Manhattan Institute’s October 15–26 poll of 3,000 voters—including 1,500 Trump-aligned Republicans—reveals the GOP’s fractured base: two-thirds are "core" conservatives (churchgoing, hawkish on China/Israel, anti-DEI), while 30% are "new entrant" Republicans (younger, more diverse, often ex-Democrats) supporting higher taxes and less aggressive foreign policy. Yet 77% of Black and 75% of Hispanic GOP voters reject gender ideology, favoring a "masculine" societal shift, while 15% endorse racist figures like Nick Fuentes. Jesse Arm warns the party’s future hinges on stability over online chaos, as Trump’s polarizing appeal risks unsustainable divisions by 2027. [Automatically generated summary]
Today's Republican Coalition and the minorities of MAGA.
Talk a little bit about your poll, who you looked at, and how you went about it.
unidentified
Absolutely.
So there are a lot of conversations happening in Washington right now.
There are conclusions sort of being reached between both the dissident, online, sort of oddball right and a lot of figures in the left-leaning corporate media that the future of the GOP is mostly this hyper-online and highly alienated set of young men who spend inordinate amounts of time with radical figures on the internet.
With our new Manhattan Institute poll we took of nearly 3,000 voters, we show the picture that is a little bit more complex.
The beating heart of the Republican coalition is still very much the normal, long-standing GOP voters who are church-going, more hawkish on questions relating to China, more pro-Israel, opposed to DEI and gender ideology, and instinctively sort of conservative on taxes and spending.
So the idea that the party is really being taken over by this fringe group of maybe Gen Z that says more about elite media habits than what it actually says about our electorate.
What the data actually shows is a coalition of two major blocs.
About two-thirds are what we in the survey report call core Republicans.
These are people who are consistent conservatives and have voted for the GOP for years.
But just under 30% are what we're calling the new entrant Republicans.
These are GOP voters who are new to the coalition.
They've joined during the Trump era.
They're younger, they're more diverse, they're often former Democrats.
They're people who were much more likely to have voted for Biden or Obama or Clinton or Harris.
And on policy, somewhat surprisingly, but also unsurprisingly, once you dig down into the data, they're notably less conservative.
They're more open to higher taxes.
They're less hawkish on foreign policy.
They're more liberal on cultural issues.
And in other words, they basically don't look like coherent, paleoconservative populists or anything like that.
They're disaffected Obama to Trump or Biden to Trump voters whose politics are largely unsettled.
They're all over the map.
And they're likely to believe all sorts of different things.
Now, your poll in particular starts with the question of how the GOP is going to look once President Trump is out of office.
Why was it important to examine that?
unidentified
Yeah, we were very curious because Trump has obviously brought together disparate strands of not just right-of-center Americans, but Americans of all types.
Ronald Reagan built an ideological coalition that brought in Reagan Democrats who saw something attractive in American conservatism.
President Trump has built a coalition with different people.
There was a theory of the case about what the Republican Party might need to do with itself in 2012 after sustaining a brutal loss with Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to Obama and Biden.
And they went back to the drawing board and they did this big study internally about what they needed to do to be more quote-unquote normal.
But in reality, Donald Trump had maybe a better sense of what normal actually looked like in America in that day and age.
Maybe he was learning it from going on Howard Stern or WWE wrestling, but it was a clearer picture.
And this is where things actually get a little bit hairy with our study.
So it's not like these new entrants are just more moderate members of the Republican Party.
No, these are some of the ugliest ideas that are coming from the right right now are largely concentrated among these new entrants.
So it's not paired with an ideological conservatism.
New entrants are far more likely to believe conspiracy theories, to say political violence is sometimes justified.
And yet those same voters are the ones who are often more liberal on taxes or DEI or social issues than the old GOP base.
So the takeaway here is really a bit counterintuitive, but important.
The most conspiratorial or quote-unquote bigoted voices on the right are not leading a disciplined ideological insurgency.
They're importing chaos into the coalition without bringing a conservative governing agenda with them.
Yes, I'm looking at this Newsweek article that millennial Republicans are more likely to identify as racist than boomers, and that's according to your own poll.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
It says a total of 34% of Republican survey respondents between the ages of 30 and 49 answered, I am such a person, when asked for their views on individuals who openly express racist views.
Only 3% of Republican survey respondents over the age of 65 answered, I am such a person.
