PrintSeptember 1, 2009
No Dead Parrots Here
It must have all looked so appealing back in the winter. Why not publish The Death of Conservatism by New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus on September 1? The book is, the Economist reviewer says, "an appeal for unilateral disarmament by the right." It would appear just in time to celebrate the passage of health care reform, cap and trade, a robustly stimulated economy and the utter rout of the evil Republicans. It all began when Tanenhaus published "Conservatism is Dead" in The New Republic in mid February. He wrote that President Bush's presidency had failed because it was carrying on a useless culture war against the mainstream consensus.[Bush's presidency] failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive "culture war" waged against liberal...(Read Full Article)
