Sam Tanenhaus

The Death of Conservatism Sam Tanenhaus

Sam Tanenhaus's essay Conservatism Is Dead prompted intense discussion and debate when it was published in the New Republic in the first days of Barack Obamas presidency. Now Tanenhaus, a leading authority on modern politics, has expanded his argument into a sweeping history of the American conservative movement. For seventy-five years, he argues, the Right has been split between two factions: consensus-driven realists, who believe in the virtue of government and its power to adjust to changing conditions, and movement revanchists, who distrust government and society - and often find themselves at war with America itself.