The most misleading part of the book, to get the bad over with first, is the title. The full title, Republican Gomorrah inside the movement that shattered the party, suggests that the Republican party is split into numerous, ineffectual, factions. To take the literal meaning of Gomorrah, that of a town destroyed by god for it's sins, suggests that the Republican party is in fact defunct and no longer a force in politics. This is hardly the case, and the book doesn't even try to provide evidence to support that idea.
However, the title was one of very few things I disliked. Since I'm pretty critical of literature (even though reading it is one of my greatest pleasures), I have to say that for Max Blumenthal to have given me only a couple things to complain about is rather high praise.
Let's start with the style. The book is arranged into three sections. Apparently the idea being that the first section deals with the creation of the modern religious right, the second deals with the current personalities, and the last with recent events. Frankly, the sections are irrelevant. So I'll deal with the structure of the book without referring to the sections themselves.
The book is a series of short biographical sketches of the founders and leaders of the modern evangelical movement. While it misses a few, like Abram Vereide, it covers a great deal of ground. There are chapters on Howard J. Ahmanson Jr., the sugar daddy of the Discovery Institute; Ted Haggard, the discredited former head of the National Association of Evangelicals; to Larry Craig and James Dobson. Because the book is primarily a set of biographical sketches, it is, it is possible to read the chapters out of order without losing much in the way of content.
The key thought in the book, however, is not the fact that these people are part of the Republican party. In fact, should a few of the core identifying ideas of these christians have been slightly different, it could have been the Democratic party which could have been infiltrated and have become the home of these religious bigots. However, since the Republican party was closer, ideologically, to the religious right, the Republican party has suffered.
The key to the book is not the political party these people belong to, the key is explicitly stated in the introduction of the book. The key, and point, of the book is summed up in a quote from Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises, but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence."
Republican Gomorrah demonstrates how the modern evangelical movement, which has co-oped the Republican party for itself, is, for most of it's followers, a place of refuge for people who have lost faith in themselves.
