>> coming snacks and water and then pushing people. but i remember sitting down because i had been standing and walking for on what to do and i was on my phone for a solid 15 or 20 minutes and then remember just to note the immediate difference of food the cloud was.

all the other people were leaving and it is younger crowd. wearing bandannas at was such a start difference first on i realized. >> i am from aei and the right and the 100 year war and this book is both an intellectual and political history over the past century. picks up the ideas and the

ways that coalition has power and use power in politics. and those intentions around servicesna around libertarians and journalists. but it gives us a talk about that so we are doing this morning. due to a conversation between and former paul ryan house speaker is a practitioner in the thinker of politics on the modern right. matt is senior fellow here at aei. and thehe prominent journalist and analyst e and author founding editor of the washington free beacon in the opinion editor of the weekly

standard and contributing editor of national review and a columnist and his third book one way or another one of them has thaten with the modern right. >> i am forced to show paying congress with that first district of wisconsin to serve as chairman of the budget committee and ways an' means committee. and that nonresidents fellow at aei. and then teaching at notre dame and and no formal remarks or opening statements and then which i will moderate questions from all of you who

are watching live online. so byt e-mail or on twitter. so with that we can jump in. have being a sense of the book is telling us why you voted the way that you did. >> thank you for coming and attending and thank you to aei for providing home where i could write this book which is many years in the making and

finally when he came to me and said you have to write the book trying to help me come to aei where i could write it. so i think the book begins in a few ways. first i have an unusual have a i love reading old journalism and starting as a political writer 20 years ago in washington, my hobby was reading throughkl the archives of the magazine where i worked at the time of the weekly standard then moving to r archives of national review and spectator and all these little magazines on the american right it was an education natalie in the history better broader education of history and cultureim over the last half-century and that's really what i've been doing in my spare time for two decades. however after 2012 in particular i began a more intensive look and investigation into the history

of the american right because after 2012 that exemplify the emerging streams within the right within the republican party establishment based in washington and grassroots conservativism and the factions within the movement and the different ideas and also carrying through 2012 it seems to me the most recent populist movement around 2005 or 2006 was only gaining steam i wanted to investigate why this is happening what was driving this energy andnd when donald trump came down the escalator in 2015 andth won the republican nomination and then the presidency, i thought the

history of the american right was all the more necessary to figure out how we reached this. i also have been teaching this material in some form over the years. i'm happy to see some of my students are here there was no one volume textbook i could hand over to say this is the history now george nash's book is the key text but that really focuses heavily on post-world war ii conservative movement and it ends the main body around the late seventies i thought it was necessary to broaden the stearate on —- the story in a narrative format so in this way i can that hand it

to my students and say forget about the class and read the book. [laughter] >> byk. way of offering thoughts the tells about the history of the right and why conservatives care about the history quick. >> i think we are coming to an inflection point like all great countries do if we lose the country to the left we lose what, the country is all about. for me it's natural law and it should be carried through and policies tof make sure it has true potential. if we lose that then we lose the left go to left make like other democracies. i feel it's extremely important but we are nowhere close from we need to be to

realize these things my background is more fiscal based and c i worry about the social contract and those to puten in place reforms we have to win i a lot of arguments. so why is that important as we can make sure the 21st century is a great century. and then thank you for giving me a home and going to college with that time i came a political agent and i came in as a young person as a think tankid and then inside of fight

bill clinton had just one and different factions fighting one another this happens from the beginning on. so for those who are shocked at the infighting this is what happens and until you actually have a big standardbearer then you will have that kind of fight. we are where wewe have been before but it's important the conservative movement in myth opinion becomes a majority movement inon the country. >> and it's a challenge of as

ald post world war ii phenomenon that youou don't do that and put a lot of emphasis on the pre- were right and why? what is there to learn now? >> for a historian the two hardest questions is where to begin and what to leave out so why i did i begin with the warren harding inauguration? i thought it was important to show the institutions that american conservatives if that is inherited institution american conservatives are in the unusual place those that we are meant to defend are those created by the american

the principles of the declaration of independence and the political theory but in 1932 many people believe the revolution had taken place in the nature of the american government and they the people onon the right by defending the constitution against fdr and the new deal i thought it was important to show how they came to define themselves in opposition to the new deal in prior to 1932 we are progressivism settling in the continuum that is up for grabs. teddyss roosevelt aligned but he was a successful president wilson aligned not so

successful but not in others and a democratic president not until the 1920s of coolidge that you see the gop align itself and to say we will define ourselves as the party of americanism in the gop is extraordinarily successful the great depression delegitimize the claim to provide prosperity for the average american world war ii delegitimized the form policy of nonintervention so conservativism there has to be can figure itself of the cold war era.

