“Blame me when you look around and see a dysfunctional political system and a Republican Party that has gone insane, Many will argue that my view of the Republican Party is distorted by my loathing of Trump. The truth is that Trump brought it all into clarity and made the pretending impossible.”
John Harwood, CNBC:
That’s from “It Was All A Lie” the forthcoming book by former Republican ad-maker Stuart Stevens. He casts Trump as not an aberration but rather the culmination of decades-long evolution within the GOP. Having advised four Republican presidential nominees and dozens of winning Senate and gubernatorial campaigns, Stevens blends diagnosis of the party’s ills with confession for having fostered them.
I know that people don’t trust the Never Trumpers and for good reason. And I’m sure some of them will end up being full of shit. But there is a re-thinking of modern conservative orthodoxy going on by at least a few and Stevens is one of them.
There is an understandable human impulse to ostracize and punish these people despite their apparent conversion. But having observed the conservative movement ascendancy I will just say that the right did not do that and the converts ended up being among their most fervent adherents over the course of many years. Don’t underestimate the zeal of an apostate.