I knew about a lot of the topics in this book, but was amazed that this is a Republican who worked on Capitol Hill for thirty years would come to the same conclusions I have about how our politicians operate. It is a shame that our government has been hijacked by big money and weak representatives who are supposed to be working to our good. Shame on us average Americans for continuing to vote them back into office and failing to demand change.The details of the military industrial complex that Republican President Eisenhower warned us about as he left office were the most appalling. The author directs most of his "wrath" to the Republicans (his own party), but also describes how the Democrats have become weak and untrue to their supposed beliefs. He also offers solutions in the last chapter. I'm afraid the electorate will not wake up in time to save us from going down the path of destruction previous empires have followed. Let's hope we wake up soon enough to save ourselves.

If I could write the review THE PARTY IS OVER : How the Republican Went CRAZY, Democrats Became USELESS, and the Middle Class Got SHAFTED deserves, it would take an article the size of a magazine article. Mike Lofgren worked for US Representative John Kasich, first on the House Armed Services Committee and then the House Budget Committee. In 2012, he finished his 28-years on the Hill working for Senator Judd Gregg, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Both of his bosses were Republican. He retired when my own party, politicians became more and more intransigently dogmatic. He didnt think they believed what they said but were playing to an increasingly deranged political base that does believe it. He examines how the GOP decided its main objective was to make Obama a one-term president. Their method was to not support any of his programs (even those they had originally suggested) on the theory that the voters would be so upset they would blame Obama for not solving the countrys problems. He says the GOP decided it could ignore its traditional base (the educated, affluent suburban voter) and get new support by focusing on issues such as Gay Marriage and Abortion. With statistics comparing longevity, infant mortality, income distribution, labor protection on a global scale, he sees the US getting closer to the Third World than the advanced state it has been for decades. Lofgren details how the Republican party has changed (not for the better) since the days of Lincoln and how the Democratic party became impotent. He begins by discussing the tactics used by the Republicans. He refers to the Republican Party as an oligarchy with a well-developed public relations strategy designed to sooth and anesthetize its followers with appeals to tradition, security, and family even as it pursues a radical agenda that would transform the country into a Dickensian corporatocraphy at home and a belligerent military empire abroad. After 9/11, under the administration of George W. Bush, many of our constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech, protection against government surveillance, undermining due process, sanctioning torture were abandoned in the guise of protecting the Homeland. Barack Obama continued these abominations. The chapter A Devils Dictionary shows how words were used to confuse and sway citizens. Elites became pejorative and possibly un-American even though Bush and Romney went to Harvard and/or Yale. Free-market is an economic system by which Halliburton gets sole-source, cost-plus government contracts. Global Warming is called a hoax even as we are experiencing major weather changes and almost all reputable scientists acknowledge it. Sharia law is a fundamentalist religious doctrine forced on people. It does not include laws restricting access to legal abortions. In his official duties, Lofgren saw how the change in tax laws (while waging two wars) created an unprecedented deficit (following a surplus in 2001) and widened the gap between the richest 1% of Americans and the remaining 99% to a never before seen division. While acknowledging the reduced role of the traditional media (newspapers, network television news), the criticizes the medias failure to investigate and their eagerness to give equal balance to unequal sides. His chapter on religion details how the Fundamentalist Christian Right is trying (sometimes successfully) to turn the US into a theocracy based on their ideas. Another chapter talks about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that has developed. People vote for the person they would like to have a beer with rather than the person best able to lead. Americans today have more access to information about the rest of the world, thanks to the internet, but are abysmally ignorant of what is going on, President Barack Obama is severely criticized for continuing many of the programs that he complained about when Bush was president and the Democrats are so disorganized that they have been unable to change things and, in many cases, have cooperated. He does offer some suggestions to get out of this mess including non-politically determined redistricting, public financing of elections. The fact that Mike Lofgren was a Republican working for Republican lawmakers and seeing what was happening behind the scenes makes this book a must-read for anyone trying to figure out what has happened with our country.

Written by a GOP insider of 30 yrs who threw up his hands and walked away after the debt ceiling debate and the obstructionism of his party. I was interested in reading a very rational GOP pt of view since that is very hard to find these days.