Tim Miller sensed the Republican Party was changing well before the rise of the current president. As a former staffer and big supporter of the 2008 John McCain campaign, he watched as vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin stumbled through Katie Couric’s foreign policy questions in a now-infamous interview. More unsettling to Miller, then in his 20s, was how quickly Palin’s populist appeal shifted the tone of the campaign, veering into what many saw as grievance-driven politics more interested in division than persuasion.

“I felt very out of place then,” says Miller, a former Republican strategist and MSNBC contributor. As Miller became more immersed in Republican campaign politics, his sense of alienation from the party he idealized growing up only deepened.

Raised in Littleton, Colorad

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