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Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the GOPโand of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, andย technologicalย disruptionย during that periodโcan we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of Americaโs current turmoil. How did a party once obsessed with national insolvency come to champion trillion-dollar deficits? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and family separation? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-married philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?
Politico Magazineโs chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insiderโs look at the making of the modern Republican Partyโhow a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.
The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains inย American Carnage, to understand Trumpโs victory is to view himย not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.
American Carnageย is the story of a presidentโs rise based on a countryโs evolution and a partyโs collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the partyโs base. Yet Obamaโs forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nationโs rapidly changing societal and demographic identity, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the partyโs identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emergedโone led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnellโengaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOPโs internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.
Loaded with explosiveย original reporting and based off hundreds of exclusive interviewsโincluding with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, among many othersโAmerican Carnageย takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as weโve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era.