It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump

by Stuart Stevens

"A brilliant, unflinching look at the descent of the GOP - backed up with data, historic sweep & first person insights. This one is a must read." --John Avlon

"I devoured an early copy in one sitting the day it arrived - highly recommend It Was All a Lie if you want to try to understand how the GOP got to this very dark place." --Elise Jordan

"It's great! Highly recommend." --Max Boot

From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal expos� of how his party became what it is today

Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass.

This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP's DNA, from Goldwater's opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens and states' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider's account of the rank hypocrisy of the party's claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party's vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.

It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, American History, Political Science, Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 4, 2020

About the author

An American travel writer, political consultant and Daily Beast columnist. He is the cofounder of Washington, DC-based political media consultancy Stevens & Schriefer Group. He served as a top strategist for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

Reviews

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so freaking satisfying! It's like if you've been gaslighted by the GOP and the media's both sideism for so long and then someone comes out and validates everything you've been feeling. It is exactly like that actually. Stevens is unsparing in his criticism of the cynicism of the modern GOP. He is a former Republican and I don't agree with his views on deficits or taxes or deregulation, but he is absolutely right that the GOP's base is mostly motivated by white grievance. I would love for all of my Republican friends to read this and sadly I don't think they will.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

spot on: fascism is already here....

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...

=======

Never forget....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHBpl...

=========

They all knew.

“It is not necessary that people be wicked, but only that they be spineless.”

― James Baldwin

https://mobile.twitter.com/adamparkho...

===================

Book description....

Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. "It Was All a Lie" is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground."

from the author....

"I’m a conservative who was a reliable republican voter. But here’s something to chew on: if you cannot win an election by making a convincing argument and instead need to try to rig that election because you know you don’t have an argument, you deserve to lose. Trump is a coward."

=========

"The Republican Party has invested heavily in the myth of voter fraud. The fraud is trying to convince the public there is voter fraud of any significance. I’ve worked in campaigns since 1978, and I don’t know of a single race in which illegal voters were remotely a factor."

But there has been consistent voter suppression.

"The Hidden History of the War on Voting"

Book...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

=============

Many got suckered by Reagan, but he was also no different than Trump....

"By maximizing white grievance and suppressing the African American vote through a combination of manipulation, lies, and legal challenges. It was this road that the Republican Party took to the Trump White House. There is nothing new about Donald Trump. He hasn’t invented a new politics or executed a brilliant and novel strategy. Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and even Ronald Reagan played the same race-based politics of resentment."

Reaganomics was a farce and the Laffer Curve a false metric. Thomas Piketty, in his excellent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, demonstrates that the Reagan tax cuts were the beginning of what is a cavernous income gap, comparable to the corrupt Gilded Age of the late 19th century after the Civil War.

One mistake Reagan did not make was to trust Russia....

"In a sane world, a center-right party of a country facing an attack on the foundation of its democracy would lead the charge to defend the country. It was a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, who issued the ringing challenge to the Soviet Union “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” That party has now been transformed into Russian apologists, more concerned with defending Donald Trump than defending the country."

===========

"The GOP race memo is a playbook for how best to play the race card, and Republican candidates have used similar tactics for decades. The logical and best course was to minimize the impact of black voters in various ways. This was the Nixon strategy in 1972. It was the Trump strategy in 2016. It was so obvious that even the Russians adopted it, attempting to instigate tensions among black voters to help Trump win."

"Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Alex Jones, Lou Dobbs, and an endless stream of professional nuts and cranks who roam the internet are selling conspiracies, bitterness, grievance, and anger, in search of an argument."

================

In 2019, The New York Times broke the story (below) that Donald Trump for over a decade had managed to lose more money than any other American and, in some years, twice as much as any other American, according to the I.R.S. information on high earners. Indeed, in 1990 and 1991, his core businesses lost more than $250 million each year—more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the sampling for those years. Trump claims to be a great businessman who was wildly successful, while in fact he was one of the greatest failures in modern American business history

This is the man Republicans chose because of his business smarts and success?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us...

===============

Not to be missed, the famous debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9...

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author gets it. There is a reason I ignore the ramblings of Republicans who claim they are Republicans but just can’t tolerate Trump and won’t be voting for him this fall. This author is a pleasant counter-point to all the other never Trumpers that I meet in life because this author gets it that the Republicans weren’t led astray by a racist misogynist fascist power seeking autocrat, but the Republican Party at their core is made up of deplorable human beings and is led by sycophants who want nothing more than power itself for the sake of power to enrich the wealthy and their privileged class. Talk radio and Fox News hate is who they are and who they want to be.

The author is not writing an apologia (a defense), he is writing a mea maxima culpa (he and all the Republican enablers are to blame and he is truly sorry). Republicans have hid behind ‘culture, community and religion’ in order to justify their hate of the other. The author deservedly frames the story such that only a deplorable human being could be a Republican and it really has nothing to do with Trump. Is there really any difference between the Zodiac Killer (Ted Cruz) and Trump? The difference is only Trump knows how to appeal to the lizard brains of his deplorable racist misogynist at a visceral level and the Republicans all long for the days when George Wallace and most of all the other knew their place and their place was not at the same table with them.

