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Politico Magazine�s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider�s look at the making of the modern Republican Party�how 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 in American Carnage, to understand Trump�s victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence. American Carnage is the story of a president�s rise based on a country�s evolution and a party�s 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 party�s base. Yet Obama�s forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation�s rapidly changing cultural and demographic landscape, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party�s identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged�one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell�engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP�s 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. Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the Republican Party�and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and technological disruption during that period�can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America�s current turmoil. How did a party obsessed with the national debt vote for trillion-dollar deficits and record-setting spending increases? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and walls? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-divorced philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive? Loaded with exclusive reporting and based off hundreds of interviews�including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, and many others�American Carnage takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we�ve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era. (less)

Politico Magazine�s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider�s look at the making of the modern Republican Party�how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable (…more)