by Dana Milbank
First published 2022
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank examines twenty-five years of Republican political strategy from 1994 to 2021. He connects Newt Gingrich's Contract with America signing ceremony outside the U.S. Capitol to the January 6 mob that stormed the same building. Milbank argues that the Republican Party transformed from the party of Lincoln and Reagan into something unrecognizable. He tracks this evolution through the careers of key figures including Gingrich, Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, and Rudy Giuliani. The book chronicles how these leaders and others pursued power through increasingly extreme methods. Milbank documents the party's embrace of white supremacy, political violence, conspiracy theories, and authoritarian tactics. Readers gain insight into the systematic breakdown of American bipartisanship and the calculated strategies that reshaped conservative politics over a quarter century.
Genres: political-science, politics, non-fiction, 21st-century, current-affairs, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: United States, Washington DC
Period: 1994-2021
416 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday