'It was all a lie': Top GOP operative delivers 'a searing indictment' as he abandons the party he

[catbyte]

helped build

August 10, 2020

By Sky Palma



On the Monday edition of The Ezra Klein Show, host Ezra Klein speaks to Stuart Stevens, who was once one of the most influential operatives in GOP politics. Stevens was Mitt Romney’s top strategist in 2012, and served in key roles on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. He also worked on dozens of other congressional and gubernatorial campaigns.

But Stevens’ outlook on his party changed after the GOP nominated Donald Trump and helped him surge to the presidency.

“Most dissidents from Trumpism take a familiar line: They didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left them. But for Stevens, Trump forced a more fundamental rethinking: The problem, he believes, is not that the GOP became something it wasn’t; it’s that many of those within it — including him — failed to see what it actually was,” Klein writes. “In Stevens’s new book, It Was All a Lie, he delivers a searing indictment of the party he helped build, and his role in it.”

Listen to Klein’s full interview with Steven’s over at https://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast/2020/8/10/21361966/stuart-stevens-gop-republicans-trump-romney-ezra-klein

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/it-was-all-a-lie-top-gop-operative-delivers-a-searing-indictment-as-he-abandons-the-party-he-help-build/

[elleng]

1. 'not that the GOP became something it wasn't;

it’s that many of those within it — including him — failed to see what it actually was,”'

[zipplewrath]

2. Exactly

You can start with Goldwater and the direction and slope has always been towards this. Trump is a symptom not a cause. The Southern Strategy, recruiting an actor, the Nixon interference in the Paris Peace talks, David Duke, and innumerable other transgressions put them exactly here, especially including the Bengazi fiasco.

[elleng]

3. Yes Goldwater, but taken up (rather later) by gingrich

(along with atwater etc etc etc)

[JHB]

9. Movement Conservatives

The connecting tissue of that political vandalism has a name. Use it at every opportunity.

They adopted the now-familiar "win by any means necessary" strategies, who worked to identify hot-button issues and press on them heavily to get Democratic voters to single-issue vote against Democrats, who built their own propaganda/media complex and encouraged "trust us not them, they're the Enemy" thinking.

[lonely bird]

20. Not to mention

Leo Strauss, Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley. Interesting that Leo Strauss was formulating his philosophy-theology at the same time Sayyid Qutb was being repelled by America in the late ‘40’s.

[MarcA]

21. It's life's blood ($$$) comes from Bushes, Walkers and their evil ilk.

Together with a lot of ignorant supporters and believers.

[Warpy]

4. The "daisy ad" that pretty much defeated Goldwater pissed them off

Nixon turned them into crooks. Falwell, Reagan and Gingrich made them rigidly tribal and incapable of compromise (as Goldwater predicted they would) and behind it all were plutocrats acting like a mob, pulling all the strings.

I doubt this book will do much good, but it's definitely time for that party to give a last dispirited bellow as a lumbers off to the elephants' graveyard. It is way past due.

[jaxexpat]

19. The "lumbering off" will take them through their pre-engineered congressional voting districts.

Don't think we've seen the last horrors from these gerry-mander monsters yet.
And there's still the "war-chest politics" of donor suckupification and pay-to-play.
If I remember rightly, the media is essentially a monopoly. Is that fact baby to disappear with the bath water in a frenzy to enjoy the end of conservatism?
I mean, will Comcast/micro-google/Face-Fox, etc. be forced to answer hard questions accurately and adhere to new legislation, reregulation? Or will they be allowed to just crawl back into their cyberspace worm holes taking access to the inter-webs with them? Will progressives have the nerve to remember just how we got here in the first place? Stay tuned until you can't stand it anymore. History is not boring, it's gut wrenching.

Oh, and BTW, while I'm at it, what's to be done with the ever-growing MAJORITY of the general population which not only cannot retire (EVER!) but can't even hope to maintain shelter or reliably feed themselves? Thank goodness the miracles of technology have replaced their purpose in society or how could the "rest of us" have nice things? (for how long it's hard to say. but just remember, the zombie apocalypse shows are actually analogies, the futuristic real reality TV.)

Giving the devil his due, these conservative yahoos have really served a useful purpose for people. They've provided the scape goats, fall guys who do the unthinkable cruelties and make the stupidest mistakes. What will we really do when their failures are finally ours to own? Personally, I can't wait.

[Warpy]

22. Oh, they'll sputter on for a while as a regional party

but what happened when both the Federalists and Whigs collapsed is that all the big money went over to one of the splinter parties, something this country has always had. These splinter parties often do a great deal of good before they become wholly corrupted, the Whigs got the country's financial house in order after the massive corruption of the Federalists had left it in disarray; the Whigs split over slavery with the Abolitionists going to the Republicans and the conservatives to the Democrats. Money followed the Abolitionists because there was little way to compete with slave labor as parts of Dixie began to industrialize.

While I admit Republicans will be scapegoated, nearly as much of the attack on the US working person was gleefully aided by Democrats who styled themselves as "social liberals, fiscal conservatives." Our party contains plenty of dross and people are going to have to fight them tooth and nail over everything. However, they're simply wrongheaded. The Republican Party devolved into a racket a long time ago and needs to go. Now.

[jaxexpat]

23. Yep, It'll take awhile before a new crop of "escaped slave catchers" will take care of these.....

"lost causers". And time will see parades of replacements efforting to improve the condition. All so neat, really, from the perspective of omniscience. Especially when the judgement is impartial.

[wryter2000]

17. George Wallace was the inspiration, imho

It may seem impossible to believe now, but during the mid-1960's Wallace was the darling of the college lecture circuit. He was quite the intellectual. I remember some college friends asking me if I wanted to go to his lecture at Syracuse University. I was aghast they wanted to hear such a racist pig, but he was considered refreshing and iconoclastic at the time.

