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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we continue with our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Thing #3, as the Republican Convention begins today, 100 Years of the American Right, from 1924 to Project 2025. In 1924, exactly 100 years ago, Republican President Calvin Coolidge, who would win that year's election and served four more years, spoke at the White House against the idea of taxation.

President Calvin Coolidge: The expenses of the government reach everybody, taxes take from everyone a part of his earnings, and force everyone to work for a certain part of his time for the government.

Brian Lehrer: President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, about 10 years after the federal income tax constitutional amendment was passed and a century ago. We will start in 1924 now. We will play more archival audio clips as we move in time toward the present, take some oral history calls from some of you, and talk to our guest, who is perfect for this centennial topic, Matthew Continetti, Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, generally considered a center-right think tank and author of books, including one, as if it was written for this segment, called The Right: The Hundred Year History of the War for American Conservatism.

Matthew was last on the show when the book came out in 2022 and back today in this context. Matthew, thank you for your time today with everything going on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Matthew Continetti: Hello, Brian. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Before we talk about 100 years of history and where conservatism might be going in the next 100 years, I want to acknowledge again that there was an assassination attempt against the presidential candidate yesterday or Saturday in which a bystander was killed and two others critically injured.

Even as we talk about other things as well on the show today, it can't just be business as usual, especially when we talk political things like this, as everyone with a microphone has to speak out against political violence, certainly against political assassination, which is an attack on democracy and also say out loud our sympathy to the family of the man who was killed trying to protect his family and our hope for the recovery of the two who were wounded. Matthew, we'll get to our history segment with you in a minute, but what's most on your mind to say about the shooting?

Matthew Continetti: Well, we are living history. This will be remembered for some time. A few thoughts on the attempted assassination. One is Donald Trump's reaction I think will also be remembered in history for ages to come. The images of him wanting to show his face after the first rounds had been fired, not clear whether there was another shooter in the crowd at that moment, and raising his fist in defiance, I think will be justly iconic in portraits of this era for many years to come.

The crowd, now you've already mentioned the father and volunteer fireman who was tragically killed simply for participating in a type of political experience, a rally that doesn't normally go to places like Butler, Pennsylvania, and the larger crowd itself, I think, acted quite commendably in the midst of this horrible tragedy.

Finally, I think one major question I have, Brian, is the security and the failures of the Secret Service, also the affiliate agencies, in allowing the situation to happen. Now, the Secret Service agents who rushed to the stage and put their bodies between the assassin and Trump are heroes. They acted bravely but there are larger questions about the Secret Service as an institution, and that's why I think it was very important for President Biden to say in his remarks to the nation on Sunday evening that he is ordering an independent investigation. Something went horribly wrong and we do deserve answers.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for all that. All right. Let's talk history. We played the Calvin Coolidge clip from 1924 and you draw parallels with today in terms of what kind of conservatism was rising at that time after the end of World War I. Want to start there?

Matthew Continetti: Absolutely. I think it's a very interesting clip to choose. When I look at the history of the Republican Party over the last 100 years, many things have changed, others have not. One of the aspects of the Republican Party and the American Right that has not changed is its opposition to taxation. You saw in that clip or heard in that clip from Coolidge a resistance to income taxes, and that will play out in the RNC this week as well, with Trump calling to preserve the tax cuts that he and the Republican majorities in Congress put into law in 2017, and Trump adding a new dimension to this policy by calling for no taxes on tips, clearly an appeal to service workers in many key battleground states, but also, I think a reflection of how the Republican Party has changed in recent years toward a more working-class, blue-collar, non-college-educated voting base.

Brian Lehrer: There was a big restrictionist(ph) immigration Act passed in 1924, which basically ended the Ellis Island era. Where would you say that fit into the picture you paint as another parallel with today?

Matthew Continetti: Oh, I think it fits in very closely. The Republican Party, it has become deeply critical of illegal immigration, especially as what's been happening on the southern border over the course of the Biden Administration, but you can also detect now within the Republican party a growing opposition to legal immigration to the United States. That, of course, is a parallel with the GOP of the 1920s.