those who consider themselves in the condition of the right but iiv want to incorporate that story into the postwar conservative movement then carry r that through with the most recent presidency including donald trump were most engaged in the the efforts to reform are entitlement system and to think about the role of government are often depicted by the left as attempts to restore pre-new deal america. is there some truth to that is the american right still seeking some way to recover from an error made by fdr or you could make that argument maybe 20 years ago. i don't think that that's the case anymore. i think i think everyone is reconciled themselves with this. with what? i guess i'd call the social contract. i think the country and look the country the founders gave us a system that was designed to reach political consensus and when you do that you do big things.

one of the reasons why we're all an amber with the filibuster even when you know, it's the issue cuts against us. so i don't think that that's the case anymore. let's just take the social contract which is health and retirement security. for the old age for for low-income you have consensus on the right and the left that this is something that government has an important role to play in. so then the question if we agree with that i would argue most do agree on the right if you agree with that then if you agree that the question is less move on making sure that is the case and then you have a fight about left and right weather markets with the choice, individualism is involvedo or if you are progressive, expanding progressivism so i do think it's aa social contract physically erected in that.

between new deal and great society and now this is what the budgets were about, not repeal but to rework the programs so they work in the 21st century and didn't create that crisis for bankrupt the country and use markets and choice and competition as a means of delivering on the goals without slowing down growth in creating reserve currency and bankrupting the country so i think we are there and populous -- he and i thought about it all the time and it became there is no way he wanted that other than good on a promise on repeal and replace which for me was his episode and we were one vote shy and get him in the senate. it wasn't popular in his mind and therefore wouldn't be pursued.

that was frustrating to me but gives an example of where the right is now which is either we don't touch it or we perform it but repealing it is not. >> it is always a dilemma for the right in a variety of contexts. which left is responding to the right in america is on the defensive because first of has to deal with progressivism and then the ark and lbj and now in the obama era dealing with that, the great awakening as we meet here today, another left and each time they transform themselves take on new guises the right often has to do it as well. i was struck whenever i teach the founding document of national review, the magazine was launched in 1955, junior, the central protagonist in my

storyse says conservatives agait the new deal and in parentheses, we are not sure if there could be any other time. [laughter] all aligned with the national review principles. for an american on the right today to read that were here what paul said clearly things have changed.ss what changed? passage of time in the small conservative, we don't want to rock the boat but also the left changed as well and moved on to new territory. we are not fighting over the new deal so much as the cultural agenda which comes out of the antiwar late 1960s and has waned. the central character book that's certainly seems to me to

be the case in reading about your publisher put ronald reagan on the cover. you can see why i think if it were up to you would have put bill buckley on the cover. what was william f buckley doing what was his what was his purpose? what was the movement he had in mind to create if you think about national review and the rest of the massive buckley project starting in the 1950s. what was his ambition? i think his ambition as he put it at that young age when he comes out on the scene in 1951 with god a man at yale. he's about 26 years old. his ambition was and he said this to mike wallace in an early interview. he said i'm a counter-revolutionary. and the revolution he wanted to overturn was fdrs revolution the revolution of 1932 the change in the nature of the american social contract that the new deal launched. so how did he go about doing this? well, there are many different avenues he pursued.

the first was institution building so in addition to national review, he was also responsible for the creation of or played a part in the creation of the intercollegiate studies institute isi. it's college arm the collegiate network the young american for freedom all of which still continue to this day. he also launched magazines a quarterly the human life review which existed for many decades as a place for pro-life intellectual work. he did it in terms of trying to build up a counter establishment. to recruit people who would inhabit these institutions who would make conservative arguments, but who would be treated seriously? by everyday americans watching, you know, the four channels that they had access to in the mid 1960s, right? the also wanted to build fences

around conservatism. the big problem of the american right in the aftermath of world war two in the post-macarthy period so the mid-1950s carrying through the early 1960s mid-1960s was that it was considered a fringe ideology. america was thought to be a liberal country. if not necessarily a capital p progressive one, but a liberal country. the constitution and the bill of rights of liberal document and these liberal documents and these conservatives who after all, buckley was a critic the popular republican president, dwight eisenhower. seeming a little odd, intellectual pies in the area government expansion and regulation. frederick and luther, friedman. buckley was very concerned making conservatism respectable

so he began drawing fences around his version of american conservatism and going after anti-semitism, going after conspiracy theory, saying iran could meet part of his movement because of the if he is him saying libertarian austrian economist could be part of his movementis because he was a naro capitalist and privatized everything. national security plays a big part, buckley's conservatism was one engaged nationalism, america should be strong, powerful and defend itself but also engaged to defeat to go back soviet union that metta large military establishment, standing army, for defense and forward deployment of troops, alliances

