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Too Dumb to Fail

How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)
May 30, 2017
Despite its tantalizing title, the book contains more complaining about how people don’t appreciate his heroes than about how to counter "the Con$ervative Movement" with better ideas. I could accept the assertion that Ronald Reagan was an unacknowledged intellectual, maybe, but not the claim that the Koch brothers are generous philanthropists. Lewis’s book fits this criticism: “The average conservative reformist output consists of about three articles bashing liberal statism for every one questioning Republican dogma” (national journalist Ryan Cooper, cited by E. J. Dionne, in Why the Right Went Wrong, page 420). You can learn some interesting things from Too Dumb to Fail, but it’s not a satisfying explanation of ways the party could fulfill its Burkean destiny and temper American progress with proper caution. He should’ve made this book much shorter and stuck to supporting his key points with giving examples of the better ideas conservative thought might offer. Apparently, the author is neither the intellect nor the writer that he thinks he is.