"Patriots" Reviewed

Canada's Macleans magazine has posted the first print notice of Patriots, here.

In the book, Republicans are thinly disguised as “Constitutionalists” and Democrats as “Nationalists.” Gen. George Pulaski, a maverick moderate conservative war-hero president—think John McCain melded with Mitt Romney—has just been elected to replace a one-term black liberal president, Monroe Williams. The country is mired in economic malaise and a war with drug lords in Mexico. The conservative fundamentalists in the Constitutionalist party turn on the new president when he wants to raise taxes to cover budget shortfalls and pay for the war effort. “If Pulaski doesn’t keep the faith, I say, tear his heart out,” says the publisher of a Constitutionalist magazine. They use every tool at their disposal: corrupt think tanks, a manufactured “grassroots” protest movement, and a cynical conservative cable news channel run by a ruthless megalomaniac who beds his “on-air blondies” while plotting to bring the president to heel. The operatives are not above using private detectives and bankrolled bloggers to engage in blackmail and scandal-mongering.