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

by Stuart Stevens

In the spring of 2016 when it became apparent that Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee, I approached a number of individuals encouraging them to run as a “favorite son” candidate in their home states. The idea was simple: if a third-party candidate with an appeal to the center right ran and took votes from Trump, it would block his path to victory. I spoke to each person under strict confidentiality and so will not reveal names or states, but they were high-profile conservatives who believed that Trump was a disaster for the party and it would be better to lose one election than lose the moral mandate of a conservative movement. Each person was very sympathetic, but each argued that Trump was going to lose anyway and it was better for him to lose because he had terrible ideas and was morally bankrupt than because of the political mechanism of a third party draining votes. I argued there was still a danger he could win, but I probably wasn’t very good at it, because I didn’t really think he would win. We were all in denial.