The Wilderness
Page 41
These provocations were so prolific—and mesmerizing—that CNN Tonight host Don Lemon began a regular tongue-in-cheek segment that he called “The Day in Trump.” But not everyone in the media was amused. “I swear, he is going to start throwing midgets at Velcro walls to keep us paying attention,” one CNN producer griped to me. “It’s Donald Trump’s reality show, and we’re all just living in it.”
Several Republican contenders were reduced to wild antics and silly stunts to compete for airtime. Graham, who was running his own long-shot presidential bid, turned his feud with Trump into a viral video that showed him using blenders, knives, and blowtorches to violently destroy his cell phone. Rand Paul sought to remind the electorate of his existence by lighting the federal tax code on fire (literally) and posting the footage online. But compared to The Donald—whose madcap, larger-than-life persona had been honed over decades of disciplined method acting and careful attention to craft—the other candidates’ routines seemed forced, or just hopelessly small.
This was especially true in the case of Scott Walker, whose galvanizing breakout speech to Iowa activists in January felt like an eternity ago in those mad, hot, hallucinatory days of summer. As much as he tried, the governor couldn’t seem to recapture the same adrenaline-charged excitement he had exhibited onstage in Des Moines. And to many conservatives, his wholesome image as a church-going, football-loving, suburb-dwelling everyman paled in comparison to the visceral escapist fantasy that The Donald’s campaign offered. Walker was the guy you wanted to have a beer with. Trump was the guy who bought the brewery, fired and deported the illegal immigrants working there, and then took off in his private helicopter, making an up-yours gesture in Mexico’s general direction as he ascended into the sky. By mid-August, Walker was falling fast in the polls, and promising his jittery donors that he was going to “step it up” and start competing harder with Trump.
Theories abounded to explain how a reality TV loudmouth, who just months earlier had been forced to fill out his first campaign event with paid actors, was now managing to cast such a powerful spell over the Republican base. Some chalked up his popularity to a perishable blip of celebrity fascination. Others theorized that the billionaire’s lack of reliance on the donor class freed him to jettison the elements of the Republican platform that appealed primarily to the wealthy and focus solely on issues that resonated with middle-class conservatives. (Trump, for his part, modestly explained the phenomenon as the rise of “the silent majority.”) But even as he filled football stadiums with tens of thousands of supporters, some of his most hard-core followers still hailed from the right-wing fever swamps—a reality that was illustrated in midsummer when pro-Trump Twitter trolls began attacking his Republican rivals and critics by branding them #cuckservatives. That the term (a portmanteau of “cuckold” and “conservative”) originated in a dark “alt right” message board for white supremacists was largely lost on the thousands of Trump fans who used it simply to describe Republicans they believed had sold out the conservative cause—but the buzzword’s viral spread during the summer of Trump demonstrated again how much influence a tiny, poisonous fringe could wield when a fractured party lacked a unifying leader.
For all the chaos Donald Trump had wrought, the fact remained that he could flame out at any moment—as most in the GOP still believed was inevitable—and it wouldn’t change the reality that after three years of exile and wandering in the wilderness, the Republican Party still had not found its Moses. There was no consensus political figure poised to unite the party by sheer force of will and personality, no single compelling visionary who had captured the imaginations of Republicans from all quarters.
In the wilderness, the traditional taxonomy had crumbled. Old ideologies were renamed, old names were redefined, and countless words had been written in a futile attempt to negotiate a universal vocabulary. Neoconservatives, neoliberals, libertarians, libertarian populists, reform conservatives, compassionate conservatives, right wing, business wing, moderate mainstream, Tea Party extreme—the disagreement over what all these labels meant and stood for had become so fierce as to render them useless.
And while the party had, indeed, spent the past few years divided into a chaotic cluster of competing tribes, the allegiances were still always evolving, battle lines ever shifting, and new fronts presenting themselves every day. From Iran to immigration to drones to race to drugs, provocative questions and unpredictable world events lay buried like land mines in the desert, poised to explode at any given moment—scattering conservatives who would then re-form in new tribes.
In this landscape of constant change, of myriad debates and fickle alliances, of sound bite news, of pundits and polls, of fast rises and faster falls, perhaps only one thing would remain recognizably the same: in the grand tradition of American politics, the fight for the future of the Republican Party, the nomination, and ultimately the presidency itself would be defined by a clash of egos and personalities, as a record class of self-styled prophets fought its way through the commotion, all promising to lead America’s conservatives back to the promised land, and then lasting as long as they could.
