Rule and Ruin

The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Geoffrey Kabaservice

Offers a provocative and scholarly explanation of why moderates lost the GOP to the conservatives.
Records the history-shaping power of moderate Republicans between the 1930s and 1970s.
Written by the author of "The Guardians"

Rule and Ruin

The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Geoffrey Kabaservice

Description

As the 2012 elections approach, the Republican Party is rocketing rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threaten to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mount primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appear to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise are dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seems, has suddenly become a party of ideological purity.

Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike. But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's conservatives who are "Republicans in Name Only."

Writing with passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation, Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney—father of Mitt Romney—conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to "listen to the voices from the ghetto." Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched history that reorients our understanding of our political past and present.

Today, moderates are marginalized in the GOP and progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire consequences for all Americans.

Rule and Ruin

The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Geoffrey Kabaservice

Introduction
Chapter 1: The Collapse of the Moderate Republican Establishment, 1960-64
Chapter 2: "Moderation Is No Virtue": The GOP and the Goldwater Campaign, 1964
Chapter 3: Wresting in the Ruins: Moderates Regain Control of the Republican Party, 1965
Chapter 4: From Rat Finks to Reagan: Republican Resurgence, 1966
Chapter 5: Moderation's High Tide: George Romney's Rise and Fall, 1967
Chapter 6: Moderate Half-Victories and the Presidential Election of 1968
Chapter 7: Moderates Get a Piece of the Action: Nixon's First Year, 1969
Chapter 8: Clashing with Nixon: The Breakup of the Moderate Republican Movement, 1970
Chapter 9: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: The Decline and Fall of the Moderate Republicans, 1971-2011
Conclusion

Rule and Ruin

The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Geoffrey Kabaservice

Author Information

Geoffrey Kabaservice

Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of the National Book Award-nominated The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment. He has written for numerous national publications and has been an assistant professor of history at Yale University. He lives outside Washington, DC.

Rule and Ruin

The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Geoffrey Kabaservice

From Our Blog

'Moderate' is an obscenity for conservatives

By Geoffrey Kabaservice It's hard not to feel at least a little sorry for Iowa's conservative Republicans. Although three-quarters of the votes in Tuesday night's caucus went to conservatives of one stripe or another, the winner by a bare eight votes was Mitt Romney, the most moderate candidate running ' and 'moderate' is an obscenity for conservatives.

Posted on January 9, 2012

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The Decline and Fall of the American Political Convention

By Geoffrey Kabaservice Will you be tuning in to watch this year's Republican and Democratic national conventions in the hope of seeing something of historic significance? The managers of both conventions are working hard to make sure that you don't get your wish. From their standpoint, the best convention is a precooked and tightly controlled event that passes placidly and without controversy into the annals of national forgetfulness.

Posted on August 27, 2012

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Newt Gingrich, Chameleon Politician

Veteran Gingrich-watchers wouldn't have predicted the latest Newt incarnation, either, but they probably weren't too surprised. Over the course of his long political career ' he first ran for Congress almost four decades ago ' Gingrich has been consistently inconsistent and predictably unpredictable. Whatever the issue, he has been on all sides of it.

Posted on January 20, 2012

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