REVOLT
How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted
By Jeremy W. Peters
When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on the morning of June 16, 2015, there was little indication that the event would change American political history. Experts rejected Trump’s chances. He gauged 4 percent; the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, suggested that Trump was really looking for a job at NBC, not the White House.
But Trump did impress Steve Bannon, an articulate conservative activist who plotted his own takeover of the Republican Party. Watching the reality TV star make remarks from the Trump Tower food court to a crowd that reportedly included actors who were paid $50 to hold plates and cheer, Bannon couldn’t contain himself. “That’s Hitler!” said Bannon. And, as Jeremy W. Peters writes in this vibrant new history, “he meant it as a compliment.”
Insurgency describes the Republican Party’s astonishingly rapid transformation from the genteel domain of pro-business elites to a growling cult of personality that views the January 6 uprising as an exercise in legitimate political discourse. Peters, a political reporter for DailyExpertNews, describes the surrender of mainstream Republicans to Trumpism as a form of political self-flagellation. From 1969 to 2008, Republicans occupied the White House for nearly 12 years. And yet “one of the more peculiar features of American conservatism is that despite decades of Republican rule, many true believers became bitter and outraged at their party. They thought it was run by weak-willed leaders who compromised and sold once in power.”
The contours of the Republicans’ turn to the right are now largely known. What sets “Insurgency” apart is its mix of political acumen and behind-the-scenes intrigue. Much of the book’s opening material revolves around the first national figure to channel grassroots anger: former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who could have prevented Trump’s rise to power had she chosen to run for president in 2012. Trump was sufficiently concerned about Palin’s potential to claim the title of populist flag bearer that he invited her to Trump Tower in 2011 “to measure her personally”. He concluded that while she had “huge political appeal, she didn’t know what to do about it.”
Trump, of course, did. Peters is a fluid and engaging writer, and as the story of “Insurgency” unfolds and Trump inevitably, irresistibly takes center stage, you can’t help but admire — as Bannon did — the candidate’s raw, demagogic genius. Devoid of empathy, incapable of humility and unfamiliar with what it means to bear consequences, he behaved and spoke in ways most would never dare.” In a chillingly fascinating section, Peters describes how Trump defused the fury over the “Access Hollywood” tape by ambushing Hillary Clinton with her husband’s prosecutors during the second presidential debate in St. Louis in the stunt that came about. thanks to a “norm-broadening” partnership between the Trump campaign and Aaron Klein, a 36-year-old reporter for Bannon’s website, Breitbart News† who tracked down the women and persuaded them to attend.
“In the history of modern presidential politics, no candidate had publicly committed such a brutal act of revenge,” Peters writes. “It changed the game and proved to Trump and his allies that nothing was banned anymore.” So pivotal was Klein’s role in Trump’s upset victory that Jared Kushner later told him, “My father-in-law wouldn’t be president without you.”
Anecdotes like this make “Insurgency” worth reading, though it’s harder to say who might want to. The book contains too many examples of Trump’s manifest flaws to appeal to true MAGA believers, but not enough revelations of outright crime to satisfy veterans of the #resistance. With the specter of a 2024 Trump candidacy looming, the rest of us could use a break while we could get another one. “He just dominates every day,” Bannon told Trump’s advisers in 2020, warning about voter exhaustion with the president. “It’s like a nightmare. You’re doing everything you can to get rid of it.” Easier said than done.
