Welcome to politics prose. Im brad graham, the coowner of the bookstore along with my wife Lissa Muscatine and were very delighted this evening to be hosting Nicole Hemmer whos here to talk her new book, the partizans the conservative revolutionaries who remade american politics. Nicoles a political historian and founding director of the new center for the study of the presidency at vanderbilt university. Shes also a cofounder of made by history, the historical Analysis Section in the washington post. And she writes regularly for number of other publications and a book six years ago, messengers of the right, nicole traced the emergence of conservative media institutions in the midtwentieth century. In her new work, she examines why the Republican Party in the 1990s shifted from kind of conservativism that Ronald Reagan had represented and the previous decade, a conservative wisdom that was optimistic and, popular to a more pessimistic, angrier, even revolutionary conservativism. It was a period nicole, of intensifying partizan conflict when a new fury took hold on the right and when republicans grew less tolerant of dissension in the ranks and began democrats not as opponents but as enemies. What accounted the shift . Well, nicole, a number of factors which shell get into in a minute, but understanding why it happened is important, because it remains very relevant today, as nicole explains. It set republicans on a course that led eventually to the election of donald trump and to the radicalization of the right. Now were in for a very informative discussion with who will be in conversation this evening, one of the most astute political analysts and washington today, journalist and author e. J. Dionne. Hes also a longtime friend of poppy and of mine and listens. In addition to writing an always interesting column for the washington post, e. J. Is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and teaches at georgetown. Hes also the author or coauthor of a number of books about politics. His latest, 100 democracy, which was cowritten Myles Rapoport and published last march, makes very persuasive case for universal voting. So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Nicole Hemmer and dionne. Thank you, brad. And thanks to our friends at cspan and in the audience out there. I love doing events at this bookstore as everybody in this room knows this bookstore is also a community organization. Its a community builder. I love the people who work here. And lisa inherited a tradition. They kept it alive and on it. And to keep a tradition alive, youve got to build on it. And theyve done great things with this bookstore. And i am so pleased and honored to be with nicole. I got to say, i love this book. I its probably the highest compliment can give. It is that you dont realize how much you are learning because book is so engaging as you through it and also like it for a very pretty killer, maybe even selfish reason because in 1992 i was assigned to cover Pat Buchanans president ial camp bed by the washington post. Spent a lot of time on that campaign. And i now learn from nicole how historically important that campaign is. You know, journalists write the first draft of history. I even made a couple of footnotes. I discovered in the book. But she makes it very, very compelling case that. Basically, reaganism and its influence ended almost as soon he left office, which is not something we usually assume. And the case she makes is really powerful. And so nicole wanted to why dont you just start there by explaining you came to that view, how you make the case here. Because as you know, people making references reagan and how much they were reaganite even as were moving away and doing so quite quickly. Yeah well of all thank you so much for doing tonight. You are an inspiration, a writer. So all of those those kind words mean quite a lot to me. So you know, this book in many ways began just the puzzle that e. J. Was talking about, that the mythology reagan grew exponentially, really, in the 1990s and the 2000. And a particular set of politics that reagan embraced were under challenge almost immediately after he left office. And was something that i started thinking about as i finishing my first book. I was writing about reagans election, and i wrote in the book little too preciously, that it was both a victory and a valedictory. It was the of this cold war movement, but it also felt like a curtain call, like like something was coming to an what ultimately was coming an end was the cold war. And what i realized as i was working through the argument of this book was Ronald Reagan was fundamentally a cold war president , that the cold war provided a kind of logic a kind of language for, his conservatism. And what that meant wasnt just that he spoke the language of democracy and freedom, something that he didnt always out in reality, but that he really appealed to throughout. But that that language and that argument about democracy, freedom affected certain parts of his policies. He truly believed that the Free Movement of people and goods was part of democrat capitalism. And so you read him on immigration and he sounds quite a lot like a democrat, especially compared to todays Republican Party and on trade. So these of things that were core to the conservative movement and during the cold war and because reagan was so popular, though he had real critics on the right, i mean, there was subset of conservatives who just punched at reagan every day of his presidency, but they found it difficult land those punches. But as soon as he leaves office, as as the cold war ends, it opens up, the space for what was, at least in part, an anti small d democratic conservative ism that pat buchanan represents. You know, one of the fascinating is the