Morning Wire - Leonard Leo’s Strategy for Conservative Victory | 10.19.24

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

Legal activist Leonard Leo outlines his audacious vision to reshape the political landscape to secure a lasting conservative future in America. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American lawyer and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo is one of the most consequential figures on the right, and after Donald Trump possibly the man most hated by the left. Leo is one of the most prolific fundraisers in American politics and is credited with transforming the federal judiciary in what liberal media outlets often call the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court. He also helped Trump choose the three conservative Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade. And with an estimated $1 billion to spend on aligned groups, Leo has the attention of both the left and right. In a rare interview, Leo sat down with The Daily Wire to discuss how he's revamping his strategy by backing conservative groups focused on operationalizing and weaponizing rather than just ideas and policy.

I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's October 20th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. It's stressful knowing you can't control the election's outcome, but you can't can take control of protecting your savings by diversifying into gold with Birch Gold Group. Birch Gold will help you convert an IRA or 401k into a physical gold IRA, safeguarding your hard-earned wealth. TextWire to 989898 to get your free, comprehensive info kit on gold investing. Trust Birch Gold, as I do, to protect your savings and secure your financial future. Again, text Wire to 989898 today.

The following is an interview between Daily Wire senior reporter Mary Margaret Olahan and Leonard Leo, conservative legal activist and the longtime leader of the Federalist Society. Mr. Leo, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to be with you. Now, last month in a much-discussed letter, you let your fund recipients know that you plan to focus on funding groups that are operationalizing and weaponizing ideas and policy rather than just developing ideas and policy.

What was your thought process behind this move? I mean, obviously, as someone involved in philanthropy, I want to make sure that the conservative movement is as impactful as possible in doing things like defending the rule of law and improving our society and culture. And that means that the participants in our movement, the many organizations that are involved in trying to improve our society and our culture and the law and politics and public policy need to be as impactful and effective as possible. And at this point in the conservative movement's history, it's really important that groups step up to the challenge by finding effective strategies for implementing our ideas, implementing our philosophy. You know, Mary Margaret, when you get to a certain point in a movement's history, while you always have to continue to develop ideas and to educate, what becomes even more important is operationalizing those ideas. taking the principles and philosophy that you've developed and finding ways to basically make those a reality in our culture. And, you know, the left has been very effective at this over the past couple of decades,

and it's time for the conservative movement to be much more leveraged in the way it tries to implement its beliefs. Now, you mentioned how successful the left has been in leveraging their large funding engines and their organizations to change the culture. What are some of the strategies that you've noticed that conservatives should be paying attention to? Well, a few of the strategies they've deployed, which I think were very smart and are things that we do to some extent right now, but should do more of, are things like, one, building talent pipelines and networks of activists. So, again, it's all well and good to sort of educate people. But it's very important to take the best and brightest of your movement, the people who have the best strategic, vision, the folks who have the greatest capability of entering into and helping to control the choke points of society, it's really important to find those people, to identify them, to recruit them,

and then to make sure that they are a part of an effort that's implementing our philosophy and ideas. So building those talent pipelines and networks, and you're familiar, I'm sure, with some of them. In the law, you have the Federalist Society, in business and finance, You have the Taneo Network in entertainment. You have the Moving Picture Institute, for example. In journalism, you have institutions like the Fund for American Studies, college fix, the National Journalism Center that are building talent pipelines for journalists. And so you need to strengthen those networks. And you need to build new networks like those where we don't presently have them.

So that's one thing. litigation is another really leveraged tip of the spear strategy that the left used decades and decades ago to sort of pursue its ideological agenda in areas like welfare reform, civil rights, and so forth. And so now, you know, it's very important for conservatives to think carefully about how it can use, how it can operationalize litigation as a vehicle for affecting the social and cultural change it wants to see and legal change. So it could be challenging government action so that you can reinvigorate things like the separation of powers and checks and balances in federalism, those structural protections that really advance the dignity and worth of the human person

by limiting government power. It could be challenges to various government policies that relate to DEI or other parts of the woke cultural agenda. But litigation is another example of a sort of a very leveraged strategy that can be deployed. I think our letter outlines some others, but those are two good examples. Yes, I was particularly interested in your mention of how the left uses groups like Students for Justice in Palestine to push anti-Semitism on college campuses or the World Professional Transgender Health Association to influence how hospitals approach transgenderism. Right.

