The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: The survival of the Republican Party requires a clear and irrevocable break with Donald Trump

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden in November's Presidential election. Pressuring the Secretary of State to invalidate Georgia's votes. The President's supporters storming the Capitol during the certification of electoral college votes. You can't say that he didn't warn us but the lengths to which President Donald Trump has been prepared to go to prevent a peaceful, post-election handover to the Joe Biden administration has convulsed the final days of his presidency and deepened the already profound divisions in America and also within the Republican party. But despite the profoundly anti-democratic events of the past two weeks supporters of Donald Trump say that it's futile for the Republican Party to divorce itself from the man who last November enabled it to capture the most votes in the party's history. They say that Trumpism is the Republican Party's future, and that its populist rejection of elites and embrace of the concerns of disenfranchised middle-class voters its path to reelection in 2024. Republican critics of Donald Trump respond that the disastrous events of the past weeks are the culmination of four years of leadership that have been consistently at odds with the principles of Republicanism, at enormous cost to the party and the country. They say that it's not too late to rescue the GOP. The Republican Party can claim a bright political future if it rebuilds itself as an inclusive and culturally modern party of the centre-right that focuses on healing, not exacerbating, America's divides.  Arguing for the motion is David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic, former speech writer for George W. Bush, and author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy. Arguing against the motion is Stephen Moore, senior economic contributor at FreedomWorks, author of Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive our Economy, and former Senior Economic Advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Sources: ABC, Washington Post, Vice News, WESH 2 News, Fox Business, NBC, Fivethirtyeight, Balitang America, Spectrum News, Global News, Euronews, CNN The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   For detailed show notes on the episode, head to https://munkdebates.com/podcast. 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/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Christina Campbell Editor: Kieran Lynch Producer: Marilyn Mazurek Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome 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.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide you 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, the survival of the Republican Party requires a clear and irrevocable break with Donald Trump. Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won't stand for it. Look, all I want to do is this.

I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state. We have hundreds of thousands of people here. These people are not going to take it any longer. Because you'll never take back our country. with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. Well, you can't say he didn't warn us, but the lengths

to which Donald Trump has been prepared to go to prevent a peaceful post-election transfer of power to Joe Biden's administration has convulsed the final days of his presidency and deepen the already profound divisions not only in America, but within the Republican Party. Despite the profoundly anti-democratic events of the last two weeks, supporters of Donald Trump say that it's futile for the Republican Party to divorce itself from the man who last November enabled it to capture the most votes in the party's history. They say that Trumpism is the Republican Party's future, and that its populist rejection of elites and its embrace of the concerns of the disenfranchised middle-class voter is its path to re-election. in 2024. Here is Republican Senator Marco Rubio. We shouldn't and we can't go back to the party of 2012,

a party that frankly was out of touch with the unheard voices of millions of working Americans. Republican critics of Donald Trump respond that the disastrous events of the past weeks are the culmination of years of leadership that have been consistently at odds with the principles of republicanism at enormous cost to the party

and the country. They say that it's not too late to rescue the GOP. The Republican Party can claim a bright political future if it rebuilds itself as an inclusive and culturally modern party of the center right that focuses on healing, not exacerbating America's divides. Here's the Republican Congressman Tom Reid. We cannot embrace the rhetoric that we saw yesterday from President Trump, and I reject that, and I am not going to be part of that. I am going to stand for a vision of the Republican Party that is not going to incite violence that is going to stand for inspiring the hearts and minds of people across America. On this installment of the Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments

by debating the motion, be it resolved, the survival of the Republican Party requires a clear and irrevocable break with Donald Trump. Speaking for the motion is David Frum, senior edmund. Editor at the Atlantic, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and author of Trump Apocalypse, Restoring American Democracy. Arguing against the motion is Stephen Moore, senior economic contributor at Freedom Works, author of Trumpinomics inside the America First Plan to revive our economy,

and former senior advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. David, Stephen, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you, Roger. It's great to be with you. Thank you for having me. David, Stephen, I'm really looking forward to today's debate. It has so much going on in American politics, but I think one of the most important issues has to be the future of the Republican Party after Trump. The GOP has lost not only the White House, but Congress and the Senate, too. Where does this party go from here to have the ability to tap into both of your interests? depth knowledge and experience of republicanism, of conservative politics in America is a privilege