psychology of reaganism more than anything was quite different from the psychology of the later right, whose rise you describe. And i hope the power of reagan came partly because even though he forgot all the ideas, he never really stopped being an optimist. New dealer, you know, he kept roosevelts optimism and shelved. Most of the policy. Can you talk about that psychological difference . And he did have support some of that same far right in his rise, you know, including the Birch Society and others. But he didnt convey that in the way the right that came along afterward did write that optimism, that emotion. The heart of reaganism is really important and i think this is an important caveat. It was an optimism that was heard by white voters. You know, he was not popular, as popular as he was. Right. He left office one of the most popular president s in modern u. S. History. He was never popular with black voters or with hispanic voters. So were talking about a particular subset of voters here. But to them, his appeals were deeply optimistic. He appealed sometimes to fear and resentment, but oftentimes to that kind of mourning in America Sentiment and, the right that would come after him was not interested in that they werent interested in pragmatic ism or popularity. And they certainly werent interested in optimism. They were focused on a much darker version of the states and a much darker version of conservatism and the right something that, for those of you who remember the 1992 campaign was very present in Pat Buchanans Convention Speech in 1992. If there were liberals in the audience whod say, arent you being awfully nice to reagan in this account . And i was really struck a phrase in your book. I have i if you look at youll see i read this very carefully. Its full of notes. At the top of this page i wrote provide locative of this sentence. You referred to the colorblind racism of the reagan era and thing i was thinking about is as it went along, as you know, when we try to think the roots of trumpism, on the one hand, you make a very persuasive case that what followed was quite different. And yet there were also some constant equity. So i wonder if you could talk about the continuities as well. Absolutely. And sometimes the continuity is or the differences are differences degree and sometimes there are differences of kind. But that colorblind racism is really important. Its the difference between the dog whistle, the bullhorn and you can argue that theyre the same ideas are just packaged or presented in different but it does matter if you feel like you have to appeal to universalism if you have to put an optimistic on opportunity if you have to appeal to a quality versus saying for instance that iq is genetically determined and it depends on your race an idea that becomes very in the mid 1990s but i think that its also important to emphasize reagan is still in the dna of the conservative movement and ideas particularly like deep tax cuts certainly remain although they get more dogmatic after reagan of course famously cut taxes and then he raised them a couple of times and didnt face the same kind of backlash that somebody like george h. W. Did. But so there are some are some continuities, but the things that made reagan ism, reaganism, what made it distinct from cold war conservatism as a movement, that emotion that youre talking about, that to compromise and that of the big tent the idea that there are reagan democrats as opposed to the 1990s, when you get renos republicans in name only the shrinking boundaries of conservatism, those differences still seem important. The continuities there are a lot of things to get to, and i just want to mention a couple because we might not. But you should read the book. Youll learn things. Youll either be reminded of things you forgot or learn things you never know. For example, i did you know that tucker and Laura Ingraham got their starts on msm and theres some great stuff on the changes in the media, which i do want to get to. And there is also, i think, something you explore that we is there was a real turn on the right on immigration long time ago which we can talk about in national review, which had long held the view when it published. Peter brimelow and that very rightly controversial, thats a nice thing to say about a book that he wrote. There are some great things there, but i want to go to two immediately political things we all like. It was smart historian confirms something you thought and so im grateful for your insight that what the conservatives had against they actually held against George W Bush. George h. W. Bush rather and then later in some ways George W Bush, you describe as the last reaganite. But the a lot of the the the knocks on george h. W. Were really not you could have made of reagan but he was sort of such a hero that it was impossible to land those punches. And then they all went to h. W. Can you talk about that transition, and then i do want to talk a bit about Pat Buchanans campaign. Its so fascinating because once you realize thats whats happening. Its impossible to see. So you have these these hard core conservatives. They call themselves the new right, who were constantly complaining about reagan. They complained about him from the very start of his presidency presidency. Theyre not able to make any headway because hes popular. As i mentioned before, when george h. W. Bush into office, theyre like all right, this is our guy, because this is our punching bag, because he he didnt have the conservative credentials. He was always suspect. He was somebody who had been part of the ford administration. They dont like the ford administration. He was somebody was seen as moderate alternative to reagan in 1980. And they never trusted his conservative bona