Welcome to politics and prose. I am brad graham, corner of the bookstore along with my wife Lissa Muscatine and we are very delighted this seeking to be hosting Nicole Hemmer who is here to talk about her new book, partisans the conservative revolutionaries who remade american politics in the 1990s. Nicole is a political historian and founding director of the new study of thee presidency at vanderbilt university. She is also a cofounder of made by history, the historical Analysis Section in the shWashington Post and she wris regularly for a number of other publications. In a book six years ago messengers of the right, nicole traced the emergence of conservative media institutions in the mid20th century. In her new book she looks at why the Republican Party in the 1990s shifted from the kind of conservatism that Ronald Reagan had represented in the previous decade, conservatism that was optimistic and popular, to a more pessimistic, angrier, even revolutionary conservatism. It was a period nicole writes of intensifying partisan conflict when a new fury took hold on the right. And when republicans grew less tolerant of dissension in the ranks and begin seeing democrats not as opponents but as enemies. What accounted for the shift . Well, nicole cites a number of factors which she would into an event, but understanding why itr 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 nicole who will be in conven this evening with one of the most astute political analysis and analyst in washingtonn toda, journalist and author e. J. Dionne. Is also longtime friend of dnp and of mine and my wifes. In addition to writing and always interesting come 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 with miles rapaport and published last march, makes a very persuasive case for universal voting. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Nicole Hemmer and e. J. Dionne. [applause] thank you brad and thanks to our friends at cspan and the audience other. I love doing events at this bookstore. As i do it in this room knows, this bookstore is also a community organization. Its a community builder. I love the people who work here, brett and lisa inherited a tradition. They kept alive and built on it and toe keep a tradition alive you have to build on and they done great things for this bookstore. I am so pleased honor to be with nicole. I love this book. Its probably the highest consummate i can get it, is that you dont realize how much you are learning because the book is so engaging as you race through it. And also like it for a very particular maybe even selfish reason. Because in 1992 i was assigned to cover pat buchanan is a president a campaign by the Washington Post and spent a lot of time on that campaign, and i now learned from nicole how historically important that campaign is. Journalists. Write the draft of history siphon made a couple footnotes i discover in the book. But she makes a very, very compelling case that basically reaganism and its influence in did almost as soon as he left office, which is not something we usually assume. And the case she makes visually powerful, and so, nicole, why dont you just s start their by explaining how you came to that view, how you make the case here . Becausee as you know, people ket making references to reagan at how much they were reaganite, even as they were moving away and doing so quite quickly. First of all thank you so much for doing this tonight. You are an inspiration as a writer so all of those kind words mean quite a lot to me. This book in many ways begin with just a puzzle that e. J. Was talking about, that the mythology of reagan grew exponentially in then 1990s and the 2000s, and yet a particular setet of politics tht reagan embraced were under challenge almost immediately after he left office, and this is something i started thinking about as i was finishing my first book that i was writing about reagans election and about in the book of those who preciously that it was both a victory and a valid victory. It was the triumph of this cold war conservative movement but it also felt like a curtain call, like something was coming to an end. What ultimately was coming to an end was the cold war. What i realized as i was working for the argument of this book was Ronald Reagan was fundamentally a cold war president , that the cold war provided a kind of logic, i kind of language for his conservatism. And what that meant wasnt just that he spokey the lineage of democracy and freedom, something that he didnt always was out in reality but that he really appeal to the route, but that that language and that argument about democracy and freedom affected certain parts of p his policies. Hehe truly believed that the fre movement of people and goods was part of democratic capitalism. And so youou reagan on immigratn and he says quite a lot like a democrat sometimes, especially compared to todays Republican Party, and on trade. So these kinds of things that were core to the conservative movement and during the cold war, because reagan were so popular even though he had real critics on the right. I mean there was a subset of conservatives who just punched at reagan every day of hisid presidency. But they found it difficult to land those punches. But as soon as he leaves office, assumes a cold war ends it opens up the space for what was at least in part an antismoke the democratic conservatism that pat buchanan represent. One of the fascinating things is the psychology of reaganism more than