The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024.

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

With Nikki Haley entering the fray, The GOP primary contest has officially begun.  Many more candidates are expected to announce here in the coming weeks. But of all the potential challengers, one has emerged as the odds on favorite to defeat the Republican standard bearer Donald Trump.  Current Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis has proven himself a formidable political operator, many in the party elite think that the future of the party belongs in his capable hands.  He is polling very well, he has the support of the establishment, is a fundraising juggernaut, and manages to channel the core of Trumpism in a more moderate and appealing package.  But other political strategists and party faithfuls believe that you underestimate Donald Trump at your own peril. His influencer over rank and file GOP voters is unmatched, and he proved himself to be a force during the 2016 primary. In short, DeSantis may be the future, but Donald Trump is the present.   Arguing for the motion is Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program as well as the Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution.   Arguing against the motion is Republican political strategist and publisher of the neoconservative news and opinion website The Bulwark. Speaker Quotes  ELAINE KAMARCK: “A shtick that seemed fresh and exciting and wonderful in 2016 is likely to not be quite as interesting after a while, when it's the same old thing and when, instead of it being fresh and exciting, it seems a little bit dated and a little bit irritating”.   SARAH LONGWELL: “There's a lot of reasons to think that Ron DeSantis could be ascendent and Donald Trump could be yesterday's news, but I think he holds enough of a real chance that nobody should underestimate him and everybody should treat it with the severity and the concern that it deserves.”. The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.     Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/   To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].     To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Senior Producer: Jacob Lewis Editor: Adam Karch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you the listener with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024. Former President Donald Trump is now eyeing his path back into the White House, a 2024 run. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doing everything but announcing his run for 2024. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and potential Trump adversary continuing to hint at a 2024 bid. The Republican field for the 2024 presidential race is slowly taking shape. The new Yahoo News poll shows that if the primaries were held today, more GOP voters would

cast ballots for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths, with Nikki Haley entering the fray, the GOP primary contest has officially begun. Many more candidates are expected to announce in the coming weeks, but of all, the potential challengers, one has emerged as the odds-on favor to defeat the Republican standard bearer Donald J. Trump. We know him as the current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who's proven himself as a formidable political operator. Many in the party, that is the Republican party, think that he is its future and he will be able to take it in a new direction into a post-Trump era.

A recent poll shows former President Trump still at the top of many Republican voters' list to be the nominee in 2024. But other political strategists and party faithful believe that you should never underestimate Donald Trump. To do so is to court your own political disaster, at least of 2016, and the Republican primaries that swept Donald Trump into the White House are any example. This is a formidable candidate, someone who has been. bounce back time and time again is Ron DeSantis, potentially just the next victim of Donald Trump's political insurgency as he campaigns for the presidency in 2024. We're going to dig into all this in a fascinating monk debate today on the future of the Republican Party by debating the motion, be it resolved. Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024.

arguing for the motion is Eileen Kamarik, senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings where she is also the director of the center for effective public management. Arguing against the motion is Sarah Longwell, a seasoned

Republican strategist and publisher of the U.S. opinion and news website and magazine The Bullwork. Eileen, Sarah, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for having me. This can be a fascinating, timely conversation. So let's dive right into the debate, our resolution today, simple to the point, be it resolved. Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024. We've got you up on deck, Elaine, to speak in favor of the motion. So take us away. Sure. Well, thank you for having me.

And it's a pleasure to be on this show with Sarah, who is. someone I've come to admire in the last couple of years. I'm going to start with two basic features of human nature. One is we get bored, okay? A schick that seemed fresh and exciting and wonderful in 2016 is likely to not be quite as interesting after a while when it's the same old thing. And when instead of it being fresh and exciting,

it seems a little bit dated and a little bit irritating. And a little bit of support for that comes from not polls, but a Washington Post series of focus groups that they conducted with Republican voters in the four early states. And when they asked them, they showed them a video of Trump, and then they said, well, how do you feel about this? And the feelings were not in a really positive direction, nervous, overwhelmed, frustrated, embarrassed, annoyed, etc.

