Vanity Fair (VF) nterview with a Republican strategist for GWB and Mitt Romney, Stuart Stevens (SS).
Trump is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party. Trump isnt an aberration of the Republican Party. He is the Republican Party in a purified form.
VF: You assert in this book that racism has always been an animating force in the Republican Party. I have to say, I cant quite believe that this is a late-breaking revelation for you. I mean, its always been there. And it was a wedge that the party could use to get what it wanted. But you [also] talk about how cutting taxes has always been the core conviction of the party and thats part of it too. And I think theeconomicsof the Republican Party have revealed themselves to have failedthey didnt understand the end game of what theyd been promoting, Grover Norquist and these guys, that it would hollow out the working class and leave them with nothing but this grievance, nothing but racism, nothing but wedge issues. Do you have any reflection on the economic ideas youve promoted?
SS: In [1993], Bill Clinton proposes a tax increase. It passes by one vote. At the time, every Republican predicted economic Armageddon. This was a time when Dr. Kevorkian was a popular cultural figure, the assisted suicide doctor, and they refer to it as a Kevorkian tax increase. So, I made a million ads about that. And we won every race in 1994 on that message. Guess what? We were wrong. It helped launch one of the greatest periods of economic expansion and growth in the history of the country. And Clinton was the last president to wrestle the deficit to some sort of standstill. So, I think you have to learn from facts. I think that theres been a deeply flawed economic theory at the heart of a lot of Republican economics. Trump ran on the pretense that to be born in America is to be a victim, that youre a sucker, that there are these powerful forces out there that are taking advantage of you. Its a complete reversal of to be born in the Reagan era was to win lifes lotteryyoure the luckiest person in the world. Youre an American. For Trump, youre a chump. And [hes] going to go out and even the score for you, buddy. Its a weaponization of white grievance.
VF: Help me with something here. My dad is a conservative. He voted for Trump. He said he held his nose, he hated Hillary, the common story that you hear. And in your book, you talk about how the party and its media apparatus, Fox News and other like-minded people, have turned it into tribal-like sports where youre just going to root for your team almost no matter what. Theres a sense of like, even if they see that hes a horrible guy and that they might have made a colossal error, theyre going to deflect and project all the blame onto the media and the radical left. Weve seen this time and again. How can we get my dad out of that?
SS: Its dangerous for your dad to go outside now. Your dads not going to be going to a football game. Its dangerous for him to go shopping. Donald Trump has made the world more dangerous for your father in a very tangible, real [way]. It didnt have to be this way. Its not this way in Canada. If your dad goes across the border to Ottawa, hes going to be a lot safer. And its not genetic. Its government. And its not conservative or liberal. It is the combination of the anti-intellectualism, the anti-education elements of the Republican Party, and the anti-elite elements of the Republican Party, so-called, that have culminated in this toxic brew that is killing tens of thousands of Americans. I mean, more Americans are going to die because of this combination of political beliefs than major wars. This virus [is] attacking Americans. And Donald Trump is making it a lot worse, and we all know this. But Republicans wont even stand up to defend America. What drives me crazy about this is you take my dadIm older than you, my dad fought in World War II, South Pacific, 28 island landings, and like hundreds of thousands of guys came back, never really talked about it. My uncle was grievously wounded in Europe, shot seven times, never really recovered. They took this legacy and handed it off to the current group of politicians. And the Republicans have completely squandered that. And its a disgrace. Courage isnt standing up to Donald Trump to defend Americans. Courage is getting out of the boat when the guy in front of you gets shot. And they dont have the courage to stand up to some fat, ridiculous imbecile from Queens. And its shameful. It should be their legacy. They are killing their neighbors to defend Donald Trump.
VF: As we look over the horizon line, a lot of us think about what the world is going to look like when Trump is gone. I mean, after theres a global New Years Evelike celebration, what is going to happen in terms of a [Republican] Party reconstituting itself? Whats going to happen to the Trumpists, the Ted Cruzes, and Matt Gaetzes of the world? Is there room for another iteration of the Republican Party to evolve out of the smoking ruins? Or does it go back to being a Buchanan-ite circus on the edge of town?
SS: We have an interesting little experiment that we can look through that I think is informative. Theres another Republican Party out there. And thats these successful governors in blue states like Phil Scott here in Vermont, Larry Hogan in Maryland, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts. I work for all these guys. Theyre all incredibly successful. But heres something phenomenal. They cant control their own state parties. They cant pick a state party chair. And the idea that a popular governor cant pick the chair of his own party, its just mind-boggling. I mean, that had never happened before. And it just shows how deep Trumpism is.