anything was quite different from the psychology of the later right you describe. Even though he forgot all the ideas come he never really stop being aner optimistic new deale. He kept roosevelt optimism and shall most of the policies. Can you talk about that psychological difference . He did have support from some of that same in his rise including the purchase aside and others but he didnt convey that in the way the right came afterward did. Right. That optimism,he that emotion of part of reaganism is really important anything is important caveat. It was an optimism that was heard by white voters. He was not popular as he was. He left office is one of the most popular president in modern u. S. History. He was never popular with black voters with hispanic voters so were talking about ase particulr 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. There were not interested in pragmatism or popularity. They certainly were not interested in optimism. They were focusedh on a much darker version of the United States and a much darker version of conservatism in the right come something for those who remember the 1992 campaign was very present in pat Buchanan Convention speech in 1992. So the liberals in the audience would say werent you being awfully nice to reagan in this account . And i was really struck by a phrase in your book. If you look youll see i read this very carefully, its full of notes and at the top of this page i wroteid provocative of ts sentence. You referred to the colorblind racism of the reagan era. One thing i will think about as it went along is when we try to think of the roots, on one hand a persuasive case of what was quite different get the also some continuity. I went if you could talk about the continuities as well. Was absolutely. Sometimes the continuities of the differences are differences of degree and sometimes differences of kind. That colorblind racism idea is really important. Its thehi difference between te dog whistle and the bullhorn. You can argue theyre the same ideas that are just packaged are present in different ways but it does matter if you feel like you have too appeal to universalism, if you have to put an optimistic spin on opportunity. If you have to repeal to equality versus st. Francis that iq is genetically determined and it depends onea your race, and i give it becomes veryy popular in the mid1990s. But a it think its also impot to emphasize that reagan is due in the dna of the conservative movement, and ideas particularly like deep tax cuts certainly remain, although they get more dogmatic after reagan. Reagan of course famously cut taxes and then raised in a couple of times and didnt face the same kind of backlash of some elect george h. W. Bush did. So there are some continuities but in the things that made reaganism, reaganism, what made it distinct from cold war conservative as movement that emotion youre talking about that willingness to compromise, that idea of the big tent, the idea that there are reagan democrats as opposed to the 1990s when you get rinos, republicans inna name only. Re 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 and you will learn things you never ever, did you know the Tucker Carlson and i laura ingrm got her start time in the hundred and is nbc, and on the changes in the media which i do want to get to, and there is also i think something you explore that we have forgotten, that it was a real turn on the light on immigration, and on time ago which we can talk aboua National Review which is longheld the rank and view when published, in the very likely controversial, that is nice thing to say about about that he wrote. Theres some great things about it but i want to go to immediately to immediate political w things, and confirm something that you thought and so i am grateful for your insight that what the conservatives had against reckoning, they actually against George W Bush and George Hw Bush rather and later in some ways george w. Bush as you describe it is the last reagan and a lot of the knox on George Hw Bush dewere really of reagan but he was, sort of such a hero that it was impossible to land those punches and they all went to h w and can you talk about that transition and then i do to talk a bit about the campaign. Is a fascinating because once you realize what is happening, is impossible not to see and so you have these hardcore conservatives her across hallie complaining about reckoning complaining about his presidency. Not able to make headway. And when George Hw Bush comes into office, they are like, this is our guy because this is her punching bag because he did not have a conservative credentials and it was always a punch back and he was somebody who had before the ford administering they dont like the Ford Administration and somebody was seen as the modern alternative to regular 1980, and they never trusted is conservative days and so they forced him into the corner to have to make promises like no new taxes and in earlier, reagan access to the biggest tax hikes in american buhistory in 1982 and in 1984 bt it is when george h w bush, raises the taxes that they not eionly lose it but the complains gained traction and things that happen with over affirmative action and when george w. Bush, was called, whether right built in 1991. And something Ronald Reagan had reluctantly is affirmative action policies during his presidency but is george h wbu bush who really takes on the ten for advancing those policies are compromising any