So human nature number one is, you know, maybe Trump isn't wearing as well as he thinks he is. Human nature number two is that nobody likes to admit that they were wrong. So of course, you know, Republican voters are going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we love Trump, we love Trump, we love Trump. But one of the things that's beginning to emerge in the polls is, yes, they love Trump, but there's a big but. And the big butt is that they are interested in other people, mostly Ron DeSantis, but frankly, that could change too. They're interested in people besides Trump. And that shows up in polls like the Wall Street Journal poll from December, which showed DeSantis beating Trump 52 to 38, pretty big margin. there. And finally, the Republicans have spent the last two years almost beating up on Biden for being

old. Oh my God, he's old. He's got dementia. He doesn't walk right. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Well, guess who else is old? And guess who will be making that implicit comparison between themselves and Trump? It'll be Ron DeSantis and, of course, possibly Nikki Hayes, as well. They're both in their 40s. They're young enough to be Donald Trump's children. So that's my reason for thinking that, yeah, Ron DeSantis could very well be the nominee in 2024. Thank you, Eileen. Terrific opening statement. Now an opportunity, Sarah, for you to add your voice to this debate. You're arguing against our motion today, be it resolved Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024.

Yeah, well, first let me agree with Elaine that I'm also, it's wonderful to be here with Elaine, somebody that I admire. To Elaine's point about Donald Trump's age, I think there is an open question about whether or not Donald Trump that we saw in 2016, who was aggressive and a bully and an alpha, whether he still has his fastball, whether he's still that guy at this point. We haven't seen a lot of him lately. And she's also right. I do conduct focus groups regularly every week. and I hear there is a chunk of Republican voters who certainly want to move on from Trump. There are concerns about him are mainly due to electability. However, the reason that I believe that Donald Trump has a much better chance than people are giving him to be the nominee

is that I conducted a poll recently through the bulwark with Republican pollster Whit Ayers. And one of the things that you can see clearly, we asked how many people, if Donald Trump were to run as an independent, How many of you would vote for him if the nominees were Biden, DeSantis, and then Trump is an independent? And 28% of Republican voters said that they would follow Trump on an independent run. And in every poll, you see that he's got this incredibly hard, stable floor of at least 30%. When Donald Trump ran in 2016, he came in second in Iowa with 24%. He came in first, then in New Hampshire with 35%. He came first in South Carolina with 32%.

And then he went on to sort of clean up on Super Tuesday. And that means that in order to get through Donald Trump, this Republican field that is shaping up with so many candidates has to consolidate around one person. Now, right now, the frontrunner to take on Donald Trump is Ron DeSantis. However, voter's relationship with him is incredibly shallow. That 28% that will stick with Trump through thick and thin, they've seen him foment an insurrection. They've seen him not, you know, engage in the peaceful transfer of power, and they're still for him. Ron DeSantis is

completely untested. He has not been through the Trump meat grinder, the media meat grinder. He hasn't had to take a punch yet. And it is a total unknown. how he performs. And I would posit that if Ron DeSantis doesn't meet everybody's expectation, those voters go back to Trump, not to somebody else in the field, and that that gives Trump the plurality he needs to just like 2016 win a Republican primary. I love the three-dimensional chess that both of you are playing. It's a lot of fun to play along with. Let's now go to rebuttals. So an opportunity here for both of you to respond to each other's opening remarks. Eileen, you're up first.

The first thing I would say is that Sarah has pointed out something that I recently wrote in a blog post on the Brookings blog, which is that if Donald Trump faces a multi-candidate field, he will probably win because of that loyal 28 to 35 percent hardcore group. But let me talk about DeSantis for a moment. He has a lot, I think, going for him. First of all, in contrast to Trump, he's the real deal. In spite of his elite education, he's got real working class roots, very similar in field to Joe Biden's working class roots, which were so good for him during the campaign and during the primaries. He also was in the Navy. And of course, as we all know, Donald Trump's relationship with the military when he was a young man was less than exemplary. So he's kind of, DeSanta's sort of the real deal. Secondly, he has a motto that's apparently on T-shirts that say, make America, Florida. And what he's doing is he's treating Florida as in ways that he wants to tell Americans he would treat America. He's taking on whokeness.

He took on the pandemic and opened up before everybody. else. He sees Florida as a blueprint for what he wants to do in the rest of America. And that is turning out to be quite powerful. He's getting, you know, he's getting a lot of national press for things that governors would, you know, have a hard time getting in their hometown newspaper. And he's getting national press for this. So I think that he is running a smart campaign. He doesn't fall for Donald Trump's name calling and all Donald Trump's childish stuff. stuff. He's basically ignoring that. And he's talking about how proud he is of Trumpism and the things that the Trump administration did. But he's kind of letting people who voted for Trump say to themselves, hey, this guy is what we like about Trump. But, you know, he's younger and he doesn't have all the chaos around him that Donald Trump has. Great points, Eileen. Okay, Sarah. Your opportunity for a robot.

