The Conservative Revolution by Lee Edwards Summary

The Conservative Revolution chronicles the rise of America's conservative movement over fifty years, focusing on how conservatives transformed from political outsiders to a dominant force. Edwards tells the story through four key leaders—Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich—who built the movement by starting magazines, creating grassroots organizations, and seizing control of the Republican Party from moderate collaboration-minded politicians.

This book is ideal for conservatives interested in their political roots, political history enthusiasts, and students of American government. The Conservative Revolution serves as an excellent introduction for young conservatives seeking to understand movement history, while also informing readers who lived through these political transformations with well-researched insights into conservative strategy and ideology.

The Conservative Revolution receives strong reviews as a comprehensive introduction to conservative movement history, praised for Edwards' intimate knowledge of key figures and tremendous writing ability. However, critics note the book's ideological perspective and tendency to present conservative leaders as paragons while overlooking internal movement conflicts, making it valuable for understanding conservative viewpoints but less balanced for objective political analysis.

Lee Edwards is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a longtime conservative activist with over six decades of experience in the movement. He has written extensively about conservative figures and history, including biographies of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr., establishing himself as an authoritative voice on American conservative political development and ideology.

Edwards profiles Robert Taft as "Mr. Republican" and beacon of conservative principle, Barry Goldwater as "Mr. Conservative" who inspired a new generation, Ronald Reagan as "Mr. President" whose beliefs helped defeat the Soviet empire, and Newt Gingrich as "Mr. Speaker" who won Congress but lost control of it. These leaders provided intellectual stability to the conservative movement and transformed American politics by maintaining ideological purity against pragmatic compromises.

Conservatives built their movement from the ground up by starting influential magazines, creating grassroots organizations, and strategically seizing control of the Republican Party from moderates who favored collaboration with liberals. Edwards describes how conservatives rejected the approach of simply managing the welfare state more efficiently, instead working to dismantle it entirely through persistent activism, writing, speaking, and fundraising efforts.

The central thesis argues that conservative success in reshaping American politics represents one of the great untold stories of the past fifty years, transforming the political landscape so thoroughly that even Democratic President Bill Clinton declared "The era of big government is over". Edwards contends that principled conservative leaders held the high ground against pragmatists who would compromise conservative principles for temporary political advantage.

Critics argue that Edwards presents an overly ideological perspective, describing conservatives as unwavering happy warriors while ignoring acrimonious internal struggles within the movement. The book fails to mention significant defections like speechwriter Karl Hess abandoning conservatism, bitter disputes between paleoconservatives and neoconservatives, and personal conflicts between prominent conservative intellectuals, presenting an unrealistically harmonious view of conservative unity.

Edwards examines whether conservatives can effectively govern after decades of criticizing big government, using examples of successful conservative state governors to argue that principled conservatives can indeed lead effectively. However, critics note this approach leaves unresolved questions about conservative leadership effectiveness at the federal level in Washington, representing a somewhat weak conclusion to the book's central governing question.

The book is praised as definitive because Edwards combines comprehensive coverage of conservative intellectual development with insider knowledge gained from six decades of personal involvement in the movement. His intimate familiarity with key figures, access to movement leaders, and systematic documentation of how conservatives built institutions and seized political control provides unparalleled depth on conservative strategy and ideology development in American politics.