pragmatism for reagan was part of the appeal which the signs of heresy and it is those ideas that age w bush made it easy for pat buchanan to run in 1992, and then in 1988, pat buchanan wanted to run any ran for a campaign in the spring of 1987, while he was still part of the Reagan Administration and he realizes very quickly that he was be thet sacrificial lamb and Pat Robertson to carol instead an iced for four more years once he was running against bush, then the very same politics take hold and gain much more traction than they would have been 88. Another thing that i had forgotten him maybe particular today because joe biden did his speech about a crime and the assault with a weapon fan and i forgot help strong reagan supported this. When he first passed and he was quite elegant on this was a. This where you start to see the policy issues immigration is one of them, and garner absolutely another and in part of that you can understand one of those that he supported, reagan after leaving bob an elvis was brady bill named after summit he was shot in an assassination attempt againsten Ronald Reagan but even after that, he came to the assault weapon band, reagan was strongly opposed to it and supportive ofd hees said yes we should have this assault weapons ban and he rose up agait the opposition. I believe that pat buchanan could sue donald trump for plagiarism and go to the 1992, campaign and something ive been that campaign and i had forgotten that at the end of the campaign, pat buchanan went to the border of mexico and he called for building a wall, that was back in 1992 in talk about the buchanan campaign where emily was this mixture of a certain kind of economics because with these very very right wing positions in a culture race and immigration, that was almost a perfect template and its hard to figure out where Donald Trump Campaign was actually different from pat buchanan. I think that is exactly right which is why he makes the cover. And you so that pat you can changes on immigration in a very short amount of time in 1984, and entered as he was talking about immigration, he was talking about undocumented immigrants and how they paid payroll taxes and they paid sales taxes and is good taxpaying citizens and were not of the welfare o rolls basicall then by people but he was saying things that were very reaganesque and also today, it sounds like a democrat when he was talking about immigration. It was not the case a few years later when he latches on to the idea that those issues of the culture race blue anza Ronald Reagan had failed to exploit that was the main thing you want to tap into and so he starts to talklk about the border wall. And he starts to tie woody no calls, illegal aliens to crime accusations from him and the attorney general that it was illegal aliens who may not most of the people really talk who were responsible for the riots in los angeles in 1992, and the criminalization and this trying the average and emotion run the border, it took work in california, in 1991, and 92, almost two or three or percent of the voters was immigration was at the top of the concern and it was until 1994 from that looks very different from proposition 27 and took a Political Movement to turn immigration into a culture and race issue that could be exploited. In your discussion of prop 87 is good and it is r really centl to this endless looking a couple of other characters who play a big role in your vote, how about Rush Limbaugh and i looked would like to stay with rush little bit because you talk about interrelated developments that areim sort so important when the rise in the conservative talk radio which limbaugh was a pioneer of. And he supported pat buchanan so theres really interesting synergy between the two of them and 92. And then the spread of right wing radio across the am dial and migrated to fm. Then you also talk about the rise leading to news makes a great discussion because some just about the rise of this fox news but by the way an important piece of history, they try to turn Rush Limbaugh into a tv show it limited just to hold network instead but you talk about the kinds with fox really helped change the nature of the political dialogue. Absolutely. So dialogue is an interesting word because this is made were notably Interactive Media landscaping that ability of what Rush Limbaugh was so important was not just that he was a conservative entertainer, but that if you call him also europe where you have. [inaudible]. God help me if you disagree. And is portions incredibly offensive things that you did earlier in his career that where he would abortrt the callings he disagreed with, but whole quality could be part of this news Cable Television ross perot in his campaign was launched in 1992 pretty and that interactivity is so important and so many of the experiments and cable is in the 90s were about trying to take essentially talk radio and put it on television. You have a network for the pure and pre curses market talking and something called National Empowerment television with his precursors fox news in many ways. In summary was talk about any he was, yes, i thought so. And you so you have these really experiments and cable, in talk radio, and again, is diversified whatai is availablen television butut also creating this new conservative country that is indicated earlier, was not necessarily just happening is Something LikeRush Limbaugh sure work fox news, much more things happening in pat buchanan come up on cnn