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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
Ryan Warner
Republican leaders have constructed a party they cannot lead. So writes DU political scientist Seth Maskett
- [00:36]
Producer/Announcer
in his new book, the Elephants in
- [00:38]
Ryan Warner
the How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders.
- [00:43]
Seth Maskett
Every time Their Attack came up, he would conclude every speech with, remember, they're not coming after me, they're coming after you. And I'm standing in the way. And that seemed to resonate for a
- [00:52]
Rebecca White
lot of these folks.
- [00:52]
Ryan Warner
And it makes him to some extent Teflon.
- [00:56]
Seth Maskett
I hesitate to describe him as Teflon because, like, everything sticks to him. But his supporters like that, right?
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Ryan Warner
We are at the Tattered Cover bookstore
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Producer/Announcer
with an audience for the book's release,
- [01:12]
Ryan Warner
Reflections on Political Violence and what the GOP Might look like post Trump. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner. Long before Donald Trump came to power, the Republican Party was getting ready for him or someone like him. You can go as far back as Nixon's loss to Kennedy, which DU political scientist Seth Maskett does in his new book. It's called the Elephants in the How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders. But it's not just a look back, it's a reflection on political violence. Today. Masket also ponders what the GOP might look like after Trump. We are at the Tattered Cover bookstore on Colfax for the book's release. Hi, Seth.
- [02:13]
Seth Maskett
Hi, Ryan. Thanks for having me on.
- [02:14]
Ryan Warner
You took on the democrats in the 2020 book Learning from Loss. In this one you write, Republican leaders have helped to construct a party they cannot lead. First off, are those the elephants in the room?
- [02:31]
Seth Maskett
Yes. When I talk about these elephants, I'm referring to local party leaders, basically people we would consider party insiders, people who in another era would be the ones who kind of guide parties decisions. They're the influential ones, not necessarily the people you see on tv, not necessarily national leaders, but local influential people who I think in the Democratic Party and in the Republican Party of the past had some influence.
- [02:54]
Ryan Warner
Had some influence. But why do they have less influence today? And is that unique to the Republican Party?
- [03:02]
Seth Maskett
What I describe in the book is the rise of what I call a, you know, conservative populist movement. And you know, other people have used slightly different terms for this but really, since the 1990s, you see the rise of what started as kind of a fringe movement. You think of, like, Pat Buchanan's backers in the 1990s that developed over time to like a just a very loyal Fox News viewership. A lot of the same people who were involved in the Tea party in 2008, 2009, maybe it's Gingrichy, too. Gingrich in there as well. This developed from a fringe movement into a very large faction within the Republican Party. And one of the principles that this group has is that they're very hostile to what they see as leadership. Basically, they're hostile even to their own party's leadership. They don't want to take directions and they don't want to be told what to do. Like kind of a key examples for them, they were told they had to back mitt Romney in 2012 because he could keep Obama out of the White House. They were told they had to back John McCain in 2008 because he could keep Barack Obama out of the White House. They didn't trust those guys, but they were told, you have to do this. This is the only way we're going to win. When that didn't work, they basically felt like, I'm not interested in listening to what my betters in the party have to say anymore.
- [04:17]
Ryan Warner
Do you think this mirrors the anti institutionalism that we have seen from Trump and his voters? The mistrust of government, the mistrust of the liberal media, for instance?
- [04:33]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the hallmarks of this populist movement. It's just kind of a distrust of institutions, of whatever is seen as the establishment. And that includes just kind of like a distrust of elected officials, a distrust of anyone they don't perceive as legitimate. They just feel like there is an elite out there. There's an elite group that is trying to deprive them of power. They're working against the true common people who are the virtuous ones.
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Ryan Warner
Okay. If memory serves, digging really deep into the recesses, Romney lost. Okay. McCain lost. I got that right.
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Jack Sanda
Yes.
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Ryan Warner
So these folks ought to feel rather justified, no?
- [05:20]
Seth Maskett
Yeah. I mean, they were, first of all, you know, furious with their party for leading them down that path. A lot of them had other candidates in mind in those contests, but, yeah, they felt very vindicated. Another sort of moment of this was, if you remember, after Mitt Romney lost, a number of people within the Republican National Committee put together a postmortem report saying, we think we lost because our party was seen as too hostile to women, too hostile to immigrants, too hostile to gay people. And they suggested sort of a moderation along those fronts. The party did exactly the opposite of that. Right. Trump could not be further from that conclusion. And yeah, the people in this populist movement felt like, yeah, we're going to ignore that advice and just go hard in the other direction.
- [06:01]
Ryan Warner
Oh, I see. The post mortem was one more example of the party taking in these folks views. The wrong message, the wrong lesson. As a political scientist, do you assume it's a bad thing when a party's influence diminishes?
