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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Fareed Zakaria is thinking about virtuous cycles and vicious ones. The Washington Post columnist and host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, wrote a column this month called The pandemic has led to innovation. It's a reason for optimism. He cites a renewed interest and massive investments in science and technology inspired by the epically successful vaccine development as hopefully fostering a virtuous cycle.

This week, Fareed also hosted a CNN Special Report called A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP, in which he sees a few vicious cycles at work, like Republican presidents from Reagan to Trump, promising big conservative changes that never happened, which contributes to the base becoming more radicalized and aggrieved. Fareed was here most recently in October for his book Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World. Let's pick up these threads. Always great to have you, Fareed. Welcome back to WNYC.

Fareed: Thank you so much, Brian. Always a pleasure.

Brian: Can we start with your use of the term virtuous cycle in The Washington Post to describe what might be happening in this country right now with innovation?

Fareed: Sure. I think we all sense some of it anyway. We're all working in ways that are different, in some ways are more productive, you lose some things for sure, but that's when innovation happens. When you're forced to adapt, when you're forced to change the ways you do things. We're all creatures of habit. It's very hard to cast aside the old habits and adopt new ones.

One of the things that's happened in all of our personal lives in corporate America and in even broader ways even government is that we've all been forced to cast aside old ways and find new ones. Not all of them will stay, not all of them are more productive, but that ability to be open to change is in many ways the essence of innovation.

Brian: You also say a bold fiscal innovation in Europe that's different from the innovation that's happening here. How is Europe innovating fiscally around COVID?

Fareed: First, let's take stock of how innovative we have been fiscally. Biden has really stepped up to the plate. We are now for the first time making major investments in the lives of poor people and middle-class people. For the time I've been in America since 1982, every major fiscal effort has been directed toward the rich. That is to say tax cuts for the rich or worse. This is the first time where the bulk of these measures will actually go to the middle of the income distribution and some of it even to poor people.

The European one is actually more innovative in the sense that, look, it's a bunch of different countries. The one thing that the rich countries have always resisted is the idea that they were to guarantee the debt of poor countries. The mechanism is a little complicated, but basically, that is what Germany and France agreed to do in the last year. They'd never agree to do this before, even in the depths of the '08, '09 financial crisis. They have agreed to a common European project even when it comes to borrowing and spending. Those are bold plans both sides of the Atlantic. I think we're being much more bold in the way we're thinking about investing for the future.

Brian: In another column, you explore the difference between countries that did well at resisting COVID spread in the first place and those that did not. Your premise is that it's less about the governments of those countries than it is about societies that have what one of your sources calls tight cultures or loose cultures. That'll be a new concept to most of our listeners as it was to me before I read your column. Can you give us a little remote learning on this concept of tight cultures versus loose cultures?

Fareed: Sure. A thought came out of a mistake in the sense that when I was trying to figure out in my book. I wrote the book in the first three, four months of the pandemic, and I had to project a lot of stuff. I look back on it now a year later and, honestly, I got mostly everything right, with a few exceptions. The big one was, I didn't catch, I didn't predict that Europe would have such a strong second wave. I was looking at it and asking, "Why did that happen," because European governments, the public health systems in France, and Germany, and Holland are very good.

All the things that I had focused on, East Asian governments being good, the American government having been terrible at this, UK government having been bad at it, what was going on here? What I discovered was that the French and the Germans, for example, really crushed the first wave because of very good, smart government action. Then people just got fed up of doing the social distancing. They got fed up of wearing the masks. Whether it was August vacation in France, or Oktoberfest in Germany, they all began to behave like Floridians, if you want to put it in the American context. That produced a huge second wave.

That led me to the research of Michele Gelfand, this wonderful psychologist. She talks about cultures that are tight cultures, where people instinctively follow rules, and loose cultures, where people instinctively defy authority. It's not a perfect correlation, but you really do find that places like Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, people generally view the collective enterprise as a very important one. Whereas if you look at places like the UK, the United States, Israel, individual action and defiance of authority and hierarchy is a core value.

It turns out in this kind of public health crisis, that kind of individualism is not a great thing because it makes it impossible to do real lockdowns, it makes it impossible to have real social distancing rules and things like that. Now, the interesting final point I make is, what I was most intrigued by her work was she points out, it's not like these cultures in East Asia are better or different genetically or anything like that. First of all, there are trade-offs here. They being tighter or looser is good or bad depending on what you're trying to do. The tight cultures were all places that in some way faced a sense of external threat, had banded together.

