Republicans backed Donald Trump in 2016, changing the identity of the party. Republican strategist Tim Miller explores this shift in his book, 'Why We Did It: A Travelogue On The Republican Road To Hell.'
Despite Trump's clear power, though, there are signs of weakness: many of his endorsees lost in the midterms. A majority of Republican voters want someone else as the nominee in 2024. And then there's the fact he is the subject of multiple high-level investigations at the moment.That made this the perfect time to talk to Tim Miller, author of– our latest selection for the NPR Politics Podcast Book Club.
I [began] working on campaigns in a bunch of states, leading up to being a spokesperson on John McCain's Iowa presidential campaign. From there, I worked on a bunch of what would now be extinct, moderate RINO Republican presidential campaigns. [I was] a spokesperson for Jon Huntsman in 2012. And then after he lost, I begged my way into representing Mitt [Romney] at the RNC during the general election.
TM: I want to caveat that that was actually the original idea for the book, was to just tomahawk dunk on everyone. An agent came to me and said,"I think you'd be really good at this book." You know,"Write 'the ten slimiest grifters in Republican Washington' or whatever, and we'll sell a million copies."
DK: Well, let's get into that – you were on the Trump payroll for a bit. You at one point advised Scott Pruitt in his bid to become EPA administrator. So in terms of answering the question of"Why We Did It," what can you say about the motivations of DC Republican insiders and also of yourself at the time?
And then I also think that there is the identity element about this, which is – particularly in Washington, but increasingly, in a concerning fashion, everybody who posts about politics on the Internet – politics becomes part of people's identity. TM: For sure. I say this not as a compliment to myself, by the way – this is a self-criticism – but I saw this as a little bit of kayfabe, which is this wrestling term of performative anger. Like, Hulk Hogan wasn't really mad at Andre the Giant – I'm showing my age with that reference. But it was fake.
One guy said to me directly,"Tim, I'm a white guy, and with all of this woke nonsense and with my wife's friends calling me racist for working for Republicans and all this criticism, all this heat I have to take, I'm not up for jobs. And it just leaves me no choice but to just think about the one or two things I agree with [the Trump administration] on and just focus on that.
I say that because if it was true that these people went in because they just felt like they had this duty to country and that it was better them in public service than someone else, then they would have supported Joe Biden in 2020. But none of them really came out and said,"no, we need to stop this person." And that would have been the logical next step of somebody that was going in really to save the country.
We didn't do anything to try to address that. We didn't challenge Republican orthodoxies on any issues, and Trump did. So I think it makes sense that those voters were attracted to Trump. He was offering them something different. TM: Not really. It has relevance as an insight into what the Republican political class, left our own devices, actually wanted. So I think that it's interesting in that regard.
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