- [06:19]
Seth Maskett
That's a really good question. So I'm someone who studies parties a lot. I'm really passionate about them. I tend to think our democracy is better when parties have some strength to them. And by strength I mean they, they can make decisions that aren't necessarily what all its voters want. That is, they can influence their voters. They can make decisions sometimes without even voters approval and get voters to go along with it. They might be sensitive to what their voters want, but they have the power to make some decisions. And I think we can still see that on the Democratic side. Democrats decision to nominate Joe Biden in 2020 was very much an example of this. You had a lot of influential people within the party that pushed other candidates out to make sure that Biden had an advantage going into the primaries and caucuses. You definitely saw this with their nomination of Kamala Harris, like pushing Joe Biden out in 2024 and rallying behind Harris. We can argue whether these are good or bad decisions. But it showed to me a lot of strength in that party that they had an ability to do that without much pushback from their own voters. I don't think you see it on the Republican side anymore.
- [07:24]
Ryan Warner
So you think there's an inherent benefit to democracy in the kind of father knows best energy of a political.
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Seth Maskett
I do.
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Ryan Warner
I want to explore that further. I think it's fundamental to this.
- [07:38]
Seth Maskett
And you can look at earlier times when party insiders and convention delegates, bosses and others had some freer reign to make decisions about candidates. And they pick people like Lincoln and FDR and John Kennedy and other people we would consider pretty positive leaders. They also pick like Richard Nixon. They're capable of screw ups. They pick Warren Harding. But generally people within the party's leadership have the incentive both to pick people who they think can win and they can pick people who they think represent different avenues of the party, different factions within the party and try and keep that organization united.
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Ryan Warner
Contrast that Perhaps with what we see today from the gop, do you just consider it Trump's party today?
- [08:24]
Seth Maskett
It very much is, yeah. And I think we saw this transformation. 2016 was a really key watershed moment there on the Republican side, where you had a lot of influential people within the party having a hard time making decision. If you Remember, back in 2016, there were 17 Republicans running for president that year. Some people were backing Ted Cruz, some people were backing Marco Rubio, Chris Christie. Very few people were endorsing Donald Trump early on. In part, that was a weakness on the party's part. That is, they possibly could have stopped Trump if they'd been able to coordinate around one person, and they didn't. They just failed to do that. And that's perfect opportunity for someone like Trump to jump in, you know, someone famous with a lot of money. You know, voters are getting no clear signal from the party. They just went with someone who they could recognize.
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Ryan Warner
I see. So that opens the door. The history that you've talked about opens the door for a Trump to walk in because the party has been made less powerful over the previous decades.
- [09:25]
Seth Maskett
Yes, I would say that's the case. And it's really kind of fascinating that we've. We haven't had more of that over time. Not to get too much in the weeds, but there were a number of reforms in the party system, in the presidential nomination system, really, in the late 60s and early 70s. That gave us the system we have today with these. All these primaries and caucuses that people have to win to get their nomination.
- [09:47]
Ryan Warner
That's not a 250-year-old system.
- [09:49]
Seth Maskett
That is not. No, no, that's.
- [09:51]
Rebecca White
That's.
- [09:51]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, that's. It's literally within my lifetime, but barely. A number of political scientists at the time raised concerns like this could open the doors to just voters doing whatever they want. You could get these factional candidates who could just, you know, win the passionate backing of a few people in the party and the rest of the party be divided. It's kind of amazing that that has happened less often, but Trump was a perfect example of that.
- [10:14]
Ryan Warner
I do want to focus on the 2024 election, and have you read this operative paragraph for us?
- [10:22]
Seth Maskett
I'd be delighted. Historically speaking, the 2024 nomination was highly unusual. For one thing, losing a presidential election typically means the end of one's political career, or at least the end of one's presidential ambitions. Prior to 2024, no one had lost a presidential general election and then later become their party's nominee again. Since Richard Nixon pulled this off in 1968, no one had served as president and lost office, only to later become their party's nominee again since grover Cleveland in 1892. Besides Nixon and Cleveland, only Franklin Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan had been their party's nominee more than twice. Beyond that, no presidential candidate had ever been indicted, no less convicted of a felony only to go on and get nominated. No presidential candidate had ever helped to organize a riot to prevent Congress from certifying an election. Trump had a dismal 34% approval rating when he left office in 2021. There were plenty of good reasons to believe that his party would move on to a younger, less controversial and more traditional candidate in 2024.
- [11:26]
Ryan Warner
What you outlined there are all the things that should have or might have thwarted another Trump term.
- [11:36]
Seth Maskett
So that was really the puzzle I was getting into in this book. And one of the things that really struck me in doing this research. I surveyed hundreds of local party leaders, basically county party chairs all across the country.
- [11:49]
Ryan Warner
This is the science and political science party. This is the data crunching.
- [11:53]
Producer/Announcer
Yeah.
- [11:54]
Seth Maskett
This is the beakers and the test tubes. And I interviewed a number of these people as well, and what really struck me so I started talking to them in February of 2023. So it's pretty early on. Most of these folks were not that wild about Donald Trump getting nominated a third time. They weren't really sold on the idea of nominating him again. And it was interesting, cuz this is a group of people that they generally liked Trump's first term. They thought highly of him, but they're looking at the situation. They're like the things I just read. They were saying, this guy has a lot of baggage. There's a lot of reasons we might not want to nominate this guy. He could lose to Joe Biden or whoever the Democrats have. And also we have plenty of good options available. There's Ron DeSantis, there's Nikki Haley, there's Mike Pence, there's Chris Christie. There's a number of, like, conventionally qualified people who could probably achieve any number of the things that Donald Trump could achieve in office and would have a much better shot of winning. And they were actually trying to steer their party in a different direction. They were trying to figure out a way to do it. They were exploring lots of other candidates. They could not sell their voters on it. They could not disabuse Republican voters of their love for Trump.