Think of Taiwan under the shadow of China, Vietnam having gone through its long war with the French and the United States, Singapore, this tiny island nation. Even New Zealand, a western country, an island nation. There is a certain sense in which you can understand why these countries band together and are more tight. It's not genes, it's more history and geography and things like that.

Brian: Yet the theory goes, America's loose culture helped the vaccine get out but also is defined by-- Sorry, I meant to say the virus. That America's loose culture, as you were just describing, helped the virus get out, but also is defined by innovation that we were just talking about with the vaccine development. It's not an all good or all bad comparison.

Fareed: Completely. Clearly, the individualism of the West, if you want to put it in very simple terms, is great for innovation, is great for individual expression. It's great for freedom and liberty in many ways. The collectivism of East Asia is probably good for social order. It's good for things like public health responses. There are some areas where collective action becomes very important. Pandemics are probably the single most important one, but there are others. Only the extraordinary innovation and individualism and all that kind of thing of the West probably could get us this miracle of the vaccine, which really is a miracle.

In nine months, we had five vaccines, which normally, if you'd asked somebody 10 years ago how long would it take to get a vaccine, they would have said 15 years.

Brian: Fareed Zakaria from CNN and Washington Post columnist with us. We'll get to your special report about the Republican Party. Staying on some of these columns that you wrote and the news, I want to ask where your country of origin India fits into this, as it becomes maybe the worst tragedy in the whole pandemic. Let me first acknowledge for our audience, and I don't mean to embarrass you, but you've spoken about this publicly, that I read that your own mother died of COVID in India just last month at the age of 85. Fareed, please first accept my condolences.

If you don't mind talking about it, I was imagining you feeling helpless. Here you are in a recovering United States and you couldn't stop the plague from claiming your own mother in a country that used to be seen as safer from COVID than the United States. Really, my sympathies, but is there anything you would like to say to pay tribute to your mom or to talk about that context?

Fareed: Well, you put it exactly right in terms of how I felt, which was helpless, because at some level, my mother had a very rich life. She had a wonderful career in journalism, social work, education. She had kids whom she adored, grandkids whom she adored. She was 85, as you say. There's a point at which in your life maybe it's okay that you're going to pass away, but to me the hardest part of it was not that. It was the fact that here she was going into a hospital, I couldn't fly there. I couldn't be there. I couldn't mourn her death. I couldn't bury her.

My kids have gone to India every year of their lives because at Christmas we go and visit their grandmother. I couldn't take them for this final trip where they would have a chance to pay their final respects, to close a circle. I found that the most deeply tragic part. Strangely, if somebody had said to me, "Okay, your mother is going to die at 85. She'll have lived a great life," but you'll be able to do all those things, it will feel very different. I still feel the whole thing is incomplete. I never thought of myself as somebody who needed psychological closure, but I now realize why in every tradition there is something like a shiva and a Kaddish, there is something like that in the-

Brian: Jewish tradition.

Fareed: -that's in the Jewish tradition, the wake. There's always something like that and I didn't get to do that. That's my greatest sadness.

Brian: Again, I definitely feel for you on this. I was shocked to read it when I saw it in the press because it's you. About India as a whole, why do you think the virus is making a late surge after pretty successful containment for a long time at first?

Fareed: I think this is a case that really dwells on the central thesis in my book, which is state capacity, government capacity. The Indian government doesn't function very well to the extent that people have thought about the rise of India and heard about it. It's really all a story of the private sector. The Indian state is dysfunctional. It's corrupt. It's also very weak. It collects almost no taxes. There's all kinds of problems with it.

Public health-wise, it's particularly bad. India has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita of any major developing country, of any major third-world country, let alone comparing it to America. There was always a danger that this would happen. It crushed the first wave really because Modi, quite surprisingly, enacted a remarkably strict lockdown. It was draconian.

I remember talking to friends of mine, relatives of mine, they said grocery stores had closed, pharmacies had closed because the lockdown was so absolute that nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of it, so they all took the safer route, which was to shut down. Tens of millions of people thrown into unemployment, but it did crush the wave. Then Modi, this is the prime minister of India, gets very overconfident, believes that he's a genius, believes that maybe Indians are naturally immune or something. Most importantly, he wants to campaign because there are big elections coming up, and so he opens up everything.