like nato, intervention like vietnam all of which earlier right would have been skeptical if not outright opposed to so this is the version of american conservatism bill buckley created, the last part of his legacy was political. working within the republican party, traditional vehicle of american conservatism to turn away from the moderate republicanism so called me to and toward conservatism so he played a big role in the early goldwater campaign that culminated in the goldwater nomination and as president republican ticket. ironically the goldwater campaign managed to one of the most prominent presidents of the institution locked out of the

campaign so he was afraid goldwater would be associated with goldwater review but that political energy expressed itself in his early friendship with ronald reagan and even later in his life who is willing to intervene, buckley's that is, in democratic primaries or support democratic candidates c including joe in order to get erid of the original me to. >> i came of age at the tail end of that so i studied austrians and corrupt reading those pages and i had an econ prophet who gave me an issue of the national review, i did know what was

conservative in the late 80s early 90s. this is the path. you took and this is the movement you came into and so we have we have different movements like this in different times when people are coming of age in the conservative movement, and i think buckley of all people pretty much dominated it for about two or three decades. the the conservative ecosystem and nevertheless. we still had you still had a bunch of people, you know, john burchers and others that were there was a big fight, but he was the center of gravity and i think i think if he didn't put reagan on the cover of this exactly he shouldn't put buckley. i would say too and all the debates we're having at the moment over the new american right? which is if you go by my book the third new right we've had over the last hundred years. i think there's great energy being devoted to building up an infrastructure. that can compete with the

conservative infrastructure that bill buckley began creating in the 1950s and 60s and then the early neo conservatives helped build throughout the 70s and 1980s and 1980s 1990s. so that that had been missing. for this new right for many years, but now in the final years of the trump presidency and in the years subsequent to that. i think they are building their own infrastructure and it just shows you you'll appreciate this point. you've all the importance of institution. right because without these institutions without these spaces for work and for organization. is just people writing in in their basements? so you buckley created this kind of conservative mainstream through all these institutions. in a way it was built around ideas. that would have been very controversial in the old right?

but presented itself as a consensus as a mainstream of the right within that mainstream within those institutions there was also a dividing line a dividing line between traditionalists and libertarians. between freedom and tradition and that dividing line came to kind of define the internal debates of the buckley-eyed conservative movement and over time the the attempt to overcome those divisions became known as fusionism the sort of defining project of the of the buckley wright at least in the 1960s beginning in the 1960s. tell us a little bit about what fusionism was what was meant to be what it wasn't did it make sense as a way to try to solve the problem that buckley confronted within his own camp. i think one of the under-appreciated figures in the history of the american right was a man named frank meyer. was an ex-communist who converted to the right through his reading of the road to serfdom. he became a contributor to many

of the right-leaning journals like the freeman and like the american mercury and then he became associated with national review. eventually a senior editor at national review in the books and arts editor. and frankmeier what he had been trained in communist dialectic and polemic and he so he thought very dogmatically. this is what conservatism is. and so this is these are the parameters in which we are going to operate as america american conservatives buckley used to call him air traffic control because he was making sure all the planes were going in the right direction and landing and taking off on time. so in the 1960s meyer who again has a libertarian strain to him because of his just love and appreciation of hayek actually

begins disputes with other libertarians on the right over the nature of the american defense establishment whether a standing army weapons programs and and what the right desire or what the conservatives desired? a policy of rollback of communism including military intervention was necessary libertarians, of course the randolph-born quote that everybody knows war is the health of the state. so libertarians are non-interventionist because war will grow the state and reduce individual freedom. so it's in the course of a debate with libertarians that myers says look i'm going to describe to you what american conservatism is. and what american conservatism is tracing back to the american founding is a synthesis? of individual liberty and traditional value what we call traditional values, but moral order. and because the american founding took place before the

great ruptures of the 19th century before the french revolution in 1789 americans have been able to synthesize these two principles. freedom and virtue liberty and order well, so he writes this essay. it's called the twisted tree of liberty. it's a great essay and his best friend. brent bozell jr. who is bill buckley's brother-in-law and another senior editor at national review? and who is moving toward a very devout traditionalist catholicism at this time. he was a convert to catholicism and became more and more. devout as the years went on he read frank's essay and said, well that's this is ridiculous. freedom is not the end of politics virtuous. what you're trying to do frank is? some type of fusion and so fusionism is one of those words that begins as an insult but ends up being appropriated by the it's a capital targets. yeah or or neoconservatism.