crossfire and another group and you mentioned culture and Carlson Ingram and though started on msnbc. The entertainment shows like politically incorrect which in 1993, Comedy Central and in the years before the daily show and then it moves to abc, and people Killian Fitzpatrick we would be later conway and allen coultersh and others in the start to become more familiar household names because it also experimenting with his idea politics as outrage and entertainment if there is perfecting that style on fox news but on incorrect and on msnbc. The other person needs to be mentioned, Newt Gingrich and he is complicated figure in all of this. This was from way back when and if a really interesting views of this money and you talk about him. He is so interesting because both sides of the story, he is somebody whos deeply interested in language and you mightve seen a memo from his Political Action committee andl Action Committee that really focus focused on leg which is a weapon and try to find a the most delightful words to tester your friends and most disgusting words to that your enemies. And entraining up a more futuristic and more conservative sort of a republican that he brings in the republican revolution in 1994. He also quickly finds himself out ranked by far more radical conservative than he is a group called the true believers in the 94th election who seek gingrich for somebody who is too willing to compromise into willing to work with bill clinton and so for instance, Government Shutdown, but again in innovation and at the time it was the longest Government Shutdown in u. S. History and when gingrich said without waiting this, the true believers come forward no, we shut it down. Sue is constantly sort of under attack and trying to as speaker of the house sort of the preview of two what would happen constantly with john maynard and in the obama years and all of that is s playing out in much te same way that would be even further too the right. The clinton impeachment, thats an important treatment in europe, a new method of his new post rating right and it didnt know for example the role the others played in this book is very valuable to people to go through tomorrow the nail. And initially he was we go forward with the impeachment even though we got associated with he was actually making a lot of headway with bill clinton and they are starting off after the 96 election, they are sitting down is hard to think about how they can rollback Social Security and when clinton comes under fire when the investigation comes up and clinton has to shore up his support among the democrats and the sox go. Away. So gingrich sees opportunity in working with clinton is proposed by the impeachment and the conservatives including or ingram who was like everybody is talking i about this and some great idea and in part because what clinton was going to be impeached over. That was not begin video. And so there is this battle over whether impeachment is going to happen and gingrich is reluctant to because also his own marital record was not you know, as clear as it could be right. So just i did to us that we need to decide is to do it, he does not answer there is very this really does happen to his desire for political sites any goes all in one impeachment five and finally gets underway. So we opening up to the audience and i just want to headed by the way, i think i see a veteran of the group in the audience and pete hello and he has 4. 4 million viewers. Yes, bigger than both just about anyone else. Anyway, its interesting. Lets go from clinton to w, whom you see house the last reaganite in the way, and there is a lot there and he was willing self compassion conservative is him before the work you love and by the end, he was taken on the right by me as he was the entire right for parts of the right is on the left and of course the Immigration Reform failed which i havee always taken is the firt sign of what was coming. Yes. And for good, we will go from there to the tea party to trump and then open it up. All right, as of bush, even of the time was being compared to reagan andnd everybody was talking about how he was the heir to reagan, real blow to h w rush but it was because he had the idea of compassionate conservatism a and the Immigration Reform and after 911 then youre talking Foreign Policyic any passes before going 11, the largest tax cut in American History. So is doing stuffy in the southern feels very reaganite in his presidency. In one by one he presented part of it so you have the financial deregulation and tax cuts that you ultimately have the collapse of the global economy, and you take that idea reagan, nine worst words and englishlanguage are im from the government and im here to help and you superimpose that over Hurricane Katrina response, and obviously the debacles in iraqd and afghanistan and so by the end of his presidency, so much of what looks reagan ask, about his policy platform and now not looking so great in terms of its outcomes. There is the sense that in some ways to put the final nail in and it empowers a more paleo conservatism and the right to surge obviously the opposition to Immigration Reform and continues to solidify the aftermath of the presidency and so there are a number of different ways that he help so long the right that i am talking about from the partisan group of failures. Will begin with the tea party because it is the tea party, was seen by some as emily it was much more, not against Social Security or