fides. And so that forced him into kind a corner to have to make promises. Read my lips, no new taxes. And as i mentioned earlier, you know, reagan raised taxes. Two of the biggest tax hikes in American History in 1982 and 1984. But it is when george h. W. Bush raises taxes that they not only it, but that their complaints gain traction. Same thing happens with debates over affirmative action. When George W Bush doesnt sign what was called or ends up signing what the right to write it, as opposed to bill in 1991. That is something you Ronald Reagan, had reluctant advanced affirmative action policies to his presidency. But its george h. W. Bush who really takes it on the chin for advancing those policies or for compromising any pragmatism from reagan was part of his appeal. Pragmatism in george h. W. Bush was signs heresy and. Its those ideas that h. W. Bush was a heretic that made it easier for pat buchanan to run in 1992. You have forgotten that in 1988, pat buchanan wanted to run. He floated trial balloon for a campaign. In the spring of 1987. While hes still part the reagan administration. And he realizes very quickly that hes just going to be a sacrificial for the new right. And he lets Pat Robertson that role instead. And he waits for more years. And once hes running against bush of reagan, then the very same politics take hold and gain more traction than they would have. 88 you just parent that actually another thing that i had utterly forgotten and maybe and im thinking about it particularly today because joe biden gave his speech about crime calling for a restoration, the assault weapons ban. Id forgotten how strongly ronald supported the assault weapons ban when it was first passed. And he was quite eloquent on the topic. Yeah, i mean this is where you start to see a particular policy. Immigration is one of them. But guns are absolute another and in part you can understand, right, one of the bills that he supported after leaving office was the brady named after somebody who was shot in an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But even after and when it came to the assault weapons ban, reagan was strongly he comes out with other former president s or he was strongly supportive of it. He comes out with other president s, says, yes, we should have this assault weapons ban. And he runs up against the opposition of the nra. No, i think that pat buchanan could sue donald trump for plagiarism. You go to the 1992 campaign and something i even covered that campaign had forgotten that at the end of that campaign, pat buchanan went to the border with mexico and called for building a wall. That was back in 1992. Talk about the campaign where you know, it really was this mixture, a certain kind of populous, some on economics because of trade with these very, very wing positions on culture and immigration. That was almost a perfect template. Its hard to figure out where Donald Trumps campaign was actually from. Pat buchanans i think thats exactly right, which is why hes on the cover which is why he makes the cover a nontrump. Yes. So pat buchanan even changes quite dramatically on immigration in a very short amount of time in 1984 when he was talking immigration he was talking about undocumented immigrants and how they paid payroll and they paid they paid sales taxes were good taxpaying citizens who werent on the welfare rolls. It was basically way of being like theyre better than black people. But he was saying things that were very reaganesque also today sounded like a democrat when he was talking about immigration, that was not the case. Just few years later when he latches onto this idea that those issues of culture and race were the ones that that Ronald Reagan had failed to exploit. And that was the vein that you got to tap into. And so he to talk about the border wall. He called it the buchanan fence. He starts to tie what he now calls illegal aliens to crime. Accusations from both him and attorney general bill barr that it was illegal aliens who made up most of the people or a good chunk of the people were responsible for the riots in los angeles in 1992. And this criminalization and this this trying to stir folk outrage and emotion around border was something that took real work in california in 1991 and 92. We like two or 3 of voters put immigration at the top, their list of concerns. Obviously, by 1994, that looks very different with proposition one, 87. And it took a Political Movement to turn immigration into a culture and race issue that could be exploited. You know, your discussion of prop 187 is really good and it is really central to this. Lets a couple of other characters who play very big role in your book correctly so i think one is russell limbaugh. Lets just stick with rush for a second because i think you talk about two interrelated, developing ants that are so important. One is the rise of conservative talk radio, which limbaugh was the of. And he supported pat buchanan. So there is a really interesting synergy between the two of them. In 92, but the rise of rush and then the spread of of right wing radio across the am dial as music migrated to fm. But then you also talk about the rise cable leading to fox and its a great discussion because its not just about the rise of fox news who by the way important piece of history. Roger ailes tried to turn Rush Limbaugh into a tv show. And when that worked he didnt give up, he just did a whole network and but you you talk about how other kinds of cable not just fox really helped change the nature of the political dialog. Absolutely is a polite word to. Well dialog is an interesting word because this was an age of a newly Interactive Media landscape that ability. What made Rush Limbaugh so important just that he was a entertainer. But that his show was