Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon) Hardcover - 2008 - 1st Edition

From the rear cover

Ten things trainwreck reveals that REPUBLICANS HOPE YOU NEVER FIND OUT

Why the conservative movement that spawned Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush is now dead.

How many core conservative principles the Republicans have betrayed.

How Republicans have made us less safe, not more.

How Republicans became the biggest spenders of all time.

How much bigger the federal government has grown under conservative rule.

How many Republicans got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

How Republicans went from protecting the environment to plundering it.

How the party of peacekeepers became the party of perpetual war.

How Reagan was worse than Nixon--and Bush worse than both.

Why conservatives can never again be trusted with power.

In Bill Press's funniest and most astute book yet, he drives the final nail into the coffin containing the ideas of the so-called party of ideas. And it's a coffin many Republican presidential candidates have been using as a campaign bus.

Conventional conservative wisdom holds that somehow, during the first seven years of the twenty-first century, the Republican Party lost its way and abandoned core conservative principles while maintaining absolute control of all three branches of government. Is this true? Or are unnecessary wars, ballooning deficits, rampant corruption, incompetent governance, inadequate public services, crumbling infrastructure, and repeated attempts to deceive the public the inevitable consequence of any government based on conservative political philosophy?

In Trainwreck, one of America's best-known progressive commentators reveals that, far from betraying conservative ideals, the administration of George W. Bush has behaved exactly as anyone would expect of a group that believes government is evil and always doomed to failure. Why, asks syndicated radio host and newspaper columnist Bill Press, would people whose primary message is that government doesn't work want to prove otherwise?

Press traces the history of the modern conservative movement from the rise of Robert Taft in the 1940s, through the glory days of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, to the long and agonizing fall of George W. Bush. He examines the movement's intellectual underpinnings in the writings of Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr. and its national political birth with the nomination of Barry Goldwater for president in 1964.

This in-depth analysis reveals three very salient facts: hatred of government has been a core value of the conservative movement from its inception; the behavior of the George W. Bush administration has mirrored that of the Reagan administration in every important way; and, until Hurricane Katrina revealed in 2005 that the emperor had no clothes, movement conservatives were the president's strongest supporters and closest allies.

Press demonstrates that, while constantly changing and evolving, conservative positions have remained consistently wrong, and that, from its inception, the movement was dedicated to tearing things down, not building them up.

Trainwreck will convince you, once and for all, that the conservative movement has remained on track for decades--and that, from the beginning, those tracks were headed for disaster.

Media reviews

Citations

• Publishers Weekly, 01/28/2008, Page 54
• Reference and Research Bk News, 11/01/2008, Page 172