medicare in the tea party, 65, and is a very strong antiimmigration sentiment and again, the tea party is a must a bridge between the buchanan campaign in the Trump Campaign is however the book. I thank you so exactly right, also one more entered outcomewaf the resign thundering tea party that was marked on the left that said keep your government hands off my medicare and that is funny, right but at the same time like the right wing populism and George Wallace like populism that is continuing and continuing in thatt ironic it victory claim like the government should be helping me white person and is those other welfare programs that folks should oppose and i think that was missed in a lot of ways because it was read as a libertarian movement. No one would buy them printed by people speak into the microphone for the tv audience and so and this is always a crod that has good questions. You talk about the fact going back to reagan, do you talk about the fact that he was actually practiced it professional after any played in optimistic president and in america and i was an attorney staff attorney in the epa, and the Reagan Administration emily has been was in all of that optimism, ragged what is that, government has a solution to the problem it is the problem and the hammock in public has turned against government in the new deal in the governor was representative of the people going after the corporation and corruption in the financial stuff. Thats a contradiction and i think all of that living in america, was nonsense and you should have seen what was going on behindd the scenes. I do write about some of this happening in some of the moves happening in the administration and how reagan distances himself in the moves when there for specifically the reason youre talking about because he wanted tour of the public in the fact that he was an actor, is really important, and there is a distinction between reagan, the actor is kind of part of the old system of the studio system in hollywood and Network Television system in the 1960s, versus the new more Interactive Media that would comed later and also longer with yes passive and actor through his time as the governor of california and so he comes over with some political things that people like Pat Robertson buchanan that they later spoke to billy for president instead of anything else bring to the table but the similarities are very important in that idea of crediting the government is absolutely of line is something that was not just part of greatest politics would have been one of the goals of that movement. Yes question, you can figure party members, there is in line with the american but also to particular break in those two things, they can be true at the same time. Right but there is a rupture and is so much of that temporary victory about how the place the rupture in 2016, and again it starts a little earlier than that. Robison, journalist and this is a great michaela bit first a quick thanks and the question, thank you i for putting richard and their hand very important he was my first when i was 16 years old we talk about abortion a letter for you in a question about religion i forgot about Pat Robertsons came in place in the Iowa Caucuses running against George W Bush and behind all and then a about bush, amazg and i completely have forgotten that. My question is, was religion on the whole white evangelical christianity in specific eventual on the pop under politicians at the time or more to evade for Ronald Reagan sing you can endorsement been endorsed you or is about, really hammered by a door with a pick it upst and use it. Whoa this is one of those questions is really important because you do haveif these incredibly religious figures and politics white evangelical politics and people whooo are important, Pat Robertson, ralph reed who is leading the Christian Coalition in the 1990s and is doing a lot of compromising in interesting ways inho the 1990s, around politics because in parts, the answer is cool, you use it to attract certain leaders and you get rid oful it in the things that are t usefully applied to get rid of abortion at the time it looks like youre just pledging not actually doing it. And in thes. Wake of dobbs and i think that is to easy of an answer to just sleep well religion is just a tool being used by politicians but were fueling the conservative movement in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s and in 1992 i think, the white evangelical Christian Coalition members made up of a majority ofep the delegates had that Public National convention. These are foot soldiers of the right and if something event and they thousand new right saw, and harness this moment that i write about in the book, the representative of idaho would be pretty radical figure in an 1990s. Focus on the family in idaho and supported not just by violations and libertarians to help but also supported five women mormons and evangelicals who again foot soldiers of the campaign so i think it is more complicated answer and i think that when wee talk about religin and politics, selena put hearing way, need to talk about the medium, fox news and manipulatingto everyone. Or sometimes people have these views that there helping tote circulate and again that is more complicated answer. Please. A big fan of your work i cant wait to read your book in a question for you, it appears that you write about the democrats are moving to the right as well though starting withk abortion. Excuse me, i was