A takedown of the GOP’s deceitful propaganda machine from the blogger of Salon’s Unclaimed Territory and the author of the New York Times bestsellers How Would a Patriot Act? and A Tragic Legacy. Ever since the cowboy image of Ronald Reagan was sold to Americans, the Republican Party has used the same John Wayne imagery to support its candidates and take elections. We all know how they govern, but the right-wing propaganda machine is very adept at hijacking debate and marketing their candidates as effectively as the Marlboro Man. For example: Myth: The Republican nominee is an upstanding, regular guy who shares the values of the common man. Reality: He divorced his first wife in order to marry a young multimillionaire heiress whose family then funded his political career. Myth: Republicans are strong on defense and will keep us safe. Reality: They prey on fears, and their endless wars make America far less secure. Myth: Republicans are the party of fiscal restraint and small, limited government. Reality: Soaring deficits, unchecked presidential power, and an increasingly invasive surveillance state are par for their course. The first book to dissect the Republican Cult of Personality and leave it openly exposed in its unabashed, shameful depravity, Great American Hypocrites is a deeply necessary call-out to Democrats to attack the GOP with their competitor’s very own weapons. Praise for Great American Hypocrites “Intelligent, insightful.” —Daily Kos “Glenn Greenwald has done it again.” —Alan Colmes “Glenn Greenwald is a treasure.” —BuzzFlash

As the linkage of Republican Conservatism to the church destroys the church’s credibility, Fox News has become the campaign headquarters of Republican Conservative Propaganda. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity are fighting daily to cover up the lecherousness, licentiousness, nepotism and corruption of the kleptocratic and plutocratic Republican system of the past twenty years. They have made a mark on society by broadcasting and speaking only half -truths that never touch the deep roots of the American problem but continue to deceive the American public. They have turned real issues—such as national debt, defense, foreign policy, immigration, health care, education, homosexuality, abortion, and limited government—into issues of deception. Part of the game plan is to use the Tea Party to recycle failed, inept politicians such as Sarah Palin in order to keep the kleptocracy going. The Office of the President of the United States has been held by a Republican for twenty of the last thirty years, with no significant accomplishments. For hypocritical Republican conservatives, twenty years was not enough to reform health care, immigration, education, and defense or to regulate the financial system and bring down the national debt. The American problem is real, and there are no quick fixes. On the whole, the problem is not a Republican or Democratic problem; it is an American problem. Every Democratic or Republican idea is not necessarily bad. The great conservative Republican lie is that only one party has the solution to America’s problem. But, America has never operated as a one-party state. The ideas of both parties make sense and nonsense at the same time.

“Shelley Lewis figured out a way to make me laugh out loud at adultery, corruption, bribery, prevarication, hypocrisy, pumpkin shooting, race baiting, insanity, cat murder, and filthy, groping old men. Naked Republicans is an instruction manual for the things you can get away with and still keep your job in Washington, D.C.” ——Rachel Maddow, Air America Radio Naked Republicans is the exposé you’ve been waiting for. From Cheney to Condi, from DeLay to the Dukester, from Newt to Rummy, these are the weasels, wackos, and wingnuts who turned the party of Lincoln into a five-kegger blowout. For the first time, in one hilarious roundup, Shelley Lewis reveals the naked truth about the fiscal conservatives who spend money like they print it themselves (oh, right–they do); the pious pols who regard the institution of marriage so highly they’ve moved on to their second and third wives; and the deceitful dissemblers who’ve earned a place in the Hall of Shame. In these troubled times, when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, Naked Republians puts the hip back in hypocrisy and restores the fun to fundamentalism! “If you crave a hilarious exposé of the weasels who need to be sent home from Washington, you need to buy this book!” ——Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher, The Nation BACK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal exposé of how his party became what it is today “A blistering tell-all history. In his bare-knuckles account, Stevens confesses [that] the entire apparatus of his Republican Party is built on a pack of lies." —The New York Times Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP's DNA, from Goldwater's opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens and states' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider's account of the rank hypocrisy of the party's claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party's vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.

A critical assessement of the problems of sincerity and truth in politics argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics without resigning ourselves to it or embracing it, drawing on the lessons of such thinkers as Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sigwick, and Orwell.

“I don’t own a single share of stock.” —Michael Moore Members of the liberal left exude an air of moral certitude. They pride themselves on being selflessly committed to the highest ideals and seem particularly confident of the purity of their motives and the evil nature of their opponents. To correct economic and social injustice, liberals support a whole litany of policies and principles: progressive taxes, affirmative action, greater regulation of corporations, raising the inheritance tax, strict environmental regulations, children’s rights, consumer rights, and much, much more. But do they actually live by these beliefs? Peter Schweizer decided to investigate in depth the private lives of some prominent liberals: politicians like the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, the Kennedys, and Ralph Nader; commentators like Michael Moore, Al Franken, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West; entertainers and philanthropists like Barbra Streisand and George Soros. Using everything from real estate transactions, IRS records, court depositions, and their own public statements, he sought to examine whether they really live by the principles they so confidently advocate. What he found was a long list of glaring contradictions. Michael Moore denounces oil and defense contractors as war profiteers. He also claims to have no stock portfolio, yet he owns shares in Halliburton, Boeing, and Honeywell and does his postproduction film work in Canada to avoid paying union wages in the United States. Noam Chomsky opposes the very concept of private property and calls the Pentagon “the worst institution in human history,” yet he and his wife have made millions of dollars in contract work for the Department of Defense and own two luxurious homes. Barbra Streisand prides herself as an environmental activist, yet she owns shares in a notorious strip-mining company. Hillary Clinton supports the right of thirteen-year-old girls to have abortions without parental consent, yet she forbade thirteen-year-old Chelsea to pierce her ears and enrolled her in a school that would not distribute condoms to minors. Nancy Pelosi received the 2002 Cesar Chavez Award from the United Farm Workers, yet she and her husband own a Napa Valley vineyard that uses nonunion labor. Schweizer’s conclusion is simple: liberalism in the end forces its adherents to become hypocrites. They adopt one pose in public, but when it comes to what matters most in their own lives—their property, their privacy, and their children—they jettison their liberal principles and embrace conservative ones. Schweizer thus exposes the contradiction at the core of liberalism: if these ideas don’t work for the very individuals who promote them, how can they work for the rest of us?

It is an axiom of modern American politics that many Republicans and most conservatives are not only anti-gay but that they have capitulated to an anti-gay agenda formulated and pursued by the religious right for the past several decades. In A Fundamental Freedom, David Lampo makes the case that support for gay rights will provide long-term political benefits for the GOP and the conservative movement. He argues that an anti-gay agenda succinctly exposes the hypocrisy of those who talk of limited government and individual rights but ignore both when it comes to gay rights and other personal freedom issues. Indeed, it is the defenders of gay rights within Republican ranks who are keeping faith with core conservative principles. He also presents a variety of polling data that show that rank-and-file Republicans, including many Tea Party supporters, are far more supportive of gay rights than commonly presumed. Lampo’s call to embrace gay rights is sure to be hotly debated within the conservative movement.