Crackup
The Republican Implosion and the Future of Presidential Politics
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
A consistently surprising analysis of how and why the Republican Party imploded in the last decade, setting the stage for the rise of Trump and extremist candidates more generally.
In Crackup, the eminent American politics scholar Samuel L. Popkin tells the story of how the Republican Party fractured into uncompromising groups with irreconcilable demands. Changes in campaign finance laws and the proliferation of mass media opened the way for newly energized groups to split the party. The 2002 "McCain-Feingold" campaign finance reform bill aimed to weaken the power of big corporations and strengthen political parties by ending corporate donations to the parties. Instead, it weakened legislative leaders and made bipartisanship toxic.
Popkin argues that moving money outside the political parties fueled the rise of single-issue advocacy groups and Super PACs funded by billionaires with pet issues. This allowed self-promoting politicians to undermine colleagues with an unprecedented use of tactics once only used to disrupt the other party. One such politician was Ted Cruz, who effectively promoted himself at the expense of the party, mobilized other obstructionists in Congress, and blocked compromises on immigration and healthcare. Into this abyss came Donald J. Trump, who took advantage of the party's inability to do anything for Republican voters struggling with economic decline. No other candidate, when forced to try to satisfy the irreconcilable demands of major donors and party leaders, could offer a credible alternative to his moon-promising bravado.
A gripping structural explanation of why the GOP ended up with Trump as their standard bearer, Crackup forces us to look at the deeper forces set in motion two decades ago. It also reveals how self-fashioned rebels like Cruz are inevitable given the new rules of the game. Unless the system for financing elections changes, we will continue to see opportunists emerge-in both parties-to block intra-party compromise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
UC San Diego political scientist Popkin (The Candidate) delivers an incisive study of how inadequate campaign finance laws contributed to congressional gridlock and the rise of Donald Trump. Popkin lays the blame largely on McCain-Feingold, a 2002 bill that limited corporate donations to political parties. But instead of decreasing the influence of money on politics, the legislation (in conjunction with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizen's United ruling) funneled private donations to super PACs and single-issue advocacy groups. According to Popkin, this shift discouraged consensus-building in Congress and gave rise to a new kind of aggressive and "self-serving" obstructionism embodied by Texas senator Ted Cruz, who became a national political figure by blocking bipartisan immigration reforms and forcing a 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act. Popkin contends that Trump borrowed from the Cruz playbook, but in a more exaggerated and media-savvy manner, in order to defeat the GOP establishment (and Cruz) in the 2016 primary. Though Popkin underplays the agency of Republican voters who either overlooked or embraced Trump's authoritarian impulses and nativist agenda, he makes a convincing case that unchecked private interests are at the root of America's political dysfunctions. Readers on the right and left will find food for thought.