I do think that if Trump is elected in November, you will see reductions in all categories of immigration. What's interesting is that we are seeing in the public opinion more broadly, not just among Republican voters who have been very much critical of immigration since really the beginning of the 21st century, but among the broader public as well. I think this is one area where this GOP that is resembling its character from a century ago is also consonant with developing trends in the wider American public.

Brian Lehrer: Just drawing one more parallel between the anti-immigration movement of that '20s and the anti-immigration movement of this '20s, was it racial and ethnic and religious in your telling of that history? Was it there were just too many Catholics and Jews coming in through Ellis Island and people not quite considered white from places like Italy?

Matthew Continetti: I think many of the same arguments that were used in support of the immigration restriction acts of the '20s are present today. The concern that immigration reduces wages, that native workers lose jobs to immigrants. You could see those. There was definitely a much more explicit racial dimension, as you pointed out, especially in terms of immigration from East Asia. That was a major issue at the turn of the 20th century.

There was also, at that time, even among many progressive thinkers, belief in the pseudoscience of eugenics that contributed to the restrictionism of the era. What's interesting about the current immigration debate is-- what you find is that the Republican party is adopting immigration restrictionism much more explicitly than it had before Trump while, at the same time, becoming much more of a diverse coalition. You have Trump leading the charge against illegal immigration, perhaps even against immigration more broadly, while also gaining and support among Hispanic American voters and as well as many Black male voters.

Brian Lehrer: Before we move on through history and listeners, if you're just joining us, we're doing our 100 Years of a 100 Things series. Because this is the first day of the Republican Convention, our thing number three today is 100 Years of The American Right with Matthew Continetti, who wrote the book, The Right: The Hundred Year History of the War for American Conservatism.

Because of the news this weekend of the political violence, if we can assume that it was in some way political violence as assassination attempt, in the 1920s, there was a surge of political violence in this country from the Ku Klux Klan and other groups you would probably call right-wing. They were at least as associated with the Democratic Party as the GOP, the southern segregationist Democrats of that era, very present at the Democratic Convention of 1924, the Clan was. We'll talk about that next month when we cover the Democratic Convention of this year, but since we're all thinking about political violence today, would you make any comparisons between the 1920s and the 2020s in your telling of the story of the right?

Matthew Continetti: I think here it's just a more general characteristic of American democracy that we have experienced political violence throughout our history. Prior to the 1920s, of course, the successful assassination of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley. Then after the 1920s, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, attempted assassinations of presidents Ford and Reagan, political violence is part of the background of American democracy.

What is remarkable I think about what happened over the weekend, Brian, is that we had not had such a close-run attempt on a presidential candidate/former president like with Trump on Saturday since 1981. The fact that we were able to go 40 years without an incident like this occurring, I think, again, raises questions, not just if the atmosphere, which the atmosphere is always there, that's why it's the atmosphere, but what were the specific mistakes that led to such a close-run attempt on Donald Trump's life?

Brian Lehrer: I guess maybe we're seeing pretty different from some other countries like Mexico just had their presidential election, and it was hardly in the news in this country for all the other things going on, but there were dozens of political killings in Mexico leading up to that election.

Matthew Continetti: That's a fair point, and of course, Slovakia, Fico, had an assassination attempt, the former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo was killed a couple of years ago. Political violence is part of the strange fabric, I think, of all societies and democratic societies.

Brian Lehrer: None on a president or a presidential candidate, as you say, in this country since the first months of the Reagan Administration in 1981. Well, let's continue forward in time and this 100-year history. The landmark election of 1932, the Great Depression was in full painful swing, Republican Herbert Hoover was president and he lost to FDR. Spoiler alert. Here is Hoover defending his record and warning the country about the prospect of Democratic Party rule.

President Herbert Hoover: My fellow citizens, from the congressional elections in 1930 down to the present moment, the strategy of the Democratic Party has been an effort to implant in the unthinking minds through deliberate misrepresentation, the colossal falsehood that the Republican Party is responsible for this worldwide catastrophe.

