This book verified all the feelings that I've had about American Politics over the past 15 years or so. Ordinarily, when your opinions are verified, you feel good. This book just made me depressed. Nevertheless, it's a book that every voter should read. ( )

Everyone should read this book. It is a hard truth that we all know but seem to be in denial about. It will be up to us average folk to bring sense and justice to government (politics) since those in power are too vested with the ills which put them in power. This book is will written with concise, well constructed structure and flow. The author is humorous with minimal sarcasm. We need to stop putting our head in the sand! ( )

Excellent review of how we are being duped by our elected officials.

*one warning - the author comes from the Republican tribe and it is easy to see how he feels that tribe has betrayed its common core and heritage. ( )

Evidence of what you believe was happening was happening and a rather frightful look at how we have let the money-lenders into the temple of government with disastrous results. Particularly damning of the Republicans because the author is/was a Republican in Congress, but provides proof that the Democrats were equally culpable.
(p. 62, 72, left off at p. 80) ( )

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 didn’t 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 country’s 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 Devil’s 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 media’s 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. ( )