interactive, that you could call and you actually talk to him. This is also era where you have like god help you if you disagreed with. Well, yes, he had caller abortion which was an incredibly offensive thing that he did early in his career where he would abort callers that disagreed with. But you had like larry king live where again, you could call any you could be part of this new Cable Television where ross perot launches his. In 1992 and that interactive city is so important and so many of the experiments in news in the 1990s were about trying to take essentially radio and put it on television. So you have a thats a precursor to msnbc called americas talking. You have something called National Empowerment television, which is a precursor fox news in many ways. I see a head shaking as somebody who is probably on it. I think it was. Yes i thought so. Nice to see you. Yeah. So you have these experiments in in cable, in talk radio, and it is again, its its diversifying. Whats available on television, but its also creating this new conservative punditry that e. J. Indicated was not necessarily just happening on Something Like Rush Limbaughs show or on fox news. It was much more intensively happening. I mean, buchanan comes up on cnns crossfire and pbs is the mclaughlin, as you mentioned, and colter and Tucker Carlson and laura ingram all get their start on msnbc and on entertainment shows like politically incorrect, which debuts in 1993. It spends a few years on comedy central, defines that channel in the years before the daily show and then moves to abc. And thats where people like kelly and fitzpatrick, who would later become kellyanne conway, ann colter and, nash dsouza start to become familiar household names because and are also experimenting with this idea of politic as outrage and entertainment and theyre perfecting style not on fox news but on politically incorrect on msnbc. The other person that needs to be. But there are a lot of people in the book who need to be mentioned, Newt Gingrich and he is a complicated figure. And all this began as a rockefeller republic. And way back when and you have a really interesting treatment of in this. Why dont you talk about him. Gingrich is so interesting because he is kind of on both sides of the story is somebody who is deeply interested in language you might have seen a memo from go pack which was his Political Action committee here. The republican Political Action committee that really focused on language as a weapon and trying to find like the most words to attach to your friends and the most disgusting words to attach your enemies. Very interesting. And in training up more pugilistic and more conservative set of republicans, he brings in in the republican revolution in 1994. But he also very quickly finds himself outflanked by more radical conservatives than he. Theres a group called the true believers who come into office in that 94 election, who see gingrich as somebody whos too willing to compromise, too willing to work with bill clinton. And so, for instance during the Government Shutdown, which, again an innovation in congressional at the time it was the Government Shutdown in us history. And when gingrich decides, okay, were not winning this, we got to reopen the government, the true believers come forward and theyre like no why would you reopen the government . We it down. So he is constantly sort of under attack. Theyre constantly trying to unseat gingrich as speaker of the house, sort of in a preview to what would happen constantly with with john boehner in the obama years. All of that is playing out in much the same way. Its just that that would be even to the right in the 20 teens. The the the impeachment gets important treatment in your book as is it partly as a kind of new method this new post reagan right. I didnt know for example the role George Conway played. I mean that, the index of this book is very valuable for people, for people to go through. Where are they now . But talk about how and Newt Gingrich was very reluctant initially to go for the clinton impeachment, even though he got associated with it later. Yeah, gingrich didnt want to be part of the impeachment at first because he was actually making lot of headway with bill clinton. You know, theyre starting off after i think its after the 96 election. Theyre sitting down to start to think about how they can roll back Social Security. And then when clinton comes under fire and when the investigation heats up and clinton has to shore up his support, democrats, those go away. So you gingrich sees real opportunity in working with clinton. That is for close by the impeachment and have a lot of republicans or conservatives including laura ingram whos like everyones talking about impeachment. This is not a great idea, in part because what clinton was going to be impeached over wasnt that big of a deal. And so there is this this battle over whether impeachment is going to happen and that gingrich is reluctant get into. He is probably also reluctant because his own marital record was not, you know, as clear as it could be. Right. So so anyway, if he gets dragged into it, but then when he decides to do it, he does it. So theres a very sort of it really does tap into desire for a political fight. And he goes all in when when finally gets underway. So i want to open it up to the audience. So i just want to jump ahead, by the way, on your media treatment. I think i see a of the Mclaughlin Group in the audience at its peak. Hello. At its peak, it had 4. 