indeed. And I know I speak on behalf of all of our listeners when I say just how thrilled we are that you're part of this debate and discussion today. Our resolution today is a simple one. It's concise. It gets right to the point, be it resolved. The survival of the Republican Party requires a clear and irrevocable break with Donald Trump. David, you're arguing in favor of the motion. I'm going to put two minutes on the clock. Please take us away. In fairness to Stephen Moore, he agreed to do this debate before Donald Trump launched the push that tried to overturn an American election, left five people dead, dozens of police officers injured, and broke the long chain of peaceful transition of power in the United States. So if during the debate, Steve says, he wants to

change his mind and rethink this. I think my arms, all our arms are open to that, and that change of mind would be welcome. What we have seen in the past week takes all of the problems of the Trump era, all of the scandals, all of the shames, all of the abuses of power, all of the corruption, all of the treasons, and takes them to an extraordinary new level. President of the United States incited his supporters to attack Congress, people were killed in an effort to stop the election, and by the way, with some scheme in mind of abducting his own vice president. I don't think we've all registered yet how big an event in American history this is going to be. It is going to be taught in school textbooks 100 years from now.

This is going to be one of the defining moments of American history and of the 21st century. And Donald Trump's name and face will be attached to it as the greatest villain in the entire archive of American presidents. If there's going to be a Republican Party in the United States, if we're going to put the center right back on any kind of competitive footing. We need to turn the page on Donald Trump and repudiate him and say, we also want no part of his violence, of his attempts to overturn elections and the democratic system. It has been scandal upon scandal, the most corrupt administration in history. And that has had an impact on the Republican Party's electoral

chances. The Republican Party is now dead or dying in every knowledge center of the United States. Joe Biden won counties that produce almost 70% of the American economy. Any place a new product is invented, any place a song has written, any place science is done, that is a place where the Republican Party cannot compete. It is competing only in the places which are left behind by the world economy and that are turning against the world economy, that are turning against enterprise and trade. This is no future for a party of the center right. And the path home, the path to redemption, begins with doing what is morally right and also politically

smart saying Donald Trump speaks for nobody except his criminal self. David, thank you for that opening statement. Stephen, we're now going to turn the proverbial microphone over to you. You're arguing against our resolution today, be it resolved, the survival of the Republican Party requires a clear and irrevocable break from Donald Trump. Let's have your opening remarks, please. Look, I think David's right that the world has changed incredibly because of the actions that happened at the Capitol. I want to state very clearly that I think those actions were outrageous. And I think Donald Trump deserves a lot of the blame because of his misbehavior. I'll put it like that over the last four, five, six weeks since the election in November. One of the things

I think Republicans need to do at this point is really separate Trump from Trumpism. And there's really two issues really at stake here. What is what is the best policy? and the other is what is the best politics, you know, for the future of the Republican Party. And I think those two things mostly merge, but sometimes they separate. So I think the trick for Republicans now is to embrace Trumpism, but not necessarily Trump himself. And I think Trump will go away his prospects for leading the party, which I think right after the election, I think he could have, he was a front runner to lead the party of 2024, but he's blown that up.

My main point is Trump's policies were spectacular success. They were off the charts in terms of how successful Trump was in terms of building the middle class. I like to look at one of my favorite statistics is that under Donald Trump, the poverty rate in the United States, fell to its lowest level in the history of the country. That's a pretty incredible thing. We had the lowest unemployment rate. We had massive increase in wealth. We had, for the first time in at least 40 years, we had gains in incomes that were higher for lower income people than higher income people, which is really spectacular.

We saw, you know, big gains in homeownership. We've seen the increase in American produced energy. These are all very positive things. And by the way, minorities had the biggest gains. And so the last thing I'll say at the outset is these were popular policies. I mean, my goodness, Donald Trump. lost this election by 100,000 votes at 150 million casts. So that's incredible how, you know, this was a, and he came with an eyelash of winning the election. And now he's done. He's done now.