- [13:02]
Ryan Warner
And once again, these are the elephants in the room that find themselves unable to steer a party that they have made to some extent over the decades, unsteearable.
- [13:13]
Seth Maskett
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Despite their own wishes.
- [13:16]
Producer/Announcer
We're at the Tattered Cover Bookstore on Colfax in Denver for the rollout of Seth Maskett's new book. The DU political scientist has written the Elephants in the How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders. You may recognize Seth from our series if youf Can Keep It. Still to come, why the January 6 attack on the Capitol wasn't a deal breaker for so many. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. The Elephants in the Room is political scientist Seth Maskett's new book. The University of Denver professor takes the science Part Seriously with nationwide surveys of and interviews with local, local GOP party leaders.
- [14:06]
Ryan Warner
You indeed surveyed these elephants in the room. And you find this disconnect, at least early in the 2024 cycle between them and Republican voters. Your research shows something both astounding and, in hindsight, no longer surprising. Though the indictments against Trump likely helped him politically. Was it the mugshot?
- [14:38]
Seth Maskett
I mean, the mugshot is an example of him being very skilled at capitalizing on this moment, not really hiding from it, and, in fact, kind of leaning into being under attack by the justice system. But, yeah, I find a lot of evidence that the indictments helped him. So, like just looking at these survey Results from early 2023 from February, half of the chairs I spoke to said they were uncommitted. They were keeping their powder dry, trying to figure out what they wanted to do. Among those who had made up their mind, Trump wasn't even in first place. More people were leaning toward Ron DeSantis at that point. Two months later, I surveyed the same group of people, and that's after the indictments for the New York case come out. And suddenly you see a big switch where Trump is now in first place. And he wasn't getting it from undecided people. He was getting it from people who had backed DeSantis earlier. Like it was people who'd already made a decision and then moved toward Trump. And I asked people in the survey, when they told me they were backing a candidate, I said, in your own words, would you mind explaining in a sentence or two why you're backing this candidate? And watching the evolution of people's reasons for backing Trump over the course of that year is pretty fascinating. Early on in the year, it's mostly people saying, I liked his first term. Basically, I want more like that over the course of the year, more and more people are saying, I'm backing him because he's being persecuted. He's being persecuted by Democrats, persecuted by the justice system, by the media. They were sort of rallying to a leader of theirs who they. They didn't always agree with, but they saw him as under attack, unfairly. And he was very skilled at portraying that. Right.
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Ryan Warner
I was gonna say they are, I think, echoing what Trump himself constantly says, that everyone is after him.
- [16:24]
Seth Maskett
And this is something actually pretty unique to him among, you know, other populist leaders. He is constantly whining about how everyone's out to get him. And he said, he's the strongest man in the world and everyone is bringing him down. All these indictments were like, suddenly there was evidence for all. Everything he'd been complaining about. Right. Suddenly it did. Like, okay, the system is attacking him. And every time their attack came up, he would conclude every speech with, remember, they're not coming after me, they're coming after you. And I'm standing in. And that seemed to resonate for a lot of these folks.
- [16:54]
Ryan Warner
And it makes him, to some extent, Teflon.
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Seth Maskett
I hesitate to describe him as Teflon because, like, everything sticks to him. But his supporters like that. Right. Like, there's a reason he has an approval rating in the 30s today. Like, he's got stuff clinging to him all over the place, but. So Allegra included. Yeah, more like a cast iron pan, I think, think.
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Audience Member/James Jacobs
But, yeah.
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Ryan Warner
Seth Maskett, when I cracked open your book, I had one looming question on my mind. Why wasn't the January 6th attack on the Capitol a deal breaker?
- [17:35]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, that's really kind of an amazing feature of this. One of the things, if, you know, if you look at public opinion polls among Republicans, and this is kind of fascinating, I think I touch on this briefly in the book. If you look at Trump's approval rating over time among Republican identifiers. Okay. Among Republicans, typically for any given president, people in their own party approve them to a very high degree. You know, it's usually like 80 to 90% give approval. Even when Richard Nixon resigned, the day he resigned, he still had 50% approval among Republicans. So typically that's.
- [18:08]
Ryan Warner
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is where history is. I don't know if it's comforting, but it is illuminating that loyalty runs deep. Okay.
- [18:20]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, the loyalty runs deep.
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Jack Sanda
Deep.
- [18:22]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, yeah. Or even go 1932. Okay. The depth of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover is running for reelection. You cannot have a worse term. Right.
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Ryan Warner
It's the economy, stupid.
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Seth Maskett
Yes, yeah, yes, the economy. Lost literally a quarter of its value in that election year, and he still gets 40% of the vote. Your supporters generally stick with you within your party. Okay, okay, where were we on that?
