The Right Path: From Ike to Reagan, How Republicans Once Mastered Politics- -and Can Again

Random House, 2013. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Joe Scarborough--former Republican congressman and the always insightful ho st of MSNBC's Morning Joe--takes a nuanced and surprising look at the unexp ected rise and self-inflicted fall of the Republican Party. Dominant in nat ional politics for forty years under the influence of the conservative but pragmatic leadership of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, the GOP, Scarb orough argues, is in a self-inflicted eclipse. The only way forward? Recove r the principled realism of the giants who led the party to greatness. In the aftermath of Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide, the Republican Party a ppeared to be on the verge of permanent irrelevance. LBJ's Great Society wa s institutionalizing sweeping liberal reforms, and the United States had a thriving, prosperous economy. Yet in an instant everything changed, and the next four decades would witness an unprecedented era of Republican ascenda ncy. What happened? In The Right Path, Joe Scarborough looks back in time to discern how Republ icans once dominated American public life. From Eisenhower's refusal to let "the perfect be the enemy of the good" to Reagan's charismatic but resolut ely practical genius, Scarborough shows how principled pragmatism, combined with a commitment to core conservative values, led to victory after victor y. Now, however, political incalcitrance is threatening to turn a once-mighty party into a permanent minority. Opening with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965--the high-water moment for liberalism-.