4 million viewers. Yeah, its so much bigger than just about anyone else. Yeah. No, its anyway, its a theres interesting treatment at that, so. Well lets go from clinton to w you see as the last reaganite in a way. There is lot of sunny ness there. He was willing to you know he tried sell compassionate conservatism for while before the war came along. Tucker and by the end, he was this hated on the right by many parts of the right as he was by not the entire right, but significant parts of the right as he was by the left. And, of course, his Immigration Reform failed, which i have taken as the first sign of what was coming. Yeah. Yes. And if i could, id like to. Well, yeah well go from there to the tea party to trump and then well open it up. All right. All right. So. So, George W Bush, even at the time, was being to reagan. Everyone was talking about how he was the heir to reagan, which is a real blow to george h. W. Bush. So, i mean, but it was because he had that idea of compassionate conservatism that he wanted to do Immigration Reform after 911. Then he was talking lot about democracy in Foreign Policy. He passes before 911, the largest, i think at the time the largest tax cut in American History. So hes doing stuff that feels very reaganite in presidency and one by one, he disproves every part of the philosophy. So you have with financial deregulation and with the tax cuts that you ultimately have the collapse of the global economy. You take that idea of reagans the nine worst words in the english language are im from the government and im here to help. And you superimpose that over the Hurricane Katrina response. Obviously debacles in iraq and afghanistan and so by the end of his presidency so much of what looked reaganesque about his policy platform and his approach not looking so great in terms of its its outcome. And so there is this sense that in some ways he puts nail in reaganism because it empower a more paleo conservative and paleo libertarian right to surge obviously the opposition Immigration Reform continues to solidify in the aftermath of his presidency. So there a number of different ways that he helps along the right that im talking about these partizans through his failures and then ill just end with the tea party because the tea party was seen by some as mainly libertarian actually wasnt it was much more there was an antigovernment element of it, but not against Social Security or medicare, since a lot of the people in the tea party were over 65 and with a very strong antiimmigration sentiment. And again, its the tea party is almost a bridge between the campaign and the trump campaign. How i read the book, i think thats exactly right. You know, there was ill just tell one little anecdote. You know, there was the sign during the tea party that was mocked mercilessly on the left. It keep your government hands off my medicare and thats funny but at the same time like theres a kind of right wing populism and almost like George Wallace like populism that is contained in that ironic, contradictory claim. Right. The government should be helping me. A white person. Its those other welfare programs that folks should oppose. And i think thats that was missed in a lot of ways because it was read as a libertarian movement. I want to invite weve got a microphone here and speaking in the microphone. Good for the tv audience. Lets. Thank you. Theres always a crowd that has good. Do you talk about the fact getting back to reagan. Do you talk about the fact that was actually a practiced professional actor and he played an optimistic president and morning in america. I was an attorney, a staff attorney in the epa in, the reagan administration, and my late husband at the eeoc. And all that optimism. Reagan is the one who said government is not the solution to a problem. Government is the. American public has turned against government in the new deal. Government was representative of the people going after the corporations. You had corruption and the financial stuff. Thats a contradiction. And i think all of that morning in america was nonsense. You should you should have seen what was going on behind scenes. Yeah, i do. I writes about some of the chicanery thats and you can read some of the moves that are happening within the administration and how reagan distances himself from those movies when theyre for precisely the reason that youre talking, because he wanted to continue to shore up that public image. And the fact that he was an actor is really important. Now, i do make the distinction between reagan the actor whos kind of part of the old media system of. The studio system and hollywood and that sort of Network Television system of the 1950s versus this hotter, more Interactive Media that would come later. And reagan also laundered his past as an actor through his time as governor, california. So he comes in with some political bona fides that people like Pat Robertson, pat buchanan later folks who run for president instead of running for anything, bring to the table. But those similarities are very important. And that idea of discrediting government is absolutely a through line, something that wasnt just part of reagans politics, but had one of the big goals of that cold war conservative movement. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. And just in defense of, thank you for the question. In defense of your argument. Youre not denying there is a long throughline of the american war, but there is also a particular break and those two things can be true at the same time, right. That theres a rupture that so much of the contemporary commentary about politics, places that rupture in 2016, i think it starts a little earlier than that. Right thank you. Rob wilson blank most recently of sojourners. Great book. Loved it. First, a quick thanks and then a question. The thanks for putting Richard Viguerie in there. Very important. He was my first interview when i was 16 years old. We talked about and ill never forget that. The question is about religion. I had forgotten Pat Robertson came in second place in Iowa Caucuses in front of, i guess, george h. W. Behind. Dole was behind dole and then above bush above bush. Amazing i completely forgot that you were covering. Sure. My question is was was religion on the whole or white evangelical christianity and specific more of a tool that was used on the politicians at the time. The republic at the time or. Is it more a tool they used for Ronald Reagan saying, i know you cant endorse me, but i endorse you . Or was it or is it both . Were they hammered by it or do they pick it up and use it . This is one of those questions thats really because you do have these in significant religious figures and religious politics, evangelical politics and people who are important to this book, to Pat Robertson and ralph reed, who is leading the Christian Coalition in the 1990s and is doing a lot of compromising and really interesting ways in the 1990 is around those politics which in part goes to the answer of its a tool, right . You use it to attract voters and you just you get rid of it when its no useful for you, you pledge to get rid of abortion. At the time it looked like were just pledging it and not actually doing it looks a little different in the wake of dobbs. But i think that that is too easy of an answer to just say that like, oh, religion is just this tool being used by politicians. What was fueling the conservative movement in the really the seventies, the eighties and the nineties in 92 . I think white evangelicals and Christian Coalition members actually made up a majority of delegates to the republican national. I mean, these were the soldiers of the right. And it was something that viguerie saw in the new right, saw him really trying harness this movement. Somebody that i write about in the book, helen chenoweth, the representative idaho, who would be pretty figure in the 1990s she founds a kind of a version of focus the family in idaho. She has not just by militias and libertarians in idaho, but she is also supported by women, mormons and evangelicals who again, are the foot soldiers of the campaign. So i think it is a more complicated answer. I think that when we talk about and politics solely in a utilitarian, just like when we talk about media and were like oh fox news is just manipulating everyone. Sometimes people want to be manipulated or sometimes people have these views that theyre helping to circulate in those media. And i think thats the more complicated answer. Please. Okay. Im a big fan of your work. I cant wait to read your book. Oh. Question for you and. As in the period that you write about, the democrats are moving to are moving to the right as although were really starting with with a book confirmation in excuse me. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what how the Democrats Movement impacted what the republicans because you know, bill clinton is i mean i mean clinton governance is kind of is kind of a moderate new democrat. He was he was. No, what i mean, the the liberals distrusted clinton as much as the rough the far right types distrusted reagan. So talk about that. Yes, course. Well, this is why its so. And what sort confounds one argument that some people make about 1990 is that it was an era of polarization. And then you look at it and youre like, but the democrats for moving to the right, they werent moving to the left. So how is it a decade polarization. Polarization, not a political process. Its described in the 1990s. Its a political being used by people, like Newt Gingrich to make it look like the democrats are enemies and theyre an existential threat. While the same time hes having these backroom negotiations, bill clinton. And if you wanted to apply causal explanation to the democrats moving to the right the bigger story im telling you could say well the democrats are moving to the right. So the republicans have to move even further right order to heighten the contradictions between the two. Well, i think its the democrats fault, but i do think that that is part of the process play. And you especially see around immigration, you know, proposition one, 87 was not just about republicans opposed it, but they supported pretty much everything up to. Proposition one, 87. And janet reno is expanding Border Patrol san diego at the time. And Dianne Feinstein saying some really nasty things about immigrants at the. So yeah there is there this rightward shift in politics in the culture more broadly what you see on the right is much broader swing and a different kind of right then than you would seen in an earlier era. Thank you. Thank you. Could you talk a bit about women on the right, which is i read this and i felt thats your next book because women play a very important in your account that you focus on chenoweth correctly. I think a fascinating figure and it reveal ing figure at that time. But you talk a lot, Laura Ingraham, you obviously talk about Phyllis Schlafly. Talk about this of this. Right. Yeah. So if we think about phyllis as kind of a a second wave anti feminist, somebody who is opposed to the Second Wave Feminist Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, who is appealing to a kind of housewife conservatism in which her role a housewife, even though she was a political activist, she was wellstudied in the law, in Foreign Policy, but that she chose to present herself as housewife and opposed the equal rights amendment oppose the feminist movement that is that is kind of the anti feminism, the 1960s, seventies, eighties, by the 1990s, you see kind of this third wave anti feminism that has consolidated the gains of the feminist movement. People like Laura Ingraham and ann colter lawyers, the women of the international the independent womens forum are all in high powered professions. Many of them arent