This is John Batchel, a conversation with Ryan Streeter of Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin,

about new book identifying the Republicans as not radical, not radicalized. However, there is that

invention of the acronym MAGA. And Ryan looks at what was determined from his work in the first term motivated the

MAGA voter carrying into the second term.

Maga voter, all good.

Ryan Streeter, much more of this tonight.

I think so, yeah.

And I think that was evident in the first term. And I did some of my own

survey work when I was formerly with the American Enterprise Institute. You can find some of these

pieces still on their website where we were looking, you know, even as far back as the end of the

first term of Donald Trump and through the 2020 election at what

motivated voters, both on the left and the right, what kinds of issues were really at the core.

And you found that within Trump's most ardent supporters, it was people that were of a higher

income and higher education were actually more motivated by by some of Trump's kind of

core issues and that working class Trump supporters were actually motivated by kind of bread and butter

issues they they cared a lot about those sorts of things but the people that wrote checks

the people that signed up got out the the vote for Trump were really motivated by these

kind of cultural issues on the left. They weren't motivated really at all by Trump's view on

economic policy. It's very hard to find in the survey data, a whole lot of support for the kinds

of things that might be understood as Trumpism, from protectionism to tariffs and those sorts

of things. People were motivated by the fact that he was saying things about the left, that they felt like conservative leaders hadn't been saying.

They were motivated by the fact that he was serious about the border issues. And also the chaos in our cities.

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