Why We Did It

The latest book I'm reading is Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell by Tim Miller.

Scenes From the Republican Surrender to Trump Why We Did It: Tim Miller’s GOP tell-all.

[...] Miller’s book takes the form of a series of psychological profiles of Republican officials responding to Trump, beginning with himself. Miller came up through the ranks of mainstream Republican hackery, attaching himself to generally respectable figures (Jon Huntsman, Jeb Bush) and party organs. Despite his initial contempt for Trump, it took a couple years for Miller to summon the clarity to break fully with the party. This process of internal wrestling gives Miller an inside perspective of the pressures bearing down on his little tribe.

After concluding his self-examination, Miller turns his lens onto several of his colleagues whose breaks with Trump took longer, or, in some cases, did not occur at all. He finds a subtle blend of rationalizations. And while the specifics of every Trump-supporting Republican differ, one motif of his subjects is a failure to summon the imagination and moral courage to break free from their career path and social identity. By the time you have attained a job in Republican politics that carries enough influence to matter, you have enough at stake professionally and socially that truly abandoning the party becomes as difficult to imagine as a fish leaving the water for land ...

I'm famliar with Tim Miller, as he is often on the news shows, commenting on politics. Also, I think I've exchanged comments with him in the distant past at some Catholic sites. He's an interesting person ... a gay pro-life Catholic and former Republican, but pretty liberal on most social issues ... it's intriguing to me that someone can hanfde all those conflicting loyalties.

Here's Tim talking about his book ...