"This narrative focuses in particular on the key actors in the House GOP at the moment of reckoning for the party. It is a moment I viewed mostly at close range—beginning with the morning of January 6, 2021."
The starting point for this book which attempts to locate the moment, in the words of its subtitle, "the Republican Party lost its mind" is, inexplicably, January 6, 2021. This is a narrative that tells the story of Donald Trump's influence on the GOP from the point of his humiliating defeat in his bid for re-election. As a result, the main cast of characters in this book is those like Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz. It is the ring-kissers who are painted as the pallbearers of sanity in the GOP. It is a story about those who voted against certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election and what they have done in the wake of the insurrection and near-coup which took place on January 6. The irony here is that January 6, 2021, was not the beginning of a loss of sanity, but rather the culmination. The conception that examining the insanity within the Republican Party by focusing on fringe members of the House becoming influential voices of the mainstream seems to be missing the larger picture.
"Gosar was my nominee to be that guy who comes in with a sawed-off shotgun one day."
Paul Gosar is one of those "key actors" in the author's argument about when the GOP lost its mind. A member of the U.S. House representing Arizona, Gosar had fervently urged Attorney General William Barr to seize all the ballots cast for President in 2020 to find evidence that votes had been stolen from Donald Trump. Gosar is perhaps most infamous for speaking at a white supremacy rally. Or, perhaps Gosar is most famous for tweeting an animated video showing him murdering Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Or, perhaps Gosar is most famous for his brothers making public statements on behalf of the sane members of their family which, they note, is a group that does not include Paul. Almost as if confirming the author's thesis on the mental state of the GOP, in early 2023 Republican Speaker of the House gave Gosar a spot on the House Oversight Committee. It should be noted that this characterization of Gosar brandishing a shotgun as a potential mass killer is not the only such comment in the book made about a Republican House member that calls into question their mental state. Such commentary is, in fact, a recurring theme.
"This is what happens when you have a dishonest election. This is all about a rigged election. None of these disasters ever should have been allowed to happen."
In the end, the insurrection which took place on January 6 as well as many of the subsequent events which are covered in this book that serves to exemplify how the GOP lost its mind all come back to these words repeated ad nauseum. Nobody else was daily shouting to the world that the 2020 election was "dishonest" or "rigged" or a voting "disaster" before Donald Trump. And nobody who would go on to repeat these irrefutably disproven claims had the power to bring thousands of people to Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, to assault the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to correct this perceived wrong. Since Donald Trump was shouting the above sentiments well before that date, the author's premise that it is the day the Republican Party's marbles got lost is demonstrably unsound.
