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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Yes, it's day three of the Chaos in the House of Representatives over electing a new speaker, a stalemate within the majority party that the country hasn't seen in 100 years. Yes, we will talk some about the Beltway politics and machinations that are going on with it. There's some breaking news about that just in the last few minutes, but primarily, for this segment, we will try to take a different tack and talk about who the Republican voters are, who these 20 congressional holdouts represent.

We've spoken in the past on this show about Donald Trump as a reflection of Republican America, not an exception to it since each time a Mitch McConnell or a Lindsey Graham, or yes, a Kevin McCarthy tries to walk away from Trump's excesses like blame him for January 6th, which they all did. They get pulled back into kissing his ring. Why? Because their constituents in the main take Trump's side, not to mention people like Liz Cheney who got voted out altogether for that reason. We can look at Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, and Congress and say, "Oh, they're going rogue," but really, they represent a lot of American Republicans, maybe most of them.

Why is this happening in people's terms? We have a great guest to help us answer this. It's Astead Herndon, national political reporter for the New York Times. Now, some of you may know the podcast that he hosted for The Times during the run-up to the midterm elections. The podcast was called The Run-Up. As part of it, he took deep dives into interviews with voters from both parties in a series within his podcast series called The Grassroots that, on the Republican side, included moments like this.

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Astead Herndon: Do you think race is a big problem in the country?

Speaker 2: Oh, yes. Oh, now I do. Absolutely. Oh, sure. It's been manufactured.

[end of audio playback]

Race is a big problem in this country because it's been manufactured to be that. We'll play some longer clips from the podcast and follow the events in the House as well. Astead, great to have you on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Astead Herndon: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with the latest developments from this morning first? Your colleagues at The Times, Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson are reporting now that McCarthy has made fresh concessions to the right-wing holdouts. The new article says "these were things he had previously refused to countenance, including allowing a single lawmaker to force a snap vote at any time to oust him from the speakership and allowing the right-wing faction to handpick a third of the party's members on the Powerful Rules Committee, which controls what legislation reaches the floor and in what form." The article cites anonymous sources familiar with the negotiations. Any thoughts on why the holdouts want those particular things?

Astead Herndon: It has been clear from the holdout's own media interviews that they want as much power that they can grasp. They define power in a broad sense. It's been hard to really understand what the ideological difference is between the holdouts against McCarthy and the larger Republican caucus. That's because this isn't really an ideological fight. This is a group of people who believes they're taking up the Donald Trump's call of draining, the so-called swamp, and they want to do things that upend the normal Washington rules to do so.

They're basically are going to embarrass Kevin McCarthy with each one of these new concessions until enough of these folks feel satisfied. With those rule changes, which Catie and Annie reported this morning, we are seeing another instance of McCarthy giving in to this wing in what could also make what even becomes his speakership down the road, much more difficult to govern or manage. Just one person, as you said, who can now call a swamp a vote to ous the speakership. That's a very tenuous concession to make that could spell doom down the road.

Brian Lehrer: That term that you used the swamp. We do keep hearing that from the holdouts. What do they mean by the swamp?

Astead Herndon: If we had a clear definition on that, I would love that. I keep asking them that same thing, it really, to the best of my understanding, it takes a long Donald Trump's messages against "the deep state" the idea that there is an entrenched class in Washington. That there's more powerful than elected officials. That includes lobbyists and longtime lawmakers, that includes some members of the media, and the political establishment. It is their feeling that these people have a pseudo-hold on power that stops the grassroots, or what they would call their Trump wing from getting voice in Washington.

What their hope is is that in instituting things like term limits or enforcing things like these rule changes that act powers representatives to be able to legislate in what they say is the interest of their people. Now, that is the most good faith reading you can give, but they are trying to do here. That is what they say they're trying to do.

Brian Lehrer: It's also someta like when they talk about changing the rules as you just described it, that's just about how policy gets made. I know you said, and everybody seems to say this is post policy, but I think this has to be about something, and I'm going to play one of the clips from your podcast that I think might illustrate it. If they want to drain the swamp, if they think that the government is to this or to that, it means they think the government is doing things that their constituents don't like, or am I wrong?

