In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024

This week we conclude our series of interviews from the meeting of the American Conservation Coalition, a right-of-center environmental organization and talk to someone you may have never heard of but should – Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas. Westerman used to be the Majority Leader of the Arkansas House and moved up to Washington by winning […]

This week we conclude our series of interviews from the meeting of the American Conservation Coalition, a right-of-center environmental organization and talk to someone you may have never heard of but should - Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas.

Westerman used to be the Majority Leader of the Arkansas House and moved up to Washington by winning Tom Cotton's old district when he was elected to the Senate. A graduate of both Arkansas and Yale, he was an engineer and forester by for Mid-South Engineering Company and served as president of the Arkansas chapter of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.

In the House he is the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee and leads the GOP Caucus on environmental issues.

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In a February Pew survey, Americans were asked to rank their priorities of 20 major issues for 2022 and climate change came in 14th. In the partisan divide the survey found only 11% of Republicans even thought it was a priority. (On the Democratic side it was 65%)

Former President Donald Trump still holds considerable sway within his party and he pulled the United States out of the Paris Accords and has repeatedly referred to global warming as a Chinese hoax designed to make US industry non-competitive.

Swimming against this tide is the American Conservation Coalition. Their mission statement includes, not just a commitment to the environment, but to capitalism. "Strong property rights, competitive markets, and trade, coupled with a culture of environmental stewardship, produce the best environmental outcomes."

We recently sat down with the ACC's president, Benji Backer, to talk about the future of environmental politics on the center-right.

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This week we come to you from the meeting of the American Conservation Coalition, a right-of-center environmental organization and talk to New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu.

Sununu is currently running for his fourth 2-year term as the Executive of the Granite State and we touch on a variety of issues roiling the news cycle: abortion, redistricting, inflation, the environment and, of course, Donald Trump's continuing influence on the Republican Party.

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Former Congressman Will Hurd has a plan: For the Republican Party; for preparing the United States to withstand a major cyber attack from a foreign adversary; and possibly for running for president in 2024. On this episode, Hurd discusses his new book, American Reboot; An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done, and opens up about his service on Capitol Hill, his years as a clandestine officer in the Central Intelligence Agency that preceded his time in politics, and his political ambitions.

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This week we split our time between the present situation in Europe and the future of domestic politics with Richard Grenell, a long time foreign policy advisor to Republican politicians.

First, Grenell offers a look inside his former ambassadorial portfolio of Germany and how Angela Merkel's policies helped make the current crisis in Ukraine worse than it had it to be and, depending on the outcome of the 2022 midterms, what a Republican Congress can do under President Biden.

Then we turn to domestic politics in 2024, whether Grenell has any ambitions for elective office and whether the field for the GOP primary will include the 45th President of the United States.

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Rep. Dan Crenshaw represents the 2nd Congressional District (which includes northwest Houston) and also represents the next generation of Republican leadership.

As a member of SEAL Team 3, Crenshaw lost his right eye and damaged the left one due to an IED in Afghanistan in 2012. Lt. Commander Crenshaw (2 Bronze Stars - 1 with V - Purple Heart and Navy and Marine Corps Commendation with valor) was medically discharged from the Navy four years later and went on to get a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard.

He joined us from his home in Texas (with an occasional hammering courtesy of a contractor) to talk about his journey to Congress, Russian adventurism in Ukraine and the state of affairs in domestic politics.

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Unlike parliamentary systems, America doesn't have a single, designated "Leader of the Opposition." The closest thing we have today is Mitch McConnell, the current Minority Leader of the US Senate.

McConnell has been in the Senate for 37 years, the last 15 years as Party Leader. On his shoulders rests the successes of Republican presidents and the failures of Democratic ones. And this incurs the wrath of both the Right and the Left.

As other Republicans jockey for the 2024 nomination, Washington power - and possibly the future of the GOP - lies in the hands of the Senior Senator from Kentucky, so this week we talked to someone who knows McConnell as well as anyone.

Scott Jennings is a founding partner of RunSwitch, providing senior level political, communications, public affairs, media relations, and crisis communications counsel for national and international clients. Jennings has served in senior positions and advisory roles on McConnell campaigns for over 20 years.

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To understand the long shadow that the former president continues to cast, we go back to the people that put him in the White House in the first place. Is it something the voters saw in Donald Trump that they really liked - or is it something they saw in the other candidates (such as the darling of the establishment, Jeb Bush) that they simply disliked?

In 2018 Republican consultant Brad Todd teamed with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito to explain the Trump phenomena and to try to define the forces at work in The Great Revolt. The book has been out for years, but the lessons for 2024 are still relevant.

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In a decidedly different edition of our show we get to take a look at the state of our politics from the other dugout - from the pollster who took a leave of absence from Harvard to join the 2020 campaign of Joe Biden. John Della Volpe is the author of a new book entitled Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America.

As Joe Biden's approval numbers tumble, Della Volpe looks back to what made the campaign successful in the first place. (According to the latest Pew Research poll*, the President is currently underwater with the 18-29 age group with 35% approve-63% disapprove.)

Della Volpe is the Director of Polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. The Washington Post referred to John as one of the world’s leading authorities on global sentiment, opinion and influence among young Americans in the age of digital and social media.

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