and this is where the debate begins really within the american right? can you unify individual liberty and traditional morality? and the buckleyites the people associated national review said you could even if it didn't necessarily work out in theory. it was revealed in practice. it was revealed in lives of many american conservatives themselves that these two worked these two things can coexist even if it doesn't quite work in theory, and by the way as conservatives we shouldn't worry about whether it works in theory or not. we should only be concerned about whether it works in practice. that wasn't enough for brazil. on the more religious right and he eventually broke off from buckley's american conservatism and it wasn't enough for libertarians like mary rothbard who continued to critique buckley's conservatism as two statists because of its belief that you needed a powerful military and engagement with the world in order to defeat communism. so i see a lot of debates today

about the future of fusionism. i continue to think that yes, it doesn't always work in theory. in fact the closer you look it might break down. but it does still work in practice. absolutely when you look at a mirror how people on the right in the main actually live their lives. let me put it this way. for people who aren't used the term fusionism the reagan coalition is, you know a good example of it. but when you go to effectuating policy meaning going to politics absolutely fusionism works. so try, you know working in congress and building a coalition a majority are working majority in congress you it requires fusionism to come together and members of congress people who are up on the ballot running for election, except this they know that in a big diverse country to have a working majority. they have to coexist in a coalition of people who come from different regions different backgrounds different

philosophies with inside the tent of the conservative movement or for the democrats sake the progressives. where you had to fuse these things together, so it's just fusionism is absolutely essential. to to have practical working majorities to pass laws and so in the think tank, it's harder to justify its harder to rationalize. it's harder to stitch it together, but when you're actually affecting politics when you're actually practicing politics, it becomes essential. so the coalition that was that began to be built around this notion. took shape through the 1960s and in the 70s when the united states experienced what we'd have to say is an extremely difficult decade in a lot of ways the story you tell in this book is a story of extraordinary vibrancy. i think i would say stepping back from the book the 1970s seemed like the most important decade of the 10 decades that you describe in the development

of the right what happened to the right in the 70s. how how was it different coming out of the 1970s than going into them? why? i think the simplest answer that question. you've always that new groups came to become associated with the right and with the american conservative movement during the 1970s and a lot of that played out as a result of the overreach of liberalism and the radical left. during the vietnam era. during the student rebellion. during the social turbulence of the late 1960s early 1970s. people who would not have identified as being on the right i ended up coming into an alliance with the american conservatives and so it became a question of how american conservatism would deal with these new entrants and i'll give you two examples. the first or what bill gavin who was a speech writer for richard

nixon and a very good writer called street corner conservatives. these were conservatives who were not familiar with hayek who are not familiar with russell kirk the great traditionalist author. but they in fact often were democrats. right. they were part of fdr's majority coalition and yet in the late 1960s and early 1970s. they looked on their television screens and read their newspapers and said what is happening to my country? right rise and crime rising drug abuse. dissolution dissolving families a democratic party racked by an argument over vietnam and the new rights revolutions that are taking place. and so they begin moving into the republican column. and they come to be known as the hard hats. because they tend to be blue collar. they tend to be not having

attained a college degree. so the hard hats enter this republican coalition and they're critical to richard nixon's landslide win in 1972, and they become part of the right. over the years they're the reagan democrats. they are they swerve toward perot in 1992, but newt gingrich brings them back in in 94. there there descendants. anyway are the the trump silent majority or forgotten man, right? there's another group as well that comes into. the right in the 1970s, and those are the neoconservatives. these were liberal anti-communists. they were democrats. who for the same reasons as the hard hats found themselves out of sync? with their allies on the left and with the democratic party not all of them make the migration to the republican party in the 1970s when irving crystal.

endorses richard nixon in 1972. it's a scandal. and many of his fellow neo conservatives don't actually make the jump to the republican party well into the 1980s. but these neoconservative intellectuals who are often well positioned within the liberal establishment. now we're moving migrating to the right and so the national review conservatives have to decide how do these neocons fit into the picture? and i've always remember the moment i read during my research and editorial in the spring night of 1971 and national review responding to a essays and commentary magazine. there were clearly indicative of the editor of commentary at that time norman pot hort's moving to the right and the title of this editorial was come on in the waters fine. so the welcoming them in bringing the neocons and then finally the last group that enters the picture on the

american right in the 1970s is the religious, right? so the religious right had been dormant in many ways at least at the national political level since the scope trial since the beginning of my story. but it's because of federal decisions. and judicial rulings in the 1970s and also because of disappointment. in the presidency of jimmy carter that you see evangelical and fundamentalist christians move en masse from the democratic party into the republican column the vehicle for that being the moral majority in 1980. and so the american right looks very different once you have the reagan revolution because not only does it have the buckley ice, but it now has the hard hats and now has the neoconservatives and it now has the religious right as well. i would add one thing there was there was inside the party. this is when i came of age was the supply side movement which really reinvigorated economics