But these policies are popular with the American people. And I like to point at the big, big surge in Republican gains at the state level, which were incredible. 180 House seats at the state level went Republican. Over 50 Senate seats went Republican. I think the party is healthy, but they do have to separate clearly from Donald Trump himself because he's blown himself up. Thank you, Stephen. Okay, time for rebuttals. This is an opportunity for both of you to react to what you've just heard from each other and your opening statements. David, you're up first. Another two minutes on the clock for you. Well, we have seen in this terrible atrocity at the Capitol that many of Donald Trump's most militant supporters live in a world of

fantasy and unreality. And I'm afraid Steve's remark suggests that some of his more polite and refined and educated supporters also live in a world of unreality. And Trump decided over the greatest economic disaster in American history since the Great Depression, at least since the war. He's the only president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than he entered into. He did not lose the election by 100,000 votes. He lost the election by close to 8 million votes. He received a smaller share of the vote than Mitt Romney, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other people who lost elections. And he did all of this. And this is one of the things I understand about the society's healthy reaction against Donald Trump. 2020 was the most participatory event in American history.

This is the biggest democratic event in American history. And 81 million people turned out to say no to Donald Trump, and most importantly for the interests of the Republican Party, they turned out to vote in the suburbs, in the knowledge centers. Everywhere, Steve is in favor of wealth, everywhere where wealth has created. He's in favor of entrepreneurship, everywhere where entrepreneurship happened. What Trumpism means, aside from Donald Trump's own personal, shocking criminality and disloyalty to the United States, what Trumpism means is trying to build a party of enterprise on the votes of people who reject the enterprise system, trying to build a party of support for the world economy, on those of people who reject the world economy. It means trying to build a party of the future on the parts of America that are most nostalgic for the past. None of that is going to work. I don't think that there's any ability to repair until you understand the extent of the damage, until you understand what Donald Trump has done to the identity of Republicans with everybody under the age of 60,

with women, with everyone with a college degree, with the parts of the American society that represent the future of the country. I'm Meg Whitman. I'm a longtime Republican and a longtime CEO. And let me tell you, Donald Trump has no clue how to run a business, let alone an economy. Those suburban votes were key to putting Joe Biden over the top in the electoral college. 2020 U.S. presidential election exit polls show that president-elect Joe Biden's coalition of voters includes 63 percent of the Asian-American vote. And there he has made the party's name.

and brand very tainted. And that is only going to get worse as over the coming months, the Trump archives are open. And people find out how much the president, how much public money the president directed to himself. It's millions, but the full count is only going to begin to be revealed. We're going to hear more about the kind of criminal conversations that Donald Trump had with world leaders. We saw the tape with the Ukrainian president.

There are similar conversations buried deep in the archives. Those are going to come to view. And we're going to learn more about the precedent's attempts to, to muscle people to overturn the election he lost so massively. The Georgia Secretary of State released an audio of Trump's attempt to muscle him into creating fake votes so that Donald Trump could win Georgia. Who thinks that's the only such conversation? It's the only one we know about so far.

For self-preservation, the Republican Party needs to turn its back. And that, when Steve says, I want to embrace Trumpism, or at least the non-criminal parts of Trumpism, or at least the economic policies that happen to occur during the Trump era, from Trump himself and from the criminal parts. of the Trump administration. If you are serious about that project, you have an opportunity right now. You want to turn the page? There is an impeachment process going on right now for Trump's involvement in this unprecedented attack on Congress and attempted kidnapping of his own vice president in order to overturn an election. Join that impeachment effort.

Thank you, David. Your chance now, Stephen, for a rebuttal of yours. Two minutes or so on the clock, take us away. I don't disagree that Donald Trump's actions of the last. month should be widely condemned and they are indefensible. So I will leave it at that. But I will say this, that what I'm saying is the ideas that Trump brought to the presidency, which can be revolved around the theme of putting America first, is extremely popular with the American voters. I think that the Republicans should embrace that message. I'm not saying they should embrace him. I think they should embrace that message. Now, even on a policy point of view, I didn't agree with everything Donald Trump stood for.

As David know, I'm strongly favor of immigration, and Trump was skeptical of immigration. I'm more of a free trader than Trump is, although Trump, I have to say, Donald Trump changed my mind a little bit about trade. I think he deserves an unbelievable amount of credit for being the first president in modern times to call out China for the sinister power that they are. And that's one of the reasons that Trump won. He did lose this election narrowly. What I met by the 100,000 votes is with a shift of 100,000 votes in four states, he would have won the election. Out of 150 million votes cast, that's pretty amazing. Trump not only rebuilt the economy once from the maylays of the Obama years, and the Obama years were pretty bad, pretty bad for the economy, not horrible, but pretty bad. The economy was the worst recovery from recession. And Trump came in

and just supercharged the economy. I remember at the end of 2019 pinching myself and saying, something's going to have to happen here because it is too good. I mean, if we had stayed on that course without the pandemic, I don't think there's any question Trump would want a 40 state reelection landslide. The pandemic came. Did Trump make mistakes with that? Yes.

