>> welcome to the 100 year war, the miles per hour conserve time" thinking andoo this is an intellectual and political history and it has power and used power in our politics the way it starts about the country and libertarians and gives us a lot too talk about and that's what we're doing this morning. we'll go through the conversation and might say one of the subjects with former house speaker paul ryan, a

practitioner and thinking about politics on the modern right. this is senior fellow here at ai where his work is focused on american politics and political start in history and he's a prominent journalist and analyst and washington pre-beacon and was the opinion editor of the weeklykl standard and he was contributing editor of national review and columnist for commentary magazine and matt's third book and all of them dealt with the evolution of the modern right. paul ryan is the speak r of the house of representatives and servee since 2019 and served as the first district of wisconsin and wrote quickly to serve as chairman of budgetd committee ad the weighs and means committee and served as speaker about three and a half years and felt like a lot longer, paul.

our format straightforward in conversation and no formal remarks and statements and school ideas and questions to map and after the back and forth. taking umm for questions and all ofth them watching online. two ways to ask questions of matt around e-mail or if you must on twitter. but byut e-mail, you can send a question to john roach, that's john.roach@ai.org and if you're on twitter, use ai to the right. with that, jump in. matt, congratulations on a superb book and the way to get

start second-degree the sense of the book and betelgeuse a bit of why you wrote it and why you wrote it in the way you did. i love reading old journalism and started as a political writer in washington 20 years ago, my hobby was reading through the archives and magazine where i worked and standards and then moving from there to the archives of national review andat all these

little magazines on the american right and from that it was an education not only in the history of the right but also american politics and the last half century and the other thing i've been doing in my spare time was two decades now. in the 2012 election and you played the part in that you were familiar with. you seem to me that the populous

moment began between the populous moment in the way it began with the second bush administration around 2005, 2006 and only gaining steam and why was this happening. it came down the escalator in 2018 and won the republican nomination and the history of the american wright with all the more necessary to findd out how we reached the impasse. i've been teaching this material in one form and over the years and some of my students are doing that. getting hand to the young person ands say it's kind of the key text of my field.

working heavily on the post and itit kind of ends its main bodyf the text and ends around and i felt it necessary to broaden the story and tell it in a narrative format that emphasizes intellectual developments along with political developments and hand to my students and say read this to the class. >> we're copping to a question pint like all great countries and lose the country to the left, we losery what the country

is all about. for me, it's a country -- the constitution of declaration is a natural lawho and that should be carried through and make sure that the country realizes its true potential and we lose that and other countries with the democracies it's extremely important and we're not going to be the moment for the team to have more and it's more fiscal based and i worry about the inflection points of the social contracts and dollars reserve currency and how much time do we have just a second ago when i

came to age and went to college from 88-92 and that time i came of political age in the reagan moment and i came into the conservative movement as a young person as a think tanker and member inside a fight that was alive andil well and bill clintn had just won and you had a big turn in the conservative movement and this is not new and happened from the beginning on. your book is a perfect example of that and from new young people who are shocked at the in-flighting of the h conservate movement and there's a big standard there and reagan-type person and you'll have that kind of fighting so we are where

we've been before. we don't yet know and it's important that the conservative movement in my opinion becomes the majority movement in the country w with respect to winnig elections and can affect policy and we can solve these big problems in the firms. >> matt, it must be a challenge too decide where to start. you mentioned that george nash is a wonderful book and looks at post-world war ii phenomena. >> what is there to learn now before the right of the new deal? >> for a historian, the two hardest questions are where to begin and what to leave out. those are the two things that everyone wants to talk about and criticize your book for. why did it begin and what's the

inauguration of the spring of 1921. the institutions we are meant to defend are the institutions created by american founding. the institution, principles of the deck la ration of independence. the political theory. but in 193 it, many people on the right believe add resolution had taken place in the nature of the american experiment and nature of the american government and they, the people on the right were defending the inheritedhe institutions of the constitution that advanced by fdr and the new deal. i thought it was important to showsh how the conservatives cae

to define themselves in opposition to the new deal. prior to 1932, where progressivismm would settle in the american political continual was up for grabs very much. teddy roosevelt aligned with the progressives and of course he was a very successful republican president. woodrow wilson was not as successful in somepr and more in others. he was a democratic president and not till the 1920s with the republican party of harding and coolidge that you saw them align itself against progressivism and say that we're going to define ourselves as the party of americanism. harding put it of normalcy. and gop of 1920s was extraordinarily successful. but events drew things and great

depression legitimizes the roe v2 for the rights of foreign policy and nonintervention in the eyes of mainstream american electric and conservatism there has to be reconfigured for the post-world war ii cold war era and it hadn't been told but it was told in some places figures like justin ray mondo considered in the book on the subject. but i wanted to incorporate that story into the story of the postwar conservative movements and then carry it through reagan and the most recent presidency including donald trump. >> the kind of work you're most engaged in, the efforts to reform our entitlement system and think about the role of government are often depicted by the left as an attempt to restore pre-new deal america.

