Shameless: Republicans' Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy
by Brian Tyler Cohen
View on GoodreadsProgressive media creator Brian Tyler Cohen's #1 bestselling first book — an argument that the modern Republican Party weaponizes its historical brand as cover for deliberately dysfunctional, anti-democratic behavior, that the mainstream media enables the farce, and that Democrats must confront the landscape clearly to preserve democracy. Foreword by Jamie Raskin.
Core ideas
- Cohen's central argument is that the modern Republican Party runs a "long con": it leans on decades-old branding — family values, fiscal responsibility, respect for the Constitution — as a permission structure to behave in ways antithetical to all three, and the gap between the brand and the behavior is deliberate, not accidental.
- A key secondary target is the media: Cohen argues the mainstream press has been a willing participant in the farce, its both-sides reflexes and appetite for sensational MAGA spectacle laundering dysfunction into normal politics — a media-complicity thesis that sits alongside the party critique.
- The book is written to be actionable for the Left: drawing on interviews with Raskin, Buttigieg, Hasan, and Psaki, Cohen argues Democrats must see the landscape clearly and stop playing by norms the other side has abandoned — the seed of the more aggressive playbook he'd lay out in The Day After.
Published2024
Pages224
ISBN9780063392885
ReadAug 2026
