The Impostors

April 6, 2020
Benen, a political commentator and producer of The Rachel Maddow Show, debuts with a sober-minded attack on the modern GOP for being a “post-policy party” more interested in winning elections than effective governance. Beginning with Barack Obama’s 2008 election and running through Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment, Benen offers an “issue-by-issue indictment” of Republican positions on climate change, economic policy, and immigration, among other hot-button topics. He cites a Politico report that Trump used “retweet tallies” as evidence in support of withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, castigates Republican lawmakers for proposing a 2009 economic stimulus plan based on “opening up coastal areas for oil drilling,” and accuses former House speaker John Boehner of “waging a deliberate sabotage campaign against American foreign policy” by partnering with Israel’s prime minister to oppose the Iran nuclear deal. Though Democrats aren’t “always right,” according to Benen, they at least take a “consistently substantive” approach to policy making. Without constructive input from the other side, he contends, the American political system doesn’t work properly. Benen writes fluidly and incisively, and backs his claims with support from liberal and center-right policy wonks, but fails to fully address the roots of the GOP’s electoral successes, and his call for the party’s reform is half-hearted at best. This exasperated polemic packs a mild punch.

April 15, 2020
A political writer argues that "the modern Republican Party has become a post-policy party." In this thoroughly researched book, Benen, blogger and award-winning producer of the Rachel Maddow Show, makes a solid case that in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly upended their once-cherished beliefs in order to focus on more power-oriented political and ideological goals. The author clearly demonstrates how Republicans have consistently reversed positions in order to score points against the Democrats, whether on trade, taxes, guns, immigration, or deficits. Regarding deficits, "since Watergate, every Democratic president has left office with a deficit smaller than when he started, and every Republican president has left office with a deficit larger than when he arrived." Furthermore, even when Republicans agreed with Democrats, at least in principle, as in the case of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, their votes often failed to reflect bipartisanship. Despite 130 congressional hearings over multiple committees, Republicans--who had once supported many of the Affordable Care Act's tenets--claimed Obama had "rammed through" the ACA. A particularly ironic example of willful contrariness was the Ebola crisis of 2014, during which Republicans either accused Obama of being "too hands off" or of being alarmist. Donald Trump, who had yet to declare his candidacy, even called for his resignation. The author ably lays out the many disturbing trends in the Republican political arena, making a convincing case for his argument that the GOP has "quit governing" and now merely focuses on attaining and wielding power or simply negating any progress made by Democrats. Unfortunately, given the pace at which events unfold in today's political landscape, much of the narrative may feel like old news not long after publication. A cleareyed argument that "strategy and governing [have] been replaced by instincts and partisan id."

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.