I think all politicians around the world have made major mistakes with that. But the most amazing thing is the recovery we've seen from the pandemic. who had 33% growth in the third quarter. We're on pace. The latest estimate is about 8% growth for the fourth quarter. That's way, way faster than any other country has done. For all the faults of Donald Trump, David correctly points out, this is a man whose actions on the Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine, is going to save tens of millions of lives throughout the world. I've said that Operation Warp Speed is the greatest accomplishment of a president since D-Day. Thank you, Stephen. Now is an opportunity for us to get into a moderated conversation, really keep top of mind the questions that our listeners are pondering right now as they digest this fascinating conversation between the two of you. And I guess, David, the first question I would want to ask you is, as a veteran of Canadian conservative politics, you know far better than most people the dangers of fragmenting the right. in Canada for our American listeners, the right split. We had a new party emerged called the Reform Party, and the result really was a decade plus of center-left rule in Canada.

Convince us, David, that the Republican Party really has a viable future without the energy, the coalition that Donald Trump was able to hold together for the duration of his presidency. But Donald Trump was not able to hold. the coalition together. Donald Trump did split the Republican Party, and you can see that in the voting record. If you look district by district, look at a district like the seventh district of Texas, that's in Houston in the area around River Oaks. That's a district that was won by George H.W. Bush in 1966. It stayed Republican through Watergate, through Iran-Contra, through the Iraq war, through

the financial crisis of 2008, and it was won by a Democrat in 2018 for the first time since the middle 1960s. New Gingrich's former district and the suburbs of Atlanta is now held by a district. Eric Cantor, who was the number two in the House of Representatives under President Obama, his district in the affluent area outside of Richmond. That's now held by a Democrat. The area on the South Bank of the Potomac that stretches past the CIA, which has been Republican for 60 of the past 66 years, that seat is now held by a Democrat. And in every case, by the way, the successor Democrat is a woman. The Republicans in 2018 lost the historic heartland of the Republican Party. So Donald Trump did split it.

He just, he split it. He just drove off the college educated part and the part that was heavily female and the part that is non-rural. And he pushed it into the Biden coalition. Biden is sitting on top of a coalition that extends from everybody from Bernie Sanders to Mitt Romney, in effect. That's Trump's doing. That's a highly artificial coalition.

but it is created by Trump, and because of Trump's attack on Congress and his continuing involvement, it is sustained by Trump. I mean, when Steve makes claims about the extraordinary performance of the economy under Donald Trump, that's just flat, not true. If you look at the three years before the inauguration of Donald Trump and the three years after, so leave out the pandemic, Donald Trump's best three good years, you cannot find a single economic indicator that shows any improvement over the last three years of Obama. Growth in manufacturing employment, same. Productivity growth, same. Improvement and unemployment, same. Donald Trump's big tax cut. That was sold as a way to increase American wages by driving up business investment. There was absolutely no measurable increase in business investment after the tax cut as compared to before. So it was all flim flam. The thing ran on momentum inherited from the past and then it crashed into a wall. And Steve may not agree with that, but millions of former Republicans do. And Donald Trump's project is not energizing the Republican Party. It is, He's doing, in effect, what populist leaders always have done. He shrunk the party, put it on an ethnic chauvinist basis, driven off all the parts of the economy that, all the parts of the coalition that relate to the economy of the future, and built a united center from which the center right is now excluded.

And indeed, a center that now looks at the right as subversive and hostile because it has to go through the list of secret service agents to say, is there anyone here who's a Trumpist who might be inclined to try to assassinate the next president, as they are doing right now. So I want to ensure that we kind of focus this debate around, in a sense, the future and the future of the Republican Party. So let me prod you a bit, Stephen, and get your view on what David's just said, in effect that the coalition that Trump assembled wasn't effective. It was an albatross around the party's neck. And the prospects of the party are better as a result of severing itself from Trump and Trumpism. Well, I disagree with that. I think that what Trump did is admirable. The Republican Party has become the party of the working class, and the Democratic Party has become the party of the very, very rich. And working class Americans in huge numbers went for Trump. That is his coalition.

