Welcome back to Beyond the Polls.

This week I talk with AEI's Map Contenetti about the history of movement conservatism and the rise of MAGA conservatism.

Let's dive in.

Well, we've been hearing a lot over the past couple of weeks over divisions within MAGA world, often fueled perhaps beyond

the actual state of those divisions, but nevertheless, they are real.

And this, of course, is coming over the debate prior to the strikes on Iran over whether

President Trump should order America to get involved in that conflict.

But as our next guest is going to talk to us about divisions within the Republican Party,

the conservative movement, have never been new, nor will they ever go away.

But understanding them is perhaps the key to understanding some of the tensions and possibilities

in the present and in the

future moment. And that guest is Matt Contenetti, Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the

American Enterprise Institute, a columnist at the Free Press, and an author of that indispensable work

on the history of modern conservatism and its segue into contemporary conservatism, The Right.

Matthew, welcome to be on the polls.

Thanks for having me, Henry. It's great to be here.

Well, you know, let's start with that, with your book.

It is difficult for people who are not history geeks beyond a certain age to remember or know that

there was once not a thing called the conservative movement. There was once a Republican Party

that was not conservative in the way that today's Republican Party is. How did modern

conservatism, I'm distinguishing that from post-Trump era conservatism,

which I'll call for the purposes of this contemporary conservatism, how did modern conservatism come about?

...