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In the last fifteen years or so I have found myself at odds with friends, colleagues, and other luminaries over whether the changes among political activists within the major political parties are real but modest in their impact or whether, as I believe, the changes are fundamental. Most commentaries on political parties by pundits and political scientists give no clue that anything fundamental has occurred. The Democratic party is described as if it were still the party of Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey, and the Republican party is still conceived as tantamount to the party of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. True, the presidency of Ronald Reagan led to discussions of a strong conservative trend; by and large, however, this trend is treated as an aberration, a product of Reagan's peculiar personality and popularity rather than an indicator of basic change within the Republican party.

A review essay on books by: Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans from 1952 to the Present (New York: Oxford U Press, 1989); Steve Bruce, The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: Conservative Protestant Politics in America, 1978-1988 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Gillian Peele, Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); & Edward G. Carmines & James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton: Princeton U Press, 1989 [see listings in IRPS No. 66]). Differences between current US political parties & those in the 1950s are revealed in these four books. Rae provides an excellent narrative history of a once dominant faction in Republican politics -- liberal Republicans. Bruce traces the rise & fall of the New Christian Right, & argues that the objects of fundamentalist hate -- the substitution of science for religion, the growth of knowledge that challenges authority -- are products of modernity. Bruce is criticized for identifying secular humanism with modernity. Peele examines the New Right in US politics via an analysis of its different factions, thinktanks, & politicians, & identifies the religious & the political Right with populism. Carmines & Stimson provide an original & well-substantiated exploration of what happened to US politics when race emerged as a political issue in the late 1950s & 1960s. 1 Figure. W. Howard