The Fallacy of the Republican 'Moderate'

By Corey Robin

October 26, 2013  |  

In the New York Times [3] this week, John G. Taft, who is the grandson of Robert Taft [4], makes his contribution to the growing “Oh, conservatives used to be so moderate, now they’re just radicals and crazies” [5] literature.

Having written about and against this thesis of conservatism’s Golden Age so many times, I don’t think it’s useful for me to rehearse my critique here. Instead, I’ll focus on one important tidbit of Taft’s argument, in the hope that a little micro-history about his grandfather might serve to correct our macro-history of conservatism.