On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Marshall Kosloff, host of The Realignment podcast, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss the political realignment within the Republican party and the role President Donald Trump plays in it.
“What we’re sort of seeing right now is a realignment of the suburbs and moderate centrist voters, who will tend to be of higher education and sort of be more upper-middle-class, go much closer to the Democratic Party,” Kosloff said.
While Kosloff agreed that the Democratic party is also realigning, Trump’s populist rhetoric has impacted the right’s shifting political platform.
“Populism is rhetoric. It’s a style of politics,” Kosloff explained, noting that Trump has spoken out against the establishment, media, and corporate America.
“Trump has been consistently populist throughout his presidency,” Kosloff said. “If you actually look at the policy priorities that he’s pursued in many areas, though, with the exception of the trade war and with the exception of certain immigration policies, he has governed as a center-right Republican.”
According to Kosloff, the right’s biggest challenge in the next decade will be addressing the “contradictions” within the socio-cultural problems that arise.
“I think the difficult dynamic for the right is that the right struggles of the next five or six years are going to be about these contradictions,” Kosloff noted. “In many ways, Trump is the sort of Republican figure most aggressively against those trends, but he’s also a figure that fuels those trends.”
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