is there truth to that? is the american right still seeking some way to recover from an error made my fdr? ryan higgins you can make that argument maybe 20 years ago. i don't think that's the case anymore.re i think everyone has reconciled themselves with this, what with i'd call the social contract. i think the country, look, the country and founders gave us a system to reach political consensus and when you do that, you do make sense. that's one of the reasons we're all enamored with the filibuster and the issue cuts against us. so i don't think that that's the case anymore. let's take the social contract with health and retirement for the old age, for low income. you have consensus on the right and left t that this is somethig that government has an important role to play in. then the question, if we agree with that and i would argue most do agree on the right.

then you have a case about whether markets and choice and individualism is involved in this or if you've a progressive, you see as a way of extending government's reach with lies and progressivism. i think the right reconciled itself with a social contract and great new deal and social society and l we work the programm and they work in the 21st century and they use markets and choice and competition as as means of delivering on these goal about the 4578 string in the country slowing downgrowth and creating a currency in the country. we're there and populism.

it wasn't popular and it wasn't going to be pursued and that gives you an example of where the right is now, many is either we don't touch it or we reform it. but repealing it is not in the cards. soy think that answers your question. >> it's always a dilemma for the right in a variety of context, which left is responding to and can the right of america always dealt on the defensive because first has to deal with the progressives. then fdr and then it has to do with lbj. now we're in the obama era and

dealing with that and the great awokenning as we meet here today and another left. each time the right time is the founding documents of national review when the nag signe was lawned in 1955. in many ways tomorrow night and conservatives against the new deal and then in parentheses and not sure if there's any other kind. there's clearly been a change. what's a change? passage of time and the small c conservatives instinctive and also the left has changed too.

the left has moved on into new territory and many ways we're not fighting over the new deal so much as the cultural agenda which comes out, i think into counter cultural movements in the late 19 60s and has ebbed overve the ensuing decade. >> i want to pick up what you said about phil buccally and everything needs toe be the case and probably should put ronald reagan on the line and what are you and buccally doing. what was his purpose and what was the movement he had in mind to create if you think about you and the rest of the massive project and what was his ambition. they put it at the young age and

his ambition was he said this to mike wall users and in an earl -- wallace in an early ninterview and the revolution he wanted to overturn was fdr's revolution and the revolution of 1932 and change of the nature much the american social contract with the new deal launch. how did you go about doing this? well, there are many different avenues he pursued. then first was institution building. in addition to national review, he was also responsible for the creation of -- play add part in the creation of intercollegiate study institute, isi and college arm of collegiate network. the young americans for freedom, all of which still continue to this day. he also launched magazines quarterly, the humanum life review, that 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 accept the resultses and be treated -- arguments and be treated seriously by every day americans watching the four channels they had access 20 in the mid 1960s. ...

these to reducing the little bit. intellectual highs were all in the area of government expansion and regulation. figures likeig frederick hayek noem friedman, fringe in the 1950s and 60s. he 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 theories saying that ayn rand would be part ofem this movement becausef her atheism saying that the libertarian as trent economist could be part of this movement because he was a

narco-capitalist empire type everything. national security office plays a big part in that. buckleys conservatism was one of engaged nationalism in america should be strong. america should be powerful independent but it also has to be engaged to roll back the soviet union. military establishment a standing army to move forward defense and for deployment of our troops and alliances like nato and interventionve like vietnam all of which the earlier right would haveis been extremey skeptical if not outright opposed to it. this is the version of american conservatism that bill buckley created. the last part of his legacy was political. working within the republican party the traditional vehicle of american conservatism can turn it away from the moderate

