Stuart Stevens: It Was All a Lie

 

And now for the book I was really looking forward to, It Was All a Lie by former Republican consultant Stuart Stevens.  

An important qualifier applies here.  Stevens wrote his book in fall, 2019.  It seems a golden age compared to 2020.  He was thus unaware of a number of events that lay ahead.  Those events will nonetheless inform my writing.

Stevens begins his book by setting forth what he took to be Republican values, and how he turned out to be wrong:

I was drawn to a party that espoused a core set of values: character counts, personal responsibility, strong on Russia, the national debt actually mattered, immigration made America great, a big-tent party that invited all.  Legislation could come and go, compromises would be necessary, but these principles were assumed to be shared and defined what it meant to be a Republican for fifty years.

 So, speaking as a Democrat, do I agree that these were Republican values?  Let's go through them one by one:

Character counts:  What exactly that means is a bit unclear.  Presumably it means having high standards in leaders an not mindlessly supporting them just because they are on our team.  I think I speak for many on our side in saying I thought the emphasis on character was just a tool to bash Bill Clinton.  Republicans seems to define character mostly in terms of private vices, particularly in matters of sex.  I thought they were fools to suggest that Clinton was our first chronic womanizer to be elected President, although he may have been the first whose record was widely known.  I also thought it absurd to think that he was a uniquely bad character who disgraced the office held by such august figures as Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.  Besides a chronic womanizer, Clinton was also a draft dodger, but that vice was rampant in his generation of politicians.  Eight years of frantic digging by Republicans failed to disclose any significant public corruption.  But I suppose that if on takes "character counts" to mean that Republicans are more particular about sexual indiscretions than Democrats and less likely to dismiss them as private matters, then pre-Trump I would have agreed.  To the extent that a politicians vices affect public duties that is a different matter altogether.

Personal responsibility:  When I talk to conservatives and read their writing, I would say I did see this as a major difference in values between conservatives and liberals.  Liberals tend to define justice as not imposing any unfair burdens and disadvantages, while conservatives defined justice as not taking anything you didn't earn and not giving anyone an unfair advantage.  Both liberals and conservatives admire people who overcome hardship, but liberals were more likely to see that as a reason for removing hardships, while conservatives were more likely to see hardships as challenges to be overcome.  What particularly struck me (I am thinking especially of Rod Dreher here) is that, while someone like Rod Dreher might acknowledge that unjust social structures might exist, and that fate might be unfairly stacked against some people, he basically saw any collective effort to change unjust structures and make the system less stacked against some people was an immoral abdication of personal responsibility, and that people should stick to overcoming such obstacles by individual effort.  I also saw plenty of evidence of hypocrisy there.  Personal responsibility often seemed more like something to lecture other people (most of whom were not white) than something Republicans necessarily practices themselves.  But there is plenty of hypocrisy on our side as well, so maybe I shouldn't just too harshly.

Strong on Russia:  Agreed.  Pre-Trump Republicans were Russia hawks.  

The national debt actually mattered:  ROTFLMAO! It has been obvious on our side of the divide for a long time that Republicans' alleged concern for the national debt comes into play only when a Democrat is President.  It is an ongoing scam.  Republicans make huge tax cuts without comparable spending cuts, ignore the resulting deficits, and then suddenly freak out and demand massive spending cuts as soon as a Democrat is elected.  The Democrat manages to shrink the deficit somewhat while Republicans spend the whole administration denouncing deficits and profligacy, until the next time a Republican is elected President.  Then the cycle repeats.  I will say, though, that various ex-Republicans I read assure me that Republicans are genuinely unaware of the obvious.  Tom Nichols, for instance, got rather offended when someone pointed out this scam and said that no one ever mentioned it when he was a Republican.  Bruce Bartlett says that Republicans 100% believe that tax cuts increase revenues.

Immigration made America great:  I don't think Republicans used to be such a hard-core nativist party as they are now.  Ronald Reagan, for instance, supported an immigration amnesty.  And I could not honestly say when Republicans started being hardcore nativists.  But certainly it should have been obvious by the second GWB term.

Big tent party:  I am not clear what Stevens means by this.  Does he refer to all races and ethnicities?  If so, he must have noticed that, much as the Republican Party may want to attract minorities, it remains stubbornly white.  If he means ideologically, clearly when a country as large as the United States has only two parties, both parties have to allow a certain ideological flexibility.  But that flexibility has been diminishing for some time.

Stevens then goes on, chapter by chapter, to discuss the Republican Party as it really is. He begins with race. When Democrats embraced the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's, Republicans responded by appealing to the backlash against civil rights.  Republicans wonder why they can't appeal to black voters, but the answer is staring them in the face. (He does not, interestingly, fault any Republicans after Reagan on this count).  I believe this to a considerable extent, but the recent election has raised questions about it.  Donald Trump, despite being the most blatant and bigoted nativist, probably since the 1920's, made major inroads into the Hispanic vote.  And despite barely veiled appeals to racism (Cory Booker will bring low-income people into the suburbs), he made (more modest) inroads into the black vote as well.  This should stand as a warning to Democrats.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the white working class a solid Democratic constituency for a generation. Look where it is now.  we are farther now from the Civil Rights movement than Ronald Reagan was from the Great Depression.  We can't count on the minority vote forever. It has to be earned.

He also rips Republicans for their concerns about "character" and "family values," both referring mostly to matters of sex, commenting not just that Republicans have often failed to practice what they preach, but that some of the most bigoted, homophobic consultants have been gay.  He points out the Republicans' obvious, glaring inconsistency on deficits and debt and another, almost as obvious political truth -- railing against spending in the abstract is a winning political strategy, but calling for specific cuts is a surefire loser.  He warns that Republicans' longstanding history of anti-intellectualism has degenerated into a distrust of knowledge, which has degenerated into a distain for facts and evidence, and, ultimately, an inability to make any sort of coherent policy beyond just rooting for Team Us over Team Them.  He explores the alternate reality created by the right-wing media, dating back as far as 1944 and the magazine Human Events. He discusses the inordinate power of special interest groups, such as the NRA, or Grover Norquist's anti-tax movement and the inordinate power of big money donors.

Next: How Stevens and Ziblatt interact.