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The Future of Conservatism: From Taft to Reagan and Beyond By M. Stanton Evans Holt, $5.95 If any doubt remained that the Christian injunction to love one’s neighbor is still honored in the land, that doubt should surely be dispelled by the ocean of tears America’s liberal pundits annually shed over the plight of the Republican Party, and the rivers of ink they regularly expend on suggestions to strengthen and improve it. From Walter Lippmann, alone up there in the empyrean, down through James Reston, Richard Rovere, Tom Wicker, David Broder, Robert Novak, Marianne Means and a host of others, all the way to Drew Pearson, writers who obviously prefer the Democratic Party and its liberal policies are forever bemoaning the manifest weaknesses of the GOP and rushing forward with proposals to succor it.

Oddly enough—or perhaps not so oddly, since after all these people are human too—their proposals almost always involve turning the Republican Party into a Xerox copy of the Democratic Party, and thus into a convenient alternative vehicle for the realization of their own liberal aims. The coin, as it were, is to have heads on both sides, so that—however it lands— liberalism will always win the flip. Naturally this sort of thing gets noticed, and it is undoubtedly why most Republicans tend to be a little chary of the advice so generously proffered—rather like a frail but wealthy aunt who unobtrusively pours into the potted geraniums the toddy mixed for her by her nephew and sole heir.

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William A. Rusher

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The Future of Conservatism: From Taft to Reagan and Beyond By M. Stanton Evans Holt, $5.95 If any doubt remained that the Christian injunction to love one’s neighbor is still honored in the land, that doubt should surely be dispelled by the ocean of tears America’s liberal pundits annually shed over the plight of the Republican Party, and the rivers of ink they regularly expend on suggestions to strengthen and improve it. From Walter Lippmann, alone up there in the empyrean, down through James Reston, Richard Rovere, Tom Wicker, David Broder, Robert Novak, Marianne Means and a host of others, all the way to Drew Pearson, writers who obviously prefer the Democratic Party and its liberal policies are forever bemoaning the manifest weaknesses of the GOP and rushing forward with proposals to succor it.

Oddly enough—or perhaps not so oddly, since after all these people are human too—their proposals almost always involve turning the Republican Party into a Xerox copy of the Democratic Party, and thus into a convenient alternative vehicle for the realization of their own liberal aims. The coin, as it were, is to have heads on both sides, so that—however it lands— liberalism will always win the flip. Naturally this sort of thing gets noticed, and it is undoubtedly why most Republicans tend to be a little chary of the advice so generously proffered—rather like a frail but wealthy aunt who unobtrusively pours into the potted geraniums the toddy mixed for her by her nephew and sole heir.