America's right turn

the long version

In America's Right Turn, historian William Berman examines the political, cultural, and economic context in which Republican conservatives operated over the past several decades and explores the crisis of the liberal welfare state against the background of presidential politics from Nixon to Clinton. Berman demonstrates the key roles played by conservative populism and by the conservative backlash to the rights revolution in the collapse of Democratic hegemony. But, most importantly, he shows how conservative politics became allied with conservative economics - an alliance forged with singular success during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.