A Republican View of Autocracy –– Pt. II

Review by Bill Doughty––

Some of the strongest voices standing up to MAGA “Trumpism” are current and former Republicans: George Will, Max Boot, David Frum, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, William Kristol, Nicolle Wallace, Michael Steele, Joe Scarborough, Tim Miller, and Stuart Stevens.

Stevens –– one of the founders of the Lincoln Project along with Rick Wilson, George Conway , and Steve Schmidt, and others –– is a Paul Revere figure among those strong voices.

Published a year before that last election, Stevens warned of his party’s fast-moving slide toward autocracy in “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Democracy Away” (Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2023). The author is a former chief Republican strategist. He worked on campaigns for prominent republicans including Bob Dole and Mitt Romney and helped elect George W. Bush.

In a blurb for this eye-opening book, journalist and author James Fallows writes, “Stuart Stevens has been everywhere and seen everything, and he shares what he has learned in concise, vivid prose. His book is urgent but not despairing. It is deadly serious but frequently funny. It offers the big picture…”

Here is how Stevens presents the big picture.

“While it is difficult to attribute any deliberate or methodical plan to Donald Trump, whose mind operates like an old-fashioned pinball machine on tilt-bouncing from one inchoate impulse to another—his basic anti-democratic, Strongman instincts have crushed dissent in the Republican Party, empowering the underlying authoritarian impulses within the party. A once-center-right political party with core ideological principles is now marching toward the formation of an autocratic state.”

The big picture includes obvious racism and misogyny in MAGA’s core constituency that would reject a woman of color, Vice President Kamala Harris, from becoming president.

“…the xenophobia and racism that appealed to Trump voters was far more motivating to Republican voters than the small government, low taxes, constitutionally conservative so-called "values" they insisted were the true core of the Republican Party. The absurdity of their deceit could not have been more glaringly obvious. Their commitment to their deeply held beliefs was so weak that they now supported a man who bragged he was "the king of debt," refused to release his tax returns to show he even paid taxes, and his Muslim ban was a religious test that was a clear violation of Article VI of the Constitution that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." They didn't care about anything but remaining in power. The Republican Party leadership was a collection of liars and frauds who thought they could use Trump while controlling him.”

Ouch.

Stevens saw (and foresaw an even greater) corruption by Trump and his family –– and the acceptance by the cult followers of grift and greed.

“Trump’s base of supporters didn’t care if he used his office to enrich himself and his family because if being rich was a qualification for office, getting richer only proved you were more qualified,” he writes.

A party that once stood for “states’ rights” and against a centralized government under a single authority, now supports the opposite. How has the Republican Party strayed? Lincoln emancipated slaves and united the nation; Teddy Roosevelt fought against big money in politics; Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and achieved rapprochement with China; and the Bushes and Reagan welcomed immigration. All would be considered “woke” or supporters of DEI (diversity, equity/equality, inclusion) by MAGA Republicans today.

“Once a political party in a democratic system abandons any moral or ideological rationale for its existence, it is on the road to autocracy.”

Stevens offers these nuggets of wisdom about the current downhill road to autocracy, from the Big Lie of election fraud to greater violence against democratic institutions:

• “There’s always been too much money in American politics. No other Western democracy allows vast sums of money to pollute its electoral system.”
• “No anti-democratic movement becomes more democratic once in power.”
• “The last time Americans couldn’t agree on who was a legal president was in 1861.”
• “Two truths remain constant … if there is to be a democracy, someone must be willing to lose … (and) no one tries to change the rules…”
• “The truth is that no one in the Republican Party actually believes there is widespread (voting) fraud, but it is a convenient cover story for the destruction of democracy.”
• “The success Republicans have had gerrymandering congressional districts is a supercharged propellant for minority rule.”
• “The Trump loyalist who stormed the Capitol have broken faith with the institution of American democracy.” [ written before Trump pardoned them and is now attempting to pay J6ers reparations]
• “You do not assault the Capitol unless you believe the democratic process has failed and must end. You do not refuse to certify the election of the candidate who received more votes than any presidential candidate in U.S. history if you respect the will of the people, an essential element for any democracy to survive.”
• “Violence has become an essential element of the Republican political narrative, signaling to the once fringe militia groups and their sympathizers the they have a place in the party.”
• “The far right is obsessed with guns and violence because they reject … the essence of a shared community.”
• “The Trump announcement at Waco was a declaration of war against American democracy made to a well-armed crowd eager to be his soldiers.”
• “If white evangelicals love Trump and black evangelicals hate him, is this about religion or race? And like all of Trump’s appeals, it is about race.”
• “In healthy democracies the heads of state act as a calming influence, reassuring citizens that their safety is protected by government policies and institutions of the state. Dictators act in exactly the opposite manner.”

