Partisans: the conservative revolutionaries who remade American politics in the 1990s

Abstract

At a time when ‘presentism’ has become something of a dirty word for historians, Nicole Hemmer owns its mantle. Tracing her ambition as a ‘historian of conservatism and commentator on contemporary politics’, Hemmer sets out to explain Donald Trump's ascendancy within the Republican Party (p. 13). Through this lens, she argues that the outrage that propelled Trump's election had its roots in the 1990s. This decade, Hemmer contends, was less ‘an era of polarization … [and] actually an era of right-wing radicalization’ during which the optimistic party of Ronald Reagan became a conduit for an ideology of protectionism, suspicion and illiberalism (p. 28). Hemmer emerged as a leading historian-pundit in the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally, when she hosted a brilliant podcast series that sought to provide historical context to the events that had taken her city hostage. She later co-founded the ‘Made by History’ section of the Washington Post. A sense of grief, as well as a conviction that a historical lens could help make sense of the shocking present, seems to animate her ventures, including this latest book. Partisans fits within a growing body of literature on the tectonic shifts of the 1990s. Hemmer's focus on the internal dynamics of the conservative movement shows how, as the Cold War ended, the ideological ‘glue’ that had held together the Republican Party gave way to a period of fluidity. To Hemmer, two individuals were key in terms of where the party went next: the failed presidential candidates Ross Perot and especially Pat Buchanan. According to the author, Buchanan's openly xenophobic campaigns created a new lexicon and campaign style, which became the template for Trump.