A circular placed in my hands since coming to this State, issued by the Democratic National Committee, says this depression was manmade. I agree with that, but they say the man who made it was myself personally.

[laughter]

They express no gratitude that in my manufacture of this world crisis, I have let this country off easier than Russia or Western Europe or South America.

[cheering]

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Herbert Hoover in 1932. Matthew, you wrote in your book that after FDR framed government as the ally of the downtrodden in competition with wealthy private interests, the Republican argument that what was good for business was good for America has rarely won the day. Reflect on Herbert Hoover in 1932 if you want, or the question, how did the depression, or how did FDR's popularity during it change American conservatism?

Matthew Continetti: Well, 1932 was the signal election in so many ways, FDR's victory and the creation of the New Deal, fundamentally restructured the relationship, I think, between Americans and the federal government, changed the relationship between the states and the federal government, and changed this broader idea, Brian, as you suggested, what role the government should play in the administration of the national economy.

Leaving all of the anti-Roosevelt forces positioned on the right of the political spectrum. Hoover's an interesting subject here because during his administration, he was known as something as a progressive Republican. As FDR came closer to winning in 1932, and Hoover's position crumbled, he began to really adopt the language, what would be the language of the conservative right in the United States really up until the present day, and its attitudes toward bureaucracy and its attitudes toward regulation, taxation. FDR changed so many things. One thing he did change was the American right. He also really moved it to the margins of American politics for many, many years after his first presidential victory.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, if you consider yourself a conservative, we want your oral history contribution to this 100-year history segment. What does that mean to you today? Has it changed over time for you? If you consider yourself a conservative, is your conservatism different from your parents or your grandparents' conservatism, if they also would have called themselves that? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. If you consider yourself a conservative, or you want to reflect on how yours might be different from your parents or grandparents' versions as we talk about this in a 100-year context, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 with Matthew Continetti.

Before we leave Herbert Hoover, that Hoover-style idea persists, "Know that what's good for business is good for America." I mean, this is actually one of my biggest questions about today's populist right, and also Trump's place in it. Its language is against the corporate elite, but Republicans in Congress and Trump when he was in office, have done basically everything the US Chamber of Commerce and other business interests wanted, the big things; lower taxes, less regulation, keep the current barriers to unionization, anti-minimum wage, easier to discriminate based on religion. I could go on. They mostly might as well be Reagan or do you disagree? You know there's so much better than I do. What am I missing?

Matthew Continetti: Well, I do disagree. I think it rests on a distinction between the national economy and the international economy. The Chamber, for example, is historically been a great supporter of immigration to the United States and that's clearly something that the Trump Republican Party disagrees with the Chamber of Commerce on. I think that question of trade has become very important with today's Trump Republican Party.

Brian Lehrer: That's the big exception. Right?

Matthew Continetti: Right. I also think institutions like the Chamber have been very much in support of entitlement reform in order to address our large deficits and debt. You look at the current Republican platform, and there's no mention of debt, and the only mention of deficit is in relation to the trade deficit. Then I think you're right to say, again, when it comes to small business, when it comes to entrepreneurialism, the Republican Party had been very consistent over this 100-year period.

Increasingly, you see a more oppositional antagonistic attitude towards sectors of the economies, you think of the social media companies, you think, of course, Ron DeSantis's war with the Walt Disney Corporation. There is a different change in attitude toward corporations, typically, those corporations that have global footprints, and whose executives, or boardrooms support socially progressive policies.

Brian Lehrer: When you mentioned Disney, so much of what I read-- Well, we did a segment on the labor policies in the Project 2025 policy blueprint that the Heritage Foundation is hoping Trump will follow. The main thing they seem to care about is using government to fight against diversity programs, don't have counting by race anymore to measure disparate impact, take away anti-discrimination, protection based on sexual orientation and other sexual related categories, which makes it seem more of a white, straight, cisgender, male culture war movement than necessarily a business-oriented movement. Tell me if you think I'm wrong.

