The Decline and Fall of Liberalism
In the history of postwar American liberalism, there has been a slow but steady decline of which liberals have been oblivious, says the editor of The American Spectator Emmett Tyrell.
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The heirs of the New Deal are down to around 20% of the electorate, according to recent Gallup polls. Conservatives account for 42% of the vote, and in the recent election the independents, the second most numerous group at 29% of the electorate, broke the conservatives’ way. They were alarmed by the deficit. They will be alarmed for a long time. Liberalism’s decline might appear, at first glance, to have begun with the 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy—when historians noted the first glimmerings of what was to become liberalism’s distinctive trait, overreach.
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