2 - Party

Summary

Chapter 2 provides a brief history of the Republican Party – which explains in part how it became the Party of Trump. It describes the Republican demographic, how it differs from the Democratic demographic, and how it was possible for Trump essentially to take over what only recently was an establishment conglomerate. One better known for its institutionalist orientation than its outrageous attacks on political norms – norms that in most cases go back to the beginning of the Republic. The chapter further explores the links between the Republican Party and the house that Roger Ailes built, that is, Fox News. As the book makes clear, the importance of Party media, and for that matter Party Money, to the Trump phenomenon is impossible to overestimate. Above all the chapter begins to explore the party’s remarkable fealty to a man who demanded it with every fiber of his being, but who at an earlier moment in Republican Party history would have been dismissed with the flick of a wrist.