Astead Herndon: You're not wrong, but I would just say that we're talking about the difference of what policy means to this version of the Republican Party. Those rule changes are important because what Kevin McCarthy has had to agree to are investigations against the Biden family, are what many would consider a more conspiratorial wing of the Republican party really imprinting its agenda on the caucus at large. What they're looking for from McCarthy are commitments to be a thorn in the side of Biden, not only in policy or making affirmative policy tackling issues coming from the house but in an investigative fashion.

They're looking to exact a score that they see being settled from the investigations into Donald Trump and how Congress was behaving investigating his campaign during that administration. When we're talking about whether the policy extractions this group is looking for, we do have to broaden out how we see that because it's not the typical legislative issue. What it is, is a tit-for-tat nature of frankly just politics.

Brian Lehrer: On the investigation side, to be sure.

Astead Herndon: Specifically, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Let me attach this or at least try to attach this to policy and what the government is actually going to do. I want to use a clip from your podcast, The Run-Up, to do that, just set up for our listeners very briefly, who this is. This is a Republican voter who you interviewed named Belinda [unintelligible 00:07:47] if am saying that right. Briefly, who is she and who's her congressperson, if you know?

Astead Herndon: Actually, is that we talked to a bunch of voters in the lead-up to our podcast that we call people who participated in Times polling. Belinda was one of those people, and she's out in New Orleans. I'm not actually sure who her congressperson is off the top of my head, but I remember she was outside of New Orleans in Louisiana. She was one of the voters we talked to and ended up that we had an extended conversation with her at the beginning of the midterms and closer to the election about how she was specifically viewing the race as a patent Trump supporter.

Brian Lehrer: Here she is folks talking a little bit about her political evolution. It is the end of this clip to just tease something that I'm going to ask Astead about afterwards. She talks here about her political evolution after being raised by parents who were Democrats.

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Speaker: Let's see, I probably changed in my 20s, which would've been maybe in the '80s, I guess. By the time Ronald Reagan was there. He would say things that really, really, really made sense. He said, "I used to be a Democrat, but the Democrat Party left me." I thought I wonder what he meant by that. Then I started paying attention. Then what really, really got me was when Obama was in the White House and the whole healthcare thing. That made me start, we started going to meetings.

[end of audio playback]

It was that last part, Astead, that really grabbed me. She had already become a Republican way back in the '80s, but what got her to start going to meetings was opposition to the Affordable Care Act. I don't know if you got all the way there with her, in particular, but can you put some meat on those bones about what was so objectionable about healthcare, and that, of course, is policy to this voter who centered her Catholic faith, generally, which does support generous healthcare benefits?

Astead Herndon: Yes. We got there with her and with the number of voters, one of the things that really stuck out when we talked to members of the Republican grassroots for our podcast was that the Obama era was really a lot of their radicalization moments. It was in that healthcare fight. It was in that [unintelligible 00:10:15] conspiracy. It was in a time in which they felt that not only politically, but culturally, a liberal majority was frankly drowning them out. When we talked to Belinda about healthcare specifically, it wasn't a policy grievance just based in the size of government, though she did have a problem with the rollout and the [unintelligible 00:10:36] and the expansion of government and what she felt was too big of a government role.

She also felt that it was just a liberal administration jamming policy after policy, cultural change after cultural change down their roads and so that's how we ended up talking about race. That's how we ended up talking about a lot of other issues, is that it wasn't just a grievance that was limited to healthcare for a number of those Republican voters. It wasn't just the grievance that was limited to immigration. It was a snowballing of those grievances that really accumulated into their support for Donald Trump. What we found was, as you said in the beginning of how you kicked off this segment, that Donald Trump was a reflection of those grievances. It was not that he kicked them off for many of those voters.

Brian Lehrer: Right. We'll play more of you with Belinda [unintelligible 00:11:32] explicitly on race coming up, but I want to take a step back and bring it back to what's going on on the House floor today about Republicans trying to choose a speaker and I want to ask you through the lens of your reporting, who those members represent. I'm looking at a list of all 20 Including Andy Biggs of Arizona, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, and it goes down the list and you just look at the states that they're from. Now I said Arizona, North Carolina. It's also Georgia, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Montana.

That's a full list of the states the holdouts are from and when you break it down, even more than that, with the very few exceptions of the one from Maryland and the one from Illinois, they're all from the south plus just two from rural parts of the West. They're all white except one and 17 of the 20 are men. What can you start to say about the constituents who likely sent these particular 20 members to Congress?