bottle two. Let's put a couple minutes on the show clock and have you respond to either Elaine's opening statement or what you've just heard now. Well, let's talk about Ron DeSantis and his political prowess in terms of what we've seen so far. So there's no doubt that he has done some things. And especially Elaine's point about Florida is an extremely good one. Because one of the things I hear from voters all of the time is, well, Ron DeSantis turned to this swing state, right? This is the hanging Chad states. In people's heads, Florida is very much a swing state, he turned a swing state blood red. And because of the way he handled the pandemic and, you know, has taken on sort of these woke issues, he has found a real group of champions in the Republican base. The problem is

those same people like Donald Trump, too. Like, there's a lot of overlap in the people who like Trump and like Ron DeSantis. And when Elaine says that Ron DeSantis is the real deal, that's the part I think I would take issue with. Donald Trump is the real deal, and Ron DeSantis is a function of the forces that Donald Trump has unleashed on the Republican Party. Donald Trump is going to be able to say, I built you, I made you, you're an imitation of me, and in a lot of ways that's going to ring true. And I think for people who want the hard stuff, the OG Trumpism, they're going to still want Trump. And to the extent that Ron DeSantis has kind of a, he's got these culture war issues that do kind of fire people up, but he does it without

the kind of happy warrior charisma of Donald Trump that I think attracts so many people. And we haven't seen Trump in a while. And so the question is, and I think it's an open one, is does it look like kind of warmed over, like a warmed over act that we've all seen before? Or when he gets in the ring with DeSantis and he starts attacking Ron DeSantis's wife, when he starts calling him names, when he starts behaving in some of the lowest, most despicable ways that shocked us all in 2016, will there be a big section of the Republican Party that'll be like, there's my guy, yes, I like seeing this guy again, or will it alienate people to see him attacking another Republican?

I'm not sure that if Donald Trump can sort of bring back some of that magic, that there's not going to be a, I mean, I find it repellent personally, but it is something that voters really got engaged in, and I could see that happening again. Thank you, Sarah. Well, a terrific debate we're having right now, be it resolved Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024.

Let me join the conversation now and try to think of some questions that are top of mind for our listeners and come to you first, Elaine, and let's talk about what politics is at its essence, which is compare and contrast, and you have an incumbent, Joe Biden, that either one of these men, Trump or dissentists will ultimately, or could be somebody else, but these are the front runners probably right now will go up against. Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden. To what extent is that on the minds of GOP voters when it comes to the

primaries and beyond? Well, I think that's a very good question. because what really has happened to Trump in the last several months since the November elections is that he's no longer the Teflon candidate. He, in fact, is a loser, the word that he hates more than anything else in the English language. Candidates that he supported and, in fact, supported against the Republican establishment did poorly in and probably cost the Republican Party control of the Senate. And in the House, the 40 to 50 vote margin that Republicans were bragging about back in 2021 disappeared. And so Trump, and a lot of this was due to the fact that Trump, unlike most former presidents who kind of sit back and don't engage dramatically with politics, Trump made the 22-elect.

about himself and it didn't go well. And therefore, the kind of, you know, the magic about Trump seems to have been a little bit less magical than he used to be. Now, I want to go to Sarah's point because it's a really good one about Trump being entertaining, et cetera. I think that's absolutely true. And to the extent that I have seen Ron Santas, he does strike me as a sort of eat your piece, kind of guy. Hillary Clinton, whom I was for, was definitely an eat your piece sort of candidate, and it didn't go over very well. But the question is, where is the public? And what's the mood of the public? Having been through a pandemic, seeing the world in this very precarious state that it's in, where there's this war in Ukraine, China looks like it's teaming up with Russia, et cetera, I'm just

wondering if the shambolic approach to government, which we saw in the Trump White House, is something that voters are going to be as interested in this time around as they were. So I agree that he's much more entertaining than Ron DeSantis, but it may be that he's, the public is sick of that. The one example I can show you is that when Florida had, you know, a terrible natural disaster. And Biden went down there with Governor DeSantis, and they behaved as we expect national leaders to behave when there is a natural disaster. And the state needs to mobilize to help people.

And both of them got high marks for their joint appearance. Contrast that to Trump's appearance in Puerto Rico, where after another natural disaster, where he was, you know, throwing out rolls of toilet paper to people and just, you know, behaving in a really, really disrespectful and unempathetic way. So, again, it may be that we've had enough of this act or the republic or some Republican voters have had enough of this act. Hey, Monk podcast listeners. I wanted to let you know about our other weekly audio program. It's called Friday Focus. And hey, guess what?

