-handedness enhances the book's credibility, making it valuable not only for conservatives but also for those seeking a nuanced understanding of the broader American political landscape. Continetti's meticulous research is evident in the book's wealth of historical detail and well-crafted arguments. He skillfully incorporates primary sources and draws from a vast array of secondary literature, giving readers a comprehensive and authoritative account of conservatism's growth and fragmentation. Additionally, his prose is engaging, making even complex political concepts accessible to a broad readership. However, some readers may find the book's detailed exploration of historical events and personalities overwhelming, particularly if they are not well-versed in conservative history. While Continetti's comprehensive approach is commendable, it might pose a challenge for those seeking a more concise overview. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of American conservatism and its relevance in contemporary politics.

[Alex Gruenenfelder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to read this book for the same reason I've approached a lot of political nonfiction in the recent past: I saw the author quoted in an interesting Politico piece. Tracing a cast of eccentric characters, often as they move from the fringe toward the Republican mainstream, this is a great guide to American conservatism. Though I am generally highly familiar with this history, I learned many new things through this work, seeing how close things often were to the edge before the party reached its cliff.

This is a book from a figure of the Republican establishment. It's why he ponders the question, likely foreign to both sides today in its premises, "How had matters long thought settled — the importance of markets, the benefits of free trade, the blessings of immigration, the necessity of war — become so hotly contested?" Its lens is mildly conservative for the most part, making it more appealing to those on the right and yet not so heavy in its viewpoint to be alienating to those more liberal readers. Primarily focused on the intellectuals behind-the-scenes of conservative thought, the book's premise can largely be summarized by the author's quote, "When you study conservatism's past, you become convinced it has a future."

"There are times when you need a son of a bitch around," a Republican at the time said of Joseph McCarthy. It's hard not to see the same argument in the acceptance by many in today's GOP of figures like Donald Trump or Jim Jordan. The beauty of history is that you know how the story ends, at least for now, and you get to dive into the causes and effects along the way. A strong, detailed history with plenty of captivating detail for the election- and philosophy-obsessed like myself.

[Drtaxsacto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting and mostly exhaustive review of the conservative side of our political spectrum. Continetti has catalogued a wide range of intellectual influences for conservatives. He is (and I think rightly so) harsh on Trump - not because of what he did that was positive but because of January 6 and his fundamental laziness in working through key issues.

As I read the book I noticed some Weekly Standard views sneaking in. The WS was a publication developed by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes. Like many of Kristol's project is was off the mark for a good deal of its 23 years. Kristol's (Irving) dad was a key person in developing an intellectually based conservative movement. But even with those subtleties and whatever reality is - Continetti did a pretty good job of explaining the 350 variations of Neo-paleo- and all the other flavors of conservatives. Note Continetti is a son in law of Bill Kristol.

Early in my career I was the President of the second largest chapter of the Ripon Society(DC) which was an effort by conservatives to mold ideas for governance. During that time and beyond I spent a lot of time studying and discussing conservative ideas. What is amazing to me is that there is less of a tendency on the left to have those kinds of discussions - the first input is not getting the ideas right but to gain power. The complete takeover of Biden's "moderation" by the Sander's faction is just one demonstration of that.

[Wade Rials · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. As a conservative, it was beneficial to see how conservativism has evolved over the last 100 years. The author does a great job framing the evolution of conservativism and accurately portraying the pro’s and con’s of each aspect. Ultimately, this book will prove that “the right’ is a much larger ideological camp than first assumed. Most interesting detail to me was seeing how Ronald Reagan viewed human nature and how in many ways he doesn’t fit neatly into the conservative camp. Very interesting. After reading, I am convinced of the necessity of defining what it means to be a conservative in 2022. Although this book does not accomplish that, the author does leave the reader with multiple streams all vying to carry the torch. What does it mean to be a conservative?

