Sam Tanenhaus has spent twenty years studying American conservatism. Hobnobbed with Bill Buckley. Wrote a much-admired biography of Whittaker Chambers. Dipped deep into the core philosophy of Edmund Burke.

Now, he looks around to find Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol, and Sarah Palin in charge of movement conservatism. Anger replacing loyal opposition. A destructive impulse killing true conservative principles.

Rush won’t like it, but Tanenhaus says honest, old-time conservatism is dead.

This hour, On Point: Sam Tanenhaus and his new book, “The Death of Conservatism.”

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review and the Week in Review section of the Times. He’s the author of a well-received biography of Whittaker Chambers and is working on an authorized biography of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. His new book is “The Death of Conservatism.” 

Here’s an excerpt from “The Death of Conservatism” (at RandomHouse.com) and an essay in The New Republic, “Conservatism Is Dead: An Intellectual Autopsy of the Movement,” from which the book grew.

John Fund, editorial page columnist for The Wall Street Journal and author of “Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy,” released in an updated edition for 2008.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania discusses his conversion to the Democratic Party at the White House with President Barack Obama in Washington on April 29, 2009. (AP)

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The Republican Party lost Arlen Specter to the Democrats last week. Over the weekend, they lost Jack Kemp, a vocal proponent of a “big tent” GOP, to cancer.

It’s been a “bad to worse” patch for the Republican Party. First they face a Democratic president who 81 percent of Americans say they like. Then they face an America where only 21 percent say they’re Republicans.

The permanent GOP majority envisioned by Karl Rove has given way, in crisis, to a Washington wholly dominated by Democrats, and critics calling the GOP “The Party of No” (somewhere between “a doomsday cult and Scientology,” writes New York Times columnist Frank Rich).

This hour, On Point: we’ll ask where is the big tent for the GOP now, and does the Republican base want to raise it again?

Republicans, what do you think? Even if you’re no fan of Specter, are you worried about the GOP’s dwindling ranks? Do you want a broader party or a purer one? What happened to the “permanent majority?” Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, co-founder and co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council.

David Keating, executive director of the Club for Growth.

Matthew Continetti, associate editor at The Weekly Standard.

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Last week, after Arlen Specter announced his defection to the Democrats, The New York Times framed the internal GOP debate in terms of a purer vs. a broader party.

The Los Angeles Times pointed to Olympia Snowe and Rush Limbaugh as examples of two very different reactions to Specter’s defection.

Over at The Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Peggy Noonan wrote that the GOP would collapse if it didn’t maintain a big-tent attitude, while Bill Kristol, in The Washington Post, called Specter’s switch “good news for Republicans.”

Clockwise from top left: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage.

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American politics and political discourse have never been pattycake. In the years of George W. Bush, opponents railed against the president.

But the language lately on air has grown particularly fierce and apocalyptic: President Obama called a dictator and sympathizer with terrorists. His policies called socialist, Marxist, Bolshevik, dangerous. Americans called to rise up in revolt. All this while the economy tanks and gun sales surge.

Is this just the hurly-burly of American politics, or something else?

This hour, On Point: Hot airwaves, fear and anger in the age of Obama and economic bust.

You can join the conversation. Have you heard the talk-show calls to rise up and take back the country? What do you think when you hear President Obama called fascist, Manchurian candidate, terrorist sympathizer? Is this just democracy in action — free speech and political protest? Is it different from the kind of attacks leveled at George W. Bush?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Montgomery, Ala., is Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks extremist groups across the country.

Joining us from Washington, D.C., is Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University and author of “White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.”

And joining us from Princeton, N.J., is Mickey Edwards, Republican Congressman from Oklahoma from 1977 to 1993 and a member of the House Republican Leadership in those years. He’s now a lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. His new book is “Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost–And How It Can Find Its Way Back.”

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A big thanks today to Media Matters, which tracks, catalogues and fact-checks political rhetoric.

You can link to some of the media personalities whose sound bites were played on today’s show: Rush Limbaugh; Glenn Beck; Sean Hannity; and Michael Savage.