Trump and his chosen loyalists have fast-laned the U.S. military on the highway to autocracy and Christian Nationalism/Supremacy by using troops as backdrops at Republican rallies, promoting protestant Christianity in the ranks, and restricting balanced media and independent thinking at the Pentagon.

Stevens notes:

“People in the armed forces are fond of the term ‘combined arms maneuver.’ The U.S. Army's Military Review defines it as "the application of the elements of combat power in a complementary and reinforcing manner to achieve physical, temporal, or psychological advantages over the enemy to preserve freedom of action and exploit success.’ This is exactly how Republican efforts to shape elections should be perceived. The Republicans have successfully undertaken ‘complementary and reinforcing’ efforts to control legislatures and appoint conservative judges at every level for decades.”

In Part I of our review of “The Conspiracy to End Autocracy,” we pulled quotes from various authors cited by Stevens.

One of the authors Stevens relies on to make his point is “Surviving Autocracy’s” Masha Gesson who warns, “Autocrats declare their intentions early on. We disbelieve or ignore them at our peril.” Gesson adds about President Trump, “He was probably the first major party nominee who ran not for president but for autocrat. And he won.”

Trump won again in 2024, despite Stevens’s warning a year earlier.

Trump was elected, in part, because of the support of Republicans who were former “never-Trumpers” –– especially in the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021 –– but who then pinballed back as loyal supporters and enablers: J.D. Vance (who called Trump “America’s Hitler”), Marco Rubio (who referred to Trump as a “con man”), Ted Cruz (who said Trump was “utterly amoral”), and Lindsey Graham (who once called Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”).

Other formerly ardent supporters, however, have turned away from the MAGA leader’s autocracy movement: Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson, Chris Christie, Megyn Kelly, Sohrab Ahmari, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Shawn Ryan, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan.

Once afraid of Trump and his followers, they are joining the ranks of those opposed to tearing down the Constitution and democracy.

A Republican View of Autocracy –– Pt. I

Review by Bill Doughty––

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, former commanding general of U.S. forces in Europe, reminds us of this old saying: “If you want a new idea, read an old book.”

A book that is not too old –– and seemingly written yesterday –– shows how the United States is embracing autocracy. Longtime Republican campaign strategist Stuart Stevens captures the country’s current radical slide with the clarity of hindsight in “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Democracy Away” (Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2023).

For a new idea, read an good book!

Stevens quotes key authors of other “old books” to investigate the seeds and roots of an anti-democracy and pro-authoritarian movement growing in the government –– including the justice department, legislature and military –– and branching into society. Five building blocks of autocracy include propagandist media, MAGA followers, oligarchic financiers, corrupt legal theories, and shock troops such as J6ers and right-wing militia all supporting the totalitarian movement.

One of the first authors of “old books” Stevens cites is George Orwell, who writes, “Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” [Instead of a belief in belief. Or skewed news and propaganda.]

In 1984, Orwell warns about Big Brother and in effect Big Lies despite objective facts. “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” It means loyalty to the leader, not the Constitution or even to concrete reality.

Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” writes, “Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.”

Regarding dictators and autocratic movements, Arendt (above) says, “Their most conspicuous external characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional, and unalterable loyalty of the individual member.”

Examples today are obsequious cabinet meetings in the White House and the recent firing of freethinking military officers, including General Todd Donahue, commanding general of United States Army Europe and Africa and commander of Allied Land Command. [Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who calls himself Secretary of War, has removed or pressured removal of more than two dozen senior military leaders, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr.; Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan; Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George; and Army Gen. James Mingus, vice chief of staff of the Army. A disproportionate number of people removed from power are women, African-Americans, and/or free-thinkers.]

Attacks on education and science are a hallmark of authoritarians, as Stevens points out through the perspective of philosopher Umberto Eco, who writes, “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity” to the fascist, and “thinking is a form of emasculation … Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”

As fascist-friendly forces attempt suppression of free speech, media and voting rights, authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in “How Democracies Die,” “The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy –– gradually, subtly, and even legally –– to kill it.”

Anne Applebaum writes in “Twilight of Democracy” that this “soft dictatorship … relies upon a cadre of elites to run the bureaucracy, the state media, the courts, and, in some places, state companies.”