republican idealism. and toward conservatism. so he played a big role in the draft of the goldwater campaign that culminated in 1964 in barry goldwater's nomination for president on the republican ticket. ironically the goldwater campaign managed by one of the most prominent presence of this institution locked buckley out of the campaign. he was afraid goldwater would be associated with the a national review but that kind of political energy expressed itself in his early friendship with ronald reagan and even got to the point later in his life where he intervened, buckley that isma in democratic primaris or support democratic candidates including joe lieberman for senate in order to get rid of

the original me to earth. >> i came of age at this time and i studied it in congress -- and college and grew up with friedman and i had a conservative econ professor who gave me his issue of the national review. i didn't knowis what it was whei was in college. he said i think you should take this and i will give you my copy when i'm done with it and then i just consumed it and take it to the national review. if you are a young budding conservative in the late 80s, early 90s this was the pathnd he took and this was what you cameo into. we have different movements like this in different times when people are coming-of-age and i think buckley of all people for two or three decades the conservativeve ecosystem and

nevertheless bruce -- he still had a bunch of people john berkshire and others that were in a fight but he was a center of gravity. >> i would say of the debates were having over the new american right which is it tico my --er by my book the third new right over the last 100 years i think there is great energy devoted to building up an infrastructure that can compete with the conservative infrastructure that bill buckley began in the 1950s and 60s and early neoconservatives throughout the 70s and 80s and 90s. that had been missing for this new right for many years. now in the final years of the term presidency in the years subsequent to that they are building their own structure and it just shows you what you

appreciate the importance of institution. without these institutions, without these bases for work and organization j it sets people writing in their basements. >> buckley created this kind of conservative mainstream institution. in aou way it was built around ideas that would have been very controversial and the older right. presented itself as the consensus in mainstream of the right and within that mainstream and within those institutions there was a dividing line, dividing line between traditionalists and -- between freedom and that dividing line came to define the internal debater of buckley-ites conservative movement over time by tim to overcome those this

decisions became known as fusion is some the product of the buckley right beginning in the 1960s. w tell us about what fusionism was and what it was meant to be and what it wasn't. did it make sense as a way to solve the problems he confronted within his own camp? >> any one of the underappreciated people on the rightt was a man named frank meyer acondas who converted to the right. he became a contributorr to many of the right-wing journals like the american mercury. then he became associated with national review through. eventually a senior editor at national review at and frank meyer he had been trained in communist dialectic so he thought very dogged radically.

this is what conservatism is and these are the parameters in which we are going to operate as americans. buckley used to call them air traffic control because who isth making sure all the planes were going in the right direction. in the 1960s meyer who again has a libertarian strain to him and just loved it and had an appreciation of hayek begins the dispute withns other libertarias on the right over the nature of the american defense establishment whether a standing army, weapons program and let the conservatives desire in the blowback of communism was necessary. libertarians can to quote that everybody knows libertarians are

non-interventionist because war will grow the state and reduce individualism. it's in the course of this hearing that meyers says look i'm going to describe to you what american conservatism is. what american conservatism is tracing back to the american founding is an antithesis of individual liberty and traditional values what we call traditional values, morals and because the american founding took place before the great ruptures of the 19th century before the french revolution of 1789 americans have been able to synthesize these two principals freedom and virtue, liberty and order. the twisted tree of sa -- bill buckleys brother-in-law and who is moving towards a very devout

traditionalist policy atat this time. he took office and became more and more devout. he read frank's essay has said this is. freedom is not the end of politics. what you are trying to do frank is some type of fusion. so fusionism is one of those wordsatin that begins and ends p being appropriated, or neoconservatism. this is where the debate begins within the american right can you unify individual liberty and traditional morality and the buckley-ites associated with the national review said you could even if it didn't work out in very it was revealed in practice. it was revealed in the lives of many american conservativesiv themselves. these two things can coexist even if it doesn't workhe in

theory and by the way we shouldn't worry about whether or not.ferior and that wasn't enough for both cell on the religious right. he essentially broke off from american conservatism andno it wasn't enough for conservators like rothbart because of its belief that you needed a powerful military to defeat communism. i see a lot of debate today about the future of fusionism and it doesn't always work in theory but the closer you look at my breakdown and that's a work in progress and how people on the right. >> let me put it this way. for people who aren't used to the word fusion is in the reagan coalition. when you go into politics

absolutely fusionism works so try working in congress and building a coalition of majority in congress it requires fusionism to come together and members of congress on the alballot running for election except for this. they know in a big diverse country to have a majority theyy have to coexist in a coalition of people who come from different regions, different backgrounds different philosophies within the conservative movement. the fusionism is absolutely essential to have practical work to pass laws. the think tank is harder to justify and it's hard to rationalizetu and put it togethr but when you're actually practicing politics it becomes essential.

