The Right Stuff: Charlie Sykes and the Practice of Sane Conservatism.

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: BOOKS - How the Right Lost Its Mind - Book review

Jerry Rubin went from being a leader of the Yippies to a cheerleader for the Yuppies. David Horowitz, raised by communists, was an outspoken radical leftist until he became an outspoken radical conservative. Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe vs. Wade, later pledged her life to "serving the Lord and helping women save their babies" from abortion.

And Charlie Sykes has transitioned from "recovering liberal" to sickened conservative. The former conservative radio host, based in Milwaukee, has emerged as one of the harshest and most incisive critics of whatever the hell happened to give us man-child-in-chief Donald Trump.

Sykes would argue, as he does in his new book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, that he has simply remained true to his principles while others have abandoned theirs, instead lapsing into moral narcolepsy. He was a Never Trumper who never switched to never mind.

In March 2016, just prior to the Wisconsin primary, Sykes had Trump on his hugely influential radio program. He opened the interview with a judo chop. "Here in Wisconsin, we value things like civility, decency, and actual conservative principles," he told Trump, who doesn't. He grilled the GOP frontrunner over his misogyny and divisiveness, likening him to "a twelve-year-old bully on the playground."

Trump, who praised Sykes on the air and afterward called him a "low life" and "whack job," lost the state primary to Ted Cruz, then narrowly carried Wisconsin in November. Sykes, unlike the vast majority of his colleagues in conservative talk radio, has refused to get over his revulsion and hop aboard the Trump Train. Now he finds himself at bitter odds with the conservative movement he once championed.

Sykes has written op-eds in The New York Times and appears regularly on MSNBC, castigating Trump's daily missteps and embarrassments. How the Right Lost Its Mind, Sykes's ninth book, is a scathing indictment of a party and ideology that has wedded its fortunes to this coarse and heinous man.

"So how did this happen?" Sykes asks at the start of Chapter 1. "How did the right wander off into the fever swamps of the Alt Right? How did it manage to go from Friedrich Hayek to Sean Hannity, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump? How did it create an alternative-reality silo that indulged every manner of crackpot, wing-nut conspiracy theory? How did a movement that was defined by its belief in individual liberty, respect for the Constitution, free markets, personal responsibility...