A total of 23% of Republican survey respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 and 6% between the ages of 50 and 64 also answered, I am such a person, you know, in response to this question about individuals who openly express racist views.
unidentified
Yeah, so we obviously have to be careful when we go into the crosstabs and try to extrapolate big ideas out, but I think it is entirely fair to say that a through line across this entire survey is that young people do not look at the term racist and think about it with the same horror that it means for older generations of Americans.
Part of that, we may be able to chalk up to the fact that, well, a lot of figures for young people, a lot of figures that have been associated with the American right have been called racist by sort of the mainstream media for a very long time.
These are charges they heard about John McCain, about Mitt Romney, about Donald Trump, about political commentators like Ben Shapiro and figures like Tucker Carlson long before they ever left the prime time slot on Fox News.
So for a lot of young people, when they hear about new figures who are highly controversial, like a young man by the name of Nick Fuentes, who has been saying some pretty egregious things and has caught a lot of popularity, perhaps as a result of some of the egregious things he's said, when an older generation or more legacy media institutions come down and suggest to them you can't listen to that figure because he or she is racist, well,
they heard the same thing about many other conservatives from the past, so it doesn't pack quite the same punch that it did perhaps a decade ago.
Your poll also found some interesting breakdowns in those crosstabs that you mentioned.
When it comes to views on gender, the current GOP, overwhelmingly, 69% to 24%, believes that American society is, quote, too feminine and that more masculine thinking is needed.
Men are the most likely to hold this view, 78%, compared to 17% who don't.
But women also agree by a substantial margin, 58% to 31%.
Support is especially high among black Republicans, 77% to 19%, and Hispanic Republicans, 75% to 21%.
What do you think is behind those numbers?
unidentified
Well, a big trend throughout this poll was we saw that black and Hispanic Republicans, who are largely comprised mostly of new entrants to the GOP, did consistently hold some of these more culturally conservative views, but not so much on economic policy questions.
But I think actually one of the most interesting things happening in our politics right now is to see how Democrats are intuiting that reality about our politics, that there is clearly an appetite for some kind of greater masculine intonation.
With respect to their own party, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is now, by pretty much all metrics, whether it's polls or betting markets, whatever you want to take your pick, is the frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic nomination.
And he's gotten there at this point by adopting very much a macho posture with respect to political and policy issues.
Now, Newsom's governing record is not sterling coming from the Golden State, but who's to say that really matters?
He's adopting the right rhetoric and the right tone right now.
So if we're looking at this from a VIBES standpoint, that is sort of common terminology in politics today for is he hitting the right tone on communication?
Does he stand a shot at winning back some of those new entrants to the GOP?
Can you describe your methodology for this report?
How many Republicans did you speak to?
How did you choose them?
And what's the overall makeup of the outcome?
unidentified
Absolutely.
So in late October, I believe the 15th through the 26th, we at the Manhattan Institute surveyed four separate national audiences, one consisting of just under 1,500 Republicans and or 2024 Trump voters, 300 or so black Republicans, and 501 or so, I think, Hispanic Republicans and or 2024 Trump voters.
But this is where it got a little bit different for us relative to a lot of polls you see of Republicans or of Trump voters.
We said and or, okay?
We were looking at, when we refer to this report throughout this report as the current GOP, we are talking about the coalition that Donald Trump brought together for president in 2024.
That also included Republicans, though, who maybe didn't vote for Trump in 2024.
So we were looking the whole of what could be considered the GOP coalition.
Why did we do those significant oversamples of black and Hispanic Republicans and or Trump voters?
Well, we did it because oftentimes when you're looking at big surveys like this, it's good to be able to take an even closer snapshot of audiences that you really care about, that you want to extrapolate, takeaways about what it is that these subgroups think.
We don't overweight them in the sense that, well, we just had a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic voters relative to this larger pool.
We took a bigger chunk of them because we wanted to make sure that our data was really, really good and rich and accurate about them.
So we obviously do waiting on the back end to make sure that the Trump coalition is reflective of how it actually came out to vote in 2024.
But yeah, this was a poll of not just Republicans, not just Trump voters, but the entirety of what could be considered today's GOP coalition.
I want to read a little bit more from your report on that coalition in particular.
The findings point to a coalition that is divided into two broad segments.
