America's Right: Anti-Establishment Conservatism From Barry Goldwater To The Tea Party
by Robert B Horwitz
(Polity, £20)

While it's pretty much the norm to draw a distinction between the politics of the mainstream right and more fascist-oriented groupings, it's far more unusual to explore factions within the body of conservatism itself.

There's an unfortunate tendency on the left to treat them as an undifferentiated whole and this book is thus a welcome exception in its analysis of what author Robert B Horwitz describes as anti-establishment conservatism, from the rise of Barry Goldwater in the 1960s right through to the emergence of the modern-day Tea Party.

In attacking the New Deal consensus that accepted limited state intervention and a containment policy towards the Soviet Union, Horwitz argues, Goldwater and his allies were instrumental in pushing the Republican Party onto a path that was far more monetarist, anti-welfare, implacably opposed to trade unions and aggressively anti-communist.

It could be argued that this paralleled developments in the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher but Horwitz's decision to incorporate Hofstadter's model of "the paranoid style in politics" gives the narrative a specifically US twist.

Even so it's an excellent read and an essential one for understanding what is happening in US politics today.

In Horwitz's account, Goldwater cuts an unusual figure. Despite coming from a wealthy, right-wing and Christian background, he defended a woman's right to choose, welcomed gays into the military and argued that demagogues like Jerry Falwell deserved a "kick in the nuts."

Toward the end of his life he was given to attacking extremists in the Republican Party on the basis that they had done more damage to the conservative cause than the Democrats ever had.

Horwitz probably makes more of the differences between Republican and Democrat than is possibly the case - Tweedledum and Tweedledee particularly comes to mind in both parties' approach to foreign policy.

Yet the views of the Tea Party, a mass movement which is not without political clout, makes Ronald Reagan look sensible. Perhaps it is worthwhile after all being aware of divisions, however small, if only so they can be exploited to the left's benefit.