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Stuart Stevens on Trump's "racist appeal"

cosmickid

Hall of Famer
Oct 23, 2009
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Stuart Stevens is a rabid anti-Trumper and one of the founders of the Lincoln Project. But he is also a 7th Generation Mississippian and 30 yr veteran GOP consultant who has worked in 5 Presidential campaigns. He really minces no words when it comes to discussing Trumpism... The title of his op ed leaves no doubt how he personally feels...

Trump's Republican Party is defined by racism and those who tolerate it

About a year ago, I finished writing a book in which I posited that race was the original sin of the Republican Party and that the rise of President Donald Trump is based more on white grievance than any other factor. It was a conviction I’d come to after over 30 years of working in Republican politics, including five presidential campaigns. To me it seemed an inescapable if depressing reality.

My first campaign was for a congressional seat in Mississippi between a white Republican (my client), a white Democrat and a Black Independent. I quickly realized anything we could do to increase the profile of the African American would help divert votes from the Democrat to the Independent. It was our best play, since there was little we could do to attract African Americans to our own campaign.

That was a long time ago, and Republicans are still failing to win Black voters in substantial numbers. For decades the party admitted that was in fact a failure and at least attempted to change. But now it has settled into a comfortable embrace of white grievance and Trump is running as the Yankee George Wallace.

Trump is proving my thesis

I’ve worked with a lot of candidates, and for all the hocus-pocus mystique about consultants pulling strings controlling campaigns, I’ve found that ultimately candidates do what they most want to do. This is never truer than when a candidate and campaign are under stress. It’s a natural instinct, the same phenomena of when someone who is multi-lingual reverts to their native tongue when most angry.

Still, I never expected Trump to base his re-election campaign around proving my thesis."

You may disagree with his thesis, but he does have the life experience as both a Southerner and life long GOP insider to bring a unique perspective to the table...

"There is a need in Trump world to describe his erratic behavior and lack of discipline as some kind of brilliant hidden strategy because otherwise you are left with the conclusion that he is a blithering idiot. Which, of course, Trump is, but he’s an idiot with deep racial animosity that dates back decades. Now with his reelection campaign crumbling around him, Trump is lashing out trying to divide the country along racial lines."

"This isn’t surprising. We shouldn’t forget that Trump still says the falsely convicted Central Park Five, African Americans he had said deserved the death penalty, are guilty despite exoneration. But what is shocking, if not surprising, is that the Republican Party is going along with Trump’s strategy to model his campaign after Wallace’s 1968 run for president. It reveals a combination of moral failure and political stupidity rarely evidenced by a major party.

Whenever I tell my Republican friends that I think racial animosity is the root of Trump’s appeal, the inevitable and often angry rejoinder is, “Are you saying that 63 million Americans are racists?” What I try to point out to them is that you don’t have to consider yourself a racist (and, of course, most racists don’t consider themselves racists) but you do have to be willing to accept that having a racist president is less important than something else you are getting from that president.

That might be conservative judges, that might be tax cuts, that might be increased tariffs on Chinese goods (since anti-free trade is apparently the new Republican standard.) From defending Confederate monuments to attacking Black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, Trump seems determined to make it impossible to deny he’s a racist."

One parting shot...

"What does it say about the future of the Republican Party when my home state of Mississippi finally lowered the Confederate battle flag just as a Republican president tries to raise it?"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-republican-party-defined-racism-110051501.html
 
Again to me this isn't a liberal VS conservative issue, it's Trumpism that has to be cut out like a cancer.

Trump is a wannabe authoritarian nationalist. He is not a patriot.

John McCain was a patriot. GH Bush was a patriot.

Trump is a nationalist. A homogenous vision that America is not a diverse culture, it's a white dominant culture and that 'nationalist' white culture is under attack.

It's such an easy fear to play for power.

Any campaign of fear, particularly racial fear needs to be immediately rejected and stamped out in my opinion.

We're better than that.
 
Is Stuart the Lincoln project guy who had the deal with Russia or was that a different guy?
 
Thanks. That wasn't so hard, was it?

Now, I don't see where he registered retroactively only after being caught. Isn't that how it's normally done?

I have no idea how it’s normally done. I only know that a member of the Lincoln project was at one time registered as a Russian agent.

I know how you guys love your Russian conspiracy theories, I don’t necessarily see it as a big deal but you guys should.
 


So I'll see your GOP Never Trumper who registered as an agent for a Russian Energy fund and raise you a GOP pro-Trump loyalist who was actually hired as a campaign adviser. Not only was Page a self-admitted agent of a Russian Energy firm, but he even admitted that he had fraternized with actual GRU agents.

  • "Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, touted his Russia contacts in a 2013 letter that TIME magazine obtained.
  • He sent the letter two months after the FBI informed him the Russians may have been trying to recruit him as an unwitting agent.

Carter Page, the former adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign who is at the center of the memo controversy, boasted about his Russia contacts in a 2013 letter to an academic journal, TIME reported on Saturday.

"Over the past half-year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda," Page said in the letter, dated August 25, 2013."

https://www.businessinsider.com/car...tacts-2013-letter-undercuts-nunes-memo-2018-2

So two GOP officials with unofficial ties to the Russians, one who even boasted about "advising the Kremlin". The saving grace of the Never Trumper is that he has the sense to realize that Trump is a cancer who needs to be eradicated. They're both Conservative Republicans, but at least one is able to try and make amends for his sins...
 