>> the coalition began to be built around this notion took shape through the 1960s and in the 70s when united states experiencedre a truly difficult decade in a lot of ways the story you tell him this book is the story off extraordinary vibrancy and stepping back from the book the 1970s seem like the most important decade of the 10 decades that you describe. what happened to the right in the 70s? how is it different coming out of the 70s and why? >> the simplest answer to that question is new groups became associated with the right in the american conservative movement in the 1970s and a lot of that played out as a result of the overreach ofof liberalism and te radical left during the student

rebellion, during this social turbulence in the night late 1960s and early 1970s.s. people who identified as being on the right came into alliance with the american conservatives and so it became a question of how american conservatism would deal with these new entrants and give you two examples. the first are what bill gavin a speechwriter foror richard nixon called streetcorner conservatives. streetcorner conservatives who are not familiar with hayek and not familiar with russell kirk the great traditionalists but they in fact often word democrats and part of 50 years majority coalition but in the late 1960s and early 1970s

they read the newspapers and say what is happening to my country? there's a a rising crime arise d drug abuse dilution of the families and the democratic party racked over the argument aboute vietnam. so they began moving into the republican column and they came to be known as hardhats because they tend to be blue-collar. they tend to be not having a colleggr the hardhats enter as the republican coalition and their critical tocr richard nixon in 1972. they become part of the right over the years there are the reagan democrats and they swerve toward perot in 1992 and newt gingrich bring some backend in 1994.

there are the -- trump silent majority. there's another group as well. those are the neoconservatives. liberalre anti-communist. they were democrats who for the samehe reasons found themselves out of sync with their alliess n the left of the democratic party. t not all of them migrated to the republican party 1970s. irving kristol -- richard nixon and it's f a scandal and many of them don't make the jump to the republican party well into the 1980s. these neoconservative intellectuals who are often while traditions within the liberal establishment now are migrating to the right. so the national review conservatives have p to decide w did these neocons fit into the

picture and i always remember the moment i read in my research and editorial in the spring of 1971 in the national review and essays and "commentary" magazine clearly indicative of the editor's commentary at that time moving to the right and the title of the editorial was come on in, the water is fine. the welcoming and bringing the neocons in. in the last group that enters the picture on american right in there 1970s is --. the right have has been dormant in many ways at the national political level since the beginning but it's because of federal decisions and judicial rulings in the 1970s and the president'sre appointment of jiy carter that you see evangelical and fundamentalist groups and

math come to the democratic party and the vehicle being the 1980s. american right was very differenton once we have the reagan revolution because not only does it have buckley but it now has the hardhats and it now has the neoconservatives and now has the religious right. >> i would add one thing. inside the party was the supply-side movement which m reinvigorated economics within the conservative movement from pain and suffering to pro-growth opportunity. bob mundel andnd art laffer and bob barkley and to credit "the wall street journal" editorial pages they reinvigorated it and reagan was not a supply-sider. he became -- with art laffer.

that was my entrance into the movement but that really reinvigorated i an economic message. >> what did the supply-siders say? >> wellto frankly they were the monarchists who were they chicago guys people like bob mundel who is a chicago guy. there is was a fight inside chicago university of chicago which was nixon took us off the gold standard and you had a big monetary policy fight between never had before. so you had supply-siders bringing answers to the problem tax reform tond achieve economic growth and to show how you can have growth and opportunity and to bring an agenda which bill stiger and

jack kemp in 1978 and then in 1981 and 82 passed tax cuts and they showed what real growth look like. it was actually jack kennedy who started it 93% top marginal tax rates but they proved the idea and one of the things we did we wanted that fresh evidence because we were all coasting on the fumes of the reagan revolution and the reagan movement and the tax cuts which was achieving higher income mobility lower wage workers opportunity was occurring because of supply-side economics. we were running on 20so or a evidence. we got fresh evidence that yes it does actually work. covid clearly threw a curveball

but i would say the supply-side movement, the debate within the establishment of the republican party or the conservative movement was supply-sider prevailed and that really helped put the coalition together in my view. >> all these threads and strands in the 70s w which went you look at them in the way in the ways of them are a strange combination of ideas and a peculiar ablution for the right who have been brought together by ronald reagan. the striking thing about yourt book matt is it doesn't culminate in reagan. it's built up to ronald reagan and then down to say look how far we have come down. that's not the argument you make and in a way thehe book struggls like every book about the right in last 50 years has struggled and how do you explain ronald reagan? the who was this person and what did he do?