married, many of them dont want to have children. And that doesnt that doesnt matter. Theyre like, thats fine. Were professional women. They talk about things like abortion. They talk about guns. Instead, they wear many skirts instead of kind of the the shirt dresses that someone like Phyllis Schlafly wear. And they really leaned into provocation both in the sort of political provocation sense and provocation and like sexual sense. And so crafting this new, sexier, more provocative, more interesting because its newer anti feminism that becomes really powerful. It becomes a model, i think, for later women activists like sarah palin and Michele Bachmann and, somebody like helen chenoweth. There is lineage there between her and somebody like marjorie taylor. Greene which is if you could hold one second, because i want to go back to chenoweth especially in light of violence were talking about now your your your work on the militias is really important. And we forget how a lot of dont forget. But the in the 1990s the Oklahoma City event was enormous and their death the deaths were sort of chilling. But i wonder again, whats parallel of the rise of the Militia Movement to some of the violence were and by the way, in your defense, this is not a present history book. It just happens that. So much of this history leads to the present. So the rise of the militia in the 1990 is is really important. It has its origins in the seventies and eighties, with the rise of posse comitatus and some white power groups that gained steam and began to go to war with federal government. And you read about go all the way back then, which i didnt realize. Yep. Kathleen belew talks about in her wonderful book bring the war home. If you want sort of more background on it. But after the events of waco and ruby ridge, those become of martyrdom moments for this new Militia Movement. And it brings many more people into, the Militia Movement. And as the Militia Movement becomes bigger and more active politic, ones like helen chenoweth, who is representative from idaho, ruby ridge is in her district. Begin to see these militia members and their politics as of their base. And so shes out there talking about black helicopter and conspiracy theories about the un. Shes her tapes are being sold in the militia of montanas montanas sales book next to bomb making manuals. There is a real interplay between her politics and this Militia Movement because she sees them as part of who shes appealing to, and particularly with chenoweth and a of other members from texas and from the west. You start to get a real thinning of the lines between the violence of militias and the mainstream of republican officeholders. And this really comes a floor with the Oklahoma City bombing, 1995, because chenoweth doesnt just defend the bombing. But she does say, you know, people are mad for a reason if you dont deal with the reasons that theyre mad, maybe more like this are going to happen. And so there is a kind of defensiveness around militias and an unwillingness to cut ties with militia members. That is really important, is probably fairly resonant for people today. So thanks for your patience. I what i once ran into Newt Gingrich, the Easter Service at the National Shrine and told him i thought hed get better when he became catholic and he had nothing to say about that. My question is, there is so little Foreign Policy content on the right these days. My my brother is an andy card. It was conservative who was forgotten. He was anticommunist. Can you talk about that at all . Why do you think it happened . Because the cold war, such a central organizing factor of the conservative movement during the cold war, its very easy to know what your Foreign Policy was going to be. It took a while in the 1940 and 1950s. There are these battles on the right over what their Foreign Policy should be. Should it be more isolationist should it be more aggressive in militaries . Stick and decide on the second one. With the end of the cold war, all bets are off. Theres a new happening around policy and well, i agree. Theres not necessarily always very clear Foreign Policy content to the right today. There are still some pretty vicious battles and. Foreign policy does still play a very central role to how the right talks about politics. Its just that there isnt there isnt a ideology around policy. I think right now on the right. And that just means that theres a lot of heterodoxy and heterogeneity on the right when it comes to Foreign Policy. And i think you see some of the split youre describing in the book in the splits in the Republican Party over ukraine, which i absolutely thought of a perfect measure of that old argument. Well, i think we have one more person in line. Am i correct . Yes. A veteran. Thank. Its great to see you. Im bruce bartlett. And i was intimately involved in almost all the history in your book. But theres one thing im thinking that come up. Oh, i didnt get any footnotes . I like you, but i want the things ive been thinking about for some reason lately is the 88 campaign and the fact that you had jack kemp running. And now jack was clearly the heir to to reaganism and and he was defeated. But more importantly he retired from congress, which opened up a huge vacuum that filled by Newt Gingrich. I mean, if jack had stayed in congress, he would have been speaker of the house in 1995. Theres no question about that. And so i think that sometimes we think too much about things that did happen rather than things that didnt happen. And and there there was an important article, the bob wrote a few years ago about how gingrich was actively engaged in the defeat of george h. W. Bush in 1992. And and this is i think he saw the way the wind was blowing. He may have had some knowledge that bob michael was