within the conservative movement from green eye shade austerity economics pain and suffering to hope growth opportunity. and so bob mundell and art laugher and jude winisky and and bob bartley and and the crowd at the wall street journal editorial pages. they really reinvigorated and reagan was not a supply-sider when he was governor. he became a convert to it with jack kemp and laughter and some californians, but that really that's what got people. i've came in the supply side crowd. that was my entrance into the movement. but that really reinvigorated in economic message that unified people and so that's easy. that was that was a key stitching that stitched this coalition together. what did the supply ciders say to the party in the country? well, it was it was frankly with there was a big fight with the monitorists which was the chicago guys, which was uncle milty on the 3% rule, which was people like bob mandel who was also a chicago guy. there was a bit of fight inside chicago university of chicago and served which was sound money

because nixon took us off the gold standard. and you had a big monetary policy fight which we never really had before during the gold standard. so you had supply-siders bringing answers to to the problem of inflation bringing answers to tax reform to achieve economic growth and to really, you know, show how you could have growth and opportunity. and to bring an agenda which bill steiger old wisconsin guy and jack kemp in phil steiger, a wisconsin guy and check him 1978 and 1981, 82 passed the tax cuts after having passed their tax cuts and showed what real growth looks like improve economics, jack kennedy's got it started because 92% in his day, it's one of the things we did, who wanted fresh evidence of ideas because we are

coasting on the fumes of reagan revolution and the tax cuts achieving higher income mobility,ti lower wage workers getting fasterus wage growth and opportunity occurring because of the supply-side economics, 20-year-old evidence so we put back in place and not fresh evidence that it does work. covid clearly threw a curve ball but the supply-side movement was a debate within the establishment of the republican party conservative movement and the site suppliers side past ideas and it stick it together in my opinion. >> allll of these strands of the 70s which when you look at the way you describe them are a strange combination of ideas in particular revolution have brought together ultimately by

megan. the striking thing about your book is it doesn't really culminate, all of history and the right buildup to ronald reagan and then down to say look how far we've come down. that's not the argument you make and in a way the book struggles in every way but the right, how do you explain ronald reagan? who was this person and what did he really do? >> he droveto his biography cra. [laughter] >> an example of what needs to be driven crazy. >> the biographer of ted roosevelt commissioned by megan himself and it depends on where you opened it up but there are other parts he found he had no idea what was going on so he had

to create himself as a fictional character to try to bring out this person. i don't think anyone penetrated that. aspeople like to say nancy reagn did but i'm not so sure. i think ronald reagan was self-contained, very usual for someone like that. he was always on stage but has other qualities as well which make them consequential. one was his leaves were consistent over the decades. he shows up in my story in 1947. he had a hopper who interviews him about ron. ... january of 1989 very

little in his basic belief system. changes i think part of that has to do just briefly the fact that he was he was very old he very old. he was born in 1911. he doesn't become a republican until he's 51 years old. right he votes for fdr four times. but he had in his head a picture of what america was like before the new deal. again, it's about the the practice rather than the theory for him. dixon, illinois was america as it should be and that life. he lived by the rock river was how should live everything there. and that was it that was in his bones. few other things he had he was always very much oriented toward the future and i think this is something he picked up from fdr. >> .

>> fdi love dad on radio. it's you and me talking having a conversation and that orientation is unusual for a conservative i'm looking to the past if you are reagan you are thinking about the future then finally son personal characteristics in the pantheon of the american right person i really enjoyed learning and writing about is senator robert taft to as mr. republican opposed the entry into the organization that robert taft ran

unsuccessfully for the republican nomination several times when tell you he was not the most charismatic person and conservatives do have a tendency to be dour and pessimistic in the world is going to hell in a hand basket but that was not ronald reagan. so this made him unusual and also appealing to parts of the electorate that when they hear the word conservative or american right, they flinch they think neanderthal and caveman and then here comes reagan with a smile as that when i think of conservative but this quality is in such an extraordinary figure who however may have been the

exception in the history of the american right. >> i live 80 miles upstream now and i mentioned that because where i came from the sky downriver just became president of the united states and it has brought people coming from the irish catholic family it was the entrée into let's see what this is all about a lot of people from wisconsin was an entrye into conservativism and had such a great face and such a great way to invitee people who never looked at it before so that's why he is such an amazing intersection in time with the rain again coalition that is

extremely rare so with reagan's approach or 1989 and the presidency cut short because of the alzheimer's diagnosis and 94 and then with theed buckley lengthy retirement he really stretched it out first he retired from public speaking and then the board of national review but he never retired from the syndicated column writing up until the day he died. with the departure of reagan empathy lucy's figures who almost every part of the right and certainly every faction saw as unifying so than the faction and the conflictual nature of the right comes to the four.

