What a More Responsible Republican Party Would Look Like
About this episode
Conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru joins Klein to diagnose a Republican Party that has become 'post-policy,' drifting from governing agendas toward cultural grievance and conservative entertainment. He argues Trump exploded the old party synthesis without replacing it, and that Trump actually won in 2016 by appealing to self-described moderates and 'somewhat conservatives' rather than the hard right — a lesson 2024 hopefuls like Cruz, Hawley, Cotton and Rubio are mislearning. They dissect Mitt Romney's child allowance proposal — monthly payments per child, phased out at high incomes, funded by scrapping the SALT deduction — as a test of whether the GOP can become a 'parents' party' valuing caregiving as work. Ponnuru also confronts the party's amorphous 'stolen election' beliefs, counters the right's apocalypticism about Democratic victories, and offers Yuval Levin's The Great Debate as a bridge book for progressives.