The majority segment, long-standing Republicans who have backed the party for many years, are consistently conservative on economic, foreign policy, and social issues.
But a sizable minority, new entrants to the GOP coalition over the past two presidential cycles, look markedly different.
And you've talked a bit already about how different these groups are, but I wonder how that shapes the actual political power of the Republican Party and what it means for future elections, particularly the midterms coming up.
unidentified
Yeah, I think the political lesson is fairly straightforward.
Online intensity is not the exact same thing as electoral reality.
You've got influencers on the web who are very obviously rewarded for garnering attention, whereas politicians are rewarded for coalition building.
Republicans make a serious mistake when they confuse anonymous X accounts with median voters who show up in, like you said, midterm elections or 2028 presidential primary elections.
The future of this party, the Republican Party, is not going to be defined by the loudest and strangest corner of the internet, but by whether leaders who can defend clear lines, order over chaos.
This is a consistent theme that we saw show up in our survey.
Prosperity over grievance.
These are things that Republican voters still want very clearly, whether or not it shows up when you're scrolling through Twitter.
But expanding the coalition the way that successful presidents always have in order to do that, Trump did it very clearly once by changing the electoral map, winning in places that it was deemed a Republican perhaps no longer could.
The next Republican leader is going to have to do that again, not by necessarily indulging the fringe, although that is, I suppose, one theory of the case of how to get there, but I think by remembering actually who shows up and participates in these elections to vote, that's going to be the better path.
And yeah, the next leader of this party is going to have to be a creative political entrepreneur who charts their own path and breaks from the Trump coalition because obviously there's something singular about Donald Trump as a political figure.
He has a personality that attracts a lot of people into the party, despite the fact that these people are of very diverse ideological persuasions.
But even the most recent Trump coalition itself seems to be fracturing a bit.
I'm looking particularly at the example of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.
She was on 60 Minutes last weekend talking about divisions in the party related to President Trump, especially interesting given her recent fallout with the president.
Let's listen to what she said.
President Trump.
I think that there's an issue with that video, but basically she was talking about the fact that making the distinction between the Make America Great Again movement and the America First movement, Leslie Stahl was asking about how other Republicans feel about her speaking out in this way and the threats that she's received.
What do you think?
Is there really a split even in the Trump coalition itself?
unidentified
No, I don't think there is one really inherently inflected with ideology.
I think that what you're seeing Marjorie Taylor Greene do is exactly what I'm describing from the findings in this survey and what we've sort of been talking about over the course of this conversation.
Greene is someone who is motivated.
She is leaving Congress no longer by winning votes.
She views her future as with this hyper-online audience where outrage sells and conspiracy sells.
President Trump is focused on winning the midterms and creating a lasting political legacy to ensure that the Republican Party stays positively changed in the ways that he introduced policy innovation.
So this question of whether or not Marjorie Tagler Greene represents some massive block of burgeoning young voters, I think if she really did, she'd be staying in American politics, not rushing to go to the outside, where influencers are motivated by voices that come from far outside the American right.
And oftentimes, as we're now beginning to learn, far outside America to generate their clicks, which in turn generate their income.
So, Patrick, just because there is some polling there that in Jesse's study at the Manhattan Institute, the study did look at foreign policy.
I'm looking here in particular.
You asked people which of these statements is closer to your view, asking about whether or not a country is an important and effective ally of the United States.
And 55% of Republicans said that Israel is an ally, but not somebody like not as much for Qatar or China.
Can you talk a little bit about what the Republican voters you polled did have to say about foreign policy?
unidentified
I'd be happy to do that, but we should also be kind of honest about what that question actually was.
I think it provided a glimpse into this conspiratorial impulse that was part of the GOP coalition with President Trump's election in 2024.
But I'd be very curious to ask that caller who he voted for over the last couple of election cycles.
Is this someone who is easy to pin down in either political coalition?
It sounds like not.
This is someone who thinks derisively about conservative values.
Describe my conservative values as such as something that is sort of incoherent and inconsistent.
On the one hand, he describes a desire for balanced budgets and fiscal conservatism, right?
I think that is probably part of how you channel populist intensity in the right direction.
That was part of the success of the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party.
It showed an ideological, consistent place to channel populist energy.
Doge, which the caller also referenced when talking about waste, fraud, and abuse, was also an example of that kind of positive populist energy being channeled in the right direction.