Legislative and judicial enablers, administration sycophants, propagandist media, and oligarchs –– “elites” –– either endorse or allow the authoritarian to gain power and restrict liberty.

It happened in 1930s Germany.

Another seminal author quoted by Stevens is William Shirer, who penned “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” Shirer writes about Franz von Papen, an aristocratic conservative politician who served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932. Papen made a deal with Adolf Hitler, thinking he and his fellow conservatives could control him and the Nazis.

Shirer writes, “By means of a shabby political deal with the old-school reactionary he privately detected, the former tramp from Vienna, the derelict of the First World War, the violent revolutionary, became chancellor of the great nation.” Hitler then removed, often violently, anyone not completely loyal to him.

In her book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” Ruth Ben-Ghiat (above) describes this as a tradition of the strongman: “…divide-and-rule and bullying tactics to weed out government officials who won’t conspire in his corruption and subversion of the rule of law.”

Their efforts are often funded by misguided oligarchs.

Ghiat writes, 

“Once the ruler is in power, elites strike an ‘authoritarian bargain’ that promises them power and security in return for loyalty to the ruler and toleration of his suspension of rights. Some are true believers, and others fear the consequences of subtracting their support, but those who sign on tend to stick with the leader through gross mismanagement, impeachment, or international humiliation.”

In a chapter titled “The Financiers,” Stevens examines the role of Peter Thiel through Max Chaikin’s book “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.” Thiel wrote in an essay for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Thiel is a big funder of his proteges J.D. Vance, who would become vice president, and Blake Masters, who would win a Republican primary election but lose to Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.

In the same chapter, Stevens uses Jane Mayer’s (above) 2016 book “Dark Money” to springboard onto a discussion about the influential Koch brothers.

The Kochs inherited a fortune from their father who helped both Stalin and Hitler develop oil industries that were indispensable in their respective war efforts. As libertarians, the Kochs were ironically opposed to centralized power and autocracy. They championed and funded Mike Pence, Trump’s first vice president. Pence served Trump faithfully until January 6, 2021 when he resisted an effort to subvert the election in the face of an angry populist mob demanding he be hanged at the Capitol.

A highlight in Stevens’s “The Conspiracy to End America” is a timeline in a chapter titled “The Legal Strategies.” After the formation of the Federalist Society in 1982 and appointments of Federalist judges to the Supreme Court –– Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett –– there is an exponential growth of the influence of money in politics, inequality in society, control by Christian Supremacists, and corruption within the executive branch, including lying to the public.

Moisés Naim cites “3 Ps” of the autocrat in “The Revenge of Power”: Populism, Polarization, and Post-Truth. The 3 Ps are often seen as nationalism, division and outright lying, where the truth no longer seems to matter to those in power.

A “Big Lie” like election denial is an example of the 3 Ps and the root cause of the J6 insurrection coup attempt. Russians and the Soviets before them sowed discord in U.S. elections. Stevens writes, “There is no more fundamental assault on democracy and the rule of law than overturning the results of a free and fair election.”

When Trump announced his last election campaign in Waco, Texas, it was a form of endorsement of White Christian Nationalism. According to Stevens, it was a link to Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh, Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge, and Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing that targeted the federal government.

In Kathleen Belew’s masterful “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary in America,” the author writes, “Nowhere was the horror of Ruby Ridge more acutely registered than in the white power movement.”

Trump’s Waco speech starkly presented his election as a “final battle” of good versus evil and of a “final battle,” linked to biblical end times.

Stevens writes, “As Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry (above) wrote in their 2022 book, “The Flag and the Cross,” as absurd as it might seem that a three-time divorced failed casino owner who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy could appeal to conservative Christians, Trump fits a narrative of Christian Nationalism:”

“The first thing to note is that Trump's MAGA narrative can be understood as a semi-secularized version of white Christian nationalism's deep story. Trump's narrative is shorn of the sorts of biblical references and allusions that peppered earlier presidents' speeches.

But the MAGA narrative still has many parallels with the deep story. The most obvious one is between the apocalyptic strand of white Christian nationalism and the catastrophizing aspect of MAGA. Premillennialists believe that there will be a final battle between good and evil, a life-and-death struggle between natural and supernatural forces that is visible to them, but invisible to unbelievers. Trump's worldview is similar. ‘Disaster’ is one of his favorite words. He sees life as an endless battle between us and them. He sees hidden conspiracies everywhere he looks. We should not be surprised that Trump's rhetoric resonated so strongly with many white devotees of Christian nationalism. Their deep stories are quite similar.”