The author points out ‘polarization’ is a false dichotomy that’s foisted on to us by ‘both siderists’ while the reality is that the Republican Party and their enablers are radicalizing and legitimating their racism, homophobia and anti-science fake news make believe garbage only to create power for the sake of power and the Republicans are to blame and are not worthy of our consideration. Trump is they and they are Trump, or in other words, the Republicans and Trump are one and the same.

The author made one stupid statement that hurt his argument. He made the statement that no Catholic really believes the Host is the body of Christ. There’s no reason to ever say that because to Catholics it can be true. Of the 87% of evangelical white Christians who voted for Trump for example, not a one believes that they are homophobes since ‘they hate the sin, not the sinner’, or not a one thinks ‘black lives matter’ since to them all lives matter, and they never realized that at one time it was the Romans who fed Christians to the lions and then they would have realized that ‘Christian lives matter’ had meaning, but today they forget their own past because they are too busy hating the other when the other is not them. To a Catholic the host is real and they don’t question its supernatural status and they probably haven’t read St. Thomas Aquinas this week on the nature of the Trinity (just as an example, because I’m currently reading his Summa Theologia and can’t wait to get to the part on why he thinks the Host is real) and they have no reason to question their faith since to pretend to know is good enough for them to believe what seems absurd to all except for those within the paradigmatic bubble, and that is the same reason why Republicans never see their own hate.

There is really no middle ground when it comes to racists and the Republican Party that enables them through an obfuscation of scientific reality by hiding behind conspiracy non-sense dressed up as unreasonable incoherent alternatives. Tolerance is not a suicide pact. Compromise is not necessary when dealing with those who assume there is only one identity worthy of having and that’s the identity for the wealthy and the already privileged who just happens to be their privileged class, the one identity without an identity.

Mitch McConnell has no interest in controlling Donald Trump. The Republicans are not possessed by a demon they are the demon. This author gets it and lays it out better than most never Trumpers. For example, never Trumper Tim Alberta’s book American Carnage was awful. He blamed the Democrats for not listening or compromising with the Republicans thus creating a place for Donald Trump as if Trump was not channeling the evil that lies within the racist who make up the Republican Party. Alberta also blamed the Democrats for being part of the politically correct excessive critters as if I long to be able to use racial or homophobic slurs like we used to be able to in the 1960s when George Wallace was preaching his hate. This author gets it, the Republicans are beyond repair and are not worth saving because they hate the others who are not like them and compromise is not necessary with those who are hateful and it is not wrong to hate that which is evil. Did you notice that Trump held the Bible upside down when he was in front of that church; It’s as if the devil knows he must hold the Bible upside down otherwise it will only burn his fingers.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing indictment of the Republican Party by a well respected Republican strategist. Well researched, the author makes a strong case that the Republican Party lost its way many years before Trump, but he is the one who exposed the party’s soullessness and hypocrisy. But as to Trump, the author notes Republicans know he’s incompetent but cling to him for the benefits he may seem to bring them all the while denying responsibility. Perhaps the most chilling section is where the author writes: “If I could make every Republican elected officials read one book, it would be the memoirs of [Franz von] Papen, the aristocratic chancellor of Germany who dissolved the German parliament and enabled Hitler to rise to power . . . . [it] is a study in self-deception by an intelligent man who knows he made terrible mistakes” trying to justify his disastrous decisions.” As a party that predominantly appeals to white people,not reflecting the true diversity of this country, Republicans are focused on only one thing: winning and winning at any cost even if this means cheating in any and every possible way. Good read but depressing too.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 5 out of 5]

An actual Republican operative confirms herein everything I've been trying to tell people about the Republican party for decades!

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazon lists more than 1,000 books about Donald Trump. And only two US Presidents—George Washington and Abraham Lincoln—account for more (over 2,000 in each case). But Trump hasn’t even completed a single term in office, and there are lots more books to come. One of the latest, and in its way most surprising, is the elaborate mea culpa, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, by the veteran Republican political operative Stuart Stevens. The Mississippi-born Stevens, a remarkably successful political consultant for decades, is one of the most prominent members of the Lincoln Project. So, few can be surprised that he would write a highly critical book about Donald Trump. But what is surprising is that Stevens writes not to add to the rising chorus of disdain about the President’s misbehavior and poor judgment but to eviscerate the political party to which the author has dedicated his life.

Immutable truths turned out to be marketing slogans

Make no mistake: It Was All a Lie is Stevens’ mea culpa. In the book’s first paragraph, he writes, “I have no one to blame but myself. I believed. That’s where it all started to go 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 invited all.” And in the following 250 pages, he demonstrates how the Republican Party betrayed every one of those values—not starting with the election of Donald Trump but more than half a century ago. “What a fool I was,” Stevens laments. “All of these immutable truths turned out to be mere marketing slogans.” And through the years those slogans lost progressively more meaning until, in 2016, the Republican Party became Donald Trump.

To cite just one flagrant example, Stevens focuses on the perennial Republican complaint about “tax-and-spend” Democrats and the national debt they run up. “In the post-World War II era, Republican presidents have contributed far more to the deficit than Democrats.” And that’s just one element in the list of lies that Stevens finds in Republican platforms and campaigns.

In strong, highly quotable prose, Stevens makes the case that “There is nothing strange or unexpected about Donald Trump. He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party.”