wondering if you could talk about how the democrats movements in parts with the republicans because clinton govern kind of moderate n,democrat. The liberals distrusted clinton asth much as the far right have distrusted reagan and so, this talk about that please see that have course, so this is so interesting and what sort of confounds one argument about in the 1990s, nera of polarization and you look at it and youre like, the democrats are moving for a break of them not moving to the left is so how is it a decade of polarization and it is notot a political process being described in the 1990s is ang Political Tool being used by people like Newt Gingrich to make it look like the democrats are enemies and tr accidental rent at theom same te you have negotiations with c bil clinton and if you wanted to apply a puzzle explanation to democrats moving to the right for the bigger story that i am telling them you could say the democrats moving to the right of theen republicans will move even further right in order to hundred issue between jew but i do think that is part of the process and you see this around the immigration you know, it was not just about republicans and the democrats opposed it they supported pretty much everything to proposition 187 and again, this expanding were to patrol in diego at the time and feinstein is saying theyre going after things about immigrants at this time because yes, there is this shift in the politics and the culture more broadly what you see in the right, is a much broader thing and a different kind of right than weve seen in an earlier era. Thank you he could you talk a bit about women on the right. I read this i thought this would be your next book because women play a very Important Role in you focus on this correctly is a fascinating figure and revealing figure of the time when you talk about love about laura ingram and talk about others sometime of this element of this right. So if you think about this kind of a second wave anti feminist, somebody was opposed to the Second Wave Feminist Movement of the 1960s in the 1970s, is appealing to a kind of housewife conservatism in which a role as a housewife even as she was a political activist and well studied and in policy but that shed could present herself as a housewife and opposed the amendment and the feminist movement and that is part of the anti feminism of the 1960s and 70s and 80s. By the 1990s, we see this third wave of anti feminism is consolidated beginning of the feminist movement if you like laura ingram and and lawyers and the of the International Womens forum are all in highpowered professions of many of them are not married and manyve of them dont want to have children it is matter, it is matter because were professional women and they dont talk aboutt things like abortion they talk about guns instead prayed. S schlafly we. 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 i want to go back especially in light of the violence were talking about now, your work on the line is important and you the deaths were sort of chilling and i wonder, again, whats the parallel of the Motion Movement then to some of the violence and by the way, in your defense, this is not a presentist book, it just happens so much of this history leads to the present. So the rise of the motion of the 1990s and happened in the rise of the 70s and 80s and white power groups that began to go to war with federal government. Going all the way back then, which i didnt realize. Yep. Thereov was a martyred moment fr the Militia Movement and brings more in and out and bigger and activist and helenho is a representative from ohio really raising in her district began to see these motion members at end their politics as part of their base. Her takes are being sold in militia montana with the book that can he beings to making manuals and interslaves between her politics and the Militia Movement and she sees them as part of who shes appealing to. A couple of other members from and from the west, theres a thinning of license between the violence and militia and Mainstream Office holders and the oklahoma cityy bombing and she doesnt defend the bombing but says, people are mad for a reason. If youre dont deal with the reason theyre mad, theres a drivenness and cutting ties with the militia members and its more with people today. Thank you for your patience. I ran into Newt Gingrich at Easter Service and thought hed get better but had nothing to say about that. My question is my brother forgot about that and where did it happen you think . Because the cold wharves such a central organizing factor of the conservative movement during the cold war, theyre easy to know what your Foreign Policy was going to be. In the 19 40s and 14 50s andbe should it be more isolationist and more aggressive and militaristic and they decide on the second one. With the end of the cold war, all bets are off and new conversation around Foreign Policy and i agree its not very clear Foreign Policy content to the right today. There are some pretty vicious battles and Foreign Policy does still play a very central role in how the right talks about politics. Its ame perfect measure of that old argument. I think we have one more person in larynx am i correct . Hi, im Bruce Bartlett and i was almost intimately involved in the history of your book. You had jack kempotes like you. Running and jack was the heir to reaganism and he was defeated and more importantly he retired from congress, which opened up a huge