In this text, historian William Berman examines the political, cultural and economic contexts in which Republican conservatives operated and explores the crisis of the liberal welfare state against the background of presidential politics. Berman demonstrates the key roles played by conservative populism and the conservative backlash to the rights revolution in the collapse of Democratic hegemony. He shows how conservative politics became allied with conservative economics - an allience forged with singular success during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In this updated edition of the text, the author discusses the initial failure of the Clinton administration to establish a viable political alternative to the GOP. Berman also shows how Clinton won re-election in 1996 by moving steadily to the centre, even to the extent of co-opting the Republican agenda, while defending a number of key Democratic programmes.