2016年の選挙において、共和党は上下両院と大統領選を制し圧勝しましたが、これは過去80年のうち6年間しかない、圧倒的な共和党支配の時代到来でした。2010年以降、共和党が州議会や知事職で勝利を収めたことと合わせると、共和党は1920年代以降で最も大きな国家改造の機会を手にしたことになります。
しかし、大統領職は、ポピュリストのアウトサイダーで、事実上、共和党体制を敵対的に買収したドナルド・トランプに委ねられることになり、共和党のブレーンは過去7回の大統領選のうち6回、一般投票で敗れていることを痛感していました。党の内部分裂は激しく、その年の夏にクリーヴランドで開催された共和党全国大会は壊滅寸前まで追い込まれ、議会ではジョン・ベイナー下院議長が失脚。後任のポール・ライアンは重要な法案を通過させることができないほど深刻な内紛状態に陥っていました。かつてないほど多くの共和党の役職者、活動家、有権者が、自分たちは党の指導者に裏切られたとの思いを抱き、共和党は一体何を目指しているのか、という疑問に答えられる人はほとんどいませんでした。
本書は、半世紀以上にわたって共和党が穏健派を粛清し、米国史上類を見ないイデオロギー政党へと変貌を遂げたこと、保守運動内部の分裂、過激主義への傾向、統治への敵意の高まり、そしてトランプ現象に最もよく現れた米国の政治システムの崩壊、といった共和党の勝利と混沌への破滅的な軌跡を説明し、分析します。
    

• Written from a deep historical understanding of the Republican Party and insider knowledge of current GOP politics and strategy
• Analyzes the historical roots and current plight of the GOP's governing wing
• Ties the Republican Party's 1960s and 70s struggle against John Birch-style extremism to the present-day GOP's tortured relationship with the alt-right
• A concise synthesis of how the party's political dysfunction is deadlocking government, splintering American society, and eroding U.S. global supremacy

　　　
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The 2016 elections gave the Republican Party control of both houses Congress and the presidency—a level of dominance the party had experienced for only six years out of the previous eight decades. Combined with the GOP's victories in state legislatures and governorships since 2010, Republicans held a greater opportunity to reshape the nation than at any time since the 1920s.
　
And yet, Republican strategists were painfully aware that the party had lost the popular vote in six of the previous seven presidential elections. The presidency had fallen to Donald Trump, a populist outsider who had mounted what was, in effect, a hostile takeover of the Republican establishment. The party's internal divisions had become so volatile that they had come close to blowing up the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that summer. The Republican-controlled Congress had experienced infighting so severe that the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, had been overthrown and his successor, Paul Ryan, had been plagued by an inability to pass consequential legislation. An unprecedented number of GOP officeholders, activists, and voters harbored dark suspicions that they had been betrayed by their own party leaders. And few had answers to the basic question: What does the Republican Party still stand for, anyway? 
　
Geoffrey Kabaservice's Conservatism and the Republican Party: What Everyone Needs to Know will provide a narrative and analysis of the Republican Party's shambolic trajectory into triumph and chaos. It will revisit the theme of my previous book concerning the GOP's purge of moderates over the previous half-century and its transformation into an ideological party unlike any other in American history. But it will also track the emerging divisions within the conservative movement, tendencies toward extremism, growing hostility toward governing, and breakdown of the American political system - most vividly demonstrated by the Trump phenomenon.