If you look south of the United States to Argentina, where Javier Millet has sort of made right-of-center governance cool again in South America, that's another example where getting your fiscal house in order can actually be something that excites and animates a populist base.
But in the absence of that, you're going to have callers frustrated, like the one who we just had, and that guy probably is a voter.
And I doubt he's a consistent one for either party.
Let's go to Alexander in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Alexander.
unidentified
Morning.
Happy holidays.
Thank you for taking my call.
Yeah, I mean, this is what the Republican Party is.
I mean, I think you've described it.
It's dangerous.
You know, Margie Taylor Greene is actually being smart because she has built the platform within the theatrics of government, and now she's going to go out and she's going to be an influencer like Laura Loomer, and she's going to make a lot of money.
And that's what politics has become.
It's become about clickbait for politicians to have podcasts.
And there is no difference between the theatrics happening in the world of conspiracies on the right and what's happening in the politics that they are pushing.
What I will say is this, and I wish I had more time.
What your data will never show, and what you can't even understand as far as a Hispanic, a citizen of this country and Hispanic, is what I consider the hollow people in this country.
There are millions of us, and I have friends in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida.
We are Hispanics, some are first generation, second generation, a lot of family in the military.
People do no longer believe in this country, and they are living here because their kids are here, their family is here.
But a lot of people want to leave this country or no longer believe in this country precisely because of the racism, the open racism, the hatred, and quite frankly, the destruction of the government in this country.
And it's not because of only the people within the government, but it's because so many people in this country accept what is happening and they see nothing wrong in saying Trump should have a third term.
People are garbage.
They're venom.
And this is the Conservative Party, and this is the Republican Party.
And they are the single biggest threat, as you just said, even in Argentina, in Poland, and all over the world.
Steve is in Tampa, Florida, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Steve.
unidentified
Yes, I have a question for Jesse.
Does he believe in the proverb that I believe in, which is an Amish proverb that says, when you're looking for something, you find what you want to see?
I think that's one of the big problems in the U.S. right now: is that the media is biased.
It doesn't matter which media you talk to, you will go to the media that says what you want to hear.
And that's causing influence of all the voters.
The younger people go to social media, the older people go to the conservative or the legacy media.
You watch what you want to hear, and that just reinforces your opinion instead of searching for the truth.
The media basically so are you trying to ask Jesse if the nature of his polling found what they were looking for because that's what they wanted to find?
I actually think that social media metastasizes that problem and makes it vastly worse.
These algorithms will reward confirmation bias to an even greater extent than just a general right-of-center disposition on Fox and Newsmax and a general left-of-center disposition on CNN and MSNBC.
It's a much bigger problem than that now because when you're Gen Z, right, and you're getting your news primarily through TikTok, as many of these folks are, you're being rewarded down to an even more micro level.
You're just seeing the things that really are a niche influencer within a niche influencer who's just confirming the things you believe even at an even more tailor-made level to you.
But at the same time, you also want to see the things that make you angry.
And that is a big chunk of what both left-of-center cable news outlets do and right-of-center cable news outlets do.
They show you the things that are going to stoke outrage and keep you mad at the other side.
And especially with a platform like TikTok, which has ties to foreign governments that sort of are incentivized to show disorder within our own country, that is a really big problem because with a micro, micro, micro-niche audience that really is only tailored to your interests, well, and an economy that is motivated by outrage, they are going to keep you mad at just about everybody.
Brenda is in Princeton, West Virginia on our line for independence.
Good morning, Brenda.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm glad you're taking my call.
I would like for the guests to comment on the fact that I have always felt that I was a moderate Republican when I was younger.
I'm 68 years old.
And I have had to change over to independent.
And I don't have any, I don't really have anyone to vote for.
And would the guests comment on whether or not there'll be moderate Republicans or moderate Democrats in the future for people like me to vote for?
I think that's a great question.
The problem is moderate means different things to different people.
In many ways, Donald Trump was a massive moderating force on the Republican Party.
The issue positions that the party has taken on abortion in 2024 with rewriting language in the party platform, I don't think would have been possible with a different leader of the GOP.
On all sorts of economic policy questions, Trump has been a moderating force with respect to what his party is willing to say relative to the days of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
But on the other hand, there is a whole other set of voters out there in this country that just view the intense posture that President Trump takes with respect to rhetoric and disposition or vibe and says, I don't like the tension.