Astead Herndon: Yes. I think this is a really important point for the 20 hold-outs. It is important not only to look at their idea, what links them ideologically, but what links those districts together. I would say that goes beyond just where those districts are. Also, something that we reported on our show when we focused on Wisconsin, Something that my colleague, Shane Goldmacher has focused on at The Times in his reporting, is how the increase in gerrymandered districts may not have affected the makeup of the house in terms of margin.

It does really change the type of representatives we get because, from all of those 20 representatives, they're all in deeply safe Republican districts that are drawn even in swing states in a way that makes them completely insulated from caring about a swing voter or more, even more so than that, caring about moderate Republicans. What these 20 voters are trying to do, which is also true for some of the people who are backing McCarthy, they have those districts too, but what these 20 voters know is that, for many of them, they do not have to answer to the Republican caucus at large, who is their constituents is really the most inversions of the Republican base.

I would also say another thing that differs for the Republican base rather than the Democratic one, even among many Republicans who we would consider more establishment, people who were unsure about their support of Donald Trump, we talked to a man in Michigan like that, they still have a deep problem with Washington Republicans, and they still will endorse a no holds [unintelligible 00:14:25] political strategy that thumbs their nose at them.

What these 20 holdouts are betting on is that they're not going to pay much of an electoral cost for embarrassing Kevin McCarthy or even the Republican Party in DC for a couple days. What they're betting on is that they will reap a benefit from a base that is ready to really push their Washington leadership to embrace new policy investigation goals and a Trump wing that's really looking for energy after a disappointing midterms.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, but is it possible to say then how those districts, again, the people not the Congress members, might differ or not in general from the much larger group that elected members supporting Kevin McCarthy for speaker, because these 20 are getting all the attention, but more than 200 other Republicans are voting yes for McCarthy for speaker, but I'm not sure how the constituents actually differ.

Astead Herndon: I'm not sure the constituents differ that much. I think that speaks to what we say is true for that 20, which is not necessarily which is a lot of times a personal grievance, but also them trying to make noise on establishment bucking front. What these 20 are definitely trying to do is, I heard Congresswoman Boebert say on Fox News last night that they have support even from the people who are backing McCarthy.

What you heard even from me from figures like Trump who backed McCarthy like Sean Hannity, who has put his weight behind McCarthy, is to do so in a tepid fashion to say, yes, we're supporting him, but we are not against the 20 who are slowing his rise to the speakership. That is a difference on the Republican side because the grassroots has really overtaken where the establishment is right now.

They cannot get those people to just back down after one day, because what that 20 knows is that, at least for this moment right now, they have more political capital than Kevin McCarthy and that might change and that embarrassment factor might get too large, but right now, they see a real political benefit in making sure that he agrees to the fullness of what they call an America first agenda. I really think we should see this as a reassertion of that Trump wing even after the midterms, even after those results, that this group still feels empowered to demand more of the Republican Party.

Brian Lehrer: You said the 20 holdouts have more political capital than the 203 Republicans who've been voting for Kevin McCarthy. Can you explain that?

Astead Herndon: I was really saying those 20 believed they have more political capital than Kevin McCarthy, that he cannot get them to really back down individually. What I do think is true, is that the Republican party apparatus, which includes, conservative media, other Trumpling figures, they've been increasing their level of frustration and pressure that they put on those 20 even from yesterday to today.

I think you'll see an increasing sense of pressure to say, okay, you made your point and he's made concessions. The reason we are at this point is that these people knew that those concessions could be had, and that is because they understood is what I was saying, that they have a political capital that Kevin McCarthy alone does not.

Brian Lehrer: Calls are starting to come in. We still do have some open lines, so listeners, any thoughts or questions for Astead Herndon from The Times on his reporting on the Republicans who voted in the midterms or on the ongoing house speakership stalemate. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

As calls are coming in, more Belinda [unintelligible 00:18:33] from your podcast, here's part of an exchange where you had just mentioned that you grew up in a religious environment too. She had been talking about her Catholicism. You said you grew up in a religious environment too, that your father was a Christian pastor in the Black church, and then even though you are the journalist and she's the source, she asks you a question.

