Partisans
The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s
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A bold new history of modern conservatism that finds its origins in the populist right-wing politics of the 1990s
Ronald Reagan has long been lionized for building a conservative coalition sustained by an optimistic vision of American exceptionalism, small government, and free markets. But as historian Nicole Hemmer reveals, the Reagan coalition was short-lived; it fell apart as soon as its charismatic leader left office. In the 1990s — a decade that has yet to be recognized as the breeding ground for today’s polarizing politics — changing demographics and the emergence of a new political-entertainment media fueled the rise of combative far-right politicians and pundits. These partisans, from Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, forged a new American right that emphasized anti-globalism, appeals to white resentment, and skepticism about democracy itself.
Partisans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the crisis of American politics today.
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The Republican Party swung a hard right away from Reaganism in the 1990s, according to this insightful political study. Hemmer (Messengers of the Right), a research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History project at Columbia University, follows the shift away from Ronald Reagan's relatively sunny conservatism, with its positive attitudes toward immigration, free trade, and internationalism, toward an embrace of isolationism, nativism, and untrammeled gun rights and a rejection of affirmative action, abortion rights, and other progressive social policies. She follows this process through sharply etched portraits of its architects, including presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and H. Ross Perot, who pioneered the policies and populist bluster that Donald Trump would take to the White House, and Idaho congresswoman Helen Chenoweth, who helped transfuse the extreme right's conspiracist paranoia into the Republican mainstream. At the story's center is House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who created the strategy of partisan obstructionism that now dominates Congress and was undone by it when ultraconservative firebrands pressured him into unpopular moves like impeaching President Bill Clinton. Written in stylish, entertaining prose, Hemmer's history is nicely balanced between colorful personalities, electoral dogfights, and shrewd analysis of sea changes in ideology and public attitudes. This is a stimulating take on a crucial political era.