>> you enter the political world right afterhi reagan. where did the right think it was headed? >> we w were in a big fight founded by a gene kirkpatrick those were thehe heads of the three different movements working with people all product' so i never really thought of myself as a neocon is much as a supply-side or. and we were fighting pat cannon and it was funny i grew up from the national review guys like that fighting it wasn't the weekly standard yet

so you had the neocons fighting the paleo cons with the point when the reagan era ended with the defeat of h.w. bush by clinton attend of soul-searching was going on in the conservative movement turned inward and shot at each other and not until a nominee emerged which was w who want and he worked on the compassionate conservativism but it never really took hold a solid fusion because of circumstances that in the post- reagan era we were with the internal struggle foror the future of the conservative movement and i think we are

quite frankly we have positives in one some way houses but never settled into a posture of the majority's center-right movement. and that is still underway if you were ranked populism with that cult of personality which is a theory or person so underneath that is the fight we had from the early nineties and what we are having right nowes. >> in a way you discuss the post- reagan rate so there is

a way and it was a time it was held in some ways to become the face of the right hand you think about thehe post- reagan years? >> it is the relationship between conservativism and populism in the irony and often times the only way they get to power is populist politics which conservatives like buckley was ambivalent this is the populism being one of the driving forces to synthesize populism with the supply-side agenda and interest of the religious right, tax cuts and all the

various factions and a departure from the scene the argument begins. i always said it was interesting the 1988 gop primary was a missed opportunity because republican party could have been forced to choose between camp andrew cannon. he doesn't runt for president but waits until 1982 because he recognizes that reagan successor will probably be h.w. bush was an establishment republican so then you have the fight between thepr establishment republican and buchanan from 1882 representing the resurgence of the old right and the

attitudes toward war andre immigration and then really beginning in the 96 campaign picking up the trade issue as well becoming more protectionist so that debate is had but buchanan is never successful then he leaves the republican party and where one of his rivals is a businessman named donald trump. think buchanan is the first to recognize 16 years later trump ascended the presidency and many ideas that he was lambasting buchanan in the 2000 cycle. but at the moment i do think the argument has been settled in the favor of populism in the conservative governing class that comes to power with

ronald reagan goes through the first george bush moving up to capitol hill during the republican revolution and then comes back down pennsylvania avenue that governing class existed 30 years had been displaced. >> looking at my time in congress are two periods in the majority and thenn lost it when obama came and then we gott it back. but the goal is to recruit members of congress because what happened to the majority is we got fat and lazy and we were recruiting the late senator who just wanted to

earmark the way to stay in office so the movement was intellectually lazy we got fat and happy with earmarks and it was ugly and those young upstartsaj in the house did not like that. we lose the majority many of us believed we should and recruited those we thought would be one of the top votes i remember talking about the movement in those days which was the tea party movement our chance to be supply-side 2.0. supply-side two.zero is progrowth economics limited government entitlements under control and a robust foreign policy. a fight that we push that aside and then we

got the majority back we could affect much but in the beginning it was but there was a fight with the neocons supply-side and trading immigration and hindsight this is me looking back we did not understand where we made mistakes we didn't understand the potency of the issues. you can see signs of this for the established republicans with the effects of issues of trade and immigration and how that played into people's perception and we are more focused with the libertarian

supply-side all agree on strong national defense so thatik isolationism and what happened isoo over to having thn the ticket no more. nice guys. let's just send a velociraptor. let's just send an apex predator on the ticket to just throw hand grenades. and and so the entertainment wing of our party with the digital age with cable rose that same time and so i think the

entertainers sort of replaced the think tank type people replaced sort of the intellectual buckleyites and and the country in a reactionary movement movement against a progressive reactionary barack obama. through the best entertainer the best bomb thrower you could ted finished second in the race, and he was you know, he was the inside entertainer in congress. donald trump was that was was the greatest bomb threw you could find and they threw donald trump at it and he won. and remember ben carson was kind of yeah, he wanted he was leaving for about a month or so. yeah. it was a rotating lady lead and it was all outsiders all outsiders and and this i think testifies to the importance of the 2012. election. i think we would be in the beginning of your first term as president had that gone a different way. and so the world would be a very different place, but i totally agree with what paul saying is that 2012 was a hinge in the

sense that i think are many on the right. had internalized the idea that because of american exceptionalism barack obama had to be a parenthesis. barack obama had to be jimmy carter reborn and he could only be one term because he would he was so. interested in moving america in a direction where it had not gone for many years as he said his ambition was to be the progressive reagan. yeah to be just as consequential to change politics and in just a similar way. and so the the right i think really believed that this was as senator dimit put it i think going to be waterloo. this is the battle right? and when the election is called for obama on election night 2012 so early in the evening right by the eleven o'clock news. i think many people on the right were just stunned try being on