And it seems like the left has been very successful in these efforts. They have, and part of their strategy was to build several different. different kinds of institutions and structures. Of course, one was to sort of develop the ideas and the philosophy and to educate influencers in society as well as up-and-coming generations of academics and professionals about their ideas, but then also to create institutions that could mobilize people behind those ideas, behind those predispositions. And so creating networks that could generate calls to action for protest or for philanthropy or for legal and political advocacy. And that's what they've done in those two areas and some others. They've mobilized people.

They've created infrastructure to get the word out, to train people to be leaders. And for those leaders then to have the resources they need to create communities of people who will go out and do everything from protesting and demonstrating to writing in the popular press, influence in the entertainment industry, putting pressure on academic institutions, sometimes even litigating, and sometimes working in various international organizations like the UN to effect change. So that's kind of the strategy that the left used with regards to the sort of anti-Semitism and Palestinian issues. It's what they've done in the climate context. It's what they've done with ballot and electoral integrity issues. They're a whole range of all. And it's a model again that goes

back really to the 1950s and 1960s. There's a great book by Pivot and Cloward called Poor People's Movement, the kind of details the early organizing efforts that the left undertook after a couple of decades of really just being in the universities and engaging in the kind of educational and ideation phase of their movement. Now, on the flip side, a quote from your letter really jumped out at me. You mentioned a foundation executive telling you, and I'll just quote here, we focus on research and policy. We're glad others fund campaign style projects, but it's not a funding fit for us. Is that a typical attitude that you've encountered when funding conservative groups? It's an attitude that is much more prevalent in the conservative movement than it should be.

and it's an attitude that's much more prevalent in the conservative movement right now than exists on the left. And look, there's nothing wrong with research, policy development, education, creation of ideas. There's always going to be a place for that in the conservative movement because ideas constantly have to be tested. New situations always require new thinking and new education. But as a movement matures and evolves, which the conservative movement has done, it's time to take what you already know you believe it and to take what you know already works and you know how it already works in a lot of contexts, to take all of that and to operationalize it. And that means being at the tip of the spear, filing those lawsuits, building those talent pipelines, placing personnel and positions of influence in culture, culture, society, and government. launching campaign-style tactics to beat back things like ESG and DEI. That's the kind of thing that needs to be done.

And then, of course, also trying to influence social and cultural institutions, infiltrating the press, infiltrating entertainment. These are things that go beyond the normal policy research, white papers, conferences, seminars, educational programs that millions and millions and millions of dollars are spent on every year in the conservative space. And again, there's a place for some amount of that, but it can't be at the expense of bringing the conservative movement to the next level and really sort of operationalizing its ideas and having real world impact, driving results in the policy, social, political, and cultural spaces. Right. And I noticed that you've argued that conservative

groups are risk-averse. Why would you say that is? Well, conservatives are, to some extent, risk-averse by their nature. It's how the word conservative came about, right? To conserve as opposed to sort of branch out and do other things. I mean, there's very much a burkian instinct that you don't just break the mold and ignore what's happened in the past. And so there's always reticence about doing new and bold and entrepreneurial things. That doesn't mean you shouldn't, but there is this sort of attitude that requires a little more introspection and thought about whether you're going to sort of branch off and do something new and different. There's also very much an independent streak amongst conservatives.

And so while the left is much more collectivist in the way it thinks and organizes, conservatives tend to be a little bit more individualistic and a little bit more insular. And so it's hard to mobilize the conservative movement in the same way. And I think some of that does need to change. I mean, I think we need to band together more effectively and more frequently. I think we need to test new strategies a little bit more than we do. And look, some of this has happened. I'm not saying that the movement is prehistoric because it's not.

I mean, there are a lot of things that the conservative movement has been very successful at doing. I mean, conservative movement has had great successes in the foreign policy space from time to time, going back to the demise of communism and the Soviet Union. Certainly when it comes to the conservative movement, what's happened in the legal space is a huge victory in success, the transformation of the federal judiciary, the beginnings of the deconstruction of the administrative state, right? The regulatory state is now something that's very much in play. those are very leveraged activities where there's been some real entrepreneurial spirit by conservatives. But that needs to happen more than it does. And that's something that we're just really trying to stress test the movement about, really. Right. And on that vein of the regulatory state, that kind of brings up the recent Loper Bright v. Ramondo Supreme Court case, which dealt with how federal agencies interpret the law.