It comes out each and every Friday. It's half an hour long, and it provides you with a masterclass on international events, all the big issues and ideas shaping our world. We've got that for you each and every Friday here at the Monk Debates. Simply access via our website, triple W monkdebates.com. Click on Friday Focus in the top right navigation. you'll get all the details or check out a sample of the program in the same podcast feed as the main monk debates podcast. I hope you'll join us for the next edition of the Friday Focus podcast.

Now back to our program. Let me just keep on this vein here of plucking some of the key themes that both of you brought up in your excellent opening statements and rebuttals and come to you now, Sarah. One thing that I think intrigues all of this is an idea of how big will. this field be? And the extent to which it's hard to imagine, but, you know, a year from now, we will already have had important primary results coming in in this contest. In short, the clock is ticking and it's, you know, the one hour, we're well past what normally would have been, you know, the kickoff in past cycles of a race for the candidacy of either one of your two large parties, but in this case, the GOP. So does this mean that Ron DeSantis is looking at a lighter field?

I mean, all you've got really now is him, Nikki Haley, and Trump. Does that play to DeSantis's advantage and give him an edge? No. I mean, I think the, so Ron DeSantis is not in yet. He only feels like he's in because every poll that's taken, he's the frontrunner against Trump. But I think there's going to be quite a large field of candidates. And I guess this is actually, actually pretty central to my concern, which is while we've seen this movie before, it feels like nobody's learned anything. Because even as, you know, because Trump isn't announced a candidate, a lot of people are getting asked things like, well, do you disagree with Trump on anything? I never said, no, no, no. I agree with Trump on everything. As policies were great. And I think

that there's a catch-22 for a lot of these candidates where to criticize Trump is to lose, to risk losing the affection of a very committed part of the base, and so they can't afford to do it. But without taking Trump on directly, it allows him to continue to use his floor, that locked-in group, and then try to bring people over as he attacks DeSantis. And DeSantis is hurt by a larger field, because, you know, you get Nikki Haley peeling off for 5%. I, you know, I think Mike Pence, contrary to all rationale, seems like he's going to run. Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott,

Chris Sununu seems very interested in running. There's just, and I'm sure I'm missing people, but there are Chris Christie. There's sort of this me middle tier that doesn't excite anybody that I think is going to get in kind of early because they don't have anything else going on. It's why we see Nikki Haley in already.

Then we've got the group of governors that could include somebody like Glenn Yonkin, along with Ronda Santos when they're done with their legislative sessions who may jump in. But there is still going to be a shadow primary that is essentially fought in 2023. And there will need to be consolidation, if anybody's learned anything, by early 2024, before you get into the early primary states. But one of the problems in terms of like, ideally, they do what the Democrats did, right? The Republicans would get out and they'd all back Ronda Santis,

if he's the one who's consolidating support. But there's also a lot of people in the GOP base. And here's the thing, Donald Trump controls the Republican base and the base is quite large. That base who either wants the guy Trump endorsed or the person who is the pure iteration of Trump, it's large. It's large. And it can be decisive in a Republican primary. And I think, you know, I don't have a lot of confidence after the, I have to take in the evidence of the last, you know, seven or eight years and listening to voters. And I don't ever get the, you know, impression that there is nothing, including the attack on the Capitol, that has made people say, boy, I don't know. Like, they're not breaking with Trump over that. They're only breaking because 22 kind of proved to a section of the party, it's sort of slightly more normy base of the party or normy element of the party, that Donald Trump kept losing.

And they want to win. And so they're looking around for somebody else, but it's not because they dislike Trump. that's a lot of things to say. I still think that if these candidates in this field do not start taking on Trump, then it looks to me like a rerun of what happened in 2016. I see no evidence that they're going to behave differently. So, Elaine, I mean, that's what I've been thinking about. Why isn't this a rerun?

Why isn't it the rerun of an environment that we know Trump thrives in, that big kind of chaotic mosh pit of all, these different candidates that he comes up with nicknames for and and steamrolls them on both personality, but let's also talk money. You know, Trump has remained a formidable fundraising force in his own right and in the party. So you put those two things together, fundraising plus a crowded field. Why isn't Sarah right here? And more likely than not, it's going to be Donald Trump, not Ron DeSantis, who's the GOP nominee. I think Sarah is right about the size of the base, and it is an impressively big and loyal

base. I think the difference is, and I think the way I would look at this, is that Republicans in 2024 watched Democrats in 2020. And what happened in 2020 is that you had this unbelievable situation of Joe Biden coming in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. And then a second place in Nevada and first place in South Carolina. And then in that incredible weekend before the Super Tuesday, people started dropping out and endorsing Joe Biden.