- [18:47]
Ryan Warner
Yeah. So we'll bring that forward. And this is around January 6th. And the notion of whether that cost him anything.
- [18:56]
Seth Maskett
It did not. Among people who identify as Republicans, that did not really cost him January 6th. The only time that he really lost support among his own voters was after the 2022 midterms, when the party was widely seen as underperforming. And it was his fault. He had recruited a lot of bad candidates. He got them to echo his claims, and he was sort of pretty broadly blamed for that. They lost some faith in him after that January 6th. They mostly stuck by him, even though they lost faith among a lot of other Republican leaders at that time. And it's interesting to note if you remember what was happening on January 6th. Right. Almost across the board, Democratic and Republican office holders were criticizing him that day, were begging him to stop, begging him to ask his supporters to back off. You had people on Fox News urging him to back down. He was getting a lot of criticism even from his own party that day. That switched after a few weeks. And when it turned out okay, they weren't going to actually remove him from office. Suddenly you had people like Kevin McCarthy going back and making visits to Mar A Lago and apologizing for harsh things they'd said about him. You know, other prominent Republicans started being nice to him. Trump was actually. This was actually, weirdly, a moment that was very low for him nationally. He got kicked off Twitter and Facebook and everything else. But he was also consolidating a lot of power within the Republican Party at this time. Broadly. He threatened to leave the Republican Party, and the people in the Republican National Committee begged him to stay. They were like, we will lose elections without you. He threatened Fox News at the time. I don't know if you remember this. He went on Twitter and told his supporters to stop watching Fox News. They're not good for me now. You should watch Newsmax. You should watch the One American News Network. Fox News lost market share for a few weeks there, and they started being nice to him again. They realized that he had them in check.
- [20:51]
Ryan Warner
What does that tell you about loyalty and hyper partisanship in this country? And I guess when I say loyalty, I mean to people versus the Constitution or the notion of America. This feels particularly relevant given the country's 250th birthday and Colorado's 150th so that
- [21:20]
Seth Maskett
idea of a very personal loyalty, obviously, it's dangerous. And it's hard to know how much of that is just about Trump or has this really kind of always been a weakness in our system, that it's really kind of contingent on particular politicians and the fact that they just don't do most of the things he does. So this is not a perfect analogy, but, like, you know, to give an example, on the Democratic side, yeah, most of you, too young, remember this. Back in 1988, in the presidential race, Colorado's own Gary Hart was running for president. I don't know that he was considered the front runner, but he was a contender that year until suddenly there was a big sex scandal about him. Reporters sort of caught him with a mistress, and they surrounded his home west of Denver, really not letting the story go. And ultimately he decides to withdraw from the race and just like, kind of withdraw from public life, basically because he didn't want to live like that anymore. And it's not really clear if he would have lost votes as a result of that scandal. It's not clear if he couldn't have raised money anymore as a result of that scandal. He just decided he didn't want to do this anymore. Flash forward four years. Bill Clinton is running in 1992, and he is running amidst massive scandals. Right. There's allegations of womanizing, of smoking pot when that was once a scandal, and of having protested against his country while abroad as a Rhodes scholar. This was shortly before the New Hampshire primary. You have very well credentialed people in the media saying this candidacy has about hours left in it. And Bill Clinton just sort of says, well, let's see what actually happens. I don't really mind people calling me slime if I get to be president out of this. So I'll just stick around and see what happens. And he ends up doing pretty okay in the New Hampshire primary, becomes the nominee, becomes president. So in some ways, he was pointing to kind of a flaw in our, in our, in the system, or just a flaw in our beliefs about the system that you can't survive a bad scandal. It turns out some of it really has to do with the, with the candidate's own personal peccadilloes and just how much they're willing to tolerate this. Donald Trump sort of took that Clinton example and ran with it like about a thousand times further and just said, I don't mind people saying horrible things about me if I get to be president at the end. And, you know, it turns out like, there's not a lot of teeth to all these things.
- [23:33]
Ryan Warner
It's fascinating to me that Al Franken didn't borrow from the Clinton playbook.
- [23:40]
Seth Maskett
I mean, well, Al Franken was, this was during a very specific time in the Democratic Party's history at the height of the MeToo movement. He was getting, it wasn't just him. It wasn't just about his own scandals. He was getting a lot of pressure from his party with a lot of implicit threats that if you, you can stay in politics, but you will be ostracized, you'll be deprived of all your leadership abilities in the Senate and just life would have been a lot worse there for him. And he made the decision. I just, I don't want to do this to me. I don't want to do this to my party.
- [24:08]
Ryan Warner
I mean, in this vein, I do want a gut check because my sense is that Republicans rally around their man, no matter, while Democrats hold their own to account. I mean, I'm thinking of the censure right here of Governor Polis over his commutation of Tina Peters.