How the Republican Party became Donald Trump

It Was All a Lie will disappoint any reader looking for embarrassing insider information from the Trump White House. (Stevens was a “Never-Trumper” in 2016 and is, without question, persona non grata there.) What the author offers that’s new (at least to me) is an examination of the speeches, policy memos, and political decisions that set the Republican Party on a course that, he implies, made Donald Trump inevitable.

** Stevens points to a “1961 speech in Atlanta by Barry Goldwater to a gathering of Southern Republicans. ‘We’re not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 and 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are,’ he declared.” And Goldwater than proceeded to spell out precisely how the Republican Party could appeal to segregationist white Southerners. In 1961.

** Quoting at length from “an October 5, 1971, White House Memorandum from ‘Research’ to the White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, headed ‘Dividing the Democrats,'” Stevens demonstrates how the notorious “Southern Strategy” of Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign came about. The memo was written by Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips. It was “based on the assumption there was little Nixon could do to attract black voters, so the focus should be on utilizing black voters’ support of Democrats to alienate white voters.” Which Buchanan and Phillips detailed exactly how the White House might do.

Reading It Was All a Lie would make any supporter of Donald Trump intensely uncomfortable. For example, Stevens notes, “whenever I hear the loonies on the right asserting that God wanted Trump to win, I always wonder why it didn’t occur to them that if God really was involved, he probably could have won the popular vote for Trump. And done it without the Russians’ helping.” Sadly, it seems highly improbable that any significant number of Trumpers will actually buy the book. More’s the pity.

[Bonnie Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is perfect.

Stuart Stevens lifts the veil on today’s Republican Party and demonstrates convincingly that it is hollowed out, overtly racist, and existing only to perpetuate power in a country growing less White every day. I doubt that the book will change minds, or even open eyes, but I give Stevens credit for owning up to the monster he helped create, and for calling out the cowards he once called friends. Recommend.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, written by former GOP political operative and staffer Stu Stevens, is a scathing indictment of the modern Republican party and detailed history of how they've become the party of Trumpism and why. The book is meticulously researched and contains scads of endnotes and a lengthy bibliography for a not very long book, and its solid...... BUT, I find it incredibly unlikely that anyone other than democrats and maybe a handful of Lincoln Project afficionados will ever pick it up, let alone read it- that's generally the biggest problem with all of these types of books- nobody whose minds need to be opened ever actually opens books. Three stars for the research and that's about as generous as I can be, as despite his apologies for spending his life working for the GOP, the damage is done and I'm over feeling anything other than angry at the RNC and their minions, even the ones who claimed to have seen the light- good for you- go work for some democrats and fix what you've done. Also? Maybe realize that the people you've helped elect and the policies you've fought for have genuinely harmed people and writing a boring book is not proper penance for doing your part to damage our country and millions of people.

[HR-ML · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stuart Stevens went to UCLA film school, and in 1978
became a political consultant, mostly for Republicans
(GOP) running for Governor, Congress, or POTUS.
He worked on behalf of 5 US Presidents. After this book
Stevens won't receive any more invites to 'Lincoln Day
dinners?' 4 stars.

Stevens did not 'pull any punches' when he described the
difference between GOP image and reality. Their core
values included: family values, inclusiveness, fiscal res-
ponsibility, anti-Russia, pro-military. But most of these
'values' were used to bash Democrats. He cited examples
of GOP Presidents adding to the national debt. He noted
Republicans & Dems knew 50% of the US budget went
toward the military. Yet GOP politicos painted Dems as
'weak' on defense.

Stevens called the GOP home of mostly white voters. He
lamented that GOP made lukewarm attempts to include
minority voters under their tent. Instead GOP candidates
used coded racism in elections IE "Southern strategy,"
"states rights,"etc. Stevens showed GOP wanted minority
voter suppression & generated legislation to support this.
GOP favored keeping the Electoral College because their
POTUS candidates from 1988 onward, with 1 exception,
failed to win the popular vote.

He gave examples of how conservative GOP members (not
moderates) complained RE 'mainstream media' from the
1940s onward. And communicated via pamphlets, radio,
etc. And eventually television, online blogs etc.

Stevens compared "Dixiecrat" Governor Geo. Wallace
& Donald Trump and considered them both frauds,
w/ racist mindsets.

The author expressed "It seemed obvious that Trump as
president would continue to be the same badly damaged,
semiliterate, incurious and maladjusted oddball he had
always been." And "That a national party (GOP) once
largely defined by its seriousness in international affairs
would be led by a man (Trump) who wasn't only ignorant
of the basics of national security but was willfully and
unflinchingly proud of his ignorance is just one more
milepost marking the journey of Republicans on their
way to the junkyard of history." (57% mark).

The author indicated Republican politicos feared Trump therefore didn't question his policies/actions/ Executive
Orders. They conformed or GOP didn't provide ongoing
or re-election support. Or the party or Trump made them
so uncomfortable, they declined to run for re-election.

Stevens voiced GOP used a "litmus test" for candidates
& lawmakers concerning favoring NRA gun rights and
the Norquist anti-tax challenge. Also foreign affairs
issues. GOP politicos were silent about corporate welfare
and taxpayers of cities providing sports stadium subsidies
for millionaire/ billionaire sports owners. Silent about
tax abatements for established businesses.

Stevens included George H. W. Bush's resignation letter
from the NRA. A great letter.

