Trump's Elite Enablers

To advance in today’s GOP, you must assert what fifth-graders know to be untrue.

We talk a lot about the degrading compromises required of Republican elected officials in the Trump era. But the politicians are only the tiny tip of a vast political ecosystem. Behind those elected officials is a billion-dollar campaign industry of consultants and staff who make the ads, organize the events, write the speeches. They fill the roles that winning campaigns require.

For a long time, I was part of that world.

I was lucky in who I got to work for. Candidates like Governor Bill Weld in Massachusetts. Governor Tom Ridge in Pennsylvania. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Agree or disagree with their politics, they were decent human beings who never would have danced with the devil of deliberate cruelty and racism that is now the entry fee to the Republican Party.

I was thinking about this while listening to Ezra Klein’s interview with Liam Donovan. Ezra was asking the question: does Donald Trump want to lose the midterm elections?

Liam is one of those uniquely Washington professionals who did a stint at the Republican Senatorial Committee and moved on to become a lobbyist, trading off his connections to Republican Senators. I wouldn’t really consider him a campaign guy, but in the Trump years, he’s often called on as a smart Republican insider to try and interpret the insanity of Trumpworld to the sane world.

I don’t know Liam Donovan, but I know his boss, Zac Moffit, the founder of Targeted Victory, where Liam works. Zac worked on the Romney 2012 campaign, where he directed its digital strategy. His firm was relatively new in 2012, but since then, Targeted Victory has grown into a large and prosperous hybrid digital/lobbying/public affairs company. Which isn’t surprising. The scouting report on Zac would have tagged him as a first-round draft pick. Smart, engaging, focused, who came up through former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office.

Now he’s a Trump guy.