[Nate Padley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Continetti has produced an informative and reliable intellectual history of the past 100 years of conservatism in the US. He has a bit of a neocon slant, so he gives paleocons and post liberals coverage that is perhaps a bit harsher than they deserve. Reading with his background (AEI scholar) in mind though, this book is a great resource for those who want to know more about the origins and trajectory of modern American conservatism.

[Mike Horne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good review of conservatism. I became a conservative in the 1980s and read Strauss, Voeglin, Bloom, Wilmore Kendall, and then was caught up in the battle between paleoconservatives (I had a subscription to Chronicles) and neoconservatives. After much internal struggle I went neoconservative.

This is a good review, but it only skims over the surface.

[Josh Craddock]

Continetti’s history of the American Right explains how the right/libertarian institutional constellation came into being, and illuminates the figures who led it. I found it interesting how the classical liberal and neoconservative strands were pushed into the conservative coalition, even though they weren’t really “conservative” in most senses of that term. The author barely veils his detestation of Trump and the populist, nationalist, and paleo-conservative strands of conservatism, which I suppose is hardly surprising from Bill Kristol’s son-in-law. Overall, a clarifying read.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the conservative movement over the last 100 years or so, even if I did find the last chapter to be a little generous. There's plenty of tidbits I wasn't aware of, and it was fascinating to see the changing face of the movement over the years.

[Kendall Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great 30,000 foot overview of the last century of American conservatism.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have a long review. It was an excellent and fascinating book. My only minor complaint is that it seemed to rush through post-Reagan until reaching Trump.

[Phil Cotnoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful overview of the conservative, Republican, populist, and right-wing movements in America in the last hundred years. There is nothing new under the sun.

[Andrew Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent overview. Described the very weird coalition of interests that make up the Right over the last 100 years, giving credence to its merits and its very dark downsides.

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Continetti begins his account of American Conservatism with the inauguration of Warren Harding on March 4, 1921. Just over a century ago, the conservatives were in charge. Harding, and then Coolidge and Hoover, were the confident bearers of the conservative message. They were not, as so many on the right are today, defensive, shrill, or violent. They were in charge.

Through these one hundred years and one year, American conservatism has stood for a few basic principles. Conservatives prioritize liberty over equality. They are reluctant to involve the country in foreign wars or adventures. They want the government to be small and unobtrusive. Over the past century these ingredients have combined in various proportions to create a maddening array of "conservatisms."

A few of the contradictory impulses that have confused conservatives: How to have a strong national defense, maintain a small government, and stand aloof from international squabbles. How to promote equality and leave civil rights and police functions to the states. How to have liberty for all and include religious groups which are authoritarian to the core.

From Harding to Trump there is an amazing odyssey. Read it and enjoy it, but note that this is also a cautionary tale. How could such a calm, confident, restrained ideology bring us to the age of Donald Trump?

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely fantastic book tracking the Right in American politics from the start of the 29th Century to the present. If you’re a Republican, the book is a must read to understand how conservative thought has evolved. If you’re not, the book provides an excellent pathway to a greater understanding of the conservative mind.

[Ceil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific history of the various flavors of conservatism in American political history. It's not doctrinaire, though it's clearly coming from a pro-conservative perspective. Useful for those of us who maybe overindex on anti-conservatism.

I particularly enjoyed the discussions of populism in conservative politics. It's not something that pops up every now and then: it never leaves us.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A breezy history of American conservatism from 1920-2020. As a Canadian I (once again, but more maturely) became interested in US politics in 2015 as Donald Trump entered the Republican primaries. I, like many, were convinced he would eventually be defeated and a more credible candidate chosen to lead the GOP against Hilary Clinton. I was wrong. But my interest in American politics has continued.