And I'm proud to be part of that. I'd love it. In the past two presidential elections, blue-collar workers and union members have abandoned the Democratic Party. and supported President Donald Trump. I look to a place like Cuyahoga County. While Joe Biden took the county, thanks to Cleveland and surrounding areas,

the suburbs of Cleveland are red. And it's minorities, it's Hispanics, it's blacks. What I'm saying is his policies work, his behavior was an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party. What I'm saying is Republicans need to find someone who carries the ball of Trumpism, and I don't know who that will be,

but the policies of putting America first, going against these insane climate change policies, deregulating the economy, trade deals that are Americans' interests. Okay. I like how this debate is going, because, again, we're not here necessarily just to relitigate the Trump presidency. We're really trying to cast our minds forward to the future of the Republican Party. And David, let's hear a little bit more from you on this idea of how the Republican Party

creates a new winning coalition absent Trump. We saw a surprising turnout, let's say minorities, largely across the country for Trump. We saw Trump, let's say, create a narrative around the white working class in America that clearly had real political traction in a way that the Republican Party did not before. So give us, David, your sense of how the Republican Party

reformulates itself in the absence of Trump of Trump and Trumpism to re-emerge as a really dynamic political force that can beat the Democrats. Well, you know, the arithmetic on this just is not true. It's just not right. I mean, Donald Trump, for example, did not win working class voters. If you look at voters who earn less than $100,000 a year, and if you trust the exit polls, Biden won them. The only way you get to the claim that Trump won working class voters is if you define the working class to mean whites without a college degree. That is, you build a racially exclusive concept, not only into your politics, but even into your analysis. Never mind the morality of it. That's just,

that's just not smart in a country that is becoming decreasingly white. Donald Trump did a little bit better in 2020 among Hispanics than he did in 2016, but he still lost them two to one. He did a little bit better among blacks in 2020 than he did in 2016. We still lost them nine to one. Donald Trump was an historically unpopular president, the most unpopular first-term president in the history of polling. He alienated women. He alienated minorities. He alienated the college educated. He alienated the young. He alienated the people in cities. One last point. In the attempt to present Donald Trump is continuous with the economic policies of the Republican past. What is essential to doing that is to jettison trade from the Republican policy playbook.

But trade policy is Donald Trump started a system of trade wars all over the planet. And not only between the United States and China and China's trade policies give rise to concern, of course, and action needs to be taken, but Trump started to do. trade conflicts with Canada, with the EU. We're here today to discuss the measures that we are taking to protect Canadian workers against the illegal and unjust tariffs imposed by the United States. The EU has announced sweeping tariffs on American goods worth more than 3 billion euros. This decision comes after the Trump administration imposed tariffs worth more than 6 billion euros

on European goods. I want to say one more thing about this, this is an idea that I think people really need to take away. When George W. Bush became president, the American economy was about eight times the size of the Chinese economy. When Barack Obama became president, the American economy was about three times the size of the Chinese economy. Today, the two economies are near peer. If you're going to balance or constrain China in any way or build rules for China in any way, the United States must work with partners. But the central idea of Donald Trump's presidency, the so-called America First policy that Steve praises, was to say, we are going to have no partners. We don't want allies. We will not cooperate with others. We will treat Germany as an enemy. We'll treat Canada as an enemy. We'll treat Australia as an enemy. We want no friends. We want to lock ourselves alone in the room with China. And guess what? That's not very successful.

Hi there, Rudyard Griffiths, the moderator of the monk debates. Look, this we know. Our society is becoming dangerously polarized. We don't listen to each other. We don't search out opposing views. Instead, too many of us live in tribes, convinced that we are right and they are wrong. It's time to put a stop to polarization before it wrecks our democracy. This is what the monk debates charity is all about, ending polarization, searching for common ground. We do this by producing the world's only weekly debate radio program through our monk dialogue series and through main stage debates on the big topics of the day. Support civil and substantive public debate by becoming a monk member. As a member, you get access to our 10 plus year online library of great debates and street. high definition video, a free Monk Debate book of your choice, ticketing privileges, and so much more. 30% off when you use the promotional code, Monk, 2021 at our website, monkdebates.com.

Again, that promotional code, Monk, Munk, Munk, WN, K, 2021 at MoncDbates.com. Join now and help fight the polarization of our democracy. Now back to our program. Stephen, what are your concerns about a Republican Party that disavows not simply the president, the man, but his policies? Why are you worried about the future prospects of your party if that indeed is the course of action? If they take David's advice and unilaterally move away from the Trump agenda? Well, first of all, I think that we have some commonality here between David and me in terms of the failings of Trump. And David is exactly right.

