The Conservative movement in America curiously finds itself in the spotlight again. After the May’s primaries, several career politicians are finding themselves with nothing to do after January 2011. Prior to that, the state of Massachusetts, long considered a Democrat stronghold, elected a Republican senator to fill the vacant seat of the late Ted Kennedy. People are talking. Questions are being asked. Television and radio news agencies are buzzing. Life seems to be flowing in the veins of the conservative movement again. Life some might attribute to the caffeine from the Tea Party.
Maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe Conservatism in America is following a pattern or redeveloping, evolving. Since its shaping in the mid-twentieth century, the movement has had its ups and downs. In 1994 the Republicans took control of Congress, but lost it again in 2006. A Conservative sat in The Oval Office for five out of seven terms between 1981 and 2009. But since election night 2008, connecting the Democratic presidential victory with its congressional victor two years prior, political pundits cry the end of conservatism on the horizon. Enter this book by R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr: After the Hangover: the Conservatives’ Road to Recovery.
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