How did leading Republicans go from being Cold Warriors to apologists for Russian President Vladimir Putin? 

For insight, we turned to Stuart Stevens, who knows Republican politics from the inside. He was a top Republican political operative who worked on five presidential campaigns, including the campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. 

Stevens, who lives in Vermont, now finds himself inside a very different political operation. He is a central player in the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and argues that the current Republican Party should be “burned to the ground.” His latest bestselling book is, “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”

Stevens tells The Vermont Conversation, “I think that there is a large element of the conservative movement that has become a pro-Putin autocratic movement. … Donald Trump did not change the Republican Party. He revealed it. And for those of us who worked in the Republican Party for a long time, it's a devastating conclusion. But I think it's the only honest one.”

“We have an autocratic movement in America that is threatening democracy itself,” Stevens said. “They'll be for democracy when they win and they won't be for it when they lose. That means you're not a democracy. And if we don't wake up and face this, we're going to lose democracy.”