[jaxexpat]

24. That may have been so, but one must place that in the context of a collegiate population...

of persons whose next gig was as "born again" Christians equally enthralled by a Black Sabbath album. It was not America's finest hour.

[displacedtexan]

28. My parents called Goldwater "Satan"

His name was used as a cuss word at the dinner table.

[zipplewrath]

29. I didn't agree on much with him

But compared to current members of the GOP, he was a relatively "honest" conservative. And actually he was more libertarian than modern conservative. He actually was ahead of his time on gay rights. He fell out of favor with the GOP pretty quickly.

[Tommymac]

31. As a toddler I carried a sign on the street corner in 1964...

"If Goldwater in '64, in '65 We'll have a War".

Alas, we still got the war.

[olegramps]

33. Basically, I think that the Republican Party has been consumed with irrational hatred.

It has so totally taken hold of their constituency that they wholly unable to grasp the fact that they are supporting the very concepts that will enslave them in poverty and economic stagnation. This one of the major faults that I have with blind party loyalty. I don't believe that it is equally destroyed the objectivity of both of the major parties, but has effected the Republicans to a far greater extent in that they have been blindly led to their own destruction. I am convinced that far to little of this phenomena has been neglected to be a realization of Reagan's repeal of the ability to challenge vicious propaganda being broadcast 24/7 by hate mongers. It has become totally useless to attempt to discuss any issue with Republicans who have been convinced that anyone who disagrees with their irrational and self defeating positions is to be hatred and destroyed. If they lose this election, which appears to be a very distinct possibility what will be their reaction? This is what I fear could be instigated by this present administration.

[vlyons]

5. I blame Ayn Rand

Since the 1950s and 60s, Republicans have eaten up Ayn Rand's philosophy of "The Virtue of Selfishness," wherein capitalists are the most virtuous of folks, and socialists of every stripe are nothing but moochers.

[JHB]

10. She's merely a contributor. Conservative hardliners talked like that for years earlier

It's the Movement Conservatives that organized the hardliner takeover of the GOP and made it their life's work to undo the New Deal.

Rand was a conductor on the selfishness train, but people like Bill Buckley and Phyllis Schlafley were the engineers.

[Tommymac]

32. OK, you are making my skin crawl dropping those names...

as it should. Thanks!

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Selfishness has been a theme of what is now conservatism since the Age of the Robber Barons

Sumner, Darwinism, God put us here to organize, exploit, rule. Notice how they're always on top

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Graham_Sumner

Note that classic liberalism, 1890s style, was actually laissez faire economics. By the 1930s liberalism switched sides.

[Mr.Bill]

26. Ironic they would call us moochers

when they have flat out stolen at least ten trillion dollars of the taxpayer's money. And you know what? They want more.

[appleannie1]

6. I remember sitting in front of the Zenith while my parents listened to fireside chats.

It has been a long, long time since a Republican in government was actually for the people. Before my lifetime.

[Sherman A1]

7. Precisely

I would think you would have to get back to TR for that to be the case.

[cab67]

30. A case could be made for Eisenhower.

He wasn’t as doctrinaire as the Republicans who followed, nor was he as laissez-faire as the Harding through Hoover crowd.

[Tom Rinaldo]

8. I give him credit for acknowledging the truth about the Republican Party

He didn't take the non apology apology route. He flat out says he was wrong.

[obamanut2012]

12. I was coming here to say exactly this

No, well, I'm GOP, I just don't like Trump. Just, I was wrong.

[gratuitous]

15. Well, he does have a book to sell

A necessary component of contrition is working to clean up the mess you've made. We'll see just how committed Mr. Stevens is to mending the errors of his ways when he isn't trying to boost his income.

[Alpeduez21]

11. Exactly

The lazy lying steaming pile Hump is a symptom of the disease that is republican.

[bucolic_frolic]

14. Why aren't we producing red MAGAt Bibles?

I mean, quite the marketing opportunity, trolling, and subtle commentary, no?

[wryter2000]

16. I'm reading it

i stopped buying books about Trump, because they pretty much told me what I already knew about him. (I might make an exception for Mary Trump.) But this book goes back several decades to explore the roots of Trumpism and shows Trump as the logical outcome of the march toward ignorance, hate, and absolutely anything to win and retain power.

The author takes personal responsibility for his role, too, which I appreciate. I bought the e-book for $13.99. If you don't want to do that, try getting a used copy or borrow it from a library.

Actually, I think all this horsesh*t goes back to George Wallace, but I haven't found anyone to go back that far yet.

[Johnny2X2X]

18. He misses the entire point IMO

Last edited Tue Aug 11, 2020, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

He's speaking about the Republican Party in terms of their ideas and the appeal of their ideas and how they're doomed because their tent has shrunk. The core principle running that party now has nothing to do with that, it has everything to do with that not mattering to them anymore because they no longer believe in Democracy in America.

They're the anti Democracy Party, that drives their choices. They don't even pretend to want to appeal to a majority of voters anymore, their plan is to appeal to 30% so they can feign legitimacy as they steal elections.

[zentrum]

25. Yes. They have always been Trump.

Indifferent, cruel, greedy, narrowly focused on privatizing all government functions, cutting SS and Medicare and lowering taxes on the rich.

Have never actually cared about their so-called values. Trump is just too stoopid to cover it up properly. That's the only difference.

[BComplex]

27. And he's right! It WAS all a lie, and it still is. I hope more republicans start to see the error of

their ways, and start at least being assholes again, instead of batshit crazy mofo's.