Matthew Continetti: Well, I think you have to look at it as a multifaceted movement. I would say that it's not just straight white males that we can see that in the polling. The Republican Party is becoming much more ethnically racially diverse. It's becoming more masculine, I think that's true mainly because many young men of color are now much more open to supporting Republicans, and specifically Donald Trump than they have been in the 10 years since Donald Trump has been a part of our lives, and our political lives. I will say the opposition to affirmative action to quotas, now, the opposition to diversity, equity, inclusion, this has been a piece of the conservative movement and the Republican party really since the Bakke decision that authorized affirmative action in 1973. It's an interesting move because the right from having had a checkered past on the racial questions really adopted beginning in the '70s the language of integration, the language of meritocracy, the language of colorblindness. That is a throughline certainly for the last 50 years on the American right.

Brian Lehrer: Foreign policy, which the right has had a changing relationship to over time, one of the main themes of your book, just as Hoover lost to FDR in 1932, which is more about domestic economics. Wendell Willkie lost to FDR in 1940. Here's Willkie in that year, of course, that was before Pearl Harbor, but with the war in Europe already raging.

Wendell Willkie: Why did Hitler strike France? Why did Hitler strike England? Why? Because they were weak economically. They had a Blum government and a Chamberlain government. You're at peace with the United States and we'll build a domestic economy here so strong that no dictator ever so seek to strike. Let me say in conclusion--

[cheering]

[applause]

Let me say in conclusion, that I who saw service during the entire period of the last war, and I know what it is to then send men to the shambles of trenches. If you elect me President of the United States, I shall never send an American boy to fight in any European war.

Brian Lehrer: The Republican nominee in 1940 vowing never to send Americans to fight in World War II. Before you comment on Wendell Willkie from then, I'll note that he sounded so different from the Republican nominee in our next clip, Barry Goldwater in 1964. This is from his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention of '64. Of course, the Cold War is going on by then, but criticizing the Democratic presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, for being too weak in the area of waging war.

Barry Goldwater: I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

[cheering]

[applause]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

[cheering]

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: That's the most famous Goldwater clip from 1964. My error, though, that was not the one I meant to play. I meant to play one where he was tearing down Kennedy and Johnson for not fighting hard enough overseas. He was saying to people, "Make no mistake, we are at war in Vietnam." That was in 1964. He wanted the US to fight harder in Vietnam, obviously. Lyndon Johnson would win that election and eventually become so unpopular because he did fight in Vietnam. How would you put those Wendell Willkie and Barry Goldwater thoughts into context?

Matthew Continetti: Well, I think it's an important contrast. I think it's a useful contrast as well because it explains the changes on the right and in the Republican Party between December 6th, 1941 and 1964 with Barry Goldwater's nomination to the presidency.

The real change was in the right's outlook toward the world abroad. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the right sounded a lot like many Trump Republicans do today in their skepticism of foreign intervention, outright opposition to assisting allies like Ukraine, for example. The hostility toward international institutions or multilateral institutions like the United Nations, of course, hadn't been created yet, but they had prior to World War II, the League of Nations, which the Republican right very much opposed.

The difference was coming out of World War II. America faced a new threat, the threat of global communism, the threat of a really powerful Soviet Union that it was now beginning to dominate Eastern Europe, and whose allies, and the Chinese Communist Party, were on their way to win the civil war in China by 1949. The right shifted. It dropped a lot of its opposition to intervention. It dropped its negative view of alliances. It became more willing to form partnerships and alliances with other countries in order to not only contain communism, which is what many Democrats wanted to do like Harry Truman, and later, Lyndon Johnson, but actually roll it back and defeat it.

This was a major transformation of the right that happened in the middle of the 20th century really because the unique nature of communism. Now, I think in the decades since the end of the Cold War, and in particular, the decade since the rise of Trump, we see the right going back to its pre-World War II view of world affairs and of American involvement overseas.