the ticket i can imagine i can imagine. and and that made them say, all right. if we're reaching this point where the input the electoral inputs, you know we elect scott brown in massachusetts, but obama does obamacare anyway, right? we have the tea party congress, but they're not able to do anything. then in 14 we get a republican wave again and that captures the senate and after the election in 2014. obama says, oh, yeah. i heard the people who voted the republicans in congress, but you know what? i also voted. i also hear all the people who voted for democrats and i hear the people who didn't vote at all and i'm going to govern for those people, right? it's infuriating. yeah, the election should matter and yet they didn't and so i think that drove a lot of people on the right to say we need an outsetter. that's right. we need to we need an external

force to come in and shake up the system and that's the only way that we're going to be able to achieve any of our goals. and they got it. well, i do want to open things up for questions. so please think of your questions, but one follow-up on this meant you mentioned three issues immigration war trade. those were the issues where things really broke open after that moment. when as you say some some voters on the right thought this isn't working. why was it those issues and does that mean really that the the seeming consensus on those in the bush years was a an illusion? yeah that the right was wrong about what its voters actually wanted and were voting for. oh, i mean the if it was an illusion. it should have been apparent even at the time. as a reporter. i was covering the immigration debates during george w second term. and i worked for magazine where the editors were very supportive of a comprehensive immigration reform that would have included

an amnesty for illegal immigrants. but my reporting is saying there was no way that was going to happen. because even if it passed the senate. the republicans in the house would not allow it because they were hearing from their constituents and that's when you begin to see a real break between the grassroots right and the conservative and republican establishment here in washington over the issue of immigration. the war is a little bit more complicated because for a while republican voters really stood behind their republican president. who was who had launched the wars in afghanistan and iraq. but beginning in 2007 with the rise of ron paul and the liberty movement you see there too that that there is discontent on the right with the george w bush foreign policy. now protectionism is a little bit more complicated. um, i think what what trump did in coming out against the trans-pacific?

partnership or tpp as you always said throughout the campaign was basically provide a a concrete symbol for the deaths of despair that were ravaging america. for the opioid crisis for the rise and alcoholism. for this on howling out of the russell unimaginable. social crisis. he said it's the de-industrialization. it's china's entry into the world trade organization and the china shock. that's what's giving you this. whether that's true, i believe is an empirical question. that is very complicated, right? but politically it's brilliant. and in this speaks to his shrewdness, he did a similar thing with immigration. immigration complicated issue clearly illegal immigration is

something republicans conservatives opposed? but what what happened with the rise of isis in the you know, the jv team in the second half obama's second term. after the shootings in san bernardino trump proposes the muslim ban and he is able to take immigration and combine it with national security. and all of a sudden we need to close the borders not just to prevent people from coming in who might be searching for jobs, but we need to make america safe and that's what we need to do it. you see how he's able to. thread these issues together in 2016, which just as an as a postscript. i would say it's something he was not able to do in 2020. let's open things up for questions. i would only ask that you do ask a question rather than make a statement or phrase your statement in the form of a

question if you can come to an interrogative and also please wait for microphone and tell us who you are when we call on you for a question. let's start there in the back. hi, i'm eliza astro. i work at third way. so one reason that we're having all of these discussions about the new right is because it's become apparent that a lot of sort of the tenets of small government conservatism are not that popular with voters like, you know, appealing social security and medicare going back the aca our politically toxic now, so what does that mean for the future of the american right and for small government conservatism? well, i'm working on a big book project here on answering that question at aei and they're about 18 of us working on this project. i think i think you have to reconcile. our our life with these programs like we said no deal that these are settled issues.

i would argue consensus health retirement security then the question is, how do you go about achieving those and the best possible way to maximize upper mobility economic growth limited governments, you know in your economy and so once we get over the fact that these programs exist and we have a social contract that we all agree. should exist then let's get on to the to the task of repairing them from bankruptcy and making them perform the best where you then go into the issue is the left wants government to run it all they want no private sector they want command of resources means of production. they want to use it as an extension of their audiology. we want to use the power of markets and choice in competition and in to to deliver these services that we all have a country as a country have reached consensus on that that may sound like me too isn't it's

just radical pragmatism. we are where we are. we do agree that these things are here and should stay and so let's get on with the business of actually performing these tasks the right way so that we don't lose our reserve currencies so that we don't have a debt crisis. because if that happens imagine what happens to the social contract and the chaos and the polarization in the country if we go down the path in 10 20 years. we lose reserve currency boomers are retiring these things explode and then you have a total debt crisis where you're doing real-time surgery taking benefits away from people in real life real time that's what would happen if we basically do nothing. so i think conservatives, you know conserving these things you have to step ahead of this thing, but you have to win the arguments you have to win majorities and you have to have a president willing to stick his or her neck out to get this done. i think that's the key task of the conservative movement for the moment right now. you're just good.

