Barry Goldwater

A new history argues that illiberalism is not a backlash but a central feature from the founding to today.

You can thank Eric Voegelin for the right’s clichéd catchall critique for the left.

For as long as Americans have been subjected to lousy candidates, they’ve been told to suck it up and vote for one of them.

Past conservative figures seem moderate by today's standards.

The transformation of Alabama politics in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the rise of a new version of Republicanism that Trump has perfected.

The economist’s lifelong pugilism wasn’t in spite of his success—it may have been the key to it.

For years, LBJ was reviled for Vietnam. Then the historical tables turned in his direction. But they turned a little too far.

Our political and cultural systems are obsessed with exploiting fears about crime. But it wasn’t always this way.

The politicized rhetoric linking race and welfare has a long, ingrained history.

A far right politics that developed in the middle of the 20th century has prevented Democrats from gaining as they have in suburbs elsewhere.

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

What the differences between Hiram Fong and Nikki Haley tell us about changes to the GOP.

We can’t blame Joe McCarthy for this one. (Though he was a fan.)

Rustin’s assessment of the lay of the political land was predicated on a no-nonsense understanding of the radicalism of the moment.

How the rural Arizona border county embodies the political shift in much of America.

Behind his tough image, the longtime FBI director was a man of profound contradictions.

In 'What It Took to Win,' Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’.

A conversation with historian Gary Gerstle about understanding neoliberalism as a bipartisan worldview and how the political order it ushered in has crumbled. 

Is the Republican Party compatible with democracy?

You likely think of the American West as deeply conservative and rural. Yet history shows this politics is very new indeed.