Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What’S Wrong With The Right: A Conservative Vision For The Twenty-First Century, Ted Mcallister

School of Public Policy Working Papers

What's wrong with the right? It has become a political movement, disconnected from a larger, more complicated and diverse social and cultural tradition. By the 1980s the right had transformed the Republican Party, had articulated a clear if not consistent agenda. After Reagan the right turned policy agendas into ideological objectives. What made their ideology different was the apocalyptic quality to the struggle for power. With the right ideas, the good cause, the right settled into a Manichean language that demonized opponents. With the stakes so high, those on the right approached politics as a Hobbesian conflict rather than a …