Revised.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

For sometime I have been following the work of the Lincoln project


For some time I have been following the work of the Lincoln project with their hard-hitting ads on YouTube. (I have significant doubt, however, as to their efficacy in convincing Republicans to move away from Donald Trump. I believe it is mostly progressives who like the ads, and I worry about their success in getting liberals to part with their money. I also think there is, for some of the founders of the group an effort to whitewash their own reputations, when they bear a great deal of responsibility for bringing us to the point we are in.) Stevens, however, it’s not one of those. In this book, he looks within himself, and submits to an inventory of his own role in bringing us to the point of a Donald Trump presidency.

Stevens is a lifelong political operative, in fact the most successful Republican political operative of his generation. He has worked on media strategy for a long list of prominent Republicans, including George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, as well as Republican governors such as Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker. He felt, and still feels, that the candidates he worked for are decent people whose values and behavior are a far cry from Trump’s. And yet, he now recognizes that the principles he always thought the Republican party represented were mostly window dressing. He finally sees that racism has always been at the center of Republican strategy, dating back to Barry Goldwater. He sees that the claims that “character matters“ were discarded in the blink of an eye when it was convenient to do so. He sees that the belief in small government was a fake, and that Republicans have no qualms about blowing up the deficit when they are in power, only to revert to being deficit hawks under a Democratic administration.

None of these insights are new for a Democrat, of course. But it takes a great deal of honesty and humility for a Republican to now realize these things. It is, essentially, admitting in public that you have been a fool. I am far from sure that I could do this myself were the tables turned. Naturally, I would not now expect Stevens to turn around and become a liberal. I am sure he still stands by the beliefs he has had all his life. It’s just that he feels that very few are standing beside him. It is a cry of shame on the failure of the institutional Republican party, and a lament on the weakness and cowardice of Congressional Republicans who refuse to stand up against the man they all said they despised a few months earlier, and who admit, in private, they still despise even now.

This is a quick read, and the author is well read and knowledgeable. I don’t know who the intended audience is, exactly. I think the author had something he needed to get off his chest. As I said above, Democrats are in for no surprises in terms of the insights on the Republican party. We have known all this for a long time now. More interesting, to me, is Stevens himself. I would have liked still more insight on him. Did the scales fall from his eyes only when Donald Trump became president? Would he have gone on his merry way as before, if we had had had Jeb Bush instead? I suspect the answer is yes. And yet this critique of the Republican party would have been true in a Jeb Bush presidency as well. He just wouldn’t have seen what he now sees. Perhaps it takes a jolt as hard as Donald Trump to force someone toundergo this kind of a paradigm shift. More insight into this question would have made this a better book for me. But if his goal is to speak to wavering Republicans, this is the book he wanted to write. so, recommended. But the people who need to read it probably won’t.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stevens, a former(?) Republican campaign strategist, offers his analysis of why Donald Trump was not an anomaly but an inevitability as the presidential candidate for the Republican party.

Here's a highlight to set up the thesis:

"As much as I’d love to go to bed at night reassuring myself that Donald Trump was some freak product of the system—a “black swan,” as his ludicrously unqualified son-in-law says—I can’t do it. I can’t keep lying to myself to ward off the depressing reality that I had been lying to myself for decades. There is nothing strange or unexpected about Donald Trump. He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party. Trump isn’t an aberration of the Republican Party; he is the Republican Party in a purified form."

Stevens proceeds to offer clues he claims to have misread decades ago, clues that would have prophesied the emergence of a Donald Trump. I generally find these kinds of arguments too pliable to be persuasive, and while the author did quote a wide variety of sources to make a sober argument I suspect anyone else could find plenty of other sources to argue the opposite. There are just so many articles, speeches, policies and laws from the past five decades it's possible to argue almost anything. Nonetheless the material is interesting and seems well sourced.

If that was all there was to the book I'd rate it 3 stars and leave it at that. Stevens is a Never Trumper and his blistering depictions of Trump, Newt Gingrich and a few others were the best parts in my lowbrow estimation.

Here's a sample:

"Like Trump, Gingrich spent decades in the pursuit of what he considered “trading up” in wives, starting with his high school geometry teacher and ending up, as of this writing, with a former intern he was having sex with while leading the impeachment against Bill Clinton for lying about having sex with an intern. That the former House intern, Callista Gingrich, is now the American ambassador to the Vatican is further evidence both that irony is dead and that God has a sense of humor. In most normalized societies, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump would be considered nonserious comic figures to be pitied if in a charitable mood and mocked if less generous. Both are total frauds at their self-described identities. As has been observed, Newt Gingrich is a dumb
person’s idea of a smart person, and Donald Trump is a not-rich person’s idea of wealth. It says a lot about the Republican Party that both of these disturbed and broken men have become dominant figures. Their unifying thread is anger at a world that has treated them far more generously than they deserved."

The book isn't especially long or taxing, I read it over a weekend. It's audience is pretty specific and most of us are stratified enough to know if we're the right audience. If you're inclined to like what the author has to say you won't be disappointed. If you're on the fence read some of the highlights.

[Leo Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

IT WAS ALL A LIE is written by one-time GOP campaign operative and commercial creator Stuart Stevens. He was wildly successful, operating within the GOP echo chamber with one goal: to help the GOP win. Because he believed in their center-right principles: limited government, balanced budgets, free-markets, and personal responsibility. And he had assumed that voters were voting Republican because they shared his core beliefs.

