The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise Book

Written at about a 5th grade level but this Scarborough's book contains a lot of very solid insight. There is some interesting data but few citations so I hate to reuse most of it. The gist of his argument, which I wholeheartedly endorse, is that in the George W years the the Republicans strayed from conservatism to something far, far from the philosophy of Buckley and other conservative thought leaders. For example (using data he attributes to Meacham) in 2000 Americans spent only 18% of GDP on the federal government. That was the lowest percentage in 25 years. It was attributable to restrained spending and moderate tax hikes under George HW and Clinton. By 2008 unconstrained spending and two rounds of tax cuts (and a weak economy which JS does not mention) pushed spending on government to 21 of GDP. JS writes "the net effect of the Bush and Obama bailout bills will drive that number up to 28 percent by the end of 2009, and as reported above, Washington spending will swallow 40 percent of the US economy in 2010." The point is that the party of restrained federal power and spending instead became the party of unconstrained spending and tax cuts at any cost - which is hardly conservative.