820: It Wouldn’t Be Make-Believe If You’d Believe In Me

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2023

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A major political party in a major swing state bets on a new leader: a total political outsider. How does that work out for them?

Prologue: In 2022, Michigan Republicans ran anti-establishment candidates who claimed the last presidential election was stolen. And they lost big. Now, the state party regroups and must decide whether to stay the course or moderate. (7 minutes)
Act One: The Michigan GOP’s newly elected leader, Kristina Karamo, faces her first big test: Can she organize and pull off the state party’s fabled, expensive Mackinac Island conference as a political outsider – with no fundraising experience or establishment connections? (9 minutes)
Act Two: Two young Michigan GOP vice chairs are totally on board with Kristina Karamo’s take on politics and hate the establishment like her. So why do they feel iced out by her? (15 minutes)
Act Three: At the start of the year, Warren Carpenter was a Kristina Karamo supporter; helped her get elected. Now he’s plotting her ouster. (13 minutes)
Act Four: Kristina Karamo and her camp defend themselves against Warren’s attacks that they’re bad at fundraising and bad at leading the party. (13 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.4	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this American Life.org.
0:11.9	This year comes to an end, and we think about what politics looks like right now in our country.
0:16.0	A good place to understand it is a state political party that made a very bold choice this year.
0:27.0	The convention will come to order. The state is Michigan.
0:29.0	This is a meeting that happened in February
0:30.0	where the Michigan Republican Party
0:32.0	had to pick a new leader.
0:33.0	If you want to return to your seats you're welcome to.
0:35.0	If you don't, that's fine.
0:36.0	I know you're going to get up and sprint to vote here at a minute.
0:39.0	They were to crossroads.
0:40.0	They'd gotten killed in the midterm elections, which was just a few months before this,
0:44.0	creamed. They were further out of power than they'd been in 40 years,
0:48.0	the Democrats controlling the State House, the Senate, Governor's office,
0:52.0	most of the congressional seats.
0:54.0	And why? Well, a big reason was, because the Republicans had all these candidates who were
0:59.1	pushing the idea that the presidential election had been stolen.
1:02.0	And Michigan voters are not into that.
1:05.0	They do not want to elect candidates who are obsessed with the election being stolen, apparently.
1:09.0	So at this meeting in February, the party needed to elect a leader who's going to rebuild and take the party forward.
1:15.6	And if you think about it, one logical path they could have taken is they could have picked somebody who renounced the whole election fraud thing, right?
	...

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