View my free, 90-minute conversation, Five Things I’ve Learned about America, with Resolute Square’s Megan Matson.
I’m Stuart Stevens. For almost three decades, I was a republican political consultant making ads for republican candidates. I worked in five presidential elections and helped elect governors or senators in over half the country.
In 2019. I left my consulting firm, no longer able to work for Republicans. I joined the Lincoln Project and wrote a book called It Was All A Lie, How The Republican Party Became Donald Trump.
When Trump was elected, I had many friends who were saying that Donald Trump had hijacked the Party, that he was an aberration. I would have liked to believe that but it was impossible. When a hijacker takes over a plane, he’s not popular with the passengers and Trump was and is the most popular figure in the Republican party.
What is important to understand is that Donald Trump didn’t change the Republican Party, he revealed it. As painful as it is for some of us to admit, the Republican party is no longer a traditional American political party, it is an autocratic movement.
I wrote a book called The Conspiracy To End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Democracy to Autocracy.
When a democracy – when our democracy – slides into autocracy, five critical elements work together. These elements are all active today in American politics. All are growing in power and influence as their cumulative influence metastasizes more dangerously every day:
- Propagandists.
Organizations like Fox News but also a growing media ecosphere that looks to autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orban of Hungary as their role models.
- Support of a Major Party.
Republican men and women – including many people I have known to be sane and decent – who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost to the 2020 race, and who now endorse Trump’s 2024 presidential run.
- Financers.
American oligarchs like Peter Theil, who has openly voiced his opposition to democracy, together with a vast online base of zealous small donors that together provide almost unlimited funding to the cause.
- Legal Theories to Legitimize Actions.
Legislation efforts like those introduced by Republicans in almost every U.S. state aimed at methodically altering the legal framework of democracy.
- Shock Troops.
The insurrectionists who stormed the Capital on January 6, 2021, as well as the still growing network of men and women who believe they have a moral obligation to remove the current resident of the White House.
My concerns are real, and, importantly, this is not theoretical for me: I know many of the people who continue to fuel the Republican drive to autocracy. I also know their world and how they function. As dangerous as they may seem, they are worse: If we don’t wake up to the crisis in our system, 2024 may well be our last free and fair election
You and a guest could win two tickets to the class of your choice.