Brian Lehrer: Before we take a few phone calls from listeners who identify themselves as conservatives and wanted to find their conservatism, let me play at least one more clip. You write about William F. Buckley as a giant intellectual influence on the right in his years of writing and speaking, and being the founder of the conservative magazine, National Review. Here's Buckley in, of all things, a pop culture context people might not expect. William F. Buckley with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1990, promoting a spy novel he had written.

William F. Buckley: It's a little bit intriguing nowadays in the spy literature to bring out a book in which the American spies are actually to be distinguished from their guys in the sense that not that we do different things, but that we are serving a better cause. In the last 10 or 15 years, there's been a tendency, I think, regrettable, to assume that if you push an old lady and somebody else pushes an old lady, that which is similar between you and that other person, is that you both push old ladies. Not whether you're pushing the old lady away from the way of a bus, and the other fellow is pushing the old lady in the way--

Johnny Carson: In the way of the bus.

William F. Buckley: Yes. I attempt in this novel, without surrendering the ambiguities to make that decision, that we're fighting on the right side, which has been, as you know, a terribly unfashionable thing to say.

Brian Lehrer: That will quite do for the Barry Goldwater clip that I meant to play. [chuckles] William F. Buckley on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1990. Do you want to talk about Buckley or that clip?

Matthew Continetti: Sure. There's so much to say about Buckley, a recent major documentary on PBS about his life. I think what we see from that clip, Brian, is, again, the emphasis on foreign policy, the emphasis on defeat of the Soviet Union and communism. This was the major cause of Buckley's life. It was something that he was willing to argue for in a variety of different contexts. The other aspect of note in that clip is he's talking about a spy novel he wrote. Buckley wrote dozens and dozens of books. He wrote about a book a year.

He was unique among conservative figures that he married a kind of intellectualism that you could kind of sense in the way he was talking and with a broad public appeal. He was one of these mid-century American intellectuals who was broadly recognized throughout the country and the world as representative of a serious point of view that should be taken seriously.

He fought very hard for that. I think when we compare that to the media landscape today, we see a very different media landscape. We see a landscape where voices on the right are very loud and certainly have a large role to play in the conversation, but there's no one figure who is universally recognized as the leader of the Conservative Intellectual Movement in the United States like Buckley was at the time. It's a comment both on his unique talents and the changing media landscape across the decades.

Brian Lehrer: We are in our series. If you're just joining us, 100 Years of 100 Things, this is Thing #3 today, 100 Years of the American Right on this first day of the Republican Convention with Matthew Continetti from the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Right: The Hundred Year History of the War for American Conservatism. We put out a call, an invitation to some of you who consider yourselves conservatives to talk about what that means to you today. If that is different from whatever your parents or grandparents perhaps if they considered themselves conservatives might've meant and let's take a couple of calls, oral history calls. Dante in Toms River, you're on WNYC. Hello, Dante.

Dante: Hi, Brian. Great show. Before I'm couched in any one word, my grandfather came at the turn of the 20th century, Italian, built a business from being a bootblack, had 9 properties, 10 children, was a devout Republican even during the Depression era when he all sold his properties. He felt that the Republican Party reflected freedom from when he came from Italy where he was starving.

I guess I got that gene because the context of your question has to be understood. I'm a boomer. I enlisted in the Navy in '70. I was during Vietnam. I saw that the fight, while it may have been noble in spirit, and while the boys who went there, we all felt the same way before the country was sworn oath, but we were misled. Whether it was the Democrats or Republicans as a convention, the thing that we were misled by was the truth of history.

Ho Chi Minh was not anti-American. In fact, he was the opposite. Roosevelt threw him out of the White House when it came to visit. When you look at people, look at what they do, not what they say. I'm a conservative who's an entrepreneur. Lower taxes, definitely more freedom, less government. It's just that America was built on that. Anything less than that doesn't mean that I don't have a heart. It's an NPR. I get my heart from NPR, but, boy, you guys get my spirit going, but this is a great show. I'm glad you guys are having it.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Dante. Appreciate it. Diana in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Diana.

Diana: What?

Brian Lehrer: Diana, are you there?

