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How Right-Wing Media Ate the Republican Party

How Right-Wing Media Ate the Republican Party

FromThe Ezra Klein Show


How Right-Wing Media Ate the Republican Party

FromThe Ezra Klein Show

ratings:
Length:
83 minutes
Released:
Jan 20, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

In recent weeks, America got a preview of how the new Republican House majority would wield its power. In attempting to perform a basic function of government — electing a speaker — a coalition of 20 House members caused Kevin McCarthy to lose 14 rounds of votes, decreasing his power with each compromise and successive vote.This is not normal. Party unity ebbs and flows, but the G.O.P. in recent decades has come apart at the seams. Nicole Hemmer is the director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, an associate professor of history and the author of two books about the conservative movement and media ecosystem, “Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics” and “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.” And she says we can’t understand the current G.O.P. without understanding when, where and how these dynamics began.We discuss why the Cold War bonded Republicans as a party, how the 1994 Republican congressional victory inaugurated a new era of intraparty fighting, how Rush Limbaugh’s rise created a new market for far-out ideas and new pressures on conservative politicians, why conservative media has had so much more sway than liberal media over grass-roots voters, how the business model of Fox News differs from that of MSNBC and what kinds of political ideas those businesses produce, how the G.O.P. is now caught between the pincers of the donor class and the grass roots, when the chief Republican enemy became the Democratic Party, why more moderate conservatives have become so weak and more.Mentioned:The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa WilliamsonThe Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by Gary GerstleAsymmetric Politics by Matt Grossman and David A. HopkinsRealigners by Timothy ShenkBook Recommendations:Fit Nation by Natalia Mehlman PetrzelaDreamland by Carly GoodmanFreedom’s Dominion by Jefferson CowieThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.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. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rogé Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.
Released:
Jan 20, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

*** Named a best podcast of 2021 by Time, Vulture, Esquire and The Atlantic. *** Each Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation on something that matters. How do we address climate change if the political system fails to act? Has the logic of markets infiltrated too many aspects of our lives? What is the future of the Republican Party? What do psychedelics teach us about consciousness? What does sci-fi understand about our present that we miss? Can our food system be just to humans and animals alike?