going to retire. He could see that all the southern democrats were just on the brink of all becoming and that this would create the possibility of a republican majority. And so i dont know, somehow i see these events as being interrelated and. I was sort of right in the middle of it because i was worked in the reagan white house. Then i was over at the Treasury Department where we were involved in raising taxes and things of that sort. And i was one of the very few reagan who who survived the bush trans and transition. I mean, he he fired everybody just as if he was a democrat. And a lot of people didnt forget that and it came back to haunt him in 92. So anyway, that was all i had to say. Now, bruce, this is great because there is a little bit of the counterfactual that i point to in the book, partly like jack kemp, really was, this policy entrepreneur and gingrich, too, was a policy entrepreneur. He was a guy with a few, many ideas. And so he fills vacuum. But also remember. So jack kemp also comes out against proposition one, 87. Hes like, is not the direction the Republican Party should go. And remember theres that moment in 1996 when people start floating the idea that colin powell could become the republican nominee and. What a Different Party it would be if colin powell had won the the republican nominee in 1996. Now, we have no idea how that would have worked out. We have no idea how he might have changed if that happened. One, if he primaries. We have no answers to any of those things. But its a really interesting thing to think about. I just love the idea of birth of a historian to focus on the things that didnt, and that would be an interesting path for a historian. Do we have one more . Yeah. So you mentioned that some of the tea partys message kind of sounding a bit like George Wallace and that kind of got me wondering sort of the sort extreme right of earlier decades George Wallace and you know other people and groups who were kind of on the fringes but still sort of important. Is there any kind of connection between them and sort of later sort of conservative partizans in the nineties . Yeah. Yeah. And could i just piggyback on your question because thats good question. And one figure you treat very serious in an interesting way also is perot. And i think its an odd relationship, perot to this movement because he was not an ideological conservative. So if wallace and perot as key figures in this book think is worth closing on and im going to read the last paragraph because it really tells us where this all ends up so wallace is a figure in the book because viguerie this new right figure, is looking at wallace and saying how, do we get that wallace vote . We want that wallace vote. We know need to lean into the politics of resentment. We need to lean in to issues of culture, issues of race. And thats how were going to that. Wallace vote and those. Wallace voters who in 1968 represented a pretty threat to the Republican Partys future or a really big opportunity. Perot is the same in a different way because so much of the politics of 1993 and 1994 are both democrats and republicans like how we get perot. Voters like perot is all over the place. How do we his voters, what is it that theyre actually attracted to . Because remember that he won like 20 of the vote in 1992. He was a politico bomb going off in the middle of the two party system. And you wouldnt think that hyper partizanship would grow out of that. But you see Something Like nuking somebody, Newt Gingrich, who develops the contract with america not to appeal to the right, but to appeal to perot voters. Thats what that document was about. Its why it doesnt mention republicans or democrats or bill clinton. Its trying to attract those perot voters, the other person that ill just throw in very quickly, because i think he attaches to the wallace question is david duke in 1990 and 1991 is duke is becoming a more known figure. Its now not Richard Viguerie, but pat buchanan, whos looking over. And hes saying why Ronald Reagan and george h. W. Bush denouncing this guy, we need to be figuring out why hes so appealing not a hard puzzle. And when his voters. And so part of Pat Buchanans in 1992 is about the duke vote just as a previous candidate had looked at the wallace vote. And so im the book doesnt not focus on donald trump. However he makes an appearance the end and a its a wonderful passage because it really pulls the book together and there was a debate at the Reagan Library in simi valley. 2015, and every candidate the stage basically appealed to the reagan legacy except for donald trump. And as you write, trump understood something. The debate moderators and other candidates did not. The age of reagan was over. It had been over for a long time, and conclude the book with the following two paragraphs and ill just close on this and then you should get the whole book to read. That came before a few people in. The Reagan Library in the fall of 2015, including trump, believe trump would president two years later. Yes, had risen quickly to the top of the polls and, stayed there. But just as 2012 had seen the rise and fall of a string of improbable candidates, the trump bubble would soon surely burst. They didnt realize that ground had already shifted, had been shifting for a quarter century. And as the end they were only now beginning to catch up. The trip to simi valley was, just the final stop in long goodbye. And like chandler, who wrote a book carrying that name you solve a lot of mysteries the write in this book thank you so much and thank you all for such our coverage of the printers rohit lit fast in chicago continues. Okay welcome everyone to the 36th annual printers rohit lit fast. Please help me give ape
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