[start of audio playback]

Belinda: Well, let me just ask you one thing. When you brought up the Black thing, do I come across as racist?

Astead: Oh, I don't, I wouldn't say that, but I'm curious, do you think you come off as racist?

Belinda: I hope I don't. You talk about Black churches. Some of our best friends have been Black around here and they don't understand. I'm in the deep south. They don't understand why the rest of the country is acting like race is a big problem because they don't think here that they have an issue.

Astead: Do you think race is a big problem in the country?

Belinda: Oh, yes. Oh, now I do. Absolutely. Oh, sure, but it's been manufactured.

[end of audio playback]

She actually said some of my best friends will let that go and so maybe it's true, but again, it was the end of that clip. White voter, deep south, knows Black people in the deep South who thinks racism is not an issue. She says race is a manufactured problem in this country. Can you elaborate or say how representative of the larger Republican grassroots block of voters you interviewed that is?

Astead Herndon: Oh, I would say that's a representative belief among the larger block of Republicans both in the reporting we did for The Run-Up and the reporting I have done across the Republican base. What we did in that podcast was really based on conversations and reporting I had started by going to Trump rallies throughout his administration and the run-up to his reelection campaign. When I was having those conversations with his supporters, I was thinking that there is both a nuance that is sometimes missed to Trumpism. Yes, a nuance and an understanding of people's full identity that makes them come to Trumpism.

At the same time, I also thought that there's a real underrating that when you ask these people about race, about identity, about why they hold the beliefs that they do, I have often found a willingness to have that discussion. Now, I'm not there trying to change folks' minds, I'm there trying to get a clarity about how they come to their political choices. I thought that that was going to be something that was really valuable to share with folks on our show. When we have that conversation with Belinda, I really appreciate someone who's willing to be candid about how they see race in this country.

I think that that's actually really rare. I would say that that belief that it is manufactured, that particularly the 2020 moments maybe went too far, the idea that black people are complaining about us, the impacts of slavery that were centuries ago. That is something that came up consistently in our talks with Republican voters. I would also say it comes up in a more close sense too. When you ask people about their Trump formation time, when it goes back to that Obama era, it almost certainly comes back to the changing demographics in the country.

We started our podcast by really zeroing in on the Republican 2012 memo and the demographic changes that really guided the party's beliefs in that time. That's why we did that because for Republican voters, it is not at the back of their mind the ways that this country is changing demographically. It's very much a part of their political decision-making. What I have found with Republican voters is when you ask them about that, oftentimes, they will own that choice.

Brian Lehrer: What do they think will change when whites are in a majority anymore? Are they afraid of being discriminated against because they see how minorities are treated in this country? That's probably not how they would put it.

Astead Herndon: [laughs] I would say that that articulation isn't always very clear, but I would say it's a general of things that a lot of people are scared about. A loss of political, cultural, economic power. We hear a lot about things that aren't necessarily what we would call pocketbook issues like a change in who gets to make a Hollywood movie or wokeness in Santas or Christmas. I think there could sometimes be a media, and I would also say a Democratic Party desire to laugh at those impacts, but what they speak to among those voters is that the feeling of cultural loss is driving political decision-making.

Whether that feels legitimate or not, it is very clear to me as a political reporter that that is what is pushing them to make some of those political choices. What we're trying to show was that the midterms were, on one hand, going to be a referendum on just how far those grievances extend, but at the same time, much of what defines Trumpism is here to stay. It goes beyond January 6th. It goes beyond election denial and the core beliefs. Those are the things that Belinda articulates and those are the things that we're going to see in this Republican party going forward. It's the things we see in the speakership fight too.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned the word wokeness. Did you hear that in your reporting in the run-up to the election? Did Republicans especially use the word woke or wokeness? Tell me if I'm pushing you beyond where your reporting actually went, but if so, what did they mean? What did they mean by wokeness? What did that word mean to them?

Astead Herndon: Oh, yes, we certainly heard that word. I would also say we didn't just hear that word from Republicans. We heard that word from some Democrats who thought that the "wokeness" had gone too far. Again, see, I appreciate the push on definitions because I too want them in a clear way, but if I could pseudo-define what we heard, I would say it goes back to something that is beyond policy, to something that's beyond, I would actually say DC but questions about representation or questions about trans identity and LGBTQ rights. Those are things that we heard consistently.