Matthew Continetti (son-in-law of Bill Kristol) does a good job chronicling the major figures and leaders of American conservatism. The right in the US has always been multifaceted and complex, containing blocs at one time or another that included isolationists, social and religious conservatives, traditional agrarians (many of whom, including international writers, were associated with the short-lived magazine 'American Review'), anti-communists, libertarians, neoconservatives, and populists. From the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, anti-communism was the strongest glue that held these competing groups together. The rise and defeat of Barry Goldwater to Democrat nominee Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election nevertheless pushed the Republicans solidly to the right, leading to the eventual victory of Ronald Reagan. But despite Reagan's popularity and seeming success, discontented elements within the GOP coalition, particularly Pat Buchanan and paleoconservatives, would eventually lay the seeds for the national populism that Donald Trump brought to the White House - and beyond?

As I said, this is a fast-paced read. Continetti doesn't just focus on pure politics but also discusses important works that shaped the conservative mind like Russell Kirk's book with the same title, Richard Weaver's 'Ideas Have Consequences,' William F. Buckley's 'National Review,' the Jewish conservative magazine 'Commentary,' and Allen Bloom's 'The Closing of the American Mind.' At times I was impressed with Continetti's nods to seemingly minor figures like Pater Edmund Waldstein but at other times I was shocked at what Continetti would leave out. For instance, in narrating Trump's 2016 presidential campaign no mention is made of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia nor the infamous Access Hollywood tape where Trump made disgusting and disparaging remarks about women; the former event was one of the pivotal reasons social conservatives swallowed Trump's deplorable behaviour because of Trump's pledge to appoint a conservative replacement to Scalia and the latter event was arguably Trump's worst debacle until January 6, 2021 (Continetti clearly isn't a fan of Trump so the failure to mention this is especially odd). Throughout the book, Continetti will sometimes make generalized statements that I wish he would expand upon in order to explain the generalization's greater significance. I can anticipate professors writing "So what?" next to these generalizations.

Despite these critiques, 'The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism' is an excellent and engaging history that illuminates the past to shine light on how the American Right has gotten to where it is today.

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for understanding the historical context in which different factions of the American right have evolved, ebbed and flowed. In this light Trumpism is nothing novel; merely the dog that caught the car? Or a simplistic populism that was bound to garner that extra ~5% amid the most elitist Left (and worst Democratic candidate) in recent memory? Eminently readable; my only critique is that the format is maybe a little too pat. Something like, “who was president, what was the intellectual conservative movement doing/saying, and what were the populists doing/saying?”

SPOILERS BELOW

Notes:

Chapter 1:
Harding/Coolidge admins as response to technocratic progressivism of Wilson/Teddy Roosevelt/Taft. WWI and adventurism, similarities to inward turn today post Afghanistan. Harding/Coolidge did not adopt the “conservative” label.

Cultural issues of the day - furthering Republican Civil Rights agenda; 2nd iteration of KKK from 1925. Anti-immigration for nation-building at home. Changing religious moorings - Darwin; rise of fundamentalist right in reaction against “social gospel”. Mencken and Nock libertarian skepticism. Unwillingness to use muscle of govt in areas like education.

Chapter 2:
Great Depression and fumbled response; Smoot Harley tariffs etc.; rise of FDR and unbridled statism.

Southern Agrarians and cultural backlash gelling with economic collectivism backlash

Austrian school - von Mises & Hayek

Rise of Robert Taft, son of the president, “Mr Republican” - for state-administered relief programs, pay-go pensions, etc

America First Committee - Lindbergh; failure but coalescing of anti-statist, anti-interventionist ideas that would gel with anti-communism in post-war 50’s

Chapter 3:
Post war anti-communism; Soviet Union more powerful just like US. Hayek, Road to Serfdom and Mount Pelerín Society. Robert Taft and Republicans sweep to power in 46 midterms, electorate wanted something new after FDR dies. James Burnham and ex-communists. McCarthy as populism and rejecting decorum. GOP colleagues abide it while disliking it. Eisenhower represents hawkish generation winning out over Taft isolationism.

Chapter 4:
Gelling of literary modern conservatism; Weaver, Nisbet, Kirk. Buckley Jr.