>> is an example of what it means to beia driven. >> edmund morris the great biographer of ted roosevelt mentioned writing reagan's biography. parts o of it it depends on whee you open it up. but there are parts where morris found he had no idea what was going on behind hiso mind so he had to create a fictional character fromn the reagan to ty to bring out this person. i don't think anyone would have. that.ot i think ronald reagan was absolute self-contained and very unusual for someone like that. he was always on stage. but he has other qualities as well which i think are important

and consequential. one? was that he was very consistent over the decades. reagan shows up in my storyfy in 1947 o testifying to -- and hada hopper who was a gossip columnist and she interviewed him about ron and what hee thinks. what are you talking about freedom and democracy and american exceptionalism? in 1947 is word for word what he says in his farewell address to the nation in january of 1989. there's little in his basic elite system that changes. i think part of that has to do with the fact that he was very old. very old. he was born in 1911 and he doesn't become a republican until he's 51 years old. he votes for fdr four times but he had in his head picture of what america was like before the

new deal. again it's about the practice rather than a theory. for him to ask in illinois with america as it should be in the rock record was how american should live.d everything there. and that was in his bones. two other things. he was always very much oriented towardut the future and i think this is something he picked up from fdr. he looked at fdr speeches and then looked at reagan speeches including reagan's famous address is supporting barry goldwater in the last week of the campaign in 1954. reagan is picking up fdr's text, rendezvous with destiny. you and i, fdr loved that. reagan does the same y thing. it's not you and me having a conversation that orientation for the future is unusual to this day for conservatives.

as a conservative i'm looking to the passenger's ronald reagan looking at the future and then there's personal characteristics that makes him stand out as the pantheon of the american right. the person who i enjoyed learning about with senator robert taft who is mr. republican who represented the pre-world war ii right opposing americans entry into the organization. robert taft who ran unsuccessfully t several times would be the first to tell you he was not the most charismatic person around. some of us have the tendency to be dour and very pessimistic and gosh the world is going to in a handbasket. that wasn't ronald reagan. nothing faced him so this too was unusual and it made him appealing toic the electorate

particularly when he threw the word conservatives for the american right in. then hered comes ronald reagan and with a movie star hair and that baritone and people are like oh that's not what i think of when i think of conservative. it made him so and a historic figure and consequential president who may have been the exception to the american right and not the rule. >> i live 80 miles upstream from dixon now and the reason i mention that is because for us where i came from the sky down the river just became president of the united states and this is amazing and it brought people into looking at the entrée into oh let's see what this is all

about. that's where a lot f of people came from. james and wisconsin had such a great way about him that he was invitingo people who had never looked at it before to look at it.az that's why they were such an amazing intersection of time and that's why this fusion occurred the reagan coalition really came together because of personality. >> you had that with buckley to two. with reagan's two-parterr in 199 in his presidency is cut short because of his alzheimer's diagnosis in 1994 and with buckley's lengthy retirement. buckley really stretched out his retirement. first he retired from public speaking and then he retired from the national review and one thing he never retired from buses indicated column.

with the departure of reagan and buckley you lose the ecumenical figures. almost every part of the right and certainly every faction within americann conservatism sw it as unifying. and then if fractiousness and the conflicting nature of the american right comes in. >> paul you entered the political world and got to washington after reagan. where did the right think it was headed? >> we were in a big fight. i was at a think tank called empower america. bill bennett and jack kemp. there's this fusion right there. they were the heads of the three different movements working with people at project for american future with crystal and those guys all products of irving.

i never thought of myself as a neocon as a supply-sider frankly. we were fighting the -- which was pat buchanan a little bit of turow and it was funny i grow up, i read from college on the national review but it it was bramwell and it was broom low and it was bramwell and sullivan and guys like that of the national r review fighting. i think it was project for american fusion. the neocons fighting the paleo cons the point being when the reagan year ended with the defeat of h.w. bush by clinton a ton of soul-searching was going on and the conservative movement turnednt and bird and shot at eh other and not until the standardbearer emerged in this case it was w who won and he