When we talked to voters in those conversations I would say that the buildup of grievances that we heard on the Republican side and somewhat of a democratic angst was specifically about fears about critical race theory, change in the country that we heard from Belinda, but also, that fear about changing gender and sexual education came up a bunch as a real motivating factor among the Republican base. We saw traditional marriage "groups" really tried to push that issue as a motivating factor in the midterms.

When we think about "wokeness", we should not think about it just in an ideological or, I would say, academic debate playing out amongst op-ed page to op-ed page. It has also become a political tool. For many of the voters we heard about, it really added up to a belief that gender, sexual, racial education in the country was "going too far". That's on the Republican side. That definitely came up in our calls, 100%.

Brian Lehrer: Our phones are jammed. We'll take a few phone calls for Astead Herndon from The Times. After the break, we'll play two more exchanges between him and voters that he recorded during the run-up to the midterm elections for his podcast, The Run-Up. Heads up, Astead. We're going to ask you how you think this ends in the House of Representatives today or in March or however long it's going to go on for who's going to be speaker. Stay with us. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC on day three of the speaker standoff in the house with Astead Herndon, New York Times political reporter. Greg in Mount Olive, you're on WNYC. Hi, Greg.

Greg: Hi, Brian. Very interesting. Thank you for getting this. I'm glad I came across it. You brought up the point that many of these 20 GOP members are in insular districts where they don't have to worry about electability and answering to the larger Republican

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Leadership because they're in insular districts.

Greg: Will that reflect on the other members of the GOP, the fact that the larger Republican party appears not to be able to govern effectively?

Brian Lehrer: Astead, can we answer that question at this point?

Astead Herndon: Well, I would say for one, it already has. The fact that Republicans have looked like a party that does not have its, I don't want to say the bad word, but together has already hurt them. I would say that was true in the midterms. They have a smaller congressional majority than they probably should based on what we thought were the winnable districts heading into November. That's partially because there is some evidence that voters judge them to be a party that was flirting with the extremes.

I definitely think it has paid them an electoral cost, but it's a difference between where that is coming from because that's true in a general election. That's true in the midterms. That was true even between the penalties Trump paid among many voters in his presidential election. In the primary, there is still a plurality of Republican voters who actually see some of this behavior as a good thing and so before you can get to that general, you have to get to a primary, particularly when we're in a presidential election cycle. I think that's where a lot of these lawmakers' peds are even so, to the caller's point, there is a real electoral cost that many voters have already placed on this Republican party.

Brian: Ray in Mawa, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ray.

Ray: Hi. How are you doing? I think your guest really does a great job of identifying the impetus behind what's going on and the role that race plays. I would go even further back to bringing Nixon's Southern strategy and Reagan announcing his Kennedy from Philadelphia, Mississippi. That is the impetus behind what I think Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann call asymmetrical polarization that the Republican parties move much further to the right than the Democratic party has moved to the left.

Just read that quote from one of their books. One of the two major parties, the Republicans is become an insurgent outlier, ideologically, extreme contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime sworn full of compromise. I'm persuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

I can't think of a better description of the Republican party today, but the 20 are particularly of interest because I think their end game is something like the debt ceiling, for instance. They never got their way on the debt ceiling. All the concessions that they're demanding from McCarthy now are attempts maybe to get their way.

Brian Lehrer: Now, on this idea that you raised of asymmetrical polarization, the Republicans moving further to the right than the Democrats are moving to the left. Here's a tweet from a listener on the other side of that. This is aimed at me. It says, "This patronizing thing you're doing where you pretend not to know what woke means. There's been a distinct cultural change around what is acceptable to say around race and disabilities, increased social tension, and hasn't materially benefited marginalized groups."

That's listener's perception. It's not that long ago that we used the word 'woke earnestly,' meaning becoming awakened to the extent of marginalization of some people in this country. To this listener who writes on Twitter, it means a cultural change around what is acceptable to say, and it's not helping the marginalized groups. Ray, you can hear how people on the other side from you, they feel like the left is also radicalizing and it's not so asymmetrical and it's cultural.

Ray: Yes. I would say the Democratic Party hasn't absorbed the same number of radicals as the Republican Party has. If January 6th doesn't tell you that, or if what we're seeing with McCarthy doesn't tell you that, how quickly did the Democrats pick Hakeem Jeffries as their leader, and how dysfunctional the Republicans are because they've absorbed more radicals into their party.