I don't like how much things have been ratcheted up in the last few years.
When I say I want moderate, I want to go back to Mitt Romney because he was a nicer fellow who was less hotly contesting everything that the media threw at him all of the time.
He was more of a gentleman, so to speak.
So moderate means different things to different people.
That is something that we learned from this survey.
It's the more moderate question, sorry, the more moderate members of the new coalition, that is the GOP, who are importing a lot of very radical ideas about conspiracies in America, as well as some of this racism, anti-Semitism, and a disposition toward political violence even.
So moderate means different things to different people.
Next up is Calvin in Canton, Ohio on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Canton.
Calvin.
Alvin, you need to turn down the volume on your TV and then you can go ahead with your question for Jesse, the Manhattan Institute.
unidentified
All righty.
Good morning.
My question to Jesse would be, how would you screen out the new GOP, Republican Coalition of Racism Tensions?
Because what I see now, we have a racist president who's actually showing it.
Now, how would you screen that out and what would be your process?
Well, we didn't screen it out.
I mean, we looked for it.
We asked about it.
We probed for it.
And we tried to understand to what extent there are people who harbor these kinds of ideas within the Republican coalition.
We were also curious about, we also polled a larger number of the electorate, right, to understand at a representative level, what does the total of America think relative to the current GOP coalition.
And with that came a slice of Democrats that we got a picture of as well.
And honestly, at least on the anti-Jewish Republican point, I think we found that anti-Semitic beliefs were sort of harbored by something like 17% of members of this new GOP coalition, as well as 20% of Democrats surveyed.
So this is a problem with respect to this bigotry we're talking about in both political parties.
I'll look at the, just to pull, Calvin, I need you to turn down the volume on your TV again.
And I just want to read from the poll here about exactly how you asked that question, Jesse, and how folks answered.
This was regarding individuals who openly expressed the following, what comes closer to your view regarding their role in your party and political movement.
And you asked about both racist views as well as anti-Semitic views.
And, you know, more folks in general said that they aren't welcome and don't represent what I stand for.
But 15% in the current GOP said that I am such a person when it came to racist views.
12% said that they held these anti-Semitic views.
You also gave people the option to say, I've had enough of cancel culture.
This should not count against them.
Can you expand a little bit more on how you ask these questions and what you think of these responses?
unidentified
Yeah, so I don't have the full text of the survey in front of me, but I think that question was also posed as, are these people okay to be in the party?
We can try to get their votes if it's useful, but they should not be in positions of power or leadership.
unidentified
Yeah, so one of those answers was sort of geared toward the pragmatists' view, right?
In the sense that's like, I don't believe my party leadership is bigoted inherently, but if bigots want to vote for us, have at it, versus another response option that was more to the effect of a purist approach, right?
I don't want any bigots within my political coalition.
None of these questions are supposed to be probing to the point where they paint us an exactly accurate picture of how things stand.
And we'll do future survey work, I believe, in the next couple Of months early in the new year, probing the Democratic Party's coalition and how it feels about some of these things as well.
But no, we designed these questions this way, and we asked about these sort of often taboo topics in this survey because we did want to understand how people feel about this stuff.
There's an entire other battery within the survey where we just ask about different groups in the United States: Jews, blacks, immigrants from India and other places, because we really wanted to tap into and get a clear sense of how members of this coalition and the electorate writ large feel about different groups in American society, their ability to assimilate,
and whether or not they do harbor any kind of xenophobia or other sorts of hostile feelings toward any given group in American life.
And I think we got an illuminating picture that it is a small minority, but it is one that is paid a whole lot of attention to by both the media and by figures on this sort of online dissident right that are looking to whip up outrage for all sorts of reasons, including ones that benefit their own bottom line.
Akiva is in Clifton, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Akiva.
unidentified
Good morning, Kimberly.
Good morning, Mr. Arms.
Maya, I only have three questions for you.
Only from first question of three is: you know, Trump really, I believe, got there, not the presidency, because you know, swing voters in wealthy suburban counties such as Oakland County, Michigan, or on Galloway County.
That's my home county.
So I love to hear about Oakland County, Michigan.
Sorry to cut you off.
