The right talk : how conservatives transformed the Great Society into the economic society / Mark A. Smith.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [219]-251) and index.

1. Introduction -- 2. The role of rhetoric in the formation of policy -- 3. Economic insecurity and its rhetorical consequences -- 4. The building of conservatives' intellectual capacity -- 5. The move to economic arguments by conservative intellectuals -- 6. The rhetorical adaptations of the republican party -- 7. Democrats and the long shadow of deficit politics -- 8. The Republicans' electoral edge on the economy -- 9. The broad reach and future prospects of economic rhetoric.

"Mark A. Smith analyzes a half century of speeches, campaign advertisements, party platforms, and intellectual writings, systematically showing how Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals increasingly gave economic justifications for policies they once defended through appeals to freedom. He explains how Democrats similarly conceived economic justifications for their own policies, but unlike Republicans they changed positions on issues rather than simply offering new arguments and thus helped push the national discourse inexorably to the right."--BOOK JACKET.