vacuum filled by newt grinning rich. If jackst stayed in congress, hd have been speak r of the house in 1985. Theres no question about that. I think that sometimes we think too much about things that did happen rather than things that didnt happen. Also there was an important article about how he was engaged in the defeat of george h. W. Bush in 1992. This is, i think he saw the way the wind was blowing. He may have had some knowledge that bobth michael was going to retire. He could see that all these democrats were on the brink of becoming republican and it would create a republican majority. Somehow i see these events as being interrelated, and i was sort of right in the middle of it because i was working in the Reagan White House and over at the Treasury Department where we were involved in raising taxesin and things of that sort, and i was one of the very few reagan people who survived the bush transition. I mean, he fired everybody just as if he was a democrat. A lot of people didnt forget that and it came back to haunt him in 92. Anyway, that was all i had to say. This is great because, there is a a little bit of the counter factual that i point to in the book. Partly the gap temporal integration pairly was this entrepreneur and gingrich too and he was a guy with a few too many ideas and he fills that vacuum but also remember with jack kemp coming out against proposition 187 and he was like this is not the direction of the Republican Party should be going. And theres a moment in 1996 when people float the idea that colin powell could be the republican candidate. Imagine if he won the republican nomination in 1996. We dont know howke that would have worked out or how it could have changed. We had no answers to any of those things. But its a really interesting thing to think about. Some of a the extreme rests f George Wallace and other groups on the fringes but still sort of important. Is there any kind of connection between them and sort of later sort of conservative partisans in the 90s . Yeah. N. Its an odd relationship of palou to this movement because he was not an id logical conservative. If wallace and palou as key figures on this book were closing on and ill read the last paragraph because it really tells us where this all ends up. Wallace is a figure in the book because richard, the new right figure is looking at wallace and saying how do we get that wallace vote . We want that wallace vote. We need to lean into the politics of resentment. The wallace voters in 1968 represented a pretty big threat to two of the republican parties of future or a big opportunity. Theres a political bomb going off between thehe twoparty sysm and wouldntpa think hyperpartisanship would go out of that and see somebody like Newt Gingrich who develops the contract with america not to appeal to the right but to appeal to voters. Thats what that document was about. Thatssn why it doesnt mention republicans or democrats or bill clinton and its trying to attract the voters. The other person ill fill in quickly and he goes to the wallace question is david duke. In 1990 and 1991 as duke is becoming a more known figure. Its now not richard vigorie and saying why are Ronald Reagan and george d. W. Bush denouncing this guy . We need to figure out why hes so appealing. Not a hard thing. And win his voters and part of the campaign is about the duke vote just as previous candidates have looked at wallace vote. The bookk does not focus on donald trump and its a wonderful passage and pulls the book together and there was a debate at the Reagan Library in the valley in 2015, and every candidate on the stage would basically appeal to the reagan legacy except for donald trump. As you write, trump understood something the debate model and other candidates did not. The age of reagan was over. It had been over for a long time. And you conclude with the following two paragraphs and ill read this part. Seeing people in the Reagan Library in the fall of 2015 including donald trump maybe trump would be president two years later. Yes, he had risen quickly and the candidates and thats a first. They didnt realize that the ground had already shifted, had been shifting for a quarter century and they were only now beginning to catch up. The valley was just the final stop for a long goodbye. Chandler who wrote a book saying that name, you solve a lot of mysteries about this book and more. Become tv has latest authors discussing nonfiction books. At 8 00 p. M. , texas senator phil graham a mathematical economist johnerly with a look at the equality and mark of bloomburg news shares book like, comment, subscribe and looks at creation and growth of youtube and how its changed our society. Watch online at any time on booktv. Org. Cspan now is a free mobile app featuring unfiltered view of whats happening in washington live and on demand. Keep up with the biggest events with live stream of floor proceedings and hearings from the u. S. Congress. White house event, the court and more with politics. The First Episode of the journal and the tv networks and now available at the apple store and google play download it for free today. Cpsan now, your front row seat to washington, any time, anywhere. Every saturday, American History tv documents americas story and book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction authors and more. Virtual to power the outage. In media, were built to keep you ahead. Mediacom, along with the Television Companies support cspan2 as a public service