Summary

After an embarrassing loss in the 2012 presidential election, the conservative movement wasted no time licking their wounds; by 2013, far-right political operatives went back to the drawing board. Many within the donor class believed image was part of their movements’ problem, thus they launched what Mayer calls “the best public relations campaign that money could buy” (355). This campaign focused on reshaping America’s image of conservatives, the effective use of polling technology, and associating everything they did with the trigger word “well-being” (360).

The first step of the conservative movement’s image rebranding was to “form and publicize partnerships with unlikely allies” such as the United Negro College Fund and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (361). These steps eventually granted Koch Industries’ general counsel Mark Holden an invitation to the White House to discuss economic issues, a sign...