India has enough of a rule of law that if you say, "I want to hold campaign rallies which have 50,000 people," well, then you've got to allow cricket games which have 50,000 people. Then you've got to allow religious ceremonies which have hundreds of thousands of people. All that opened up. It's a much larger version of what happened in France, for example, when in August everyone-- It turns out everybody thinks that when the numbers go down, they're special.

This is a good lesson for us in life. When something happens, you always think you're special and you're unique and you stop doing the very determined measures that made it happen, which were not that you were special or unique, but that you were wearing masks and you were socially distancing.

Brian: As we lift all those restrictions here, we will see what comes to pass.

Fareed: The big difference we have, though, is we have a massive vaccination, which you really have to give the Biden administration credit for. Of course, I'm worried, Brian, but in places like New York City, we're at 50%, 60% of the population is vaccinated, 20% to 30% had COVID. Who knows what herd immunity is? 80% of the population has antibodies. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Brian: To this excruciating ethical question that relates, I saw a headline in the Hindustan Times this morning, "US will share 80 million spare vaccine doses." Spare vaccine makes it sound like, "Oh, we don't need them." President Biden says in the headline, "India may benefit." The end of the headline. The story goes on to say, "It's unknown how many of those doses India will get and of which vaccines as opposed to what other countries will get."

I'm curious if you think the US is doing enough for the global ethics of things like getting American children vaccinated. Whoever wants to look away from the safety of their own children, it's a hard thing to ask of anybody, but they are generally a low-risk group for serious effect. India has a 2% adult vaccination rate, I think I read or something 2% to 10%, something crazy low, and is in this crisis.

Fareed: You ask a very good question. I think the answer is we should be doing more. I'm actually a bit surprised that the Biden administration is not taking this opportunity to assert American leadership in an area where the United States has always been the global leader. The whole idea of international public health, global public health is an American idea though. All the major international global health movements going back to the 1890s were either founded by Americans or the United States was an absolutely key founding member, including the WHO.

This is a case where the United States could really show that we're back, we're engaged. It's a classic case of enlightened self-interest. People will benefit enormously. They will see America in a good light. It also helps us because you can't really get the world back to normal, you can't get global travel back to normal, trade back to normal without mostly everyone being vaccinated. Everybody doesn't have to be, but we have to have a major push.

I think that part of what's going on here is the Biden administration is worried about being criticized by the America fosters, by, essentially, Donald Trump and his allies, because the minute President Biden does something that looks like it's altruistic, you know what's going to happen. People like Trump are going to say, "Wait a minute, what about Americans?" The truth is there are now more than enough vaccines for Americans. The problem we are facing is not supply, it is vaccine hesitancy. We should keep pushing. We should keep educating people.

The point is we have enough vaccines for Americans. We are now clearly building up surplus capacity. We could easily get through a series of smaller measures, whether it's relaxing export controls or suspending patents for a bit. Those technicalities don't matter. The point is we have the capacity to flood the world with vaccines. I think it would be a perfect opportunity for America to show we're back on the world stage, we care about the fate of the world, and we understand that our own fate is wrapped up with the fate of the world.

Brian: We're going to take a one-minute break, then we're going to come back and turn the page with Fareed Zakaria and talk about his CNN Special Report this week called A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP. This is going to include, folks, a very rarely heard clip of Jackie Robinson announcing in 1964 that he was leaving the Republican Party. Did you know Jackie Robinson was a Republican? That's going to be 10 seconds of our conversation coming up. Your calls are welcome for Fareed Zakaria.

Join the conversation about virtuous and vicious cycles and more. 646-435-7280. Did you see his CNN Special this weekend on the transformation of the GOP or anything else we've been talking about regarding COVID, and cultures, and government? 646-435-7280. We'll continue after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Washington Post columnist and CNN host, Fareed Zakaria. Let's go on to the vicious cycle as you described this week in your CNN Special Report, A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP. One of them is, before we get to some clips, this pattern that you also tweeted about. You wrote, "Reagan, Gingrich, and Trump whipped their followers into a hysteria and promised they'd repeal and reverse terrible trends, but it never happens, which makes the base more angry." What so-called terrible trends were you referring to there?

Fareed: It really begins with Goldwater, even though he was never in power. Basically, what happens after the creation of the conservative base of the Republican Party is that Republican leaders realized that the way to rile up this base is to promise them that we're going to repeal the New Deal. Modern American conservatism grew out of the New Deal as a reaction to the New Deal.