For Stuart and the other politicos, the only thing that mattered was winning. Along the way, though, he came face-to-face with moral dilemmas that he ignored. For instance, he race-baited in ads.... because it worked. Like the GOP, he ignored the huge holes that their compulsive tax-cuts have blown into the US budget, despite Republican administrations out-spending EVERY Democratic one since the 80s... even Barack Obama, who faced an economic melt-down.

What's more, he reports on other hypocrisies he's seen in the GOP. For instance, he notes that there is a very high percentage of the super-conservative members of the GOP who are closeted gays. What's more, many of their operatives and staffers are also gay. One of those gay staffers quips to him about a GOP candidate he was working with when Stuart inquired if he thought the politician was gay, said: "he's conservative enough to be gay."And of course, he ignored the GOP's concerted efforts to attack LGBTQ rights... in efforts driven by these very politicians.

Amazing.

In the end, this is a scathing attack of what has become of the modern GOP, America's one-time center-right party. It took Trump's being elected to see the GOP for what it's really become: a white person's party peddling white supremacy. And he now sees that choices that GOP has made and he helped drive home in a new light. Like the Lincoln Project ads against Trump, the indictment is more salient since it's coming from a disillusioned one-time true believer.

Four-stars. A short, fascinating memoir.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stevens is a former Republican strategist who, post-2016, has concluded that the Republican Party was always deceptive about its values. Stevens personally felt strongly committed to certain values, and he championed them through political work, but now he has decided that Republicans in general were always weakly committed and that is why they so easily cast their professed values aside in 2016. Thus, what the Republicans said and did "was all a lie." I published an article on Medium.

[Joe Robles · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Burn it to the ground and start over." Starts a letter to the reader printed on the back of the book jacket. Purchased the book immediately after hearing him on Why is this Happening with Chris Hayes. Literally! I finished the podcast on the way to the bookstore. Great, quick read. A masterful indictment of how the Republican party betrayed it's values for mere power. A must read for your Trump supporting uncle.

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Republican Party elite abrogate political responsibility

Stuart Stevens is a senior Republican strategist who worked on numerous political campaigns of both Republican presidential and congressional candidates. Yet in his book “It Was All a Lie” he sees a modern Republican Party that has forsaken its core values and principles in support of a president who doesn’t stand for those values. Why do that? Stevens response is for too many of the Party elite being in the winning party is more important than being in a losing party dedicated to ideals that while important are not winning. He cites that after the 2012 presidential election loss, the party did a thorough analysis to determine how to make the party more inclusive. Yet four years later, the party nominated the most virulently racist candidate to run for that office in decades. The Party which traditionally espoused family values, chose a standard bearer who was married 3 times, having had an affair with his soon to be second wife while still married to his first. The Party that supported free trade has now become the most protectionist party since the 1920s and 1930s all thanks to a president who appears to despise all foreign cooperation unless the US can exploit decisive advantage from it.

Stevens sees that the role of the Party should be to protect the party values. Yet because they have chosen to turn a blind eye to a party that is led and ravaged by a demagogue, they have meekly stood by while he has destroyed that party. He sees that when the Party elite abrogates their primary duty in protecting the party then there is little value left in the current party.

This is an interesting topic, made all the more intriguing as we near to the 2020 election. Though decided after this book was written, the fact the Republicans decided to adopt the exact same Party Platform they had in 2016, despite the fact that a pandemic and economic have wracked the country, is yet further evidence how the Party still is not a party of principle. Will the Party prevail in spite of the issues Stevens presents? Time will tell.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Republican Party has many weapons it will use to fight to remain in power. But it seems clear that embracing change will not be among them. Even though the party has all but abandoned any pretense of a moral justification for its existence except to defeat Democrats, it remains the official party of a white governing class in America, and with that comes tremendous money and power that will be employed to defend the party. But how long can a political party that is defined as a white party cling to power in a country changing as rapidly as America? (p. 303)”

“American history has never seen a party so unified in perpetuating a massive fraud. This isn’t the action of a rogue president like Watergate but a deliberate, calculated decision for a major governing party of the most powerful nation in the history of the world to join hands and deny what they know is true: that Donald Trump is a threat to the country. At its root is an acceptance of a betrayal of their country that they try to disguise by suppressing those in their ranks who put their country over their party. These people don’t hate America, but they are weak men and women who decided long ago their self-worth was determined by winning elections. (p. 258)”


Stuart Stevens has a predilection for figurative language. He likes a good metaphor when describing complex issues like politics. Take, for example, this: “Donald Trump didn’t crash the guardrails of political and civil standards; rather, the highway officials eagerly removed the guardrails and stood by cheering as the lunatic behind the wheel drove the party straight off the cliff of reason. (p. 149)”

There are metaphors galore like that all throughout his book “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump”. And while they are fun to read, his fondness for figurative frivolity belies a dourness that is difficult to disguise.

See, Stevens used to be a Republican, and a proud one. He was a campaign manager that helped to get a lot of Republicans elected. He was, in fact, all about winning. Then Trump happened.