George H. W. Bush drives a golf cart on a 1983 family vacation in Kennebunkport, ME, accompanied by his son Jeb, who spent his teen years as a pot-smoking prep school kid conflicted about his family’s budding political dynasty. (Cynthia Johnson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Jeb announces his candidacy at Miami Dade College in Miami, Florida. After deciding to jump into the 2016 race, his lieutenants launched an aggressive, behind-the-scenes campaign to sideline his rivals. (Johnny Louis/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
A copy of the gleefully blasphemous underground newspaper published by Rand Paul’s secret society at Baylor, featuring a photo of the future senator in Groucho glasses and a false nose. (The Rope)
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul shares a private moment with his father, Ron, a libertarian icon who sources described as privately antagonistic toward his son’s political rise. (Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images)
Former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan attends Pastor Darryl Webster’s early-morning religious “boot camp” in Indianapolis as part of his post-2012 tour of impoverished, inner-city America. (Clare Burns)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose second term was derailed by the “Bridgegate” scandal at the end of 2013 that set off a panic across the national GOP establishment, speaks to constituents. (Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images News/Getty Images)
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal at church: In high school the Hindu teen secretly converted to Christianity against his parents’ wishes; later, as an ambitious governor, he became a conservative culture warrior. (Courtesy of Timmy Teepell)
Rafael Cruz spends time with his young son and future Tea Party icon, Ted, whom he often told as a child, “God has destined you for greatness.” (Courtesy of the Cruz Campaign)
Cruz embraces his father at a victory rally on the night of his election to the Senate in 2012, when he was already eyeing the Oval Office. (Courtesy of the Cruz Campaign)
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry entered the 2016 presidential race looking for redemption after an embarrassing 2012 flameout, but failed to gain traction and became the first candidate to drop out of the 2016 race. (Courtesy of Ben Price)
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the sole woman in the Republican field, sits for an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier. (Courtesy of Justin Giorgio)
Cruz and Paul put on a unified front at a conservative “Defund Obamacare” rally, but backstage tensions flared between the two men during the 2013 government shutdown. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images News/Getty Images)
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush welcomes rising star (and future rival) Marco Rubio to the stage at the Biltmore Hotel in Miami. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images)
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker waves to the crowd at the Iowa Freedom Summit, where his fired-up speech turned him into an early top-tier contender for the GOP nomination. (Scott Olson/G
etty Images News/Getty Images)
Bomb-throwing billionaire Donald Trump shocked the political world and threw the GOP into disarray when he entered the 2016 race. (Steve Sands/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images)
Acknowledgments
A great number of people made this book possible—so many, in fact, that I won’t even attempt a comprehensive list here. I’ll be repaying IOUs for years to the many people who worked with me on this project. For now, I’ll just recognize a few particularly noteworthy contributions. Thank you, first, to the incredibly talented team at Little, Brown, & Company: my editor John Parsley, who showed endless grace and good judgment throughout the writing and editing process; as well as Malin von Euler-Hogan, Carrie Neill, Nell Beram, and Mike Noon. David Patterson was present—and terrifically helpful—from this project’s conception, and no first-time author could ask for a better agent.
Several skilled researchers assisted me with reporting, including Haley Bissegger, Kurt Hanson, Robin Rodgers, and Maegan Vazquez. Kate Havard was especially helpful in tracking down people who knew the subjects in their early lives, as was Maria Santos, whose energetic reporting and essential insights inform much of this book. Jacob Fischler spent about six weeks in the summer of 2015 rigorously fact-checking this book: any errors that may remain are my fault alone. I also benefitted immensely from the reporting and analysis of countless accomplished journalists, including Tim Alberta, Michael Barbaro, Marc Caputo, Marin Cogan, Mark Leibovich, Jonathan Martin, Zeke Miller, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Andrew Sullivan, Dave Weigel, Jason Zengerle, and many others. A full bibliography containing the published works I relied on for this book is available online.
I am indebted to my fantastic colleagues at BuzzFeed: Katherine Miller, who read the manuscript at various stages, provided invaluable notes, and put up with more than one missed deadline from me; Ben Smith, who has been known to refer to nonfiction books as “glorified paywalls” but who nonetheless supported me in this crazy pursuit; John Stanton, Ruby Cramer, Rosie Gray, Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Geidner, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Kyle Blaine, and everyone else on the politics team, who make me smarter just by working within earshot.
Thank you to Rob and Amy Shull for allowing me write much of this book from the spare bedroom in their basement, and for proving to be even better friends than they are landlords. Thank you, also, to my always supportive in-laws, Kevin and Sue Schmidt; and to the cheering section/peanut gallery that comprise my brilliant siblings (and their more brilliant spouses): Kami, Chase, Ashley, Tagg, and Christie. I owe a particularly large debt of gratitude to my parents, David and Carol Coppins. I grew up with the kind of dad who learned how to use Adobe PageMaker just so he could help his fifteen-year-old son redesign his high school newspaper, and the kind of mom who line-edited her kid’s (often-not-very-funny) humor column in the local paper—every week. Their unfailing encouragement and love are the reason I get to have this fantastically fun career.
The long-suffering spouse is a cliché of authors’ acknowledgments sections, but there is no writing around the fact that my incredible, and preternaturally patient, wife, Annie, put up with way too much to let me do this. When I started working on this book our first child, Ellis, had just been born; by the time I finished our second, Alden, was seven months old. The three of them have made me happier than I can possibly express here.
About the Author
MCKAY COPPINS is a senior political writer at BuzzFeed News, where he covers national politics and the Republican Party. Formerly, he was a reporter for Newsweek. Coppins was listed as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2012, included on Politico’s list of 2012’s “breakout reporters,” and identified as a rising TV pundit in Details magazine. He lives in New York with his wife and two young children.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
A Note on Sourcing
INTRODUCTION
PART I : EXILE CHAPTER ONE: The Exodus
CHAPTER TWO: The Biltmore Caucus
CHAPTER THREE: Battle Hymn of the Bleeding Heart Conservatives
CHAPTER FOUR: The Coroners
CHAPTER FIVE: Outreach
PART II : PROPHETS CHAPTER SIX: The Stand
CHAPTER SEVEN: “It’s Not You, It’s Me”
CHAPTER EIGHT: Daddy Issues
CHAPTER NINE: The Chosen One
CHAPTER TEN: All In
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Gridlock
CHAPTER TWELVE: Seeing the Light
PART III : WANDERING CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Coalition Building
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Into the Fever Swamps
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Inner-City Education
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Double Bind in the Greenroom
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: From Teacher’s Pet to Troll
PART IV : PROMISED LAND CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Ball and Chain
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Midterms
CHAPTER TWENTY: Shock and Awe
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Homeland Security
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Crusade
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Donnybrook in Des Moines
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: The Promised Land
Photos
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by McKay Coppins
Cover design by Chris Sergio
Cover art by John Lund / Getty Images
Author photograph by Christie Lyons-Coppins
Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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