That's actually, Mr. Arm, first question is: do you have any information on whether Trump is popular in Trump is popular among suburban voters in either of those states, Pennsylvania or Michigan, because they want to do great in the midterms next year in Michigan or Pennsylvania or both?
Second of three questions is: you know, after 1986.
Can you make sure you're speaking directly into your phone?
unidentified
I will.
Okay.
Second of three questions is: after 1986, we saw the Republican coalition divide.
You saw Bush, who seems the heir, because he's the sitting VP, have to clash with Pat Robertson, a non-elected official, and the Senate minority leader, Robert Dole of Kansas.
I read a lot of history.
Do you think that the coalition is sustainable beyond 2027, which is when Trump becomes a lame duck in third?
Do you believe that Trump can expand?
Excuse me, not just Trump, but also the Republican Party can expand to lean blue states in 2026, next year's midterms in states like Minnesota or New Hampshire.
Sure.
Trump didn't win, but he got extremely close, like less than.
So this was about Trump's popularity in the suburbs, particularly in Michigan and Pennsylvania, the GOP coalition, particularly leftover from the 80s, and could it be sustainable beyond 2027, and also whether the GOP can expand to lean blue states.
unidentified
Okay, a lot of ground to cover there, but I'll try to do it rapid fire.
To the question, the first question about President Trump's popularity, I think it's often needs to be accompanied by the fact of relative to what.
So in 2024, in the presidential election, President Trump won because in those suburban counties that the caller was describing, he was more popular than Kamala Harris.
Was a lot of disorder with respect to the country at large, but also with specific respect to what was going on at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Kamala Harris had kind of been shoot in at the last second and was presented as this inevitability almost.
And there was a lot of distrust there.
There was a lot of lack of confidence about whether this was the right person for the job, whether she could do the job.
And there was a feeling that the country was kind of coming apart at the seams with the current people that were left with the keys to the castle.
And with President Trump, a lot of people thought about his record from 2017 to 2019 prior to the pandemic and thought back to themselves: okay, maybe I'd like to go back to that period in time where, yes, it felt chaotic back then, but it's feeling stable in retrospect after this giant pandemic, after the BLM riots of the summer of 2020, and after a whole lot of chaos with respect to who's really running the country.
So I think that was what helped catapult President Trump back into the presidency.
With respect to the GOP coalition from the 80s, I think I was talking about this a little bit earlier, but that was very much an ideological coalition.
President Reagan made the case for an old school, kind of free market-oriented, anti-communist conservatism.
And it really sold with respect to what Americans were looking for at that time.
He won his first election, and then he won an unprecedented something like 49 states in the re-elect.
So obviously, the days of those kinds of broad, ideologically unified and cohesive coalitions are much more difficult to maintain and manage with how civility has kind of degraded in our politics.
There's just a lot more Americans who are completely not open to ever voting for the other party.
There are no longer there's less ideological diversity in both parties, too.
In that era, you still had liberal Republicans in the Northeast and conservative Democrats throughout the South.
So because both parties have sort of narrowed in on ideological conservatism, became the unifying force behind the Republican Party and progressivism as a response, the one in the Democratic Party.
I think you're going to see, yeah, less likelihood of sweeping GOP victories in blue states anytime soon.
The last question, I believe, was about Republicans and their ability to win in blue states.
I think I kind of- Winning blue states like Minnesota.
unidentified
Yeah, so the 2026 midterms are going to be really, really tough.
I think the Republicans are mostly on defense.
I think they are trying to maintain the Senate.
I think they're quite pessimistic about the House, if we're being completely honest, because of the fundamentals of our politics.
It is a swinging pendulum.
It is really hard when you win a sweeping victory like Republicans did in 2024, control in Congress and a considerable victory to secure the White House in every swing state.
Really hard to come back from that, short of having massive victories across the board on every level and win in the midterms.
In many ways, 2022 was sort of an aberration where Democrats managed to keep the Senate.
And I think they were able to do that partially because the GOP was in a hot spot with a presidential primary that was heating up unusually early, January 6th, still in the sort of recent rearview mirror, as well as the pandemic, as well as the BLM riots for a lot of Republicans.
And yeah, there was sort of a split within the Republican Party.
It was, do we want President Trump again or do we want to try our hand with Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or somebody like that?
So that was a period in which the GOP really was gearing up for a hotly contested intra-party fight.
And ultimately, the Democrats were able to benefit from that.
But that was the exception to the rule.