Stevens admits to drinking the GOP Kool-aid for so long that he failed to (or purposely refused to) see how fucked up his beloved political party was becoming. Trump, in his mind, didn’t just happen. It was the inevitable conclusion of decades of Republican douchebaggery, of which Stevens fully admits being a willing participant. This book is, essentially, Stevens’s 300-page apology letter. It’s also a call to arms for reasonable-minded Republicans to a return to accountability: “I have this crazy idea that a return to personal responsibility begins with personal responsibility. (p. 4)”

His first step is calling out the real problem underlying every other problem with the Republican Party: Racism. Even this was something that he denied for a long time, and he believes that most Republicans are still in denial.

Racism is, according to Stevens, the main issue, one that started in 1964, when Barry Goldwater, a Republican Senator from Arizona, opposed the Civil Rights Act. The African American vote generally trended Democrat anyway, but since 1964—-and precisely due to Goldwater’s vote—-no Republican presidential candidate has ever received more than 17 percent of the black vote. Indeed, with every election, the black vote for Republican candidates has dwindled to the point that only 3 percent of African Americans voted for Trump in 2016. Interestingly, Trump got slightly more (8%) in the 2020 election, but this is perhaps due to a dwindling black vote for Democrats since 2008. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/b...)

Stevens can attest to the fact that Republicans, starting in the late ‘70s, struggled to find ways to grab more black votes but none were that successful. At some point, he says, Republicans gave up and started to accept the fact that they were the “white” party. It’s not a long jump from being the “white” party of Ronald Reagan to the “white nationalist” party of Trump.

This transition was helped along by something with a lot of influence: the media. Specifically, the rise of conservative, right-wing media. Unbiased, objective journalism gradually devolved—-with the help of conservative players like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones—-into something that was definitely biased, blatantly subjective, and could never, in good faith, be called journalism.

FOX News, more than anything, helped Trump get elected. Not only that, but FOX News also helped to threaten other Republicans to “straighten up and fly right” by toeing the party line; in this case: anything Trump wanted. Republicans knew that if they were seen as critical of Trump in anyway, FOX News could brand them a “RINO” (Republican in name only) or, worse, “unpatriotic”. This, of course, would stoke the ire of Trump and may even result in a nasty tweet. In the eyes of most Republicans, this was essentially akin to political suicide.

The whole “fake news” debacle was a brilliantly strategized campaign by Trump and his lackeys to basically de-legitimize the mainstream media. Anything that was critical of Trump—-regardless of the fact that it was true—-was a “lie”. For many gullible Americans, this tactic worked. They actually believed that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, TIME, Newsweek, the Atlantic, Ranger Rick, Ebony, and Glamour were all ganging together conspiratorially to spread vicious lies about Trump to make him look bad and thus reduce his chances of winning re-election (which was rigged anyway).

The only true and honest news reporting was on FOX News. So says FOX News.

Stevens, and every American with a brain, knows that this is bullshit. The mainstream media, which Stevens defines as “the journalism that believes in standards, strives to report facts, and has a professional standard to correct errors. (p. 181)”, is, unfortunately, under attack from a right-wing media that has allowed the fringe movement of conspiracy theory nut jobs and white nationalists/supremacists to have a much louder voice than they deserve.

All of this, of course, came to a head during the 2016 elections, when it was discovered that Russia was hacking the elections via our Facebook feeds.

Not that anyone did anything about it, at first. When the whole thing got too big to keep under wraps, what did Trump do? Stood at a podium and begged Russia to find the missing e-mails that Hillary Clinton “lost” when her computer was hacked. And republicans chuckled.

“In a sane world, a center-right party of a country facing an attack on the foundation of its democracy would lead the charge to defend the country… That party has now been transformed into Russian apologists, more concerned with defending Donald Trump than defending the country. (p. 187)”

Robert Mueller, in his Report, tried to warn everybody. While he couldn’t find anything on Trump with which he could indict him, he did say that crimes were committed. He also made quite clear that Russia’s interference in the election process was a more-than-serious problem that boded ill for future elections and that Trump benefitted greatly from it. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-can...)

Stevens, utilizing one of his fun metaphors again, reiterates: “When you learn that the bank you borrowed money from is actually owned by a drug cartel, should your first reaction be, “Well, we got a good interest rate”? The simple reality is that the Republican Party was in business with Russian intelligence efforts, what used to be known as the KGB, and precious few leading the Republican Party seem to give a damn. (p. 191)”

Stevens gives a damn. He also holds out hope that other Republicans will eventually come back to reality and also give a damn. Until then, though, the Republican Party appears to be broken beyond repair, and that’s not a good thing if one truly believes in the concept of checks and balances. Democrats need Republicans the way day needs night.

[Chris Gleck]

Another quick read - two in one week! I confess I purchased this book having placed it on order before publishing when I saw the author on a TV show. This is definitely a case of preaching to the choir, but in this instance, the preacher is Catholic and the choir is Protestant. I mean that figuratively since the "preacher" is Republican and the "choir" (me) is Democratic. His premise is that Trump is the logical outcome of 50 years of trends in the Republican party, which he no longer considers to be a legitimate political, governing party acting in the best interests of the country and democracy. It is a damning (but accurate in my viewpoint) indictment of the Republican Party and consequently Trump. What makes this so significant to me, however, is that he was a longtime Republican campaign operative which makes his indictment more credible than would a similar work written by someone from the Democratic side. He owns up to his own role and failings, but also had the excuse that he merely worked on campaigns and was paid to win, but never worked in government or in policy development. I will be keeping this book for the time being to keep the well-documented accounting of the failings of the Republican party.