The Goldwater promise, we're going to get rid of it. Reagan comes to fame in a speech in which he says, "If we adopt Medicare, this is the road to socialism and dictatorship." They're promising the repeal of Medicare. They're promising the drastic paring back of the welfare state in every way. Then they come into office, and actually Nixon expands the welfare state. Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency.

Reagan comes into office. Reagan expands Medicaid, he saves Social Security. The reason is, these guys, when they come into office, they realize George Will's great line, which is, Americans are theoretically conservative but operationally liberal. They like the welfare state. They like the benefits of having these safety nets and things like that. The problem is how do you keep the base riled up? You keep promising.

What's happened as a result is the base gets angry and more frustrated, and feels that there must be something going on here. Why are we never getting our way? It must be betrayal. It must be traitors. It must be a great conspiracy, people in Washington. The base gets more and more angry, not with Democrats, but with Republicans. The real story of the last 20 years of the Republican Party, if you think of Newt Gingrich and his attacks on George HW Bush, his attack on the then Republican minority leader Bob Michel, you'd think of Trump now as the apotheosis of this trend.

Trump becomes the Republican nominee in 2016, trashing every living previous nominee of the Republican Party: John McCain, Mitt Romney, and both Bushes. It's a party that has consumed itself in this kind of Jacob and reaction, which is keeping its base permanently angry, permanently aggrieved, and always feeling like somebody is betraying them.

Brian: That seems to be what's going on now. I do want to question the premise, at least in part, of them not delivering on their promises, because as seen from the vantage point of progressives, Reagan, Gingrich, and Trump were very successful in doing things progressives see as massively destructive. Reagan ushering in the "greed is good" era, as progressives see it, in the 1980s, contributing to today's massive inequality and some of today's racism. Reagan also successfully destroying people's faith in government. Here's one classic Ronald Reagan line. Remember this?

Ronald Reagan: I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Brian: Not when government was trying to be authoritarian dictators, but when they were having good intentions. He was even trying to dismantle faith in government, trust in government for that, and he largely succeeded. Then we could go on to Gingrich using his power as speaker of the House to end welfare, as they knew it, a success in the booming '90s, you could argue, but that ravaged families later on. Trump packing the Supreme Court. I could go on, but that's the view from the left.

Conservatives would have reason to say Reagan really did lower taxes, and deregulated business, and discredited the New Deal state. Trump really did empower conservative Christian doctrine to be seen as what the constitution calls for on the court and other really big things. No?

Fareed: No. Look, you make a very good point, but here's how I would respond. I think what you're describing is, look, these were conservative politicians, they came to power, obviously, there were conservative consequences. Look at what we were talking about. Nixon comes into power. This is the first conservative to come into power because Eisenhower was regarded as a me-too Democrat since the New Deal.

What does he do with the core issue that the conservatives had cared about, which was the size of government? He actually expands it. Reagan comes in, what does he do? You're absolutely right. Reagan, unlike Nixon, demeans government, disrespects it, rhetorically dismantles it, but operationally, for the most part, Social Security gets bigger, Medicare gets bigger.

There is a reality there. Partly to compensate for that, I think the Republicans stand to the social issues. On the social issues, you're absolutely right. They get more conservative and they get more effective at packing the court and doing things like that. People forget a lot of Nixon's judges, for example, were actually quite moderate in comparison. Social conservatism got more extreme over the '80s and '90s, but you still had the problem which was the core animating idea which had been flowing through from Goldwater, to Reagan, to Gingrich, which was, we're going to pair back this out-of-control government. Never happened.

Many conservatives kept searching for an explanation. Why did that part of it lead? At the very least you'd say that central part of conservative ideology never happened. Why? When all these people kept promising it, it must be that there's some conspiracy, these guys are all closet moderates. They all actually think of themselves as Democrats. They keep searching for somebody who is even more extreme. Then finally they get to Trump, who says, "I'm just crazy. I'll blow the whole house." That's what they got.

Brian: By the way, I should mention, folks, if you want to see it, that Fareed Zakaria's CNN Special Report called A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP, though it originally aired over the weekend, will reair a couple of times this Friday night at 11:00 and Saturday at nine o'clock at night. Friday night at 11:00, Saturday night at 9:00. It's also on demand on CNN's digital platforms through May 29th, I am told.

It goes back at least as far as Barry Goldwater, which reminds us that in the presidential election of 1964, the Republican nominee was seen as an off-the-charts, radical right-winger, and led to Lyndon Johnson winning in a landslide. Here's a few seconds of, maybe the most few seconds of Barry Goldwater from that year.

