Quotes from Stuart Stevens

his ludicrously unqualified son-in-law says

What few people grasp—because they are outside the system and have normal lives to lead—is just how huge the machinery of deception is that the Republicans have erected and how long it has been in the making. Fox News is unique in American media history as serving more like the in-house propaganda arm of a strong-man dictator than operating by the accepted norms of professional journalism.

There is nothing strange or unexpected about Donald Trump. He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race, self-deception, and anger that became the essence of the Republican Party. Trump isn't an aberration of the Republican Party; he is the Republican Party in a purified form.

With a Senate nominee voicing an opinion on "legitimate rape," the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, called on Akin to withdraw from the race and blocked any official party support for him. But four years later, Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims' entering the United States, a clearly unconstitutional edict violating the Constitution's Article VI clause against a religious test, and the Republican Party leadership did nothing.

Few are naive enough to really believe what they say, but the palace of lies is a comfortable mansion with many rooms.

white grievance party;

The Republican Party was—and still is—afraid of Donald Trump.

The new conspiracism has what we call a "partisan penumbra," an alignment with radical, antigovernment Republicans. Not all Republicans or conservatives join these ranks, but…they rarely speak out against conspiracist claims. They exhibit partisan reticence.

Trump refuses to accept the terms of his own victory and incessantly conjures machinations against him, including coups d'état from within his own administration.

American history has never seen a party so unified in perpetuating a massive fraud. This isn't the action of a rogue president like Watergate but a deliberate, calculated decision for a major governing party of the most powerful nation in the history of the world to join hands and deny what they know is true: that Donald Trump is a threat to the country.

Mitt Romney stepped forward and called out Trump for what he clearly was—"a phony, a fraud.

This was their moment to stand for something, and they chose to stand for reelection. Let us remember.

Barry Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act, which made Jim Crow voter-suppression laws illegal, was the defining moment for the modern Republican Party.

Was it possible to change such that it could attract more nonwhite voters, or would it go down the road of using every means possible to fight the demographic trend of declining white voters by making it more difficult for nonwhite voters, particularly black voters, to participate in the election? This was a fundamental battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

Now whenever I hear the loonies on the right asserting that God wanted Trump to win, I always wonder why it didn't occur to them that if God really was involved, he probably could have won the popular vote for Trump. And done it without the Russians' helping.

Decency, kindness, humility, compassion—all touchstones of a Christian faith—have no value in today's Republican Party. All his life, Donald Trump has believed these to be weaknesses, and now that is the view of the party he leads.

Farmers have good years and bad years—like every other business—but the median income of farm households is consistently higher than the median income of nonfarm households. The average American household has a net worth of $82,600, versus $827,000 for farm households.19 About half of the billions in farm subsidies go to farmers with household income over $150,000.

Donald Trump's mind is that tabloid you see at the checkout counter of the grocery store claiming that aliens impregnated Chelsea Clinton so the offspring could become president and turn the United States over to the Federation.

I hoped the Trump era would be seen as an aberration and made less ugly by those who might have influence over the president. That hasn't happened. Rather than Republicans and people of faith checking his most unappealing sides, the president is dragging down virtually everyone within his orbit.15

There is a collective blame shared by those of us who have created the modern Republican Party that has so egregiously failed the principles it claimed to represent.

Trump will always put himself before anyone and any value and that a lifetime of scams, frauds, scandals, and lies has proven that whoever associates with Trump is discredited.

In a sane world, aid would be need-driven with any subsidies going to farmers in need just as food stamps are need-based.

In a Washington Post interview, the former USDA chief economist Joe Glauber acknowledged the hypocrisy of the farm lobby taking a stand against income testing for eligibility for farm subsidies, while "you have a knockdown drag-out over whether you'll give SNAP payments to someone earning $26,000 instead of $25,000. Give me a break."21

Republicans are allowing Trump to equate conservatism with conspiracy, and the long-term success is predicated on stupidity becoming an airborne viral plague that will sweep the country like the walking dead.