Crackup

Samuel Popkin applies his extensive experience with presidents and presidential campaigns to provide a lively, extensively researched story of the contemporary Republican Party. He shows how reforms intended to take corporate money out of political parties ended up crippling party leadership, rendering them unable to cope with a new political landscape. In their stead, the machinations of billionaires pursuing pet issues and "purity for profit" activists thrived. As Popkin lays bare, party rebels such as Ted Cruz exploited these forces to block immigration and healthcare reform, opening the door for Trump's election.