Donald Trump was extremely unpopular with black voters. And he didn't do nearly as well as he should have done with Hispanics. I mean, my goodness, we had the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates in the history of the United States under Donald Trump. Even the black unemployment rate, 6.8 percent, the lowest in history. The sad part of that number, it's still, you know, almost double white unemployment, but it is still a number that is also going down to. So you'll see people writing today.

I mean, that's incredible. We had the lowest black and the lowest Hispanic poverty rate in the history of the United States under Donald Trump. Those are policies that the policies that led to those results, you know, should have translated into votes. And the reason they didn't is because Trump, this was a problem with his personality. That's my point is that he agitated and antagonized the very voters that he should have been capturing into the Republican Party. And so what I'm saying is you kind of need a kinder, gentler Trumpism that stands for. of these various principles. Reduction and tax rates to grow the economy, the supply side, Reagan Laffer formula, who has worked every time. A policy that says yes to legal immigration, no to

illegal immigration, a policy that says we are going to deregulate the economy and get business, get government off the back of our small businesses, a policy that is anti-shutdown. I mean, this is a big issue right now, whether it will be two years from now, but the Democrats have become the shutdown party. The Republicans are the party that says open up the economy. And patriotism. I mean, the left tends to not view American exceptionalism and accept that premise. And we as free market conservative Republicans believe in the whole idea of American exceptionalism.

And that means America first, that every single policy that we put in place should be, does this put the interests of American businesses and American households and American families, first. And Joe Biden's not going to do that. He's already announced his first initiative is going to be to put the United States back into the insane anti-America Paris Climate Accord, which puts no constraints on countries like China, which is the biggest polluter, and forces America to shut down its energy industry. So what I'm saying is that these policies work and maybe with a friendlier face that is not so antagonistic to minorities and doesn't shoot at the hip as often as he does can be a real formula for longstanding success for the Republican Party.

Thanks, Stephen. So just as we're moving towards the conclusion of this debate, David, it would be interesting for our listeners to hear from you what you think the future of the Republican Party is going to look like over the next four years. Do you think they will be able to put forward a credible candidate and have a winning agenda in 2024? And if so, why? And if not, what do you think the loadstones are here that are going to weigh this party down? I am pessimistic about the decisions the party will make in the near term, alas. I have spent a lot of energy in the years since 2004, offering in books and articles and speeches, my vision and of what it should be instead. And I think it's safe to say I have not been

very influential. But here's what I think the future should look like. Every country needs a party of the center right that stands for enterprise, private property, and the concerns of people who create and sustain businesses. But that, in all the, in order, ordered for that to be a decent party, it has to be culturally modern, and that means open to diversity and to sexual minorities and to people who are secular and to families of all kinds. It has to be economically inclusive. That is, it can't do what Donald Trump did with his tax cut in 2017 and laid all its benefits on the already very, very, very rich. It has to create an environment in which new businesses can be created, and under Donald Trump, new business creation actually slowed.

and it has to be environmentally responsible. I don't want to spend a lot of time on the issue of climate, but it's just a fact. It's like our political facts. The world's climate is warming, and it's warming because of the stuff we're putting, humanity is putting into the air, and something collectively has to be done about that

in a way that is consistent with markets and private property. And the party of the future, those voters that were lost in 2018 and that didn't come back in 2020, they care. They really do care about the environment. And if the Republican Party is a party, that is racist, that is environmentally disdainful, it has no hope. And its future is it going to shrivel into one of these kinds of reactionary nationalist parties we see in Eastern Europe.

It'll be like the PIS and Poland or like Victor Orban's party. Stephen, let's get your view on the Republican Party over the next four years. Are you optimistic about a rebuild, about the opportunity for them to put forward a candidate and a suite of parties that can win in 2024? Well, they came within an eyelash of winning the 2020 party. This wasn't like what happened back in 2008 when the Republicans got wiped out. You know, the Republican Party, you know, just to give you one sense of how strong the Republican Party is today, you know, we have 50 states. And in, let's see, I'm trying to remember these numbers. I think 31 or 32 of those states, Republicans control all lepers of power.