That's a product of the process as well and the primaries play a part in that, and gerrymandering plays a part in that. These are all structural things that need to be addressed. I would ask that listener that, well then how do you explain Nixon's Southern strategy? If you can't explain it through the idea of what she derives as woke. There's no other way to address what Nixon did and why would Reagan decide to announce as candidacy from Philadelphia, Mississippi. There there is really, you have to ask those questions and those are critical questions, and it's the fear of asking critical questions that leads to this idea that woke is this.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. The first threat. I appreciate your call. I appreciate your 50-year lens on it. Jim, in the South Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jim.

Jim: Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I just want to adjust the issue of the ideology behind these radical Republicans. I've looked at a couple of right-wing media sites to see what these people say about themselves. If you look at what they say about themselves through this group of 20, they talk about democratizing the House of Representatives, they talk about spreading power around, they talk about making the leadership accountable. It all sounds very progressive and very democratic, which in a certain sense it is.

Brian Lehrer: Like good government. Right?

Jim: Exactly, but also accountable democracy, spreading power around inclusion. They use all these nice buzzwords, and in fact, I suppose that's what they're doing, but I think what's behind it is that they really don't have enough power to do what they want and so because they have limited real support, they have to blame the process for their inability to advance their agendas or to acquire power.

It's not that they themselves are marginalized that the process is rigged against them. I think that's what their strategy or their ideology is. The last point I make about this is that what they've been saying, he's 20 in the right-wing media, sounds strikingly similar to what the Bernie people said in 2016, that he couldn't win because the process is rigged as undemocratic establishment has their finger on the scale. There's a mirror image going on between these two groups, and I'd like to know what you guys think about that.

Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you. Astead?

Astead Herndon: Yes, I think those are great points. I absolutely believe that there is something that is true about the basis of both parties feeling a bucking against establishment norms. I think you've had that happening on the Democratic side, particularly after the Trump era, where it felt as if the democratic leadership had let the party down, had not met where the base was, had lost the so-called Obama coalition.

That kind of disconnected something we explore in our podcast. I remember asking a woman named Rochelle, about how she thought about Biden's democracy pitch. This is a black woman in Pennsylvania who talked about being housing insecure and the way police had treated her son. She said, "What has democracy ever done for me?" I think that that was a real challenge that the Democratic party still has to overcome.

That's true even in these midterms. There was a decrease in terms of Black voter turnout was a sore spot for the party and an otherwise good midterm year. I think, at the same time, really, none of that adds up to the top-down challenges that we're seeing on the Republican side. Certainly, I believe that these 20 are representing wing of Republicans and an insurgency that is true among that face.

We should also say that McCarthy is handing in concessions. Here's what I would say. If this was interested in good governance they would also talk about issues of gerrymandering, issues of voting rights. It would be things, there are real things that affect the way that Washington is connected to regular people and that cuts across D&R.

What we have seen as the request from these 20 is not things that are just focused on that. Either things that are largely the wishlist of a different type of donor class, which is the Trump and MAGA Ecosystem. It has not been a purely grassroots, good governance-driven effort because I would say actually that if it was so, there would be a lot of Democrats who have a lot of structural problems with the way that works and would take them up on a good faith offer.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another Republican you interviewed, and my guest, if you're just joining us, is Astead Herndon, New York Times political reporter who did a podcast series called The Run-Up in the run-up to the midterm elections, interviewing a lot of voters from both parties and from neither party. We're using that as context for our conversation today about the 20 Republican holdouts who still are denying the speakership to Kevin McCarthy or anyone else in the house. This is a Republican voter, Michael Sprang. Just tell me what state he's from or what district, if you remember.

Astead Herndon: Brian, this was three months ago. I'm not sure if, I don't remember from the name Michael Sprang. He was from Michigan.

Brian Lehrer: He might have been from Michigan. I'm not sure. He talks here about how he thinks the Democrats are a bigger threat to democracy than the Republicans.

Astead Herndon: Yes. This was a mission-

Brian Lehrer: Here's the clip. Yes, we'll do the clip first.

