NATIONAL BESTSELLER now in paperback, updated with a new afterword
"This is the definitive account of what has gone wrong in our
two-party system, and how our democracy has to adapt to survive it. I
can't say it in strong enough terms: Read. This. Book." --RACHEL
MADDOW
The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the
Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how
they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering
America
For decades, American voters innocently assumed the two major political
parties were equally mature and responsible governing entities,
ideological differences aside. That belief is due for an overhaul: in
recent years, the Republican Party has undergone an astonishing
metamorphosis, one so baffling and complete that few have fully reckoned
with the reality and its consequences.
Republicans, simply put, have quit governing. As MSNBC's Steve Benen
charts in his groundbreaking new book, the contemporary GOP has become a
"post-policy party." Republicans are effectively impostors, presenting
themselves as officials who are ready to take seriously the substance of
problem solving, but whose sole focus is the pursuit and maintenance of
power. Astonishingly, they are winning-at the cost of pushing the
political system to the breaking point.
Despite having billed itself as the "party of ideas," the Republican
Party has walked away from the hard but necessary work of policymaking.
It is disdainful of expertise and hostile toward evidence and
arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy
preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing
proposals should be crafted, scrutinized, or implemented. This policy
nihilism dominated the party's posture throughout Barack Obama's
presidency, which in turn opened the door to Donald Trump -- who would
cement the GOP's post-policy status in ways that were difficult to even
imagine a few years earlier.
The implications of this approach to governance are all-encompassing.
Voters routinely elect Republicans such as Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz
to powerful offices, expecting GOP policymakers to have the technocratic
wherewithal to identify problems, weigh alternative solutions, forge
coalitions, accept compromises, and apply some level of governmental
competence, if not expertise. The party has consistently proven those
hopes misguided.
The result is an untenable political model that's undermining the
American policymaking process and failing to serve the public's
interests. The vital challenge facing the civil polity is coming to
terms with the party's collapse as a governing entity and considering
what the party can do to find its policymaking footing anew.
The Impostors serves as a devastating indictment of the GOP's
breakdown, identifying the culprits, the crisis, and its effects, while
challenging Republicans with an imperative question: Are they ready to
change direction? As Benen writes, "A great deal is riding on their
answer."
