>> As key Republican primary
races are taking place across
the country, a battle is
underway within the g-o-p about
its beliefs and its future.
Amna nawaz explains.
>> The Republican party has long
been the political party of
choice for conservatives but as
Matthew continetti explains in
his new book, "The right - the
hundred year war for American
conservatism", the GOP has also
historically attracted those
with populist views, similar to
what we're seeing today.
Matt continetti joins me now.
Why as?
>> A war is a struggle for
dominance between two main
groups.
Intellectual elites and the
populist grassroots.
And what I found in my 100 year
study is that there have been
times where these two groups,
the elites and the populists,
have cooperated.
But more often there have been
times where they're in conflict,
where the conservative
intellectuals, the conservative
movement, wanted one thing and
the populists wanted another
thing. Usually when it comes to
the question of who should be
the leader of this movement and
of this party.
>> We're in that struggle right
now, too.
>> Oh, of course, yes. We've
been going through this struggle
in many ways since 1992 over
which direction the Republican
party should take. Should it be
more nationalist? Should it be
more globalist or more open to
global engagement? But certainly
since 2015 and the rise of
Donald Trump, that struggle has
been tilted toward, I think, the
populist side.
>> You write about how obviously
anti-communism was an early sort
of organizing principle, right?
If you said you were
conservative, that was a strong
part of your identity that went
away with the cold war. So what
what are the organizing
principles today when someone
says, I'm conservative? What
does that mean?
>> Well, it could mean many
things, precisely because that
glue that anti-communism
provided the movement no longer
exists. So when I look at the
right today and you ask someone,
you're a conservative, what does
that mean? I think one unifying
factor would be opposition to
political correctness,
opposition to the so-called woke
ideology, especially when it
manifests itself in cultural
institutions. That seems to be a
binding commitment that many
people on the right hold today.
>> What about the potential
overturning of roe? Right.
Opposition to abortion rights
has also been a core organizing
principle. It's a 50 year fight.
Conservatives could be winning
that. Does that take away an
organizing principle?
>> Well, I think it would
actually vindicate those on the
right who have said that working
through institutions could
produce results. So if roe V
wade is overturned by the end of
this supreme court term, that
would actually be a win for the
more establishment forces who
are able to say to the
populists, look, we took 50
years, we had victories, we had
setbacks, but we worked our way
through the courts, through the
judicial process, through
organizations like the
federalist society. And we
finally came out with a win
overturning roe V wade. That, I
think would be a powerful tool
for the more intellectual elite
conservatives to use to reorient
the movement more in their
direction, as opposed to the
grassroots populist side.
>> It does take away one of
those kind of rallying cries,
right, that this is why we need
to back are our candidates
because of this particular
fight. And some of the other
rallying cries we've seen
gaining ground often now include
a lot more of those sort of
dangerous and ugly messages that
used to be on the fringes and
are now kind of finding their
way more into the mainstream.
Some of these really dangerous,
like white supremacist ideas
like we saw linked to the
alleged shooter in Buffalo.
There's really been no
meaningful effort from
leadership to condemn these
kinds of things, though, so why
not?
>> Was very important for the
conservative movement coming out
of World War two to really
define the parameters of
conservatism. For William F
Buckley, Jr, the leader of the
postwar conservative movement,
to say anti-semites can't be a
part of my conservatism.
Conspiracy theorists can't be a
part of my conservatism.
Anarchists can't be a part of my
conservatism. In the new era, in
the social media era,
gatekeepers like William F
Buckley Jr. No longer exist. And
so it's incumbent on people to
police their own institutions.
And some conservatives have done
a better job than others of
that.
>> But we're not seeing that
kind of gatekeeping even from
leadership.
>> Right? Right. Well, I think
there's a problem. There's a
tribal instinct that kicks in,
especially these days, too, when
Republicans or conservatives see
the liberals in the media or in
politics saying one thing, they
instantly want to be against it.
And there's a rallying behind
the opposing idea. And you see
that playing out now with
discussions over culpability for
this awful act in Buffalo.
>> When you talk about the
populist movement kind of
gaining ground, the largest
conservative conference is going
to be hosted in Hungary, right,
with Viktor Orban as their
keynote speaker, who is an ally
of Vladimir Putin. What does
that say to you about where that
conservative center of gravity
is right now? And does it alarm
you?
>> It does. It's important to me
as an American conservative that
we put the American in
conservatism, that we have
reference to the American
founding, to the ideals not
always worked out in practice of
that founding, and to the
political institutions embodied
in the constitution, the rule of
law, the free market and civil
society. When I see elements of
the right look to European
continental models of
governance, I become very
concerned. But precisely because
there's an un-american this to
them and that they look away
from American traditions,
American politics. That's where
I think the future of
conservatism ought to lie with
the United States.
>> That's where you think it
ought to lie. But based on what
you have seen right now with
some of these more extremist
forces, misinformation
campaigns. You say in your book
what a lot of conservatives will
not say out loud that Joe Biden
won the 2020 election. Are you
concerned conservatism is being
overtaken by extremism here?
>> I wouldn't have written the
book if I wasn't so concerned. I
do think there are some signs of
hope. If we had been having this
conversation in may of 2014,
neither of us would have said
that Donald Trump would be the
Republican nominee in 2016 or
the president. Or if we had said
that, we'd be very rich because
we could have won money on the
betting markets. So what that
tells me is that politics
changes and changes quickly. A
new Republican leader could
reorient the movement and I
think a more positive, forward
looking, agenda driven
direction.
>> The book is the write the 100
year war for American
conservatism. The author is Matt
continetti. Thank you so much
for being here.