The 2024 nomination of Donald Trump was both predictable and wildly unusual. Parties almost never nominate someone who has previously lost the presidency - let alone a candidate who helped organize a riot and faced dozens of criminal indictments. Why, then, did Republicans nominate Trump for a third time? In this fascinating follow-up to Learning from Loss, leading scholar and political analyst Seth Masket conducted surveys and interviews with local Republican leaders across the country between 2021 and 2024. He finds that most were deeply wary of nominating Trump again but had lost any control they once had over their party to a passionate core of voters. The Elephants in the Room captures a political party in the act of making a fateful decision; attempts to understand what has happened within the Republican Party in recent years by focusing on the people most critical to it; and looks at how the party has changed, what we should be learning from it, and how the US political system has changed as result.

‘Seth Masket’s The Elephants in the Room is a triumph. Blending journalistic reporting from the ground with a top-flight political scientist's understanding of the big picture, Masket illuminates how Donald Trump successfully defeated Republican elites and transformed the party and our politics. Fair-minded yet urgent, this should be required reading for all serious students of America and democracy itself.’

Jonah Goldberg - Editor-in-Chief, The Dispatch

‘Seth Masket brings razor-sharp analytical skills, deeply informed historical perspective, and a dry sense of humor to bear on the great political mystery of our time: How did the GOP establishment lose control of their party to Donald Trump’s grassroots populist supporters? Masket’s gimlet-eyed dissection of the runup to the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, based on extensive inside information and testimony from party leaders, is the clearest and best account of how longstanding trends intersected with Trump’s norm-shattering disruptiveness in ways that will continue to reshape our politics for decades to come. An eye-opening and essential contribution.’

Geoffrey Kabaservice - author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party

‘From documenting how the stolen election narrative prevented the Republican party from reckoning with its divisions following 2020 to explaining Trump’s fear-and-favor based reign in terms of the party bosses of old, The Elephants in the Room shows how loyalty to Trump and disagreement over the party’s direction coincide in the contemporary GOP. This book is a must for anyone craving an evidence-based take on Trump’s Republican Party.’

Rachel Blum - author of How the Tea Party Captured the GOP

‘Seth Masket has a view into the day-to-day life of American party politics that no other political scientist can match. His new book is grounded in the everyday working lives of Republican Party leaders at the grassroots level, and that provides him with startling insight into what life was like on the right in the Trump era. No one interested in how Trump changed the Republican Party – to the frequent dismay of the people who actually run the party – can afford to ignore Masket’s careful, exhaustively researched study.’

Steven Teles - author of The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth and Increase Inequality