Summary of E.J. Dionne's Why the Right Went Wrong is a history and analysis of the conservative movement from the early 1960s to 2015. Conservative polarization and radicalization did not happen in response to the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. Instead, the roots of the radical conservative Tea Party movement of 2010, and the violently nativist 2016 campaign of Donald Trump, stretch back to Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful 1964 Republican campaign.

Goldwater's conservatism was based on two central themes. The first was a libertarian ideology that saw government intervention as a threat to freedom and a dangerous path to socialism. The second was a distrust of cultural change, including the civil rights movement...