Volume 54, Number 6 · April 12, 2007
Cracks in the House of Rove
By Jonathan Raban
The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back
by Andrew Sullivan
HarperCollins, 294 pp., $25.95
Like so many parties that go on past their proper bedtime, Karl Rove's Republican Party has lately begun to break out in fights, as neocon theorists, Goldwater-style libertarians, the corporations, and grassroots Christian fundamentalists come to the aggravating discovery that they're more defined by their differences than by what they hold in common. On climate change, government spending, stem-cell research, reproductive rights, and the Iraq war, to name just a few of the triggering issues, self-styled conservatives find themselves at loggerheads with other self-styled conservatives, each claiming the mantle of true conservatism for himself. As both symptom and diagnosis of this interesting—one might say promising—development, Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul is as engaging as it is provocative.
Review, 3819 words
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