Barry Goldwater: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

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Brian: He calls himself an extremist. You don't hear presidential candidates doing that every day. Here's that archive clip from the documentary of Jackie Robinson, who was a Republican, as he spoke to an interviewer who asked this question.

Interviewer: Mr. Robinson, which senator of President Johnson--

Jackie Robinson: Yes, I was very strongly for President Johnson over Goldwater. There's no question about that.

Brian: Fareed, tell us a little bit of the Jackie Robinson story. He was a Republican?

Fareed: He was a Republican. Remember, there were a lot of Black Republicans. People often forget, but the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln. The Democratic Party in the '20, '30s, '40s was the party of the KKK and the segregationists. As a result, it was not unusual to find a lot of Blacks who voted Republican. Richard Nixon in 1960 got 40% of the Black vote. Now, this is after the decade of the '50s, where conservatives like Goldwater had started to come out against civil rights. It was actually probably even a little bit higher, but in 1960, 40% of Blacks vote Republican. The Republican Party was really a mixture at that point of some very liberal impulses and very conservative ones.

The most liberal politician in America probably of any stature was Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York, who was a Republican. The most conservative politician in America was Barry Goldwater, and he was also a Republican. The '64 Convention sorts the liberals and conservatives out, and essentially destroys the liberal wing of the Republican Party. The issue on which that split takes place more than anything is the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was passed just a few days before the Republican Convention.

Goldwater was one of, I think only 20 senators who voted against it. Most Republicans voted for it. In fact, more Republicans voted for it than Democrats. At that point, when Goldwater allies himself with the anti-civil rights agenda of the segregationists, the Blacks flee the Republican Party, and so Goldwater gets, I think 5% of the Republican vote, down from 40%. It's never recovered since then.

Brian: Angelo, in Stanford, you're on WNYC with Fareed Zakaria. Hello, Angelo.

Angelo: Hello, Brian and Fareed. The great Brian Lehrer once again. Well, I must say I disagree. I disagree that GOP has changed. I submit that it has always been thinly veiled. It may seem like I'm being a provocateur, but to me, it's always been the homophobic, misogynistic, myth-believing, money and blood-lusting, xenophobic band of old, white guy racists. I think most, or at least I would be intellectually dishonest not to see that the right has only now, over the last five to six years, found their champion and trust. Again, from my perspective, it's always been this. The veil has gotten thinner and thinner over the last 25 to 30 years.

Brian: Angelo, thank you very much. Fareed?

Fareed: Look, I think that there's some truth to that, but I think you'd have to bear in mind that in the 1960s, until the late '60s, the majority of the most racist politicians in America, certainly in the Senate, and governors were all Democrats. The southern segregationists were all Democrats. That flips, but the change actually takes a while. Ricardo carries much of the south. It's a slow process that takes place. It's Nixon's southern strategy that makes it happen. Even then, I think that the caller is right, but there was a way in which they play footsie with racism but they wouldn't themselves do it. Reagan did that in very symbolic ways.

I think it's fair to say the elder Bush was not racist himself nor I think was the son, but they would ally themselves with forces like that. I do think that you get to a new level with Trump because Trump openly acknowledges the grievances. His entire agenda is essentially race, ethnicity, and all that kind of thing. I think you can say the veil keeps getting thinner. I think that there was a big shift. The shift from John McCain, who admonishes somebody who tries to make a racist comment about Barack Obama in an election rally, and Trump, who encourages people to make racist comments about Obama. That's a big difference to me.

Brian: McCain lost and Trump won.

Fareed: Precisely. Trump is the darling of the Republican Party and McCain is an entirely forgotten figure.

Brian: Gary, in Madison, New Jersey, you're on WNYC with Fareed Zakaria. Hi, Gary.

Gary: Yes, hello. Great honor to be on the show. Thank you so much.

Brian: Thank you. Go ahead.

Gary: Hear me?

Brian: Yes.

Gary: Very good. To be brief, I don't have my friends believe in me when I tell them that since President Johnson caught Nixon colluding with North Vietnam, I understand, and Reagan with Iran to not release the hostages until after he took office, and what we know about Trump colluding with Russia, and I understand he having a server that only talked with a Russian bank, if I'm correct. The documents haven't been released with Bush Jr and Sr, but we know they have business with Saudi Arabia.