- [24:25]
Seth Maskett
I will, I'll roll things back again to the Bill Clinton era in the sense that a lot of Democrats were very annoyed with him during the Lewinsky scandal and his impeachment, but rallied around him anyway because their leader was under attack. I think there is aspects of that within both parties. It doesn't automatically trigger for every candidate, for every politician. There was little value for Democrats to rally to Jared Polis defense. Right. I mean, he's a lame duck. He's on his way out. Nothing terrible was going to happen if they threw him under the bus and they did that. I think there are definitely differences across parties. There's also differences in types of politicians. I don't think Republicans will, you know, run to the barricades to defend JD Vance if he gets in trouble. Right. There's just not that kind of connection. And this sort of gets into a tricky area that I have trouble defining. But like the question of is Donald Trump a charismatic president? Right. Or is he a charismatic leader? I sometimes think of that in terms of is he a very skilled and persuasive public speaker? I don't think he is like, not in the model of Kennedy or Obama or Reagan or something like that. But he does seem to have this relationship with his supporters that a lot of other politicians don't. They identify with him. They feel this sort of almost like a parasocial relationship with him. And when he gets in trouble, they feel threatened and they rally to defend him. That's not true for a lot of other politicians.
- [25:52]
Producer/Announcer
He is Seth Maskett, political scientist at the University of Denver. I'm Ryan Warner, your host, and we're at the Tattered Cover Bookstore for the release of Maskett's latest, the Elephants in the How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders and Colorado Matters continues in the next half hour with Trump's singular relationship with violence and threats of violence, plus a chat about the Colorado GOP in particular. I'm Ryan Warner. Indeed. You're with CPR News and krcc. You're back with Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner. Changes in the Republican Party long ago paved the way for Donald Trump or someone like him. Let's get back to my conversation with DU political scientist Seth Maskett. His new book is the Elephants in the we spoke at the Tattered Cover Bookstore for its release.
- [26:49]
Ryan Warner
You write that political violence and the threat of it are as old as the country itself. But what special sauce does Trump bring in this regard?
- [27:00]
Seth Maskett
Part of it is that his fans, again, this sort of conservative populist movement, this large faction within the Republican Party, they are less averse to political violence than a lot of other Americans are in service of what they see as their own political goals.
- [27:17]
Ryan Warner
Now, what do you base that on? That's a big assertion that a certain group of people is more comfortable with violence. Yeah.
- [27:25]
Seth Maskett
And this is just a result of a lot of public opinion surveys. It shows up in the surveys I do of these county party chairs as well, where you ask people, how do you feel about political violence? Is it sometimes justified in the pursuit of political goals? Overwhelmingly, people say no to that question. You know, most people say no, but, like, there's a difference. You know, for people who were in the party who were opposed to Trump, only about 5% of these Republicans said, okay, violence is sometimes justified. And it was 12% among those who
- [27:56]
Ryan Warner
were fans of Trump more than twice.
- [27:58]
Seth Maskett
Right. That's not a, you know, again, not large numbers, but it doesn't take that many to cause a lot of trouble in the field of political violence. So Trump appeals to that crowd and he's shown that when he says something is really important that you need to turn out for a lot of them will. He's very good at motivating this crowd to turn up. We saw, I mean, January 6th was a great example of this. But even when it doesn't escalate to full violence, we know that when he publicly castigates another Republican, there are supporters of his who will show up or they will just make phone calls and send emails and threaten people. And this is something that has been mentioned by a lot of office holders, a lot of people formerly within the party. They have felt their own lives were at stake. They felt that their families lives are being threatened and that's why they didn't oppose him more strongly or they didn't vote to impeach him or something like that.
- [28:48]
Ryan Warner
Yeah, I mean, you quote him saying, rough up protesters, stand back and stand by when the looting starts, the shooting starts. If you go after me, I'm coming after you. We do throw around the word electability a lot. I mean, certainly we're in an election cycle right now. What does it mean, electability post or during Trump?
- [29:15]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, electability I talked a lot about in this book and in my previous book as well. It's kind of this important feature that people have a very hard time defining. Right. It's just sort of, it's our estimation of, of who can win a general election not based on who we like, but who we think other people will like. And so there's already several levels of abstraction there and remove.
- [29:37]
Producer/Announcer
Yeah.
- [29:38]
Seth Maskett
And sometimes we have polling data to back it up. And sometimes it's a lot of gut instincts. This was something that Democrats were obsessed with going into the 2020 contest. Right. There were a lot of Democrats who liked Bernie Sanders but were concerned he couldn't win in a general election or liked Elizabeth Warren. Warren or any number of other candidates for that reason. And a lot of people who were backing Joe Biden that year were doing it solely because they thought he was electable. They, in their heart of hearts, preferred other candidates, but they said, this is the guy who can kick Trump out of the White House. So I'm backing him and I'll worry about policy stuff that I care about later. So that's very much a live wire in the Democratic Party. On the Republican side, it's become a lot more confusing. There are still some people who believe that this is a real thing, that they have to be concerned about that a very scandal tainted president or presidential candidate is less electable than someone else. And these are people who like, were supporting Nikki Haley based largely on that, that this person would have an easier time winning. And I talked to a number of different party chairs about this very question. Those who are much more in the Trump camp. I asked them, are you concerned about electability? And a lot of them just dismissed the whole concept. I just don't think it's a thing we were told that Trump was unelectable in 2016, but he still won. They were told that Ronald Reagan was unelectable in 1980, and he still won.
