Summary of The Destructionists by Dana Milbank: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of The Destructionists by Dana Milbank: The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party

 

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In 1994, more than 300 Republicans signed the Contract with America outside the U.S. Capitol. Twenty years later, on January 6, 2021, a bloodthirsty mob incited by President Trump invaded the Capitol. In the quarter century in between, Americans have witnessed the crackup of the party of Lincoln and Reagan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Aug 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201848408

Willie M. Joseph

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SUMMARY PART 1

Introduction

On January 6, 2021, a mob will storm the steps of the U.S. Capitol in an attempted coup d'etat. David Rothkopf: The seeds of sedition had been planted on that same spot in 1994. He recalls the day when Republican members of Congress gathered for a nonviolent transfer of power. Contract with America was Newt Gingrich's dystopian vision for America after the GOP's landslide victory.

We have become in danger of losing our own civilization, Gingrich warned. He signed a ten-point legislative agenda proposing balanced budget amendment, congressional term limits, and other reforms. A ferocious, racialized, and sometimes violent partisanship has consumed us. The United States is now technically an anocracy - somewhere between a democracy and an autocracy. It's at greatly increased risk of civil war.

Six in ten Republicans say the 2020 election was fraudulent, and 40 percent think political violence can be acceptable. At least 163 Republicans who have embraced Trump's election lies are running in 2022. The GOP has become a death cult, with pro-Trump die-hards more likely to die than those who reject Trump. Frida Ghitis: Since Donald Trump left office, GOP has been trying to rewrite the history of the January 6 insurrection as a normal tourist visit. She says Republicans' focus on the phantom menace of critical race theory has provoked threats and violence at school boards.

Frida Ghitis: Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy. She says the party has chosen to become the voice of white people who fear loss of their way of life. Ghitis argues that race is the biggest cause by far of the GOP's identity crisis. Before Trump, Republicans fabricated libels about Obamacare death panels, 9/11, Saddam Hussein, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. These are the people who broke American democracy, he writes.

Before Donald Trump, there were the Republicanengineered shutdowns of 2013, 1996, and 1995. Earlier Republicans embraced the racist pronouncements of Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and Steve King. The Vince Foster murder, Ken Starr's smut, the violence of the militia movement are explored. Michael Wolraich's new book, The Destruction of American Democracy, chronicles a quarter century of Republican assaults on democracy and civil society. Alex Castellanos: Washington warned of the dangers of cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men in his farewell address. He says Republican officials invited Trump's takeover of the party by inviting conspiracy theories, welcoming white nationalists, sabotaging engines of government.

Shooting at Melons

In 1993, it became the site of the first shot in the Republican Party's war on truth. The deceased was White House counsel Vince Foster, a friend of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton. Dan Burton shot himself in the head with a gourd to prove that Vince Foster had been murdered. A year later, he used the fruit as a stand-in for Foster's head in a speech in the House of Representatives. Vincent Foster was found dead in