Your show being about the patterns of the Republican Party of late, I'd love to know what your take is on, apparently, colluding with foreign governments during presidential campaigns and all of the Republican enterprises since Nixon that we know of. I'd love to add also, I'd love to point out that the last previous three Democratic presidential administrations have garnered a Nobel Peace Prize each with Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Barack Obama.

Brian: Obama before he did anything. Gary, thank you. Fareed, for you as a foreign affairs watcher, do you think there's anything to that as a pattern? I think Gary does cite some things that are real there during those presidential campaigns, but how do you see it in context?

Fareed: I think that there's a lot in there. There's more factual basis for some of those cases than others. In other cases, I'm not saying it's not true, I'm just saying we don't have as much in terms of a factual record. The strongest one is actually the first one he mentioned. There's no question that Nixon sent signals to the North Vietnamese not to make concessions to the Johnson negotiating team in Paris and wait because he would be more likely to be flexible in a way that doomed Hubert Humphrey's chances for the presidency. That I think there's a fairly strong record on. The Reagan case is a little more, as far as I can tell, a little more complicated.

I think the Iranians also wanted to really screw Jimmy Carter for whatever reason, and so they also were gladly waiting for Reagan. I think that the Trump-Russia one, people have known forever. Look, I think that the way I would put it is, Republicans have tended to be more cynical in their election campaigns in general. I think that is a fair statement. Bush Sr was a very decent man himself, but tolerated the abomination of that Willie Horton ad and also other parts of the campaign, which impugned the patriotism of his opponent.

Republicans have grown up, particularly ever since Nixon. There has been a sense that politics ain't beanbag, it's a contact sport. You've got to do what you've got to do. Look, I think, in general, that's not true of life with anything. Ethics pervade everything. Whether you're a business person or a politician, there are some things you should do and some things you shouldn't do. I think it's true that the Republican Party has been more cynical in the way it has used power during campaigns.

Brian: Let's conclude with this, Fareed, and kind of it ties together your domestic, political, and cultural analysis of the GOP over the last 60 years with foreign policy. Here's Liz Cheney speaking the other day after being kicked out of the Republican House leadership for not embracing Trump's big lie about the election being stolen.

Liz: We've got to get back to a position where we are a party that can fight for conservative principles, that can fight for substance. We cannot be dragged backward by the very dangerous lies of a former president.

Brian: Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming. I'm curious, Fareed, in your big picture telling of the Republican story of these past decades, how you see the line from Dick Cheney, to his daughter Liz Cheney? Because 15 years ago, you certainly remember it was Dick Cheney who was seen as the symbol of the Republican hardcore, as he embraced torture, unapologetically, and embraced false theories about Iraq being involved in 9/11, that were arguably as false as Trump's election fraud. Now, his daughter is the symbol of fact-based ethical conservatism. Can you draw that line?

Fareed: Yes, actually, the story, you can even take it one step earlier, which is, Dick Cheney as a congressman was widely regarded as somewhat of a moderate figure. Even when he was the defense secretary for George Bush Sr, he was regarded as somewhat cautious, something of a realist. Colin Powell said to me once that the Dick Cheney he knew in Bush one was a different person from the Dick Cheney he knew in Bush two.

I think it speaks to this transformation of the Republican Party. The party got more extreme, more conservative. Cheney came in as vice president determined that he was going to enact some kind of a much more radical agenda than had been enacted before, becomes much more radical on foreign policy. His daughter, in some ways, thought she was taking on the family mantle now, which was this uber-hawk, uber-conservative mantle. What happened is that the Republican Party is no longer a party of ideas.

This is to my mind the-- The last transformation of the Republican Party has been to take that conservative base that got more conservative, more extreme, more socially conservative. All of a sudden, the final flip is that Donald Trump said none of these ideas matter. It's all personal loyalty. It's all tribal loyalty. She finds herself on the wrong side of the one issue that matters. She's much more conservative than, at least, Stefanik, the woman who replaced her. Much more conservative, has voted for Trump much more, voted for Trump's tax cut, which at least Stefanik did not.

On the issue that now defines the Republican Party, which is tribal loyalty, not conservative ideology, she turned out to be on the wrong side.

Brian: Fareed Zakaria's special report, A Radical Rebellion: The Transformation of the GOP, airs two more times on CNN, Friday night at 11:00 and Saturday night at 9:00. It's available on CNN digital platforms on demand through May 29th. Fareed's book is called Ten Lessons For a Post-Pandemic World, and you can also read his Washington Post columns. Thanks so much for joining us. I always appreciate it.

Fareed: Thank you, Brian. Great conversation.

 

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