Finish What We Started

February 19, 2024
Washington Post journalist Arnsdorf debuts with a raucous recap of the evolution of Trumpism since the 2020 election via the “Precinct Strategy,” a movement encouraging adherents to join the Republican Party’s lowest ranks as precinct committeemen, from which vantage point they can oust moderate Republican leaders and promote MAGA primary candidates. Arnsdorf profiles leading characters in this political drama, including Arizona Republican Dan Schultz, who started the movement; MAGA generalissimo Steve Bannon, who boosted it on his War Room podcast; and Georgia mom Salleigh Grubbs, whose viral video of election workers allegedly shredding ballots set her on a path to becoming chairwoman of her local precinct committee, where she oversees campaigning and election monitoring. Arnsdorf spotlights MAGA extremism (“To talk to Susan... was to hear about how the person in the White House was a body double or a clone wearing a Joe Biden mask”) and paints a fascinating picture of politics at its grubbiest in tedious party meetings where factions wrestle over Robert’s Rules of Order. His colorful reportage teases out from the tangle of conspiracy theorizing the deeper yearning of MAGA zealots to have their voices heard in a world that seems immovably complex and atomized. It’s an entertaining and insightful look at the Republican Party in extremis. Agent: Isabel Mendia, Cheney Agency.

February 15, 2024

Washington Post national political reporter Arnsdorf delves into the origins and evolution of the Trump-inspired Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. He interviewed hundreds of people over the course of three years to examine what motivates and stirs the MAGA supporters into action. A big factor is their strong dissatisfaction and desire to dismantle traditional political parties. He discusses the perceived leadership traits of Donald Trump but stresses that the MAGA movement is more than devotion to one man. For example, Steve Bannon is a provocative presence throughout the book, along with other prominent far-right figures. The lesser-known Dan Schultz emerges as a key figure as well. The heart of the book is a blow-by-blow account of how MAGA candidates took over the Republican Party in Maricopa County, AZ, using a precinct strategy devised by Schultz. He also writes at length about Salleigh Grubbs, a Republican Party worker in Georgia. She worked tirelessly to try to invalidate Biden's victory there in 2020. VERDICT This eye-opening, often terrifying (for democracy advocates) debut work is rich with political history and recent case studies. Highly recommended for readers wanting to understand how millions of Americans have been swept up in the MAGA universe.--Thomas Karel

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2024
Arnsdorf, who reports on the extreme rightwing forces behind today's Republican Party for the Washington Post, delivers a coolly detached, ground-level chronicle of the MAGA wing's largely successful national effort to overthrow those they now blame for Donald Trump's failure to win reelection in 2020: establishment Republicans. Arnsdorf details the "precinct strategy" developed by Arizona party official Dan Schultz and amplified by MAGA strategist/podcaster Steve Bannon, which is to fill low-level, overlooked, but highly influential Republican precinct positions with MAGA partisans. The fissure between the establishment wing, represented here by longtime Arizona Republican power broker Kathy Petsas, and the MAGA wing, represented by full-throated 2020 election denier and Cobb County, Georgia, Republican Party chair Salleigh Grubbs, can be found nationwide, and its consequences could determine not just the fate of the Republican Party but also that of the democratic experiment in America. Important reading in our current presidential election year.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 15, 2024
MAGA is coming for democracy, but first it's coming for the GOP. "Our audience does not hate these people," said Steve Bannon of Democrats. "But they hate the RINOs." In his first book, Washington Post politics reporter Arnsdorf notes that, since the 2020 election and the 2022 midterms, when Trump-approved candidates lost nationwide, it was Republican boards, commissioners, and judges who fended off challenges. There were Republican governors and operatives in places such as Pennsylvania and Arizona who counted the votes that lost Trump the presidency in 2020. "Even Trump's own vice president refused to help him block the official certification in Congress," writes the author. Consequently, one of MAGA's chief goals is to take over all those downstream positions so that loyalists can force out moderates and never-Trumpers and fill the ranks with true believers. Never mind that true believers are very much in the minority and that the fringe is broadly unpopular. Never mind, Arnsdorf writes, that they "disconnected from the rest of the country." In their campaign to capture the GOP, they have been successful, helped along by election deniers and Capitol stormers for whom loyalty to Trump is the only litmus test. Ironically, as one longtime Arizona GOP operative told Arnsdorf, most of the recruits into the far-right movement, as well as candidates for local posts such as precinct commissioner, rarely or never voted before 2020, while local MAGA darling Kari Lake was an Obama supporter before seeing greener pastures in Trumpland. Given MAGA's remake of the GOP, with no small help from QAnon initiates, it's small wonder that most of the candidates being fielded at every level are MAGA approved and that the Republican Party is what Bannon calls "a revolutionary vanguard" for the extreme right. An eye-opening look at how a fringe effected a hostile takeover of a once-mainstream political party.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.