Movement conservatives go from distaste for McCarthyism to defense of it in spite of its rough edges.

McCarthy’s support wanes culminating in his attack on the military - Lodge “Have you no decency, sir?”

Chapter 5:
Founding of National Review 1955; Left/Liberal “establishment” had not been used to having their views challenged.

Ayn Rand and Buckley did not get along.

Buckley, movement conservatism and school desegregation 1957 - hewing to Southern Agrarian constituency, getting it wrong and limiting conservatism’s reach.

Leo Strauss

1960 election - Nixon “Compact of Fifth Avenue” for Lodge as VP to gain Rockefeller endorsement. Goldwater represents fifth time in a row the conservatives passed over on presidential ticket.

50’s were about recovering from and defining intellectually in contrast to Great Depression/New Deal but still “a minority political tendency” 60’s, however, would “break the Left” and propel conservatives forward.

Chapter 6:
Bozell v Meyer and Fusionism - exclusive vs inclusive

Birchers and extremism

Goldwater v Johnson, Reagan switches party, “The Speech” vs Goldwater at Cow Palace “extremism no vice” - (inclusive vs exclusive)

Still, first time conservatives had won the nomination. Goldwater being blown out was not viewed as defeat.

Strikes me at this point in book just how recent “movement” conservatism is, as an elite persuasion within the right and as a formidable faction within the GOP. Reverence for founding principles, distaste for New Deal and progressivism are older and were already more widespread. But here was a movement that actually proposed rollbacks/intellectual answers to those.

Chapter 7:
Reagan runs for governor. Buckley for NYC mayor. George Wallace and right wing extremism. National Review readers write in angry at criticism of Wallace. 1968 violence around race, Vietnam put law & order at front of voters’ minds. Nixon’s southern strategy - going for Wallace’s voters as law & order replaced economics on voter’s minds. The “Dayton Housewife”

Moynihan, Friedman and the Family Assistance Plan - negative income tax

Chapter 8:
George McGovern embraces counterculture - the far left screws the pooch and pushes out Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and the “neoconservatives”. Urban and descendants of immigrants, these neocons accepted New Deal institutions but saw the left as going too far. Nixon wins ‘72 in a landslide despite the right’s displeasure with him - opening to China, wage and price controls, etc.

Watergate

Chapter 9:
Ford continues Nixon moderation, picks Rockefeller as VP snubbing Goldwater/Reagan.

New Right/Conservative Digest, Viguerie - more maximalist conservatives and anti-establishment, anti-compromise

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Commentary article on more muscular opposition to the Soviet Union at the UN. Appointment as UN Ambassador.

Solzhenitsyn first person account of debasement of Soviet authoritarianism.

76 primary Ford vs Reagan - Reagan late surge makes him heart of party though he comes up short with Ford enjoying incumbency.

77/78 supply side economics - Wanniski, Mundell-Laffer, Jack Kemp… the shift from Goldwater ideology to Growth ideology

Meanwhile… undercurrent of cultural/social conservatism - Roe v Wade in 73, Phyllis Schlafly and ERA. Norman Lear and Archie Bunker - meant as spoof of bigoted and sexist working men; did not expect him flying be most popular character. 79 Moral Majority.

Chapter 10: Reagan years
Much inherent populism; believed in the goodness of people.

Thomas Sowell

Conservative legal movement had started in 70’s after Roe but was supercharged during Reagan admin - Ed Meese AG

Solidified neocons in the establishment, old right/now called paleocons and libertarians increasingly upset with drift and foreign policy

Allan Bloom and Closing of the American Mind - pessimism sets in, capitulation to Liberal takeover of the academy and culture

D’Souza & Ingraham @ Dartmouth Review and brash tactics; culture war takes shape

Chapter 11:
HW Bush, Kemp, Buchanan, Pat Robertson - no bay up to task of unifying Reagan coalition same way he did.

Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Krauthammer - “End of History” and unipolar moment with Iraq/Saddam

Buchanan and new populist right (2); Bush-Perot-Clinton… latter wins with only 43% - Roght takes this to mean strong majority still leans right.

Media landscape changing - repeal of fairness doctrine 1987, national syndication of talk radio - Rush ‘88

Charles Murray the bell curve - genetics and IQ; he regards this and episodes like it in the early 90’s as conservatives shooting themselves in the foot.

Newt - too cerebral, more interested in ideas than in legislating on them.

Clinton - welfare reform, culturally conservative, balanced budget - plenty for conservatives to like. “Triangulation” put strains on conservative coalition.

Weekly Standard launches 1994 - final mins meld of movement conservatism and neoconservatism.

Monica Lewinsky scandal as something for Right to latch onto, the eroding culture as replacement for anti-communism.

Chapter 12:
The W. Bush years - international adventurism and extension of the Truman doctrine. Surveillance state and Patriot act wrinkled libertarians. Immigration had Bush really out of step with the base.

Douthat, Yuval, others - Reformocons - “Sam’s Club Republicans” - seize on slide of white working class voters toward right with family-friendly policy. Redirect energies of populist wing toward productive ends. Never found a champion like Jack Kemp.

Chapter 13:
The culture war seed corn of Obama years

Financial crisis, resentment at bailouts lead to Tea Party elevation of populist right. Paul Ryan and Romney can’t harness it; too establishment. Competing 2012 “autopsies” - accommodative of immigration vs. “in-reach” for white rural working class.

Judicial restraint vs “judicial engagement” - from Roberts’ upholding of Obamacare “tax” to Kennedy in Obergefell.

Obama Iraq withdrawal and red line in Syria give rise to ISIS, refugee crisis in Europe 2014-15 give rise to populist right there

Pen and phone presidency with immigration, Title IX and universities ending due process for sexual assault, HHS and little sisters of the poor, EPA Clean Power Plan and Waters of the US rule. Education and transgendered students choose bathroom

Inability of GOP Congress to check the president soured grassroots on the establishment.

Opioids epidemic decimating white working class. Issues like trade, opioids and immigration were not priorities of conservative establishment.

[Greg Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read. Continetti does a fantastic job of introducing and weaving together several conservative thought leaders throughout the past hundred years. Each chapter covers roughly a decade (give or take a few years) with a unique blend of history and journalism. And Continetti deftly weaves in both history and political philosophy, such that readers come away with a well-rounded sense of the historical and ideological forces that reinforced one another during this time period. The fast-paced writing will surely appeal to anyone remotely interested in this subject. And while Continetti is conservative, he wrote the book in such a way that progressives and liberals who find themselves disagreeing with the figures in the book can nonetheless appreciate his commitment to objectivity.

My two gripes are the occasional awkward transitions between ideas within chapters and the Washington-centric narrative. The first is the product of the amount of material that the author squeezed into the book, and it’s only a minor blip in the reader experience. The second is more foundational. After all, conservatism—like all political movements—is a national, dispersed ideology that takes on different flavors depending on the geographic region. While many of the most important players did move to Washington to participate in politics or the war of ideas, it would have been interesting to read more of the particular manifestations of conservatism in, say, California in the 1960s or the Midwest in the Tea Party era.

Neither of these disagreements should dissuade potential readers from picking up the book. If you want to understand conservatism beyond the surface level, you should read this book.

[Luis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matthew Continetti is an inside the beltway rat, an elitist intellectual who has Washington bureaucratic solutions to more complex nation-wide problems. He does not know where conservatism should go from here after Trump. He only has criticism for Trump while never acknowledging the responsibility of elitists, like himself, in the creation of Trump. I don't take this book seriously because it is not an objective history but a very biased opinion. Besides that I did not like Mr. Continetti's writing style, I was expecting a book of ideas and I got a recount of events of the past 100 years in a non-engaging format.