- [30:59]
Ryan Warner
And they were told that Romney was electable.
- [31:02]
Seth Maskett
Exactly.
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Ryan Warner
And they were told McCain was electable. Just to circle back.
- [31:06]
Seth Maskett
Yeah, they sort of questioned the whole premise of the thing.
- [31:09]
Ryan Warner
Is it possible Trump turns the Epstein files into yet another thing that he's just being persecuted about?
- [31:19]
Seth Maskett
He's had a harder time navigating that one. And it remains an issue that people who are in his camp claim to be still really bothered by it. There are those who, like, got into politics because of QAnon conspiracy theories about there being a secret pedophile ring in government that was being hidden and protected. And it turns out, well, Donald Trump was actually fairly close to that ring, even though he was the one saying, we, you need to elect me so I can blow that conspiracy open. That has clearly cost him the support of some within his party. They're not necessarily becoming Democrats as a result of this. Yeah, you have.
- [31:54]
Ryan Warner
Marjorie Taylor Greene has not joined the Democratic Party so far as I know.
- [31:58]
Seth Maskett
No. She claims she's no longer Republican. We'll see how or how she ends up voting in the fall or whether she ends up voting in the fall. This is not likely to cause, like, a massive title shift, but it's cost him. That's been a hard one to spin.
- [32:11]
Ryan Warner
In your book, when conservative populism comes up very often, the words immigration, racism, and conspiracy theory are nearby. I want you to expound on the connective tissue there because I think, just for me as a journalist, I crave you showing your work. But those words are often next to conservative populism.
- [32:39]
Seth Maskett
Yes, this is part of the reason I trace it back to Pat Buchanan's run in 1992, if you have a chance. Pat Buchanan's culture war speech at the Republican convention in the summer of 1992 is really revelatory.
- [32:52]
Audience Member/James Jacobs
There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold war itself. For this war is for the soul of America.
- [33:07]
Seth Maskett
If you listen to that speech, he is talking many of the same things that Donald Trump talks about today. It actually showed it to some students, expecting them to be shocked by that speech, as I was back in 1992, and they were like, that just sounds like Trump with better grammar. And, yeah, you know, it doesn't sound shocking anymore. But that is not how Republicans talked in 1992. And one of the things he's talking about then is the dangers of unconstrained immigration and how our country is being transformed by all these immigrants coming across the southern border and how it's a threat to American culture and a threat to all of America's achievements. That's tied in a lot. I mean, it's, you know, it clearly has a racial tie to it. He's clearly concerned about immigration from certain types of people from certain parts of the world. And he's also talking about their threat to kind of white American culture, working class whites in the Midwest, and saying, you know, these people are being put upon. It's also a very conspiratorial speech. It's talking about how there's like this vague, shadowy group of elites who are sneering at regular hard working Americans and they're bringing in these immigrants to change the country. And you see a lot of that language coming forward today.
- [34:18]
Ryan Warner
This discussion has largely been driven by the notion of party power or the loss of party power and party members. But in Colorado, 2 million voters are unaffiliated. That's twice as many registered Democrats and twice as many and plus registered Republicans. So to put this politely, are you looking at the wrong group of voters by focusing on parties?
- [34:49]
Seth Maskett
I don't think so. I mean, so I was really interested here in a party nomination. Right. How a party makes a decision and what goes on in the general election is kind of like outside this book's scope to some extent. We know that presidential elections are generally gonna be closed today in Colorado. Of course, unaffiliated voters can play a role in primary elections. Indeed.
- [35:11]
Ryan Warner
Yeah. If you're unaffiliated, you can choose to vote in the Democratic or the Republican primary.
- [35:18]
Rebecca White
Yeah.
- [35:19]
Seth Maskett
And we know from a lot of research that the vast bulk of independent or unaffiliated voters are actually pretty loyal to one party. One party or another. They tend to whatever they are, they vote with that party consistently throughout their lives. They just prefer not to call themselves a Democrat or Republican. They don't like to identify with a party they like. The term independent or unaffiliated just has like a more positive valence for them. But there are, you know, there's like some 10 or, you know, so percent of voters out there who really are. They don't know.
- [35:51]
Ryan Warner
They're the mysterious, the unicorn, the swing voter.
- [35:55]
Seth Maskett
They're out there.
- [35:56]
Ryan Warner
They are out there.
- [35:57]
Seth Maskett
Yeah. And one thing is they don't vote super consistently. They'll show up for presidential elections. Whether they'll show up for midterms is a little bit more of a crapshoot. And they'll sometimes decide very much at the last minute about how they're going to cast a vote. And they're more persuadable. But also they don't follow politics as closely. They don't know as many things that are going on in the world. They do catch big things like is the economy good or bad, Is there a war or not like, stuff like that. But for the most part, they're largely tuned out until pretty shortly before an election.
- [36:28]
Ryan Warner
I feel like I'm asking you to write an essay in your own political science class with this next question. Seth, compare and contrast, compare and contrast your findings about the Republican Party nationally with the Colorado Republican Party, which has been out of power and in disarray.
