The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party Paperback – August 1, 2014

It's a common fault in modern times: history started in 2000, when the Internet really took off, or even worse, at the beginning of the current President's term in office. This book breaks that illusion and digs deep into the history of where our modern beliefs and disagreements come from. A brilliant, quite readable, scholarly take on modern politics. Highly recommended.

This is a well written and extremely informed book about the early years of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. For those interested in learning why most conservatives are currently part of the GOP, then this book will help you better understand the transformation. Well worth the read.

This is a useful history and I'm glad I read it. But we have moved on since then and the more recent history of partisan politics is not really that much better informed by this account. I was hoping for more insight into the mentality of the conservative perspective. This is a decent account and fills a hole in my historical understanding. But not, really, contemporary behavior. Much has changed. (24 hour cable news hour, self aware cynicism, etc) Possibly the characters portrayed in this account were principled, more so than contemporary politicians. I did get a sense that the issues raised in this account are no longer a driving force of contemporary politics, and that nothing, really has replaced them. So it does feel as though contemporary conservatism is otiose, or moribund.The time running up to the War (WW2) and then Roosevelt's policies to deal with the German and Japanese aggression pretty much put paid to the "primitives" - the reactionaries and isolationists. But then they were back after the war with the "You Lost our China" and the great McCarthy Communists under the bed hearings.... Was there ever anything useful or valuable conservative extremists ever contributed?I will have to look elsewhere for a more contemporary account of current polemics.

The Roots of Modern Conservatism indeed looks at the roots of the conservative ascendancy and gets deep into the weeds of Republican postwar politics. As such, it is a significant contribution to our understanding of that period. When one hears about the rise of conservatism, one hears about Irving Kristol and Barry Goldwater, rarely about Robert Taft. This book corrects that. It is thoroughly researched and sourced and I have no doubt about the merit of the author's reporting.But it is dry. If you are deeply interested in insider politics, the review should be four stars. There is a great deal of recounting the politics of the 1948 and 1952 Republican conventions and the vast amount of politicking that occurred prior to both. This makes for some very slow parts through the heart of the book as we are treated to discussions of Dewey and Taft underlings positioning themselves in state Republican organizations. Important stuff, but not good reading. Even the lead characters, Dewey and Taft, are not fleshed out in any way. We get no sense of their personalities and motivations (other than becoming President).One other fault of the book is that it ends early. Dewey wins in the short term with the victory of Eisenhower in 1952 and in the conclusion we learn that conservatives win in the long term beginning with the Goldwater nomination in 1964. But Goldwater got crushed in the election. If the GOP had stayed where it was in 1964, then perhaps the moderates would have made a comeback. But with the passage of civil rights legislation, and the resultant southern strategy of Nixon, the conservative Republicans were buoyed by the entrance into the party of religious advocates and racist forces dooming moderate Republicanism.

This is a painful, pedestrian narrative about a micro history in Republican history, which the author tries to pawn off as the origins of 'modern conservatism'.