What a More Responsible Republican Party Would Look Like

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you watched this past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, you heard a lot of debunked election conspiracies, dire warnings about “cancel culture” and unwavering fealty to Donald Trump. What you didn’t hear was much in the way of policy ideas to raise wages, improve health care or support families. This is the modern G.O.P.: a post-policy party obsessed with symbolic fights and curiously uninterested in the actual work of governing. But does it have to be that way? Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Republican wonk who is pushing his party in a more responsible, policy-centric direction. We discuss: — Why Republicans have lost interest in policy. — Whether Trump would have won the presidency if Senate Republicans had passed a big stimulus bill before the 2020 election. — Why Ponnuru thinks the Republican Party’s 2024 hopefuls have learned the wrong lesson from Trump’s 2016 victory. — The conservative case for a universal child allowance. — Why so few Republican politicians have openly endorsed the Romney child allowance plan — and what that says about the tensions within the party’s coalition. — What it would take for Republicans to move away from being a “business owners’” party and toward being a “parents’” party. — Why Ponnuru thinks Republicans should support limiting, or outright banning, just-in-time scheduling practices. — Whether there was ever a mass constituency for Paul Ryan’s version of conservatism. — Who are the most important emerging voices on the political right today. And much more. Recommendations: "The Great Debate" by Yuval Levin "The Upside-Down Constitution" by Michael S. Greve "Popular Crime" by Bill James "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ezra Klein and this is the Ezra Klein Show.
0:24.0	So before we begin today, we are still looking for an associate producer on the show that
0:28.0	is a position requires two years audio experience, but it's going to be involved in everything
0:32.0	from researching guests, booking to transcripts, to cutting and editing episodes.
0:36.9	If that sounds like something you have the experience for and want to do, we have the
0:40.6	listing right now in the show description.
0:42.7	So go check it out.
0:44.6	Today's episode is about one of the core obsessions or themes that this show is going to have.
0:51.2	And that is how do we get, can we even get a more responsible Republican party?
0:57.1	And one way I define that is our Republican party that is more centered around an actual
1:01.0	governing agenda.
1:02.5	The Republican party we actually have has spun off too much to culture war and grievance
1:06.5	politics as depending on how you want to frame it, a distraction from an absence of consensus
1:13.4	on more direct policies that would improve the lived economic lives of the voters or another
1:18.7	way of looking at it is it is trying to distract from opposition to those policies.
1:23.9	But there are Republicans who are trying to diagnose the problem, who are trying to push
1:27.0	the party back in a more policy-centric direction and trying to push the party also towards a policy-centric
1:32.4	direction that I think would be healthier towards a kind of policy direction that would make
1:36.2	it more reasonable for Republicans to say they are actually a working persons party or
1:39.9	as you'll hear in this appearance party.
1:42.6	One of those Republicans is Ramesh Pinduru.
1:44.5	Ramesh is a senior editor at the National Review.
	...

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