And only something like 13 of them do Democrats control all lepers of power. So that's just an example of how popular the Republican Party. party is at the state level and at the local level. I think Republicans need to be the freedom party. Just listen to what Joe Biden is saying right now. I've read this entire 93-page economic report. There's not one policy that is good for the economy out of 93 pages. It's all basically big government, higher taxes, redistribute income, climate change fanaticism, which ranks about the 18th biggest issue to most American voters. They care much, much more about jobs and income and their families than they do about what the planet's weather is going to be 50 years from now. And so I think

Republicans are actually in pretty decent shape. The Democrats always, when they win an election, they think the American people moved to the left. And it's still a pretty conservative country. I mean, the United States, as David was saying, it is that we are a center-right country. We're not a center-left country. We're center-right, notwithstanding millennials. That's a big problem for Republicans as well. But I think the future looks bright. I don't know who the the leader is going to be. It's not going to be Donald Trump. It's going to be somebody like a Ronda Santis. I mean, Ronda Sannis would be an absolutely fantastic Republican candidate. He embraces the pro-freedom, pro-economic growth, limited government agenda. He is very popular in Florida. And so I think we need

to continue with those policies, but put a different base on it because David's right. The American people have now, you know, repudiated Trump and there's no coming back from his bad behavior. Before we go to closing statements, I'd be remiss if I didn't provide our listeners with a little bit of your analysis of this vote on impeachment and how the Republican Party needs to handle this. And, David, to come to you first, I mean, isn't there just a risk here for the Republicans in supporting impeachment that you permanently alienate those Trump voters? They certainly don't hurt the Republican coalition politically. You probably want them in the tent, not outside the tent, you know, fermenting in a third party. So what would your argument be, David, for why politically Republican senators could conceivably join the Democratic majority and vote for impeachment? Because the future fills a very, very long time.

In 1974, there are a lot of arguments on both sides of standing by Richard Nixon as it was exposed that he had indeed ordered the break-in at the Democratic headquarters and obstructed justice. There are always in the moment cynical calculations as to why doing the wrong thing might be to your temporary advantage. But the moment passes and eternity arrives and you have to carry for decades through the memories of children and grandchildren the recollection of where you were. The Democratic Party, after the Civil War, paid the price for being on the wrong side of the Civil War for a century. The South was the territory of the Confederacy, of insurrection against the Union, and Southerners could not be president. I think we're going to see a similar kind of reaction to the Trump presidency. And that reaction is not going to fade with time. It will become more heavy with time.

So don't worry so much about figuring out what the angle is. You never know the future. But you do know what is right. What just happened in Washington is without precedent in the history of the United States. And a president inciting a crowd of his supporters to try to attack violently the Congress, to try to kill members of the House of Representatives and Senate, to try to kidnap his own vice president. I mean, it's beyond belief.

And if you hadn't seen it happen, you wouldn't believe it. We need to move to a different kind of future, one that accepts democracy. When Steve talks about the Republican hold on the states, that's, of course, true. it's achieved by abuse of minority power. So in a state like Wisconsin, Republicans got about in 2020, about 46% of the vote, but they got 60% of the seats. In Pennsylvania and Michigan, Republicans get minorities of the vote and majorities of the seats. You've got a party that is betting on non-democracy until now in the relatively polite form of gerrymandering, but with Trump in much less polite forms, in more aggressive forms. We are seeing the Republican Party at risk of evolving into a post-democratic

party. And that's nothing that anyone should welcome whatever their view of economic policy, whatever even their view of the Trump record. Thank you, David. So a similar question to you, Stephen, on impeachment, what do you see the risks here for the Republican Party in how they would handle that vote? And do you just think it's, I would assume, your view is that the upside of removing Trump permanently as a federal political candidate in any way, shape, or form? does not justify the potential damage to the Republican Party in the Republican coalition? Well, I don't know. I'm not even going to, I'm not, I don't know whether he should be impeached or not. I will say this, that I think the big issue right now is, I think that David and I agree on is Republicans have to do a much better job of reaching out to minorities because it's clear that, you know, minorities are what won Democrats this presidential election.