So I'll see your GOP Never Trumper who registered as an agent for a Russian Energy fund and raise you a GOP pro-Trump loyalist who was actually hired as a campaign adviser. Not only was Page a self-admitted agent of a Russian Energy firm, but he even admitted that he had fraternized with actual GRU agents.

  • "Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, touted his Russia contacts in a 2013 letter that TIME magazine obtained.
  • He sent the letter two months after the FBI informed him the Russians may have been trying to recruit him as an unwitting agent.

Carter Page, the former adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign who is at the center of the memo controversy, boasted about his Russia contacts in a 2013 letter to an academic journal, TIME reported on Saturday.

"Over the past half-year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda," Page said in the letter, dated August 25, 2013."

https://www.businessinsider.com/car...tacts-2013-letter-undercuts-nunes-memo-2018-2

So two GOP officials with unofficial ties to the Russians, one who even boasted about "advising the Kremlin". The saving grace of the Never Trumper is that he has the sense to realize that Trump is a cancer who needs to be eradicated. They're both Conservative Republicans, but at least one is able to try and make amends for his sins...

don’t really care
 
Stuart Stevens is a rabid anti-Trumper and one of the founders of the Lincoln Project. But he is also a 7th Generation Mississippian and 30 yr veteran GOP consultant who has worked in 5 Presidential campaigns. He really minces no words when it comes to discussing Trumpism... The title of his op ed leaves no doubt how he personally feels...

Trump's Republican Party is defined by racism and those who tolerate it

About a year ago, I finished writing a book in which I posited that race was the original sin of the Republican Party and that the rise of President Donald Trump is based more on white grievance than any other factor. It was a conviction I’d come to after over 30 years of working in Republican politics, including five presidential campaigns. To me it seemed an inescapable if depressing reality.

My first campaign was for a congressional seat in Mississippi between a white Republican (my client), a white Democrat and a Black Independent. I quickly realized anything we could do to increase the profile of the African American would help divert votes from the Democrat to the Independent. It was our best play, since there was little we could do to attract African Americans to our own campaign.

That was a long time ago, and Republicans are still failing to win Black voters in substantial numbers. For decades the party admitted that was in fact a failure and at least attempted to change. But now it has settled into a comfortable embrace of white grievance and Trump is running as the Yankee George Wallace.

Trump is proving my thesis

I’ve worked with a lot of candidates, and for all the hocus-pocus mystique about consultants pulling strings controlling campaigns, I’ve found that ultimately candidates do what they most want to do. This is never truer than when a candidate and campaign are under stress. It’s a natural instinct, the same phenomena of when someone who is multi-lingual reverts to their native tongue when most angry.

Still, I never expected Trump to base his re-election campaign around proving my thesis."

You may disagree with his thesis, but he does have the life experience as both a Southerner and life long GOP insider to bring a unique perspective to the table...

"There is a need in Trump world to describe his erratic behavior and lack of discipline as some kind of brilliant hidden strategy because otherwise you are left with the conclusion that he is a blithering idiot. Which, of course, Trump is, but he’s an idiot with deep racial animosity that dates back decades. Now with his reelection campaign crumbling around him, Trump is lashing out trying to divide the country along racial lines."

"This isn’t surprising. We shouldn’t forget that Trump still says the falsely convicted Central Park Five, African Americans he had said deserved the death penalty, are guilty despite exoneration. But what is shocking, if not surprising, is that the Republican Party is going along with Trump’s strategy to model his campaign after Wallace’s 1968 run for president. It reveals a combination of moral failure and political stupidity rarely evidenced by a major party.

Whenever I tell my Republican friends that I think racial animosity is the root of Trump’s appeal, the inevitable and often angry rejoinder is, “Are you saying that 63 million Americans are racists?” What I try to point out to them is that you don’t have to consider yourself a racist (and, of course, most racists don’t consider themselves racists) but you do have to be willing to accept that having a racist president is less important than something else you are getting from that president.

That might be conservative judges, that might be tax cuts, that might be increased tariffs on Chinese goods (since anti-free trade is apparently the new Republican standard.) From defending Confederate monuments to attacking Black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, Trump seems determined to make it impossible to deny he’s a racist."

One parting shot...

"What does it say about the future of the Republican Party when my home state of Mississippi finally lowered the Confederate battle flag just as a Republican president tries to raise it?"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-republican-party-defined-racism-110051501.html

its the “tolerate racism” crowd that drives me nuts. They know better. Kind of like the senate republicans knew better in the impeachment trial.

Trump is who he is, but he only is able to do the horrible things he’s said and done if he is enabled. I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again. Those that overlook racism, enable it. In other to banish it, you have to call it out. Whenever it appears. To sit back and say nothing is tantamount to endorsing it.

As a husband to a black woman & father of two multi-racial kids, a second Trump term would be absolutely devastating. I thought pre-Trump that we’d never see another George Wallace. I was wrong. Only, GW’s support came mostly from the Deep South. Trump has brought out racial resentment across the country. And he’s doubling down on that strategy. The first clue should’ve been when Steven Miller stuck around, and now essentially controls immigration policy. That dude is as racist as it gets. Remember the “white power” hand gestures in the White House before a briefing? That was no accident. He wasn’t merely “adjusting his tie”.

I can only hope that enough of the country has had enough in November. It appears that’s going to happen, but I will take nothing for granted until it does.
 
I’m looking forward to readings his book. I’m heard him on a few podcasts and I have been impressed with his level of introspection. He doesn’t let himself off easy and he accepts the role he played in creating the monster.
 
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