I think it's going to be really hard for Republicans to win in blue states in 2026.
Thank you so much to Jesse Arm, Vice President of External Affairs at the Manhattan Institute with their new survey looking at Republican voters and the future of the Republican Party.
Later on our program, we're going to be joined by Dan Glickman of the Bipartisan Policy Center, where he's a senior fellow.
And Dan Glickman is a former agriculture secretary, and he's going to discuss issues affecting U.S. farmers, including tariffs, as well as the president's farm assistance policies.
But up next, we're going to take more of your calls and comments on political news of the day in open forum.
Our numbers are on your screen.
You can start calling in Republicans at 202-748-8001, Democrats at 202-748-8000.
Most of the names are familiar to those who follow politics and government.
Hunter Biden, Rudolph Giuliani, Tony Podesta, Paul Manafort, and many others.
Kenneth Vogel has written a book about these figures.
It's called Devil's Advocates: The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and Washington Insiders on the Payrolls of Corrupt Foreign Interests.
In the publisher Morrow's liner notes on the book, they write, the foreign influence business comprised of shadowy operators who quietly shape U.S. foreign policy while producing massive paydays for themselves has existed for decades, often unnoticed by Americans.
Ken Vogel is a reporter for the New York Times, previously was with Politico.
unidentified
Author Kenneth Vogel with his book, Devil's Advocates: The Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden, and the Washington Insiders on the payroll of corrupt foreign interests.
On this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
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C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
But first, quick updates on the two shootings that we've been following this morning: one in Australia, as well as the one in Rhode Island at Brown University.
Here's the latest on that shooting, in particular from the Providence Journal.
Brown University mass shooting live updates.
There's a person of interest in custody reporting here at the Providence Journal.
The Providence Police Department has confirmed that a person of interest in connection with the mass shooting at Brown University on December 13th is in police custody.
The shooting, which happened around 4 p.m., left at least two students dead and nine other students injured.
Law enforcement worked well into the night to clear and evacuate Brown University buildings and bring students to the established reunification center.
Now, yesterday, President Trump spoke to reporters briefly to address the shooting on Brown University's campus.
Thank you, Mr. And unfortunately, the other shooting that we're following this morning is in Australia.
Here's coverage from the New York Times: what we know about the shooting at Bondi Beach.
Two gunmen opened fire at dozens of people who were at a Jewish holiday event.
At least 11 people were killed in the attack, and so was one of the shooters, police said.
Now, back to open forum with your comments on public policy issues of the day.
We're going to start with Al in Detroit, Michigan, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Al.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
I think that as far as social media is concerned, that we really don't have to listen or look at any of the media outlets.
All we have to do is listen to the president.
Let's listen to what he's saying and what he's talking about.
If that's what you like, with him degrading every race and insulting people with our warships over in a foreign land, the same thing Putin did because of drugs and blowing and killing up, killing people that, you know, they don't even have the means to reach us.
Not one America has died in his so-called war.
I think that all the think tanks, the person that was just on, he's just a member of the think tank, which is an extension of MAGA.
They all have that same opinion.
And I call myself a moderate Democrat, but I have to admit the Republicans are much better right now.
They're better spend doctors.
They're better liars.
They're beating us in every stage of the game.
I'm not all the way left.
I don't believe in the extreme left of my party.
And I just hope that America, we don't have to listen to any of the news outlets.
Let's just listen and look at what's going on in our country.
unidentified
I'm African American and I'm a veteran, and I'm also a civil servant.
And I think that no one has shown their love for this country, you know, better than the African American who served in the armed forces under conditions no one else had to face.
So I would just encourage America just to, you know, it's not your lion eyes.
Listen to what is going on and vote appropriately if our vote is going to matter.
I grew up, I was in high school in the middle 60s.
And at the time, we had a president running for president, a Democrat.
And the greatest bifurcation of our political system occurred during that time when John Kennedy, he asked the country, don't ask what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.
Then he turned around, needing to get votes in Texas and brought in Lyndon Johnson as his vice president.
And that became the greatest bifurcation of our political system at the time.
He took it to the different direction, the great society, and we've never been the same since.
Dee is in Flint, Michigan on our line for independence.
Good morning, Dee.
unidentified
Yes.
I wanted to address the mail-in voting issue.