At today’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference President Trump lied to evangelical supporters that recently elected democratic socialists were “hardcore godless communists” who “will close your churches in this country.”

Trump said. “They will kill your people and that's what they're about. They want to end religion.”

The opposite of “diversity, equity and inclusion” can be considered as religious-based “racism, inequality, and exclusion.” It’s “Us vs. Them” instead of “E Pluribus Unum.”

By using the words of other authors to make his point, Stevens achieves a brilliant strategy of illustrating the five “building blocks” of autocracy: propagandists, support of a major party, finances, legal theories to legitimate actions, and shock troops.

General Hertling’s reminder to read old books for new ideas also applies to “old” ideas: freedom over suppression, ethics over corruption, and democracy over autocracy.

We have Hertling’s book, “If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal” on our summer reading list.

An Imperial Presidency’s ‘Prerogative’

Review by Bill Doughty

Some of America’s greatest presidents have assumed emergency powers during crises. Jefferson took the law into his own hands when he ordered the arrest of Aaron Burr for treason. Lincoln blockaded ships of the Confederacy and employed exceptional powers in the Civil War. FDR assumed extraordinary powers as Commander in Chief Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt

They acted on “presidential prerogative,” a right to act temporarily outside of the Constitution as justified in times of emergency or extraordinary imminent threat to the nation.

But, like George Washington before them, they worked with Congress and followed constraints of the courts. In his farewell address, Washington rejected “change by usurpation; for through this, in one instance, may the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Washington famously turned down calls to serve as president beyond his two terms.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. examines the history of the tension between the executive and the other co-equal branches of government in “The Imperial Presidency” (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). Despite being written more than half a century ago, this remarkable book is relevant in 2026 in the era of “No Kings” protests. In fact, as we show, Schlesinger predicted what the United States is now experiencing –– 50 years after his book was published.

President John F. Kennedy and historian/advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Schlesinger, an advisor to JFK, was an advocate for a strong forward-thinking executive as essential to a healthy democracy. But in The Imperial Presidency –– published near the end of the Vietnam War, the Nixon presidency, and Watergate scandal –– he warns of the expansion of presidential power leading to dangerous abuse of the office.

His book and conclusions especially resonate in a topsy-turvy week –– as the current president and his administration go after a former FBI director for posting a picture of seashells, attack a comedian for telling a joke, justify tearing down part of the White House to build a ballroom, and try to manage a war of choice that is causing massive damage to the world's economy..

Years later Schlesinger also criticized George Bush’s ill-conceived “needless war” in Iraq, calling Bush an “imperial president.”

Marines marching prisoners in Iraq in 2003.

Commitment to the Constitution

Key to the success of American democracy, Schlesinger contends, is respect for and commitment to separation of powers as outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

“The American Constitution was established, for better or worse, on an idea new to the world in the eighteenth century and still uncommon in the twentieth century –– the idea of the separation of powers. This forbidding phrase represented a distinctive American contribution to the art of government. There had been no such doctrine in medieval times. Before the eighteenth century, everyone assumed that government required the unification of authority. But the Founding Fathers, who saw conflict as the guarantee of freedom, grandly defied the inherited wisdom. Instead of concentrating authority in a single institution, they chose to disperse authority among three independent branches of government, equipping the leaders of each, in the words of the 51st Federalist Paper, with the ‘necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.’ These branches, as every schoolchild used to know, were the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The Constitution thus institutionalized conflict in the very heart of the American polity.

The question has always remained –– and has provided a central theme of American political history –– how a government based on the separation of powers could be made to work.”

Using events in American history, Schlesinger examines how a balance of power without checks on that power can create “inertia” that allows a president to become a corrupt autocrat. He shows how the executive branch can then manipulate fear, hate, religion, and emergencies such as war to breach the Constitution.

Schlesinger writes this:

“This book consequently devotes special attention to the history of the war-making power. The assumption of that power by the Presidency was gradual and usually under the demand or pretext of emergency. It was as much a matter of congressional abdication as of presidential usurpation. As it took place, there dwindled away checks, both written and unwritten, that had long held the Presidency under control. The written checks were in the Constitution. The unwritten checks were in the forces and institutions a President once had to take into practical account before he made decisions of war and peace –– the cabinet and the executive branch itself, the Congress, the judiciary, the press, public opinion at home and the opinion of the world. By the early 1970s the American President had become on issues of war and peace the most absolute monarch (with the possible exception of Mao Tse-tung of China) among the great powers of the world.