[start of audio playback]

Michael Sprang: Then now with Biden basically saying anybody who doesn't agree with me is, I can't remember how he put it, threat to democracy, I think is what he said. If you take the Obama years, that was I think the beginning of the breakdown to where the divisions started getting really deep, not only along racial lines but also along political lines. Then the beginning of the Trump presidency, when all of a sudden you had half the Democratic caucusing, "Oh, well, not my president." They started these endless, ridiculous impeachment proceedings and I think it's just gotten worse.

[end of audio playback]

Common sentiments about the end there. The ridiculous impeachment proceedings and democracy as he perceives it.

Astead Herndon: Absolutely. I would say that that speaks to what we've been seeing this wing pushed Kevin McCarthy on a little bit about that voter. This was someone from Michigan who had voted for Obama in 2008, had very recently considered themselves a pretty swing independent, and was open to what the Obama administration would be, but this was a voter speaking back to our point about race and cultural centrality and the kind of Trump voter radicalization. This was a voter that mentioned how Barack Obama treated the Trayvon Martin protest in terms of pushing him away from the Democratic Party. Someone who has also mentioned the issue.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I heard that part of the interview where that voter didn't like the fact that Obama had said Trayvon Martin could have been my son and he thought that Obama wasn't embraced the white half of his parentage enough.

Astead Herndon: That was something that they brought up as a key point on their journey because my question was what takes you from Obama eight to Trump 2016? We know that that voter exists, particularly in states like Michigan, but what pushed you to embrace candidates that are seemingly the opposite of one another?

Michael is pretty clear that they felt pushed by the move in the country's cultural direction to the point where now he was someone were saying he was fine with election-denying candidates, he was fine with candidate. He did not think January 6 was that big of a deal. He was defending the language of election security and election interference that we see from some of the most conspiratorial wings.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play that clip actually with the context that he does not think, this voter does not think the election was stolen, but as you follow up, asking him this.

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Astead Herndon: What about the January 6 part?

Michael: I think it's largely overblown. Yes, it was a terrible thing that happened, but when you weigh it against the riots of the summer and all of the violence and stuff there. I don't think it was any serious attempt to overturn the government or they didn't go capture any congressmen or anything like that. Yes, it was a riot that got out of hand. Do I think it was treason? No, not really.

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Brian Lehrer: They feel aggrieved that the January 6th riots somehow get portrayed as worse than the post-George Floyd murder riots. He made that point. Comparing an explosion in response to injustice to fabricated grounds for a coup attempt that even he did not believe the election was stolen but equated those two in that way. Last two questions, tying some of these threads together. Some people, as you know, commentators, analysts, see January 6th as a white grievance riot more than a stolen election belief riot. Did you hear things to back that up?

Astead Herndon: Oh, certainly, we heard things that played directly into, I would say, a white grievance ideology. Not just what we would talk about in terms of antiBlackness or anti-Obama, but also, really core to this was nativism was a belief that immigration had gone too far, specifically against Latin American immigration or Muslim immigration. That certainly came up a bunch. I would also say we should expand out how we see that January 6th event, even from the lens of identity.

One episode that we did for our podcast was all actually about the importance of white Christian nationalism and the centrality to January 6th and actually, seeing evangelicals and their justification for that as a kind of act of wholly justified violence. We think all of those threads-- In our show, we try to look at how all of those threads work together and are playing out on the political space. How did voters who, like Michael, become comfortable go from Obama to a comfort with January 6th but even more broadly, how did an evangelical church not only come to accept Donald Trump but come to accept people who are willing to commit violence and insurrection in his name?

We see this as a linked question that wraps up a lot of the different factions of the Republican Party. I should say, as our show has some new episodes that we're getting ready to do for this year, we also see this as core to the question of the run-up to the next presidential election, because all of these threats from evangelicals to conspiracy to white grievance are still here.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, and we just have 15 seconds. Do you see how this ends on the House floor for who the speaker is going to be?

Astead Herndon: My original prediction was McCarthy in 10 votes. I am sticking with it. It looked crazy at the time. I think about the meme. They called me a madman. It's looking more and more likely, and I think we leave with a much more unified Republican wing around the American first Donald Trump agenda.

Brian Lehrer: I'll take the under on 10 votes. Astead Herndon, national political reporter for The New York Times. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. Let's do it again.

Astead Herndon: No, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer WNYC. Stay with us.

 

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