um right here, please. i am peter murphy with invest in education. i think matt you made it passing reference to the iraq. war does your book or could you address now where the republican voters soured on that conflict? and i asked that because i thought a very powerful moment in the 16 campaign. was when donald trump? really had a moment in one of the debates early on where he just eviscerated that in a very passionate way. i thought it was a cheap shot. but i think his history or post history was actually pretty spot on and i thought that would really resonate and i weren't if you could identify or paul when you felt that that was really sourd upon by republican voters. yeah, it's a complicated question because i think public opinion really began turning against the war after the

bombing of the mosque and samara and february of 2006 and kind of the onset of civil war in iraq and ethnic cleansing. and with the war really begins spinning out of control. and republic and public opinion was also very ambivalent about the surge policy in iraq sending more troops and changing our strategy there. and yet mccain and romney engaged in a mini debate over the surge in the run-up to the primaries in 2008, and it's a debate that mccain the strong support of the surge won. so even then with the mccain candidacy we could still see that winning in iraq or achieving stability there. that would allow us to leave most exit most of our forces from the country with still powerful among republicans. however, i think what was going on when trump attacked jeb bush over the war when he said that w had lied us into war.

iraq was part of it. it was also much more. it was more about ending the bush era >> p so turning the page on the bush era you think about the condition of america and 2015, clearly ending up on the racing two-term president with the situation overseas and domestically is not good and yet who do the two parties offer? jeb bush and hillary clinton for another offer of the bush dynasty and you can't get more establishment than hillary clinton. basically there saying to say there is disappointment in iraq war and still huge

discontent and opposition to immigration reform which jeb bush had written a book about and that economics one —- economic legacy ending with the financial crisis in the v great recession also in the back of voters heads. also thent important moment is not trumps victory winning 45 percent of the total vote in 2016 had he lost the general electiontr i think they would have had a very good position and that debate which goes on between populism and conservativism as outlined in my book is more evenly matched that decisive moment was trump winning the presidency.

then that gives them the electoral college victory. once you become president you are the most famous person in the world maybe next to the fed chair but the most important in your party you define the alternatives and set the agenda and t set the example is not donald trump winning the nomination but him winning the presidency to transform the republican party and the conservative movement. >> so i'm wondering looking at the future of the right this and is nowll and we will see where we are so where are we?

based on your thinking of the past 100 years where do you think the generation is looking what does the future look like. >> it is very important americans remember it is american makes american conservatism distinct to the founding and the american political institution which has always made great space of liberty and freedom and i worry sometimes being drawn to the models of continental europe it is not the american right and even though the terrain of politics has shifted from the size and scope of government to the

cultural power and policymaking leveraged but if we forget the americans of american conservativism than the right is very different than what i write about but also we cannot sustain political coalition that would attract those who are living their lives to those challenges. >> i didn't until i became speaker of the house because i didn't put thought because i was busy formulating policy. but then the legislative branch i became a strong institutionalist for what you said we have to have a conservative movement tethered to principles that is uniquely

american. the european flavor , disregards the uniqueness of the american idea the country based on natural law. and there are reasons for that but to meem it is extremely important i conservative movement has these critical institutions that are dedicated to these founding principles so you have a core standard to operate to have great debates on policy matters within the sphere of these principles we won't get to that point until we have a party or movement capable of having a strong vibrant debate not dominated by just one personality so this populism is it tethered to principles

we can get to a populism and i think we will but those have a vibrant debate frankly the economics competition with china and technology and on and on we don't have a whole lot of time to get it right. but it do believe the country is yearning foror this. it is a center-right country. can we put together a movement that can move and accommodate and accept different factions that is a center-right that has men and women incapable of carrying that torch and standard? multiple. not just one to win elections and effectuate d, change, dodge bullets and get us back on track? i think we can but we're not

there now. >> that is a note to end on. the book ishe the right 100 year war. [applause] >> one of the great messages of the book is psychiatry of what to take to heart the hippocratic oath to do no harm in jumping into enthusiasm and refusing to see the evidence that runs contrary and thinking you have a magic one to solve the problem is

repeatedly happened over the last 200 years and the results have been uniformly disastrous. some of the's people that they had discovered the royal road to intervening? those who also appear is a gentleman who and the new jersey state until he died suddenly in 1933. and then he may well have picked up that was a result of infections in the body and the

only solution was to eliminate them if people had rotten teeth you would pull those. so when people don't get better instead of thinking perhaps i am on the wrong track have to be other areas of infection in the body and cotton starts eliminating stomach and spleen and : and uterus. women are disproportionately targeted. but 65 around 75 percent of the patients were operated on when i say cotton was sincere he decided any teeth