The Indochina War placed this problem high on the national consciousness. But the end of American military involvement in Southeast Asia would not extinguish the problem. The assertions of sweeping and unilateral presidential authority remained official doctrine in foreign affairs. And, if the President were conceded these life-and-death decisions abroad, how could he be restrained from gathering unto himself the less fateful powers of the national polity? For the claims of unilateral authority in foreign policy soon began to pervade and embolden the domestic Presidency. ‘Perhaps it is a universal truth,’ Madison had written Jefferson, ‘that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.’ The all-purpose invocation of 'national security,' the insistence on executive secrecy, the withholding of information from Congress, the refusal to spend funds appropriated by congress, the attempted intimidation of the press, the use of the White House itself as a base for espionage and sabotage directed against the political opposition –– all signified the extension of the imperial Presidency from foreign to domestic affairs. Underneath such developments there could be discerned a revolutionary challenge to the separation of powers itself.”

Schlesinger continues:

“This book is written out of a double concern. The first concern is that the pivotal institution of the American government, the Presidency, has got out of control and badly needs new definition and restraint. The second concern is that revulsion against inordinate theories of presidential power may produce an inordinate swing against the Presidency and thereby do essential damage to our national capacity to handle the problems of the future. The answer to the runaway Presidency is not the messenger-boy Presidency. The American democracy must discover a middle ground between making the President a czar and making him a puppet. The problem is to devise means of reconciling a strong and purposeful Presidency with equally strong and purposeful forms of democratic control. Or, to put it succinctly, we need a strong Presidency — but a strong Presidency within the Constitution.”

The solution is to find a balance between a strong executive and strong guardrails of, by, and for the people. Schlesinger examines the yin-yang relationship between the executive and legislative branches within the context of the War Powers Act and how the military is used or abused.

[Of note, England’s King Charles spoke to a joint session of Congress yesterday in this “No Kings” era and 250th commemoration of the birth of the United States. Charles praised the prowess of the American military. And he gently rebuked those who are against NATO, who oppose support for Ukraine, who only look "inward," who refuse to recognize climate change, and who want an imbalance of power without checks and balances. He did not mention directly the hundreds of women who were victims of Epstein, Maxwell and friends (including Charles’s brother Andrew).]

Corruption and Tyranny

Near the end of The Imperial Presidency, Schlesinger makes the provocative statement that “Watergate was potentially the best thing to have happened to the Presidency in a long time.”

Facing certain impeachment, Nixon was forced to resign the presidency. His associates were jailed and humiliated. But accountability and lessons-learned sometimes do not last forever.

Here’s Schlesinger's astounding prediction from 50 years ago:

“We have noted that corruption appears to visit the White House in fifty-year cycles. This suggests that exposure and retribution inoculate the Presidency against its latent criminal impulses for about half a century. Around the year 2023 the American people would be well advised to go on the alert and start nailing down everything in sight.

A constitutional Presidency, as the great Presidents had shown, could be a very strong Presidency indeed. But what kept a strong President constitutional, in addition to checks and balances incorporated within his own breast, was the vigilance of the nation. Neither impeachment nor repentance would make much difference if the people themselves had come to an unconscious acceptance of the imperial Presidency. The Constitution could not hold the nation to ideals it was determined to betray. The reinvigoration of the written checks in the American Constitution depended on the reinvigoration of the unwritten checks in American society. The great institutions — Congress, the courts, the executive establishment, the press, the universities, public opinion — had to reclaim their own dignity and meet their own responsibilities. As Madison said long ago, the country could not trust to "parchment barriers" to halt the encroaching spirit of power. In the end, the Constitution would live only if it embodied the spirit of the American people.”

The presidency has some prerogatives in times of crisis. But in the American democracy, Congress has the prerogative to impeach the president, fund the government, and declare war. Under the Constitution, the media (and comedians) have the prerogative and right to free expression. And the people have the ultimate prerogative through their voice and vote –– as long as voting is not corrupted by an imperial presidency.

“Unless the American democracy figures out how to control the Presidency in war and peace without enfeebling the Presidency across the board, then our system of government will face grave troubles,” Schlesinger warns.

The Imperial Presidency concludes with a quote from Walt Whitman:

“"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, –– and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance –– Tyranny may always enter –– there is no charm, no bar against it –– the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men [and women].”