Diana: Yes. I'm there. Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hi there.

Diana: It's interesting. I have the opposite from the caller that just was-- Sorry. I was a postwar child born to Jewish refugees from Europe. My mother came before the war and she was a very firm Democrat. I remember my mother crying when Adlai Stevenson lost in 1952. They were firmly liberal, I guess lefty, but not extreme left, just a little.

As the years go by and as they see what's happening and the so-called progressive movements have become totally-- I don't know, to me they're turning the world upside down, destroying marital relations, destroying irregular old fashioned values of family and of abortion and euthanasia and things that were--

I remember Dr. Kevorkian being called Dr. Death and now there's states where you can just go in and assisted suicide is acceptable. I just told my mother, she said, "How come you're not liberal?" I said "Ma, I'm liberal. They've left us. They've left us. This is not [unintelligible 00:34:10]. Today, I'm conservative."

Brian Lehrer: Because as you see it, liberalism has left you. Diana, thank you very much. I know we're going to lose you in a couple of minutes, Matthew. There's more we could do, but I do want to get your take on the Project 2025 report from the Heritage Foundation written to inform a second Trump Administration. Do you have a basic take on where it fits into The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism?

Matthew Continetti: Absolutely. Having looked at Project 2025, it has two components. One is vetting potential staffers and the second component is the policy agenda, the telephone-sized book that has all these different policies for another Trump term. You see areas of major continuity that the first caller was talking about in terms of the emphasis on business freedom, but you also see some places where you have the new Trumpian elements, the modifications to the right on trade and on immigration that make the Republican Party more like its pre-World War II self.

I would say, Brian, I had always been skeptical of the stories that said that Project 2025 was somehow going to be immediately imposed on America in the event of a Trump victory just because it wasn't coming from Trump. Sure enough, we've had repeated messages from both Trump and his top two advisors who will play key roles in any administration that sure you have this out there, but it's unlikely that it will be directly transferred into policy.

I do think it's been appropriated as a political vehicle in order to remind independent voters that a Trump term might not be exactly how they remember the first one or what they think might happen in a second one. I don't think this political appeal is working.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one follow-up question on that in political philosophy terms because you're right, Trump hasn't explicitly embraced Project 2025, though it was written by many people who worked for him, but you work at another, if you accept a label, conservative think tank, AEI more seen as a center-right think tank than the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025. Is there any contrast between your two think tanks that you would make that exemplify the theme of your book, The War for American Conservatism among Conservatives over the last 100 years?

Matthew Continetti: Well, I do think that many of the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, and we don't have an institutional voice like the Heritage Foundation. We believe in intellectual freedom for all of our scholars, but I would say the view among the scholars at AEI is predominantly that America needs to retain its leadership role in the world, that a strong America means not only that we have robust defenses, conventional and strategic forces, but we are also active with our alliances like NATO that we build new partnerships and address the longstanding partnerships like with Japan, Korea, and elsewhere, and that we are open to America continuing to lead in the world and if necessary, intervene in the world.

I do think there's a slight change in tone from Heritage toward what is now the ascendant view in the Republican Party that America needs to look inward. America needs to be more restrained abroad. America needs to reexamine some of these post-World War II alliance systems and structures.

That is one difference but this is a competition of ideas. That competition will continue to play out in a second Trump Administration. I don't think it will just be yes or no up or down one way or the highway, what we know from Trump's first administration was the arguments were very vocal [chuckles] on both sides. Trump actually went from position to position, depending on the circumstances and depending on what he felt would be the most productive use of America for him and for the world at any given time.

Brian Lehrer: That's our episode for today in our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. This was Thing 3 for Day 1 of the Republican Convention, 100 Years of the American Right with Matthew Continetti, author of the book, The Right: The Hundred-Year History of the War for American Conservatism. We'll continue with Thing 4 on Wednesday and it's still being Republican Convention Week. We'll do a 100 Years of Republican Convention Speeches. Matthew, thank you for today. We really appreciate it.

Matthew Continetti: Thanks for having me, Brian.

 

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