When America Liked Ike: How Moderates Won the 1952 Presidential Election and Reshaped American Politics

The 2016 election cycle put in sharp relief the rifts that divide, and threaten to destroy, the Republican Party. While some claim these divisions originated in Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” or in Newt Gingrich’s tenure as Minority Whip, Gary Donaldson argues that the conflict has its origins much earlier, at least as far back as the 1952 presidential election. That election pitted the conservative wing of the Republican Party (the Right Wing, the Old Guard, what is now the Tea Party) against...