The Lies Republicans Tell Themselves
Support for Trumpism, like support for Nazism, is built on a edifice of self-deception, as former GOP campaign guru Tim Miller’s new book makes clear
If you’ve ever wondered how so many professional Republicans, people who work in politics on a daily basis, have justified their support for Donald Trump and the larger miasma of manipulation, prejudice, lying, cruelty and incompetence that is Trumpism, make time for Tim Miller’s book Why We Did It.
Miller is one who got away. After cutting his teeth as an Iowa staffer on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, serving as press secretary for Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential bid, working for the Republican National Committee as its 2012 liaison to the Mitt Romney campaign, and then joining former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in his ill-fated 2016 presidential run, Miller never closed ranks behind Trump. In 2017, he made waves by supporting Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate, and in 2020 he co-founded Republican Voters Against Trump, one of a constellation of never-Trumper efforts. In Why We Did It, which is both a highly entertaining memoir of Miller’s own trajectory down and out of the bowels of the GOP and a sincere effort at penance, he explores how hard it was for him to break from his…