And how do you do that? How do Republicans do that? I thought Trump was right on when he said both in 2016 and 20, you know, to Democrats, what, you know, to voter, black Hispanic voters, what do you have to lose? Why do you keep voting for these people? Like what they've done to Detroit. Look what they've done in New York. Look what they've done to Los Angeles in San Francisco in Milwaukee. I mean, it is just disgrace. And yet, you know, unfortunately, minorities keep voting for these corrupt politicians that are almost exclusively Democrat. The Democrats are the party of government. And, you know, this country is going to collapse if we become a nation where the government, you know, we're moving towards 50% of GDP being government right now, which is, you know, we talk about socialism. My goodness, if you got half your country is government, that's a really scary thing. So it's an appreciation of limited government, fiscal conservatism, pro-growth economic policies. And I've talked to Donald Trump many times about this stuff. He believes that.

And Trump, again, I think it's a really important part. Trump is the first modern president, David, who has seen China as the enemy that they are. And this is the issue of our time, is whether China or the United States will continue to be the global economic power. I guarantee you that Chinese did not want Donald Trump to be the next president. They wanted someone who would not put America first. And I think that's why this moniker of putting America first is so critically important. because it is, we are in the struggle of our lifetimes right now with respect to China, and they are a sinister power, and we better be up to recreate our economic might or they're going to overtake us, and it's not going to be pretty. Thank you, Stephen. David, I'm going to give you the last word in this debate. Take us home. Wrap us up.

Well, let me just deal quickly with the point about China. As I said earlier, and this really has to be stressed, you can contend with China or you can insist on America first. You can't do both because the only way to bring any kind of rule, an economy as large as China, now nearly as large as the United States, is to work with partners. And the fact that Donald Trump wouldn't and couldn't do that, that he could never understand, that he had to find common cause with countries like with the European Union, with Great Britain, with Japan, Canada, the others that had to make new alliances for the United States across the Pacific, that he had a vision of the United States as a selfish giant dominating the world as it did in the 1950s and 60s because he hasn't kept up. That was no way to keep pace with China. Steve has professed bafflement as to why so many minority groups are suspicious of the Republican Party, even when, and he and I may agree on this, Republican policies might be helpful for their economic interests. The answer is because people are first and foremost dignity-seeking beings. They want to be treated equally.

When you have a party who's the core of whose political formula under Donald Trump and since the great gerrymandered that began in 2010-2011 has been, our secret to success is going to be preventing minority people from voting. and when they do vote making sure that their votes count for less than those of white people, as they do in so many of the states, Republicans have leveraged minorities of the vote into majorities of the seats, of course they're going to be against you. Why wouldn't they? The Republican Party faces a really stark pair of choices. And one way leads from Trump toward the logic of what Trump began.

A corrupt authoritarian post-democratic party like those, Victor Orban and Erdogan and Turkey and the PIS in Poland. And the other is to a dynamic modern party of the center right that embraces democracy, not just accepts it, embraces it, thinks that all votes should count, is in favor of things like a new voting rights act, that accepts that universal health care is something that has come to stay in the United States and that the job now is to shape it, to be friendly to markets and to small businesses, that accepts the reality of the climate challenge and that tries to find ways to meet that challenge while respecting the price mechanism and markets and the creative role of business that tries to be a party like those we see across the develop world, like

the Christian Democrats in Germany, like the British conservatives, like the Canadian conservatives, like the Australian liberals, that plays its part in the 21st century rather than hankering to this reactionary nostalgia that dominated the Republican Party out of the Trump years. If the Republican Party is to become the kind of party of the future, economically inclusive, culturally modern, environmentally responsible that I envision, it needs to say Trump is just wrong. We are wrong In the same way, the Democrats who supported segregationists ultimately disavowed them, just as the Democrats broke from George Wallace, Republicans have to break from Donald Trump and make it clear that he belongs to the past and in no way contaminates the future.

Thank you, David. Well, look, the future of the Republican Party is a story that will be written in the months and years to come. But what I know right now is the two of you at a moment of, well, almost febrile political debate has provided us with a really substantive conversation that has informed and engaged. And I just want to thank you both for having that conversation in a spirit with a willingness to listen to each other's arguments and to engage with each other's ideas. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, David, Stephen, thank you for your participation today. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, David,

and Stephen Moore, they certainly give us a lot to think about. The Monk Debates is that place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. To listen to more debates on everything from climate change to religion, to geopolitics, to the future of human progress, visit our website, monkdebates.com. You can also find show notes on today's debate. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate, one conversation at a time. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Rudyard Griffiths, Christina Campbell, and Marilyn Missouri are the producers. Api Rahaja is our associate producer.

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