worked on the compassionateco conservatism. it never really took hold i would say. it never had a solid fusion because of the circumstances of the wars in the rest and i won't get into it all put in the post-reagan era in 92 when clinton won we were an internal struggle in thee conservative movement for the future of the conservative movement and i think we still are frankly. we have had pauses and we have won some houses. we haveut never settled into a posture of a majority area and center-right movement that's capable of racking up consistent majority present season putting in place a governing agenda from the 21st century. right now it's dominated by trump which is untethered to principle populism. it's a cult of personality

populism which isn't really an agenda, to person. we are still in this and underneath that is the kind of early mind --n 90s and the fight we are having now. >> matt in a way your book describes the post-reagan right and reagan is the exception. there's a way in which populism rose to the forefront in the 1990s. i don't think it's that way now. it was a time when the populism that has been held at bay in some ways became the face of the right. how do you think about the post-reagan years? >> one of the big themes of my book is this relationship between conservatism and populism and the irony that oftentimes the only conservatives get into power is through populist politics which

conservatives like buckley and meyers who i mentioned were conflicted but but this is cleay evident in the reagan election. populism being one of the driving forces with reagan able to synthesize populism with the supply-side agenda in the interest of the religious right and the taxcutting, the defense buildup in the various factions on american right as well but his departure from the team this argument begins anew and by our thought it was interesting in 1988 the gop primary in many ways was a missed opportunity because you had a moment where the p republican party could hae been forced to choose between jack kemp and the canon. he doesn't run in 1988 and he

waits until 1992 because he recognizes that reagan's successors probably going to be george h.w. bush who was not a reaganite. he was an establishment republican. there we get the fight between the establishment republican bush and buchanan in 1992 representing the populist wing, representing the versions of the old right and attitudes towards war andit immigration and really really beginning can be canned and 90 picking up the trade issue becoming more protectionist. so that debate was had but the canon never accepts it. in 2000 he leaves the republican party and he runs for president on the reform ticket for one of his rivals as a businessman named donald trump.

i think buchanan is the first to recognize the irony that 16 years later would ascend to the presidency on the idea that he was lambasting buchanan in the 2000 cycle. at the moment we think the argument has been settled with populism and the conservative governingg class they came to power with ronald reagan lasted through the first george bush was kind of moved up to capitol hill during the republicanre revolution gingrich and came back down pennsylvania avenue with george w. bush but that conservative governing class took about 30 years. >> i look at my time in congress where the majority when obama came in, and this book i had

seen for years out there. i was two or three on that name. our goal with that plan was to recruit members of congress who are willing to take tough votes. what happened to her majority was we got. they ended up recruiting the local county executive for state senator who is the next guy in line. our movement got intellectually and we got and happy we did earmarks and it is kind of. those were the young upstarts in those days in the house and did not like that. we lose o her majority. then we recruited people that we thought and prove through that would be willing to take up votes and we were excited about the tea party movement theire member talking with the tea

party movement was our chance to get supplied chart -- supply-side 1 2.0 and 1.0 was agnostic and 2.0 was not so supply-side 2.0 was pro-growth economics limited government entitlements under control and a robust foreign-policy and on the issues of trade and immigration it was a fight but that we push that aside. we g really got the majority bak but it was in a divided government approve or couldn't ieffectuate much. >> is that with a tea party really was? >> in the beginning it was that there wass a fight them back to the supply-side versus the paleo cons. trade and i immigration versus e others and hindsight is me looking back we didn't understand and this is where we made mistakes we didn't

understand the potency and the power of those issues. you can see signs of this and where they establish republicans put people like me included missed was the affects of issues like trade and immigration. and how that played into not just policy. people thinking and perceptions. we were more focused on the tea party and the libertarian supply-side. all of us more or less agreeing on -- so the isolationism had a crepeti den like it is now at tt time. and what ended up happening was the trade and immigration issue overtook it and turned a tea party and something like what it is today. there was a moment in time where we really thought we had a shot. when we did get finally our majorities in the republicans which we lost in 12 people

freaked out after we lost 12. it wasn't fun losing in 12 but when we lost in 12 people freaked out. and that what happened from my perspective was a not having these nice guys on the ticket. no more nice guys. dlet's just send an apex predatr onre the ticket to throw hand grenades. so the entertainment wing ofty r party in the digital age of cable rose at thee same time. i think the entertainers are placed the think they -- think tanks have people replace the buckley-ites and the country reactionary moment -- movement against the progressive reactionary barack obama the best entertainer the best bombs or he could. ted finished second and he was the insider in congress.

