An ex-libertarian’s quest to rebuild the center right

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2019

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nothing would do more to repair American politics than for the center right to regain power in the Republican coalition. But before that can happen, the center right needs to exist — it needs a theory of both policy and politics, one that would allow it to organize a new right if the Trumpist coalition ever collapses. The Niskanen Center is a new Washington think tank started by refugees from the libertarian right who’ve decided to do exactly that. Will Wilkinson, Niskanen’s director of research, is one of them. A former Ayn Rand devotee, philosophy grad student, and Cato Institute staffer, Wilkinson has come to believe, among other things, that the freest economies feature the biggest welfare states, that unchecked capitalism and unchecked democracy pose similar threats, and that polarization is a function of density and psychology. This is a podcast about those ideas, but also about whether a center right like this is actually possible, or whether it’s a doomed project that misunderstands conservative psychology from the outset. Sometimes conversations go in very interesting directions you didn’t expect. This is one of those. I don’t want to spoil too much of it, but we could’ve, and perhaps should’ve, talked for twice as long. Enjoy! Book recommendations: Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistributionby Christopher D. Johnston, Howard Lavine, and Christopher M. Federico The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequalityby Brink Lindsey and Steven Teles The New Geography of Jobsby Enrico Moretti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:42.8	There is no Republican city.
0:45.8	In there are no red and blue counties, much less red or blue states.
0:50.8	There are red and blue densities.
0:52.8	And that's an incredible fact.
1:00.8	Hello, welcome to Sir Clancho on the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:09.8	I'm your host, Azur Clan.
1:11.8	So today's show is about, I think, one of the most important questions in American politics right now.
1:15.8	Can we have a saner right?
1:17.8	Can we have a Republican party or even just a right coalition in this country that is less extreme?
1:25.8	That is more interested in actually proposing and crafting solutions to problems that is more interested and compromise more interested in dialogue.
1:34.8	I know it gets controversial when you say this, but I don't think at this point there is all that much argument that the Republican party has become something quite different than it was even 20 years ago.
1:44.8	And that those differences that asymmetric polarization that the people like man and Ornstein have documented so well is perhaps the central force pulling the political system into a kind of crisis.
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