Free Republic

It must have all looked so appealing back in the winter.  Why not publish The Death of Conservatism by New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus on September 1?  The book is, the Economist reviewer says, "an appeal for unilateral disarmament by the right."  It would appear just in time to celebrate the passage of health care reform, cap and trade, a robustly stimulated economy and the utter rout of the evil Republicans.  It all began when Tanenhaus published "Conservatism is Dead" in The New Republic in mid February.  He wrote that President Bush's presidency had failed because it...

American conservatism Overdoing it Aug 20th 2009 From The Economist print edition The Death of Conservatism. By Sam Tanenhaus. Random House; 144 pages; $17. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk THE recent implosion of the conservative movement is one of the great puzzles of American political history. Four years ago the Republican Party was in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Today the party is locked out of power in Washington entirely, confused about its future and dominated by its know-nothing fringe. Is Bill O’Reilly conservatism’s mortician? Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the New York Times Book Review,...

September 03, 2009, 4:00 a.m. An Exaggerated DeathIn proclaiming the death of conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus misses several marks. By Peter Berkowitz In contrast to progressives, who converge in believing that the top priority of politics should be more equitable government distribution of opportunities and goods, conservatives differ, sometimes sharply, about the aims of politics. While almost all conservatives in America affirm the centrality of individual freedom, social conservatives concentrate on protecting religion and morality, economic conservatives on limiting government’s scope and size in accordance with free-market tenets, and neoconservatives on preserving the principles of sound government embodied in the...

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review and Week in Review, author of many books and articles including a January 2009 offering in The New Republic entitled Conservatism Is Dead -- An intellectual autopsy of the movement and its cleverly repackaged follow-up: The Death of Conservatism (which might have been subtitled "Same autopsy, more words") is clearly, as these credentials would suggest, a man of remarkable erudition and prescience. Consider this forthright pronouncement in the 2009 article and ask yourself it's any coincidence the names "Tanenhaus" and "Nostradamus" are so similar. What conservatives have yet to do...

It's tough to be a Republican. It's tough to be a Republican in 2004, because you are expected to somehow believe all of this. Religion George W. Bush is a Christian, and Christians believe that lying is a sin, but it is okay for George Bush to mislead the public. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction to enlist support for an unprovoked, undeclared war, in which tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians die, is "defense". Christians believe in charity toward the poor, but...