they threw donald trump added anyone. >> i remember ben carson. >> he was leaving for a month or so. he was the rotatingg lead. all outsiders and this testifies the importance of 2012 elections. i think you were in the beginning of your first term. and for the world would be a very different place but i agree that 2012 is the hinge. many people on the right had internalized the idea that because of american except her was him barack obama had to be jimmy carter and he could only be one term because he was so interested in moving america in the direction where it had not gone for many years.

as he said his mission was to be the progressive reagan to be just as consequential to change politics. the right eye think really believe that this was as centered demand put itin i think this is the battle and win the election called for obama on election night of 2012 early in the evening by the 11:00 news. i think many people on the right were just stunned. >> try being on the ticket. >> i can imagine, i can imagine. or writemade them say if we are reaching this point electoral input if we elect scott in massachusetts. obama does obamacare anyway we have a tea party congress but they aren't able to do anything.

then in 14 we get a republican wave thatt captures the senate and after the election of 2014 obama says oh yeah i heard the people that voted republican in congress and i hear the people that voted democrat and i hear the people that didn't vote at all and i'm the governed for those people. it's infuriating to the electiot should matter. i think that's true of a lot of people on the right to say we need an outsider. we need an external force tofo come in and shake up the system that's only way we will be able to achieve many of our goals. and they got it. >> i want to open things up for questions so think of good questions but i want to follow up on this pretty missions -- mention three shoes immigration war -- and those were the issues where things broke open where voters on the right saw it

wasn't working. this seeming consensus by those on the bush side was the right was wrong about what the voters wanted. >> it was an allusion that should have been apparent. as reporter i was in the immigration debate during george w.'s time and that editor was supportive of the conference of immigration reform that was included in the amnesty bill. but we said there's no way that was going to happen because even if that past the republicans in the house would not allow it. that's when you see a real break between the grassroots right and the conservatives in washington over the issue of immigration. it's a little bit more complicated because for a while

republican voters stood behind the republican president who had launched the wars in afghanistan and iraq. beginninghe in 2007 rights of rn paul in the property movement you see therehe are two there is discontent on the right with george w. bush's foreign policy. protectionism is below that more complicated. i think what did and coming out against the transpacific partnership or tpp as was said throughout the campaign was basically provide a concrete symbol for the depths of despair that were ravaging america from the opioid crisis, the ricin alcoholism -- the howling out of thee rust belt.

>> this unimaginable crisis. he said it's the deindustrialization and china's entry into the world trade organization. that's what giving us. whether that's true is an empirical question and the more complicated question. politically it's brilliant and speaks to his rudeness. he did a similar thing with immigration. immigration complicated issue clearly illegal immigration is something conservatives opposed. what happened with the rise of isis in the jv teams in the second half of obama second term after the shootings in san bernardino trump opposes -- and he's 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 searchinf for jobs that we need to make america safe. you see how he's able to thread these issues together in 2016 and as a postscript i would say it was something he was not able to do in 2020. >> let's open things up for questions but i would only ask that you ask a question that what rather than make a statement >> or fraser statement in the form of a question. and please wait for the microphone and tell us who you are only calling you for question. let's start there in the back. >> hi eliza and i work at third way. one reason we are having these discussions about the new right is it becomes apparent a lot of small government conservatives are not that popular with voters

like rolling back the ac and social security and medicare are toxic now so what does that mean for the american right? >> i'm working on a big vote at it here on answering that question of ac and there are 18 of us working on this project. i think you have to reconcile our life with these programs. like he said the new deal these are settled issues i would argue health and retirement security and the question is how do you go about achieving those in the best possible way to maximize upward mobility and limited government in your economy? 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 task of repairing

them from bankruptcy and making them perform the best where you've been going to the issue is the left wants government to run at all. they want no private sector. they want command of resources, and means of production. they want to use it as an extension of their ideology. we want to use the power of markets and competition to deliver these services that we as a country have reached consensus on. that may sound like me too-ism.. it's radical practicism. we are where we are and we agree these things are here in should stay so let's get on with the business of performing these tasks the right way so we don't lose our reserve currency and we don't have a debt crisis because of that happens imagine what happens with associate tract in the polarization if we go down that path and 10 or 20 years.