And he went into Super Tuesday like a freight train. No money, not a dime. I mean, they were broke. He wasn't up on the air in any of those states. But it was like everybody finally said, okay, let's stop fooling around. We're not going to nominate. We can't beat Trump with an old socialist and we can't beat Trump with a young man who was the mayor of a small city. I mean, that's just crazy.

So everyone got their act together and Biden became the nominee. Let's go to 2024. If Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are not walking away with the votes in South Carolina, I mean, they're dead meat, all right? I mean, the problem with being from an early state is you really can't win it because you either have to win it so overwhelmingly or you're going to lose it. You're going to not come up to expectations. Let's suppose they don't do terribly well.

What do they do then, right? Do they slog through Super Tuesday knowing that they're going to win no delegates? Or do they look around and say, okay, well, Ron, DeSantis is young like us. He's a sort of next generation Trumpy. Trump is in real danger of losing the general election. Let's get behind someone. And that's why I think the scenario, what you have to realize in this scenario is that the four early states are small. They don't have a lot of delegates. So the race doesn't get very serious until you get to Super Tuesday. And then there's a ton of delegates. Trump won on Super Tuesday, Biden won very shortly thereafter.

So that's the name of the game. And I would bet that there are some Republicans, maybe even the ones that have already gotten into the race, who understand that if they get out early and endorse somebody who wins the nomination, they're going to be in good shape if that person wins the presidency. too. Great. One more set of questions, then let's go to closing statements. And Sarah, just to come to you in this, because people would be familiar with the bulwark as, you know, an amazing place for fantastic, insightful commentary on American politics and a bunch of other stuff. They'd also probably be aware that the bulwark in many ways has been a bulwark against Trump and kind of Trumpism. So maybe you could just explain where your head's at in terms of in this debate. you're arguing that Trump could be the GOP nominee. As the publisher of the bulwark, where does that put you in terms of your own thoughts about the state and play of American politics as we head into this, no doubt, contested high-stakes election in 2024? You know, where it puts me is that I think that Donald Trump represents a unique and

distinct threat to democracy. And I think a second term of Donald Trump, if he, were to win the presidency, what that would say about our country, what that would do to us as a country, I mean, if you just go through the thought exercise of what it would mean to reelect someone who had refused to engage in the peaceful transfer power, had tried to overturn his last election, the amount of sort of retribution he would be seeking the kinds of people he would fill his government with, it is an astoundingly frightening scenario. And I chose to take this position because I do think, while I think Elaine is making very compelling points and that Ronda,

there's a lot of reasons to think that Ronda Santas could be ascendant and Donald Trump could be yesterday's news, I think he holds enough of a real chance that nobody should underestimate him and everybody should treat it with the severity and the concern that it deserves. And then I also just want to say it because I want to respond to something Elaine was saying that I think is really important. And it speaks the difference of the Republican voters and the Democratic voters and the Democratic voters. So when the Democrats all dropped out and got behind Biden, it was an incredible act of party unity. And it was really good for sort of stitching that coalition back together to go in

to beat Donald Trump because they were really aligned against Donald Trump. That was the sort of animating thing in 2020 for the Democrats. If Nikki Haley endorsed Ron DeSantis, if Mike Pence endorsed Ron DeSantis, very recently, Jeb Bush came out and he sounded like he was endorsing Ron DeSantis. And I guarantee you that Ron DeSantis said, hey, Jeb, please keep that endorsement to yourself. Because Ron DeSantis doesn't want these Normie's endorsements. He doesn't want, people, when they talk at the focus groups,

whether they like Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump, if you ask them about Nikki Haley or you ask them about Mike's Pence, they think they belong to an old Republican Party that they hate. And Donald Trump's line of attack on Ron DeSantis is that he is an estableness. is that he is an establishment politician, rhino, that you cannot trust. And it's that anti-establishment fervor that that that really animates Trump and really animates his voters. And so the the act of a bunch of Chris Christie and a bunch of people lining up, it's just like what happened in 2016, right?

