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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

What a post-Trump Republican Party might look like

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

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

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2020

⏱️ 79 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Five years ago, Oren Cass sat at the center of the Republican Party. Cass is a former management consultant who served as the domestic policy director for the Mitt Romney campaign and then as a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. But then he launched an insurgency.  Today, Cass is the founder and executive director of American Compass, a new think tank created to challenge the right-wing economic orthodoxy. Cass thinks conservatism has lost its way, becoming obsessed with low tax rates and a quasi-religious veneration of markets. What conservatives need, he thinks, are clear social goals that can structure a radically new economic agenda: a vision that puts families first, eschews economic growth as the be-all-end-all of policymaking, and recognizes the inescapability of government intervention in the economy. Trump is likely — though not certain — to lose in 2020. And then, Cass thinks, Republicans will face a choice: to return to a “pre-Trump” consensus, or to build a “post-Trump future” — one that, he hopes, will prevent more Trump-like politicians from rising.  In this conversation, Cass and I discuss how current economic indicators fail, the relationship between economics and culture, why Cass believes production — not consumption — should be the central focus of public policy, the problems with how our society assigns status to different professions, the role that power plays in determining market outcomes, the conservative case against market fundamentalism, why Cass supports labor unions and industrial policy but not a job guarantee or publicly funded childcare, what the future of the Republican Party after Donald Trump looks like, whether Cass’s policies are big enough to solve the problems he identifies, and more. References: The Once and Future Worker by Oren Cass "Removing the Blinders from Economic Policy" by Oren Cass Book recommendations: The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom  The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato  Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy  Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas. New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere) Credits: Producer/Editer - Jeff Geld Researcher - Roge Karma Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:17.0

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0:24.0

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0:50.0

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0:56.0

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1:04.0

People's roles as productive contributors, people's ability to support themselves and their families is vital to the formation of families and the rationale for their formation in the first place.

1:15.0

It's vital to their stability and then it's vital for that replicability for being able to raise kids in an environment where they then reach adulthood prepared to carry these things forward.

1:27.0

Hello and welcome to the Ezra Client Show on the Box Media Podcast Network.

1:42.0

My guest is me because I've wanted to talk to him on the show for a long time. It is Orrin Cass, who's the executive director of the NewCook the American Compass.

1:48.0

Cass is an important figure in Republican domestic policymaking. He was director of domestic policy from at Romney's presidential campaign in 2012.

1:58.0

He has been at the Manhattan Institute for a long time. He's one of these folks whose ideas on this are very, very influential on the right.

2:05.0

But starting in 2018, when he published a book called The Once in Future Worker, a vision for the renewal of work in America, and then more recently when he founded American Compass, he has begun leading a kind of insurgency on the right to create what he calls in some context of post-Trump economics.

2:20.0

But in particular, to sort of get rid of the rights focus on free markets and focus on in particular tax policy and tax cuts, and to try to tie economic policy to a vision of the country and a vision of families and what is good for them that he thinks is often missed.

2:38.0

And I think it's a very interesting project. A lot of things that he thinks that I don't agree with, but he's somebody who I think is important in the debate, and I think understanding his perspective is really important for understanding at least for one part of the Republican party is going to try to go next.

2:51.0

As always, you can email me at asorclinetbox.com, but here is Orrin Cass.

2:56.0

Orrin Cass, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me.

2:59.0

I'm excited to have this conversation because I've been really interested in what you've been doing for a long time, but particularly these last couple of months and years.

...

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