Marshall here. Welcome back to The Realignment. For today's episode, I spoke with author and journalist

Sam Tannenhouse, whose new biography, Buckley, The Life and Revolution that changed America,

charts the legacy of Winif Buckley Jr., the intellectual godfather of modern American conservatism.

In our conversation, we explore how Buckley's ideas, debates, and media empire helped shape

American political discourse on the right, center, and left from the post-World War II

era to today.

But this conversation moves far beyond just biography.

We go into the rise of the MAGA right, from the post-2012 period onwards, the collapse of ideology

within the Democratic Party, the rise of figures like Vice President J.D. Vance, the failures

of modern political rhetoric, and what it means to truly have a worldview when it comes to

politics. Whether you're on the left, the right, or somewhere in

between, this is a conversation about the power of ideas, the need for political imagination,

and why Buckley's model might hold unexpected lessons for anyone thinking about the state

of American politics from 2024 and beyond. Hope you all enjoy the conversation.

Sam Tenenhouse, welcome to the realignment. Pleasure to be here. This and beyond. Hope you all enjoy the conversation.

Sam Tenenhouse, welcome to The Realignment.

Pleasure to be here. The name alone has got me interested.

Yeah, there's a, there's a frame here. So we're obviously here to discuss your new book, Buckley,

The Life and Revolution that changed America. But I want to start by just giving you a real shout out. So it was the summer of 2014. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do of my life.

I was a very, very terrible intern of the Congressional Research Service focused on cybersecurity,

so not a topic I was interested then, and I'm definitely not interested in it now.

But you had a piece come out in the New York Times magazine called Can the GOP become the Party of Ideas Again?

...