The media lining up against Trump, the establishment of the Republican Party lining up against Trump. It did nothing but help Donald Trump. I'm going to come to you, Elaine, and then we'll go to closing statements. And I guess it's a question for you as someone broadly aligned with, you know, the Democrats. I mean, to what extent are Democrats here, I don't know, kind of whistling past the gates of hell by almost wanting, encouraging a Trump candidacy because the party assumes that he would be the easiest Republican nominee to defeat. But then again, isn't there just an existential risk there? I don't think the Democrats can have much, you know, control or effect on what the Republicans do. The one thing you have seen with the Democratic Party in the Trump era is that as opposed to our

fractious, normal fractiousness, the Democrats are incredibly united because the Democrats are the party that sees the risk that Sarah talked about of the Trump Republican Party as opposed to the more normal Republican Party. And it's interesting to hear Sarah talk about normies as, you know, Republicans who aren't Trump and who are thus more normal politicians. So I don't think that Democrats can do much about this, nor can Democrats do much about their nominee. I me, we have a president. He's doing fairly well. He's still healthy. He's still in good shape. As far as we know, he's going to run for re-election. And people are going to be for him. Nobody's going to challenge him. Now, God forbid, something happens to him. Then I think we have a whole new ballgame.

Great insights. Okay. Let's go to closing statements in this fascinating debate. Be it resolved, Ron DeSantis, not Donald Trump, will be the GOP nominee in 2024. Sarah. Let's put a couple of minutes on show clock what do you want to leave our listeners with what's the key analysis or insight that they should take away from this debate so i started out in my opening statement by talking about donald trump's hold on this core constituency of 28 percent who are so bought in so always trump so ride or die that they would go with him if he ran as an independent and i i got to tell you that is one of the donald trump's uh excuse the expression but trump's cards over the Republican Party because they know, and this has been just the problem for them

the whole time, they can't win with him and they can't win without him because he brings, you know, one of the reasons that Donald Trump won in 2016 is because he brought all these new people in that they didn't, the Republicans didn't know they could get, that hadn't voted before. And now they're in the process and Republicans need them. And Donald Trump's the only one that can turn them out. When he's not on the ballot, they struggle. And they know, maybe they don't think that Trump can take 28% with him. But even if he doesn't run as an independent, just if he was on the sidelines hammering away at Ronda Santis, calling him around, because Donald Trump doesn't care about the Republican Party. He doesn't care about its success. He's not institutionally committed

to it. So why not burn it all down if he's not going to be the nominee? Why not demonstrate to people that he's still in control. And so I think that they will find a reticence among Republicans as this primary goes on. They will try to think about a way to take Donald Trump on, but they couldn't find out how to do it in 2016. They never learned how to do it in the four years that he was in office. They're not really doing it now except to call him a loser because they've lost these elections and they're trying to blame it on him.

But I just think that that is a very powerful tool. in Donald Trump's toolbox, that he can take a certain percentage of voters with him or keep them sidelined, and that that could cost the Republican Party the election, and that that will make them loath to take him on too hard, which is the kind of thing that could allow him to sneak through with a plurality in a crowded primary. Thank you, Sarah. Okay, Elaine, we're going to give you the last word in today's debate. Take us home.

Okay. Well, I think that one thing to remember about Donald Trump's base is that it is older, that people in it are older than the rest of the Republican Party, and they tend to be people without college degrees. People who are younger and people with college degrees seem to be moving towards DeSantis. And so I think that with every year, if you're counting on an elderly population, with every year, unfortunately, there are fewer of them. And this is a problem that the Republican Party in general has, which has an old base. And the upcoming generation, which is now in their late 30s and about to hit 40, they are a very

Democratic vote. In fact, we just published a wonderful piece on the Brookings site by Morley Winograd and his co-authors, and where he argues that 45 is now the over-under age. that if you're over that, you're likely to be Republican. If you're younger than that, you're likely to be a Democrat. And that is obviously repeating itself even within the Republican Party. So while the Trump piece of the Republican base does seem to be very strong, it is an older base and it is a base that will get fewer in number with every single year passing. And I think that that's something to be cognizant of. And I think that's why you have 40-year-olds getting into the race and trying to argue that they are the ones that are energetic that can take the Trump

style and message into the future in a way that Donald Trump will not be able to do. Thank you, Eileen. And thank you, sir, for a terrific debate. This topic is usually one that is not frequented by civility and substance, but both of you. have given us those qualities in droves. And for that, the Monk membership thanks you for your considered views. And again, just a terrific important conversation. And it's fascinating to see where this all goes in the months to come. So thank you both so much for coming on the Monk debates. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Eileen Kamarik and Sarah Longwell for a fascinating conversation on U.S. politics. We'd love your

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