[Beth Given]

I'm a political moderate swimming in a conservative sea (I live in a red state, was raised by Republican parents, and attend a church that's historically aligned itself with the GOP). But the 2020 election was my breaking point, and it's puzzled me that those around me have doubled down in defense of the Republican party. How has our country gotten here?

This book, written by a former strategist for several prominent Republican politicians, was mean and sarcastic -- but it was also enlightening. Stuart Stevens explains the progression of events, starting with McCarthyism and the southern strategy back in the 1950s and 1960s, that led to the GOP's nomination of Donald Trump, a candidate both morally bankrupt and completely unqualified for president.

Yes, this book may be inflammatory, but it's also intelligent. It's not particularly hopeful, but it's truthful. For former Republicans feeling gaslit by their family and neighbors, this book felt validating.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was pure rage filled justice injected into my veins. A longtime Republican insider spilling the beans and admitting to his own culpability. Dirty laundry was aired. Cowards were called out. Not a lot of names were named but that's because the list of names is all Republicans. All of them.

These cowards have ruined the Republican party and are doing their best to ruin the country as well. And this isn't a difference of opinion. They know what they are doing is wrong but they would rather have short term power. To quote William Shakespeare, I hope these assholes "choke on a bag of dicks." (I think that's from Macbeth but I can't be sure).

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my FIL's pick for our road trip. It was a bit repetitive, and definitely contributed to the echo-chamber feel we already had in our vehicle. I don't think Mr. Stevens is wrong. I'm just not sure what to do about it.

[Walt Boyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this and weep!

If you are a Republican, read this and ask yourself how your party got this way. If you aren’t, don’t congratulate yourself— we all bought the lie. Now go do something about it. Vote as if your life depends on it— because it does.

[Budd Margolis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this book just when the news broke of Jerry Falwell Jr. who was placed on indefinite leave as Liberty University chancellor and president amid a scandal over the posting of offensive photo and Steve Bannon who was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of money laundering and fraud related to his involvement with the We Build the Wall project.

We live in a topsy-turvy world where lies are now acceptable and have been weaponized, up is down, white is black and integrity no longer counts? I have to ask, even pinch, myself where is this all headed? That is why I picked this book up and have been engrossed at the admission of the author's role and how the Republican party of principles has become an absolute and complete lie.

We must cleanse the party and return to making peoples lives much better, stop feeding Corporations with tax breaks and enriching billionaires at the sake of the middle class. This is a crucial moment in time and I found this book an eye-opener. Yes, I knew politicians lie but people of faith, the Evangelicals, so complicit in deceit and evil as to be a shock to my system. The devil rules now and they adore him? How does that equate on a scale of morality, integrity, honesty and God fairing life?

Really, this is a well written, vital and important book!

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The post WW2 tale of the GOP is told by a mercenary who gives a scathing retrospective of the party he so long fought to elect. The story is told as a sequence of indictments, each sprinkled with a bit of precedence in the post-War US political history, spiced with personal, inside anecdotes, flavored with a campaigner's access to election statistics, and sprinkled with recent books and essays. The GOP is cast a minority party of white resentment, bolstered by the allegiance of for-profit evangelicals, a deceitful media enterprise, fiscal hypocrisy, affinity for conspiracy theories, antagonism to expertise and science, and no vision for governing. "A well-funded collection of political warriors with no greater purpose than staying in power." (p. 139) Steven claims a chasm between national GOP and a handful of pragmatic, competent Republican governors, and offers no hope for redemption of the GOP as a right-center democratic institution.

Stevens telling is consistent with my own early recollections of 1968 and 1970 elections, with George Wallace's segregationist candidacy and the defeat of Tennessee Senator Al Gore, Sr. for having supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Mrs. Gore was a tea-time guest in our house during the 1970 election.

Stevens status as a mercenary is revealed in three quotes:
"But like anyone who has gone to film school, I was eager to get out and actually do something even vaguely related to film, so I said yes." (Page 8) "I digested it [the congressman's confession] the way I was beginning to learn to do as a consultant, without any though of the incident itself or any sympathy fo the client but in a clinical analysis of the various options moving forward." (page 38) "I'd like to say this [Helms] bothered me, but the truth is that I was happy anyone wants to hire me and I eagerly said yes." (page 45). Stevens writes with admiration of personal character, service, humility, and center-right governance, but offers no real convictions, governing philosophy, or any sealer epipany other than a growing NeverTrumpism.

Stevens joined the GOP "tribe" (p. 5) and clearly holds right-center affection for GHW Bush, GW Bush, Michael Gerson, and Tom Ridge. And, he draws strong distinction between competent governance by moderate GOP governors (Hogan, Scott, Baker) and the national party.

His critique begins with Goldwater's 1964 embrace of segregation and opposition to Civil Rights Act, and continues with the "Southern Strategy" of Buchanan/Philips/Nixon. GOP was set on path of a minority party of white resentment and latent racism. Trump is a product of the legacy, not an aberration.

Chapter 2 moves on to family values as the "weaponization" of racial prejudice and hypocritical cartoonish professional TV evangelism. In Chapter 3, the target is fiscal hypocrisy embodied in deficits, pork, farm subsidies, corporate subsidies, defense outlays exceeding next 9 countries combined, and tax cuts. Like Donald Trump, GOP is "addicted to debt and selling a false image of success." (page 54). The storyline touched on Clinton-years balanced budget (with zero GOP votes), "voodoo" economics claim by GWH Bush, "colossal stupidity" of "total fraud" (p. 134) Newt Gingrich. At this point, Steven starts to embrace progressive positions on racism, corporate capitalism, and anti-democratic forces in America, and less like a "compassionate conservative"!