boomers are retiring at these things explode and then you have a c total debt crisis where you are taking benefits of from people in real life come real-time but come real-time professor would happen if we basically do nothing. conserving these things you have to step ahead of the thing they have to win the argument and whenen majorities and you have o have a president willing to stick his or her neck out toha t this done. i think that's the key path of the conservative movement. >> murphyy i think matty made a passing reference to the iraq war. does your book or could you address c where the republican voters soured on that concept? i saw a powerful moment in the 16 campaign when donald trump

really had a moment early on were he just eviscerated that in a very passionate way. i thought it was a shot but i think his history or post history was spot on and i thought that would resonate and i wondered if you could identify when you felt that was soured upon by republican voters. >> it's a complicated question because i think public opinion began turning against the war after the bombing of the mosque in 2006 and the onset of the civil war in iraq. and where the war began spinning out of control. public opinion was ambivalent about the policy in iraq changing our strategy there. mccain y and romney engaged in a mini-debate over the cert in the

run-up to the primaries in 2008. mccain who is in strong support of the surge one and with mccain you could still see winning in iraq or achieving stability there that would allow us to leave was powerful among republicans. i think what was going on when attacked jeb bush when he said that the mac us into a war iraq was part of it but also much more. it was more about ending the bush era, turning the page on the bush era. we think about the condition of america in 2016 and 2017 to clearly we are ending a very polarizing future presidency with barack obama, the situation overseas at that point, the situation domestically is not

good and yet who did the two parties offer? jeb bush and hillary clinton. another scion of the bush dynasty and you can't get more establishment than hillary clinton on the left, right? so trump basically is saying bush is over. it there is still huge discontent and opposition to comprehensive immigration reform which jeb bush had written a book about prior to his run and the economic legacy of the bush presidency which ended with the global financial crisis and the great recession is also in the back of voters minds. i would also say important moment is not's victory in the republican primary. donald trump 145% of the total

votes in the republican primary in 2016. had he lost the general election i think the anti-trump forces would still have had been a very good position in that debate which is a debate that goes on between populism and conservatism for 100 years as i outlined in my book the decisive moment was trump winning the election and winning it on a fluke. 30,000 votes gave him an electoral college victory a substantial electoral victory. once he becomes president he was the most famous person in the world and the most important person in the world and maybe next to the fed chair but one or theim other. definitely the most important person in your party. he defined the alternatives and set the agenda. it's not donald trump winning the nomination that is of

consequence it's him winning the presidency and being president for four years that transforms the republican party and the conservative movement. >> our time is drawing to a close and there's much more to be said. a wonderfully can and thinking about the future of the right. thisis book and at the end of te trump era. we will see where we are. where are we? had the think based on your thinking about the past 100 years of american right have a think about where the right is and who the generation is looking to? >> i would say it's very important that american conservatism remember is american and whatco makes it distinctive references american founding and the critical institution and the american political tradition which is

always states of liberty. i worry sometimes that the right today is being drawn to models found in continental europe which is a different right. it's not the american right. even though i think the terrain of our politicss have shifted from arguments over the size of government in the west cultural power and public policy may be leveraged. the less cultural power. we forget the america in american conservatism. the right would be something very different than it's been for the 100 years i write about and also we will not be able to sustain a political coalition that would attract non-political everyday americans living their

lives looking for substandard answers to concrete policy challenges. >> i didn't put a lot of thought into the execution because i was busy formulating policies and with committee chairs and then when i ran the legislative branch i became a strong institutional as for what you just said basically which is we have to have a conservative movement that is tethered to principals that is uniquely american. i think the blood and soil nationalists would which is this european flavorf of populism he on the right disregard the uniqueness of the american idea of a country based on natural law and there are reasons for that and weor have been through that but to me it's extremely important the conservative movement dedicate to these

founding principals that you have a core standard at which you operate and then it's a movement that can have great debates on policy matters within the sphere of these principals. and we won't get to that point until we have a party or a movement that's capable of having a strong debate not dominated by just one personality. this kind of populism is one that's not tethered to the principals. we can get to a populace and i think we will, that is tethered to principals that have a vibrant debate in the way look at it frankly from it numbers an economic standpoint in competition with china with policy and on and on. we don't have a whole lot of time to get it right. i do believe the country is yearning for this. it is still a center-right country so the question is can a movement that

can move and can accommodate and can acceptpt different factionsn a new fusion that is a center-right fusion that has men and women capable of carrying that torch multiple, not just one so that we can win elections effectuatete change dodge bulles and central problems in this country to get us back on track andd have a great 21st century america and i think we can but we are there now and we have to go through some cycles to get there. >> that is the note to end on a wheel and there. the book is the right by jeff beck and with paul ryan. thank you. [applause]