How do you see cases like this impacting your future plans for the movement? Well, I'm glad you brought that up because this is a perfect example of what we're talking about, right? So for decades, the conservative movement has talked about what I call the structural constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. It's educated this country about the importance of that structure. It's demonstrated quite clearly that those aren't just antiquarian notions, but they're very important in the here and now. because those provisions in our Constitution, they're what really ultimately protect the dignity and worth of the human person. Because if you look at the course of human history, what has been the greatest threat to human dignity? It's been the state.

It's been government. It's been overreach by the governing power. And so the movement has educated the citizenry about those issues. But now, now that we're well along in that educational enterprise, and we've developed lots of theories and approaches to how to sort of think about the role of limited constitutional government, now we're operationalizing those ideas, right? by supporting litigation projects that beat back the administrative state using those constitutional tools by demonstrating that the successive power that the administrative state has impinges on the separation of powers. It violates the checks and balances of our constitution. It staps the states of the power that they have and their people have to make decisions.

And in all of that, the point we're making in that litigation is that if you really want to defend the freedom and the dignity and worth of ordinary people in this country, you need to make sure that the regulatory state comports with our Constitution. And not surprisingly, the plaintiffs and a number of these different kinds of challenges to the administrative state are very average, ordinary, but wonderful people who, reduce great value in society. They're small lobstermen and fishermen, for example, from New England and from the Gulf Coast. And so if you want a really good example of a place where the conservative movement is well-prime to operationalize and weaponize its ideas, it's in challenging the administrative state. And we are very committed to supporting that enterprise to as much of an extent as we can because we know the ideas, we know how to communicate them, we know how to get people to embrace them, we know how to implement them. And so now it's just a matter of operationalizing and weaponizing it

by incubating litigation and by building talent pipelines of people who can pursue that. And then, of course, when you have an opportunity, when you win elections, for example, you want to have talent pipelines of people who embrace those ideas, who can enter into the administrative state and properly clip the wings of these agencies when they overreach. So would you say that combating that overreach or challenging that administrative state is your main priority right now? Certainly in the rule of law space, challenging the administrative state is probably our highest priority. I mean, there are other areas we work on, but that is a very high priority. And it's certainly when you look at the overall portfolio, it's probably in the top three.

because it's such a natural for the conservative movement, right? And it's such a big problem. And the movement is really well-primed to be successful in that space. You have a judiciary that's receptive. You have state AGs and other public officials around the country who are willing to challenge federal overreach in a way they never did before. You have public interest litigating groups that have best-in-class talent that can do this work. And we have networks of small business owners and farmers and ranchers and private educational institutions and religious institutions that are now prepared to sort of step up and say, we want to help beat this back because the administrative state is challenging our ability to sort of be who we want to be in this world.

Now, I wanted to circle back to something that you said a moment ago about how elections could put conservatives in a better position to enact change. what are your thoughts on the current trajectory of the 2024 election and will conservatives be in a position of power after November 5th? You know, I've never been a very good predictor of what's going to happen on elections. And so I've kind of given it up because my ability to predict soundly is almost laughable. However, having said that, look, I mean, elections obviously matter. But at the end of the day, politics and public policy is downstream. culture. It's downstream from societal norms. And so if the conservative movement wants to ultimately be successful, it obviously has to be very engaged on issues of politics and public policy.

It has to engage in that sort of leveraged activity like litigation in a legal policy space. But at the end of the day, the conservative movement needs to begin to build talent pipelines, infrastructure, operational structures that affect the broader society and culture. In a way, I think that's even more important than what happens in a particular election cycle. So, yes, very important what happens in November. I don't want to undercut that. But in the medium term, what's perhaps even more important than elections is conservative movement building beachheads in areas like news. entertainment, business and finance, corporate C-suits, educational institutions, private educational

institutions, so that you can begin to have a much more level playing field within society and culture regarding traditional principles, Western ideas, traditional America-based values. And if you can do that, if you can achieve that, or begin to see some change, Politics, public policy, become easier, frankly. So I think work hard at the politics, but really don't lose sight of those other social and cultural institutions that really do ultimately call the shots in our lives. Well, Mr. Leo, thank you so much for your time today. Well, thank you. And very much appreciate your interest in these issues and very much appreciate the work that the Daily Wire does in trying to highlight a number of these important issues today.

That was Daily Wire senior reporter Mary Margaret O'lihan speaking with conservative activist Leonard Leo, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.