Chapter 4 moves on to themes of racism (from Buckley and the National Review), team identity, anti-expertise sentiment, Bennett's hypocrisy 1999 vs 2017 that "character matters", and a GOP bent toward conspiracy theories. Gives a critique of Magnet's book, which influenced Bush2 and Gerson, as fundamentally high-brow racism.

Chapter 5 touches on the lies and deceit of the "radical" right-wing media, with genesis in, for example, Buckley's National Review. Chapter 6, "what are they afraid of", gives an insider's condemnation of campaign finance and the influence of the NRA. Congressmen "routinely spend a fourth or a third of their working hours soliciting those campaign contributions that Long and Abramoff both thought looked a great deal like bribes." (P. 142). Steven notes an asymmetry: Democratic coalition has competing interests, which prevents the kind of influence NRA and Norquist exert over the GOP.

Chapter 7 moves on to view Trump's authoritarian impulses, examples from 20th century history (especially Franz van Pappan in 1930s Germany), and a condemnation of the GOP enablers. He gives an insider's glimpse into private contempt held by elected GOP officials for Trump, and their expectation and hope that Trump should loose (in 2016) without their overt intercession, so that they could then pick up the pieces. In contrast, he earlier cites, as courage, his own Dad's resignation from FBI and GHW Bush's withdrawal from the NRA. An "apocalyptic" fear of a "non-white" world drives, he claims, justification of embracing the anti-democratic actions of Trump (p. 160). "...the self-rationalizing conviction that winning by any means is more than justified; it is require d to save the country from ... something" (p. 181) ... "becoming Sweden?"

Chapter 8 forthrightly calls out voter suppression and ties to early 20th century Jim Crow: "the [1902] number of black registered votes in Alabama fell from 182,000 to 4,000." (p. 179)

Chapter 9 concludes with verdict that GOP has failed the moral test put forward by Trump and is a party of white grievance.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read

Definitely a must read for everyone but particularly for Republicans. First step is to recognize you have a problem. Time to recognize we have a problem.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book purely for the cathartic value. I also admire how fully Stuart Stevens is broadcasting his own complicity in this lie. In writing this book Stuart is actually embodying the value of personal responsibility - remember that one? He's really doing the hard work of facing up to what he has done. Good for him. I'm only rating this three stars because I was admittedly reading it for the express purpose of confirming my priors, and I suspect most other readers would as well - it's just a guilty pleasure. I would recommend listening to the interview with Stevens on the Ezra Klein show, where he covers most of the high points of the book.

"How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. In the end, the Republican Party rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem? Because it had always been about power. The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie."

[Sarah Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

A searing indictment of the current Republican Party under Donald Trump. He chronicles how the GOP got to where it is today, by looking at its history from the 80s to today. And what you come away with, is party built on racism, hypocrisy, owning a narrative without policy or a record and winning. Really, winning, without a shred of anything more.

There were times I forgot he was a former GOP operative, he was so exacting in his indictment. But, he’s a conservative still, a conservative without a party. He viewed the GOP as center right, but like many GOP got caught up in winning over all. There’s nothing too surprising in this, if you’ve been paying attention to politics, but this takes on a different slant because of who the author is and his vast knowledge of those operatives and politicians he’d worked with and know, personally, how terrible they are. He even apologizes on occasion for how successful he was in getting terrible people into positions of power.

Quite the interesting, if not depressing, read.

[Marc Gerstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the Trump-era tell-alls, this may be the most devastating, not so much because it tells us anything new about Trump (it doesn’t), but because of all it tells us about the Republican party that sold itself to one they knew was incompetent because it served their goal of . . . and that’s the punch line: There is no goal, no plan, no set of principals other than winning for the sake of winning. According to the author, Trump did not co-opt or distort of corrupt the Republican party. Quite to the contrary, he is where the party has been going for decades. He’s the culmination of an evolution when the party chose to focus on being the antidote to the mid-1960s passage of the Civil Rights bill. And the author is one who knows. He was an insider who worked on and won many elections for those Republicans; one who executed their lie-based non-program.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book for precisely the reason you might expect given the title: How the hell did the party of my birth family and much of my extended family (I do live in Indiana, after all) go so far off the rails as to give us an inept, belligerent, narcissist as a candidate for President? (My apologies to those of you who voted for Trump, but that's my opinion of him. Stuart Stevens' opinion of him is even worse.) The answer is essentially a story of compromising your ideals -- just a little at a time, over a period of years, and all in the name of a presumably higher goal -- until you find you have none left. Please, I'm begging you Republican movers and shakers out there, give us a better choice in 2024 than Donald Trump!

[Maime · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly found it shocking that many disturbing and destructive aspects of the GOP were intentional. Perhaps not by the people, but by the politicians. Enlightening and honest book by a key party insider.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profoundly damning mea culpa and evisceration of the modern Republican Party by a man who helped Republicans get elected for almost 40 years before the rise of Trump opened his eyes to the enormous amorality of what had once been a genuine center-right party.