• DOI:10.1353/rah.2012.0043
• Corpus ID: 96461510

Questioning Conservatism's Ascendancy: A Reexamination of the Rightward Shift in Modern American Politics

@article{Williams2012QuestioningCA,
  title={Questioning Conservatism's Ascendancy: A Reexamination of the Rightward Shift in Modern American Politics},
  author={Daniel K. Williams},
  journal={Reviews in American History},
  year={2012},
  volume={40},
  pages={325 - 331}
}

• Daniel K. Williams
• Published 21 June 2012
• History
• Reviews in American History

The latest histories of postwar American conservatism challenge the notion that there was anything inevitable—or even predictable—about the movement’s political triumph in the late twentieth century. Until now, most historians of modern conservatism have portrayed the movement as a product of long-term structural causes, including deeply ingrained racial and religious attitudes, demographic changes, and global economic trends. Such interpretations have deemphasized the importance of individual conservative politicians such as Ronald Reagan because the factors that produced conservatism’s success at the polls transcended the contributions of any single person. Since historians believed that conservatism was a product of long-term social processes, they did not foresee any immediate end to the “conservative ascendancy.”1 But some of the most recent studies, produced in the wake of President Barack Obama’s election victory, suggest that the supposed triumph of American conservatism may have been much more ephemeral, and its sustainability much less certain, than many had thought. Contrary to previous interpretations, several historians have posited that perhaps conservatism’s short-term victories depended more on the fortuitous decisions of a few individual political actors than on long-term social and cultural developments.2 Sean Cunningham’s Cowboy Conservatism and David Farber’s The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism represent this new interpretive approach. Researched and written during the final years of the Bush administration, when it appeared that the postwar conservative coalition was collapsing, and published a year after Obama’s election, when it seemed that a new era in