It seems that the president and others want in-person voting during elections, yet they do not consider that service members that are serving overseas cannot fly into home country and vote.
We had, as a veteran, we had bill-in-voting, and that's what mail-in voting is when you're out of the country serving in the United States military.
Godfrey is in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Godfrey.
unidentified
Good morning.
What I'd like to point out, which has been my issue, first off, I served in the military during the Vietnam conflict, and I was in training with the Army when President Kennedy was shot.
And what I found was that at the point where Johnson was elected, and at that time, no one, in other words, the future is going to be determined by who wins the economic domination of the world politics.
And they neglect the most impactful policy decision that Trump has made, and that is the one of energy policy.
And the Chinese seem to be leading us in the right direction.
And anyone who suspects that climate change won't be an impactful issue in the future is really blind, scientifically blind.
The atmospheric river that's affecting Washington State and other areas of the globe now is going to be the most impactful issue of the future.
And if the idea that my grandchild might be digging coal in a coal mine in the future is really a turnoff.
Trump has it all wrong.
Definitely, we have to upgrade to sustainable energy resources.
And I'd lastly like to point out that of every dollar that's spent in this country or worldwide, there's a portion of every dollar that's devoted to energy.
So that's going to be the issue of the future.
And it's an existential issue for the planet that we correct our position on sustainable energy.
If we don't, the consequences are going to be horrific.
JL is in Moab, Utah, on our line for your independence.
Good morning, JL.
unidentified
Good morning, Kimberly.
Good morning, America.
Happy holidays to all.
I tried to call during the lack of trust in our federal government.
And for me, it's summed up pretty good in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
If Congress would do what it says in the Constitution, it only has a limited amount of power, and it should be really good at these things.
But it doesn't.
It's abdicated all of its power to the executive branch for whatever reason.
But I would have a lot more trust in my federal government if they would do the powers listed in Article 1, Section 8.
Some of those are borrow money and regulate commerce and establish post offices and secure the borders.
Real basic things.
It also says in there that any of these powers not specifically given to the federal government belong to the states or the people at large.
And I would have a lot more trust, and I guess this message I want to get to Senator Lee, Senator Curtis, and my representative Mike Kennedy, that being a presidential puppet is not representing me.
I would appreciate my representatives to have their own ideas and their own agenda and do their job, make the laws so we don't have to count on these executive orders that will go away as soon as the next president comes in.
So the Constitution is what makes this country special and great.
I would ask my federal government and the representatives there to adhere to it, at least show me that they're willing to live by that law.
They had a budget for 12 says Clinton.
That's one of the powers that they have.
They're supposed to get a budget and report to the people of what they're spending, of where the money's coming from, and where it's going.
But they haven't done that.
The Defense Department is supposed to be audited every so often.
They tried to do it a few years ago, and it was too big a deal.
You know, if you shoot somebody and it's televised and they know that you did it, I don't understand why there shouldn't even be a hearing.
I mean, it's televised.
That gentleman in New York got shot.
The shooting and stuff is all about money.
Everything is about money.
A large courtroom drama and everything.
It's almost like the world has turned into a soap opera.
Well, I'm going to close now, and I hope all of you have a happy holiday.
But I'd like to hear some input from other people on what they think about the justice system and the fact, like that gentleman says, that Congress don't do anything.
Otis is in Detroit, Michigan, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Otis.
unidentified
Yes, how are you doing?
My name is Otis.
I'm from Southwest Detroit in the area we're trying to get retagged as African Town 48217 after our zip code.
I am also a Vietnam/slash Vietnam here veteran, and I bring that up based on what the last host, I mean, the last guest you had.
One thing is Trump has said when he was in Pennsylvania recently was about the different countries that he don't think that's acceptable coming to the United States.
And I'm not going to use the foul language that he has used about those countries.
But as your last guest, he did not ever mention, seemed to be about what do you think about white Europeans coming to America.
Your last guest spoke of all the countries of color, people of color, but he never mentioned or say white European countries, but do his survey says about them.
So like here in African town 48217 in south of Detroit, where we're trying to get located on our city and state maps, just like court town, it's always that there's no emphasis on the white community when you're doing these surveys.
unidentified
We have us assume that majority of the people that he's talking to are white, but it's never actually mentioned.
We'll break away from this program and take you live to Providence, Rhode Island, where officials are giving an update on the deadly shooting at Brown University.