- [36:52]
Seth Maskett
So a couple of interesting things there. If you've been following the Republican gubernatorial contest in Colorado, which how can you not Right. It's super entertaining. There's aspects of that that I think are really indicative of what's been going on nationally. Like one thing you have in Barb Kirkmeyer and Scott Bottoms, that strikes me as the kind of contest you would have seen 10, 15 years ago in the Republican Party. These are both state lawmakers, state lawmakers, one a little bit more toward the center of the party, one more toward the extremes. They're kind of fighting it out about what it means to be a Republican. That's a typical primary battle. And now you have this new character, Victor Marx, the high risk humanitarian. I think that's the term he uses for himself. And that's the sort of person prior to Donald Trump, we never would have taken this person seriously. The media wouldn't. Voters wouldn't have it would have been. And he probably wouldn't have really even run. And now that's considered just some outsider who has really not much interest in policy, not much clue about how lawmaking occurs, but just decides this would be an interesting moment for me to be governor. That's a plausible route to getting a Republican nomination these days where it really wasn't before. So I think he's someone that's that's really like a product of this era. And I have no idea who's gonna win this. And I haven't seen a whole lot of reliable polling on this. But he's, you know, he's a very serious contender and he's fundraised well, is a very good fundraiser. And I think another aspect of this is that unlike at the national level, Republicans in Colorado are very much a minority party. They are aware they're not likely to win a statewide election anytime soon. They're not likely to even be competitive within the state legislature anytime soon. So in some ways, like, the risks of this kind of nomination are less threatening to them. Like, you know, you can't screw it up that much. And maybe just throwing in an outsider could actually change, you know, roll the dice a little bit and change the outcome of the election.
- [38:44]
Ryan Warner
To borrow a question you ask in your book, what happens to the GOP after Trump? Chris, that presumes the whole Trump 2028 thing, which is blatantly unconstitutional, is just about owning the libs.
- [38:59]
Seth Maskett
Yeah. So I have. I think there's a different way of conceptualizing after Trump. I mean, there's sort of after his political career is over, I still think he's a huge player in the party regardless. But after he is no longer with us. I don't mean to be, you know, morose, but, you know, he's an older man, he's got some number of health issues. But once he is no longer around, it's really not clear what things look like the party. And this is a result of a lot of conversations I had with these party chairs. It's part of the book. They will tell you that, well, the party has changed fundamentally from what it was. It's not about to snap back to some sort of Reagan Bush type organization. And I accept that. But also, if you think back to, like, the primaries and caucuses in 2024 boiled down to, like, Nikki Haley versus Donald Trump, Nikki Haley was getting about a third of the vote in a lot of these contests, and these were from Republicans who knew Donald Trump was gonna get the nomination. At that point, they still wanted to cast a vote for something different. Those people are still there in the party. And if you looked at some of the Republican debates in the summer and fall of 2023, Donald Trump refused to participate in those. And other than like Vivek Ramaswamy, who was really just trying to annoy people, the other candidates in the room, that could have been a debate from 2012.
- [40:20]
Producer/Announcer
Right.
- [40:20]
Seth Maskett
They were talking about the economy, they were talking about regulation, China policy. It sounded kind of like previous Republicans used to. So that aspect of the party is still there. This populist faction is still prominent. They don't have as much power. Once Trump is gone, I think you're just going to see the party just fighting it out a lot more. It's not going to be just very solidly Trumpist party anymore. You're going to see the party fighting it out in primary elections.
- [40:45]
Ryan Warner
Seth Maskett, thank you for being with us.
- [40:47]
Seth Maskett
Thank you so much for having me
- [40:48]
Producer/Announcer
on DU political scientist Seth Maskett. His latest book is the Elephants in the How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders. Questions from our audience at the Tattered Cover on Colfax. After a break, one gentleman asks if we're seeing a progressive populist sweep this cycle. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. You're with Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. We're on the road today, kind of really more down the block at the Tattered Cover bookstore on Colfax. In Denver, I sat down with Seth Maskett. The DU political scientist has written the Elephants in the Room about the power of Donald Trump and his base. Now questions from our audience.
- [41:39]
Jack Sanda
My name is Jack Sanda. I live in Denver. With primary season going on and especially the results we saw out of New York, I'm wondering if you see any similarities between the fringe takeover of the Republican Party and the fringe left wing influence that is being exerted on the Democratic Party.
- [42:00]
Ryan Warner
Timely.
