is the only one you need to read in order to understand how the Republican Party has operated the past 60 years and how its values changed, leading to the election of Donald Trump.
Stevens spares no punches and takes the reader from William F. Buckley, Jr. and Joe McCarthy to Roy Moore and the Trump era. And he does not spare himself some of the blame for the recent GOP misdirections; this is an honest book written by a long-time party-insider. He figures, though, that with changing demographics, that the GOPs are in decline and that the party will eventually be voted out by the new young generation of more enlightened caucasian and by the ever-increasing number of non-caucasian peoples.
This is a book that could easily be used by the Democrats to undermine Republicans and Trump in the current election. Stevens offers many suggestions and views of what makes the latter two tick.
(Note: He wrote the book last fall and recent events of 2020 are not included.)
Some examples of memorable quotations from the book:
“[Trump] is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party.”
“Since 1964 Republicans have learned that they will have little success in appealing to black voters.”
“The Republican Party as a national institution is dead.”
“Compare photographs of Jimmy Swaggart and Donald Trump, and they look like brothers from some strange union of Mardi Gras float: huge heads, strange colors, balloon bodies, mouths disconnected from brains.
(re. the William F. Buckley, Jr. vs. James Baldwin debate of 1965)
“The losing Buckley argument was one that would continue to be a touchstone of the Republican credo on race until today: that in America, race doesn’t matter; anyone can succeed. It is the essence of the ‘color blind’ assertion that is perversely racist but reassuring to white people.”
Roy Moore’s passionate claim that “blacks were better off during slavery. America was great, Moore claimed because families were united–even though we had slavery. They cared for one another.”
“Today the intellectual leaders of the Republican Party are the paranoids, kooks, know-nothings, and bigots who once could be heard only on late-night talk shows, the stations you listened to on long drives because it was hard to fall asleep while laughing.”
“One of the hallmarks of Trump era is the alacrity with which intelligent people embrace stupidity.”
“[Trump] claimed Obama wore a ring with an Arabic inscription. He said that global warming is a “‘hoax’, that windmills cause cancer.”
“Donald Trump’s mind is that tabloid you see at the checkout counter of the grocery store claiming that aliens impregnated Chelsea Clinton so the offspring could become president.”
“Trump has staged a national Scopes trial and placed himself in the William Jennings Bryan role. The question for the Republican Party is whether it is content to let the Democrat Party play Clarence Darrow. All indications are overwhelmingly yes.”
(re. Roy Moore)
“Despite multiple allegations of molesting an underage girl, sexual harassment of barely legal teenage girls, and being such a general creep that he was allegedly banned from his local mall, {Moore] became the Republican nominee…What sort of man goes to high school dance performances to check out the girls?”
“Republicans have built a political ecosphere that thrives on deceit and lies.”
“These days the branding of Fox News as ‘Fair and Balanced’ often seems primarily to serve the purpose of proving that irony is not dead.”
“When Donald Trump tweets ‘What you’re seeing and reading is not what’s happening,’ Orwell’s 1984 is the perfect framework to understand his motivation.”
“The most distinguishing characteristic of the current National Republican Party is cowardice.”
“Newt Gingrich is a dumb person’s idea of a smart person, and Donald Trump is a not-rich person’s idea of wealth.”
“National Rifle Association as gatekeeper to the power center of the Republican Party.”
(Trump in answer about nuclear priorities:)
“I think, I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.”
“The Republicans don’t hate America, but they are weak men and women who decided long ago their self-worth was determined by winning elections.”
“Conspiracies are a key element of the Trump Republican effort to build an alternative universe in which their lies will be truth.”
“Trump’s Deep State is just a variation of Joe McCarthy’s mythical Communists infecting the State Department, the ‘enemies within’…. In the 1950s, America has a president Dwight Eisenhower who saw the danger of Joe McCarthy. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, Joe McCarthy is president.”
“Watching the Republican Party is like watching a friend drink himself to death.”
“Like the Raj, unless the party changes, its future is determined, with only the question of how long until the decline becomes a rout and it collapses inward like a dying star.”
“Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of collapse, Trump has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines and failures of the Republican Party.”