Republican party

Saturday

Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell, Gus Carter, Ruaridh Nicoll, Tanya Gold, and Books of the Year I

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Christopher Caldwell asks what a Trump victory could mean for Ukraine (1:07); Gus Carter argues that leaving the ECHR won’t fix Britain’s immigration system (8:29); Ruaridh Nicoll reads his letter from Havana (18:04); Tanya Gold provides her notes on toffee apples (23:51); and a selection of our books of the year from Jonathan Sumption, Hadley Freeman, Mark Mason, Christopher Howse, Sam Leith and Frances Wilson (27:08).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Friday

Lionel Shriver

America’s impossible election choice

31 min listen

With just days to go until the American election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's respective campaigns continue to ramp up, with rallies and gimmicks, and even advertising on the Las Vegas Sphere. Despite this, Spectator contributor Lionel Shriver declares she is America's 'last undecided voter'. Why? Is it the candidates' characters that put her off voting for them, or the policies they represent? Lionel joins guest host, and fellow American, Kate Andrews to discuss further.  Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Coffee House Shots live: the struggle for the future of conservatism

39 min listen

The mood at Conservative conference has been surprisingly jubilant considering the turmoil that the party finds itself in. Labour's misfortunes may have contributed to this, but there seems to be a genuine optimism around the four candidates vying for the leadership of the party. What's the latest? Have Kemi Badenoch's comments on maternity pay impacted her position with the members?  Also on the podcast, this evening will see the Vance vs Walz vice presidential debate. They go head to head in an increasingly tight election. What does Trump vs Harris say about the state of American politics? And can any of these candidates – on either side of the pond – expect to be fighting future elections for their parties?

Friday

Freddy Gray

How can you stop Donald Trump?

29 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Alex Castellanos, Republican Party strategist who has served as media consultant to seven U.S. Presidential campaigns. They discuss Donald Trump's presidential campaign, his search for a vice president, and if there's any way Joe Biden can tarnish his image.

Monday

Ben Domenech

Trump versus the party

When The Simpsons’s evil billionaire C. Montgomery Burns heads for a checkup, the doctor informs him he has virtually every disease known to man, including some just discovered for the first time. The odd thing is that all these diseases are in “perfect balance,” which the doctor illustrates by trying to shove a bunch of fuzzy novelty germs through a tiny door all at once. When they’re all jammed together, none can actually make it through — an example of “Three Stooges syndrome.” Despite the doctor’s warning that even a slight breeze could upset this balance, Burns happily concludes that he is “indestructible.” The Republican Party had a serious bout of Three Stooges syndrome in 2016.

genghis donald trump boomer republicanism establishment

Sunday

Roger Kimball

The known unknowns of 2024

I think it was the once-renowned critic Clement Greenberg who gratefully acknowledged that his job as a cultural commentator allowed him to conduct his education in public. I suppose we all do it, more or less furtively, though what prompts me to mention it now is the realization that I do not know the answer to any of the questions that have motivated this column. I write in the immediate aftermath of Ron DeSantis’s official announcement that, yes, he is running for the presidency of the United States in 2024. The announcement itself was no surprise — everyone has known DeSantis was running for months.

trump second term colorado

Wednesday

Andrew Tettenborn

Ron DeSantis is the Republican party’s best hope

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is shaping up as the GOP’s best hope for next year’s US presidential election. Large parts of his popular appeal are his open attack on (now fairly well-established) left-wing infiltration in education and to some extent in commerce, and his expressed intention to make Florida the state ‘where woke goes to die’. Hitherto his success has been limited. But recently there have been signs that he may be learning from his mistakes. His troubles started with a failure to grasp that a direct legal attack on left-wing influence, however electorally popular, was likely to be doomed.

Wednesday

Ryan Girdusky

Showtime lets the Lincoln Project off the hook

Showtime’s latest docuseries follows the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump Super PAC, during the end of the 2020 campaign as the organization blew up in notoriety. The series displays the shallowness within modern day American politics. What starts as a hero’s journey, with former Republican consultants disavowing the racism of the GOP, proves to be more of a Greek tragedy as one-by-one they ultimately become everything they claimed to hate. The show centers around Lincoln Project co-founders — Reed Galen, Jennifer Horn, Mike Madrid, Ron Steslow, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson — as well as principal members of the organization such as Keith Edwards, Sarah Lenti, Conor Rogers, Stuart Stevens and Ryan Wiggins.

lincoln project steve schmidt

Sunday

Kate Andrews

Donald Trump tightens his grip on the Republican party

‘Do you miss me yet,’ Donald Trump asked the crowd in his opening remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference this afternoon: the most important annual conference for the Republican party. The former president was given the keynote address at CPAC, with anticipation that he might have a big announcement to make about his future plans, including the possibility of another run for the White House. In a speech that ran for roughly 90 minutes, Trump never committed himself to a 2024 bid, but he teased it several times. ‘I may even decide to beat them for a third time,’ he said at the start of the speech: the first of many references to what he continues to claim was a ‘rigged’ election, despite having these allegations shot down in the courts.

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

The never-ending smugness of the NeverTrumpers

In March 2016 as Donald Trump looked likely to be the Republican party’s nominee to run for president, more than 100 foreign policy professionals signed a letter vowing not only that they wouldn’t work for him should he become president but that they would work ‘energetically’ to prevent his election. As the months wore on, the light in which the signatories appeared often shifted. Once Trump became the nominee, and then the President, these representatives of the ‘national security community’ appeared to have demonstrated one of the most damaging things any such group could demonstrate: their own irrelevance.

Monday

Daniel DePetris

Donald Trump is now the Republican party’s kingmaker

As Donald Trump continues to insist that he actually won the 2020 presidential election, speculation has grown about how the president will spend the next four years. Trump's political future isn’t over, even if he did become the first president to lose re-election since 1992. Trump is a notoriously prickly man who can make three different decisions on one topic in a span of an hour. Not even his closest advisers and family members know what he is going to do after vacating the White House in about two months. Trump is reportedly mulling a 2024 presidential run to avenge a loss he considers fraudulent; one campaign adviser told the Washington Post this weekend that Trump could make an announcement in as soon as three weeks time.