Rogue Elephant - by Paul Heideman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Rogue Elephant traces the radicalization of the Republican Party over the past fifty years, arguing that its subordination to Donald Trump was not an anomaly, but rather the culmination of processes at work for decades. Providing a new perspective on figures from Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush to the Koch brothers and Donald Trump, it shows that the party's lurch to the far right was the product of a volatile mix of a disorganized party structure and a divided and fractious class of American business owners.

These forces have propelled ever more reactionary leaders to the front of the party, setting up cycles where the insurgents of one period become the party establishment of the next, and find themselves con­fronted with a new batch of insurgents even farther to the right. The result is that a party once seen as the handmaiden of American business has increasingly come into conflict with business groups like the Chamber of Commerce. Considering the implications of these dynamics for American democracy, Paul Heideman warns that there may be no going back to normal for the Republican Party without a much broader transformation of American society.

Review Quotes

"Ever since Donald Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016, we've been waiting for a sharp political analyst, someone who knows political economy and knows political parties, to explain how the business class allowed Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party. In Paul Heideman, we finally have that person. The most sophisticated account, to date, of Trumpism and the American future."
--Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind

"When Donald Trump is gone -- there will be more Donald Trumps! In this fresh and sophisticated interpretation of recent American politics, Paul Heideman explains how and why a fractious business elite, a hollow party, and plenty of billionaire money have made the Republicans an incubator for personalistic authoritarians likely to extend the Age of Trump well into the future."
--Nelson Lichtenstein, author of A Fabulous Failure

"Finally! The need for a lucid, well-researched history of the modern Republican Party has long been clear. Paul Heideman's new study is especially good at illuminating the complex relations between the party's political leaders and different parts of the business community."
--Thomas Ferguson, Research Director at the Institute for New Economic Thinking

"Moves beyond pat narratives explaining the GOP's shift from the party of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to that of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Instead, Paul Heideman locates the roots for this sharp transformation in the factional divisions of the party and the remaking of the American business class. A fresh and bold reinterpretation of the recent history of the Republican Party and American politics more broadly."
--Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind

"In this piercing, ingenious account, Heideman unpacks why the Republican Party and the business elites that dominated it failed to rein in Donald Trump...Meticulous and robustly argued, this is a vital new perspective on recent political history."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

About the Author

Paul Heideman holds a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark. His work has appeared in publications such as Jacobin, Dissent, and In These Times. He works as a history teacher in New York City.