- [42:00]
Seth Maskett
Yes, very timely. Thank you, Jack. I mean, there are obviously some similarities. There is. In some ways we're seeing a populist moment in both parties right now. And at least so far it's been a little less powerful on the Democratic side. So I think you can look at like what happened in the last decade. 2010, there was this big Tea Party moment on the Republican side. The Tea Partiers took down a bunch of Republican incumbents in the 2010 primaries. In 2018, there was kind of a similar moment on the Democratic side where you had all these progressive candidates challenging a lot of Democratic incumbents who they didn't see as strong enough or liberal enough or what, and mostly didn't succeed. I mean, AOC was a big success story for that year, but she was one of very few. For the most part, Democratic incumbents were able to protect themselves. The party protected their incumbents. We might be seeing a little more a stronger progressive moment this year. We only have like the primaries are really just getting going. We only have a few data points so far. But there were a few progressive victories in some Democratic primaries in California, the ones that happened this week in New York. I mean, we're really just looking at like three primaries that where Zoran Mamdani backed candidates and they won and the whole national Democratic Party is freaking out about it. But those are, you know, those are high leverage observations. People pay attention to those. And if I were someone like, say, Diana deget, I probably wouldn't be sleeping well after that, Right. That doesn't mean she's definitely gonna lose. She's been challenged a lot over the years. She sometimes has some people in the primaries who do well in the caucus and assembly process, and it looks like she's gonna face a real threat in the primaries, and she still wins 2 to 1. I don't know what's actually gonna happen this year, but if you look at the campaign spending, she's spending like she's in trouble, right? People are defending her like she's in trouble. People are donating to one of her opponents, Melad Quiros, in large numbers. That's going on in a couple of different races throughout Colorado. So people are certainly acting like this is a moment. I don't have a sense of whether it will actually pan out. But right now it seems like the ingredients for, you know, kind of a strong populist or populist progressive moment are there and probably stronger than they were in 2018.
- [44:17]
Audience Member/James Jacobs
James Jacobs, Denver Our cousins in Britain, they did Brexit and we elected Trump. They can't govern. We can't govern. Are we going to start studying the question about the ungovernability of democracy?
- [44:36]
Seth Maskett
I touch on this briefly in the book, and I don't get enough into it, but just the fact that what we've observed in this populist moment here in the United States has been going on in a lot of democracies around the world.
- [44:46]
Producer/Announcer
World.
- [44:46]
Seth Maskett
It's not a coincidence that Trump was elected within months of Brexit passing. In the uk, we've seen the rise of some populist candidates in Poland, certainly in Hungary, Germany, France, and a lot of other lot of other democracies. So there's something going on in this sort of, you know, as a response to the modern economy. I don't think we have a great, a great sense of what is driving all this, but part of the consequences of electing populists to office is they're not that into governing, right. They're not as focused on policy. They're not as into the intricacies of bargaining and lawmaking and the compromises that just go with making policy. So that adds to the governability crisis as you were talking about, and that has been going on elsewhere, too. I think that has caused a much bigger impact on the UK's economy than on the US's so far. But I think we're just beginning to see the consequences of that. It's going to be affecting US for a long time to come.
- [45:43]
Ryan Warner
Is it because people who like to govern and like the nerdery of government just don't tickle our fancy?
- [45:54]
Seth Maskett
I don't think we in political science or even, you know, the punditry has a great way of defining this all just yet, but we have tended to think in terms of ideology, in terms of policy. Someone is electable if we perceive them as more moderate. And you can tell moderate by like how high or low taxes or something like that's just a world that is being kind of phased out. And you have the rise of Ezra Clyde had a good conversation about what he called the attention economy in politics. I think that overlaps with charisma, but it's not the same thing. Donald Trump is obviously very skilled at making conversations about him. This is something that James Talarico in Texas has been very good at. This is something that Graham Platner in Maine has been very good at. And it's not necessarily that their stances are more moderate or more extreme than others. It's just that they are good at capturing the attention of the public. That can be a great skill. Sometimes it comes at the expense of governing. A lot of these people just don't really know or care all that much about policymaking. I think any party can do fine if it has a mix of people who are like workhorses and show horses. But I think we're leaning much more toward the show horse these days.
- [47:06]
Rebecca White
Rebecca White, Denver so you had mentioned earlier that in the post Trump era, the Republican Party would have to sort of wrangle with the two factions, the populist one and the traditional Republican. Does that weaken the party or does it open up another Ross Perot moment where you see a third candidate come in?
- [47:29]
Seth Maskett
I think that sort of competition within primaries is actually healthy for a party. I think it's actually like when there are lots of different ideas being tossed around in primary contests. That's how parties make decisions. That is how, you know, they pick from various ideas and try and keep a coalition together. I think that's a lot healthier than one movement or one person saying this is the way. This is what it means to be a Republican. And if you don't believe that, you're out. So, you know, I don't know that one or the other necessarily paves the way for a Ross Perot type figure, a third party candidacy. And in some ways I think, you know, Trump paid attention to that, to Ross Perot as someone who could self finance a presidential bid. And it still didn't get him a win. He didn't win a single state. He recognized that if you want to do this sort of thing, you have to work through a political party. I still think that's the world we live in. You know, there are ways of changing the party system, changing our electoral system that will be more open to different types of parties. But for now, this is still very much a two party system and you can get lots of different types of people within those parties. But parties is still the way to get things done.
- [48:36]
Producer/Announcer
That is DU political scientist Seth Maskett answering audience questions at the Tattered Cover on Colfax in Den. His new book is the Elephants in the How Trump Voters Seized the Party from Republican Leaders. Special thanks to producer Anthony Cotton and to audio engineer Pedro Lumbragno.
- [49:18]
Ryan Warner
I'm Ryan Warner.
- [49:19]
Producer/Announcer
Tomorrow's primary election day. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc.
- [49:36]
Seth Maskett
Sam.