The Republican Party’s wholesale embrace of Donald Trump has left traditional conservatives like the Times Opinion columnist Bret Stephens without a political home. But what happens after Trump leaves office? Will the party return to its Reaganite roots? In this conversation, Stephens and David Leonhardt, an editorial director in Times Opinion, imagine what the G.O.P.’s next story might be.
Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
David Leonhardt: As we come to the end of the year and the end of the America’s Next Story series, I wanted to have conversations with a couple of my colleagues. I’m starting today with Bret Stephens, a columnist. As a traditional conservative, Bret no longer has a comfortable home in President Trump’s Republican Party, but it’s worth remembering that 2028 isn’t that far away.
So, I wanted to ask Bret whether the next election is an opportunity to rescue conservatism from Trump’s warped version of it, and what would that new version of conservatism look like? If that doesn’t happen, where does it leave conservatives like Bret?
Bret, thanks for being here.
Bret Stephens: Good to be with you, David.
Leonhardt: You once identified as a Republican. How do you describe your political affiliation now?
Stephens: I guess I’m in transition is one answer. Actually, the reverse is true. I remember growing up, my parents would often say they didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left them, and that’s how they became Reagan conservatives.
The line was not original to them, but they were reflecting on their experience of being Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy Democrats in the ’60s who were turned off by some of the radicalism in the party in the late 1960s and 1970s. Now I find myself saying, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”
Leonhardt: That very much conjures up Ronald Reagan for me. What we’ve been doing with this podcast series is trying to talk about the stories that America tells itself. I would argue — and I’d guess you agree — that the most successful political storyteller of the second half of the 20th century in the United States was Ronald Reagan.
He told this story about freedom, about capitalism, about American confidence and American exceptionalism that was highly influential, and I think it’s fair to consider the United States as living in the Reagan era from the 1980s through the early 2010s. I also think the Reagan era has ended. Do you agree with that?
Stephens: Well, it has — and that’s a shame because the Reagan era, at its core, was optimistic about American possibility. What you have today among conservatives, and certainly with the president, is essentially a pervasive pessimism about the future of liberal democracy: the idea that ultimately free citizens sorting out their problems through experiment and collaboration, the contestation of ideas, is going to yield good results.
The conservatism that Trump expresses is better classified as illiberalism. That’s to say, a set of ideas often based in ethnicity, race or place that may have something in common with the conservative traditions of Europe, but have much less in common with the conservative traditions of the United States. At its heart, there’s a dark vision of the future of the free world, a real pessimism or doubt about whether liberal societies can succeed.
I’ve never shared that pessimism. So, that’s one of the many reasons, from the beginning, that Trump simply left me cold as a traditional Reaganite Republican.
Leonhardt: You and I, in different ways, both lament that Trumpian pessimism. But I do want to try to give it its due in one way, which is to understand why so many Americans found it attractive, find it attractive.
I think there is something important there about the failures of the last several decades, including the failures of Reaganite conservatism. I don’t think that Reaganite conservatism delivered on what it promised in terms of broad-based, consistent increases in Americans’ living standards. I don’t think you totally agree with me about that.
Stephens: Maybe not.
Leonhardt: I’m interested in both how you disagree with it, but also why you think Trump’s darkness was so appealing — first, to so many Republican voters, and then was appealing enough to let him win two of the last three presidential elections.
Stephens: First of all, I think where Reaganism failed in terms of delivering on its promises is that Reagan never meaningfully cut the size of government in the way that he had promised coming into office in 1981. And I would argue that explains many of our dysfunctions today. I don’t want to get carried away by tangents, but I also think it succeeded, in this sense: For 35 years, in terms of at least finance capital, the United States was the undisputed world champion. It explains why we have remained economically dynamic in a way that the welfare states of Europe or Japan simply have not.
So, I think that in many respects, Reagan delivered on his promise. I do think that Trump understood better than I did a couple of very serious complaints that parts of America, which I don’t inhabit, had about the way things were running in America. I think one of them, maybe most importantly, he understood intuitively that migration was probably the single most important issue affecting ordinary Americans.
He also understood the failure of elite institutions to deliver on their promises — whether the elite institutions were at universities or the public health administration of this country or mainstream media — Trump was on to something in a way that I was simply blind to, because I was encased in a cultural bubble. One of the things I’ve tried to do in the last 10 years is understand the legitimacy of the Trumpian complaint, even as I profoundly disagree with the prescription.
Leonhardt: Can I ask you to pause on mass migration for a minute? Because I’m guessing that some of our listeners heard you say the downsides of mass migration and thought, “What downsides?” How are Americans, and working-class Americans in particular, actually suffering because of high levels of immigration? How would you answer that question?
Stephens: Well, first of all, let me stress as someone who grew up in Mexico City, whose father was born in Mexico, that I see many of the upsides and I see the hard work, enterprise and dreams that the vast majority of immigrants bring with them as they come into the United States — legally or otherwise — just in search of a better life, and how much they contribute economically, demographically, culturally and so on.
But of course there are downsides, and I think that you have to be living in a bubble somewhere between Scarsdale, N.Y., and Concord, Mass., to miss them. I mean, we had hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people enter this country with no idea of who they are.
Some number of them, by no means the majority, but some number of them were, in fact, criminals. Many of them depended on social services, which were overwhelmed. Look at what happened in New York, Chicago, Boston and other cities that found themselves unable to meet the needs of desperate migrants. I see now on the streets of New York the kind of poverty and begging that I used to see on the streets of Mexico City.
More to the point, there is absolute legitimacy in saying that a basic expectation of people in this country is that they follow the rules. When the first thing they do — even if the reasons are understandable, out of desperation — is to break the rules in coming into this country, it sets a tone, an idea that our rules are not serious, that they can be laughed off. That’s problematic.
I would love to see genuine immigration reform that combines really strict controls over the border with a very generous legal immigration and asylum policy. I think it would settle a lot of the cultural distempers in the country, particularly over the last 10 or 15 years.
Leonhardt: You’re moving us right toward where I wanted to go, which is let’s try to imagine a Republican Party that is very different from Donald Trump, but that is also able to win a Republican primary.
How do you think about a future version of Republicanism that takes seriously the reasons that Donald Trump was so appealing, but also rejects his nihilism and his racism and his negativism?
Stephens: Well look, you don’t have to go too far into the reaches of the past to find a lot of Republicans who are capable of thinking rationally on this subject. There are all kinds of conservatives who could conceivably get behind something like my idea of a sensible immigration policy.
It’s very difficult now, in part, because the loudest voices in both parties — but particularly in the Republican Party — the ones with megaphones on social media or on YouTube channels, the Tucker Carlsons of the world, have so much sway through fear of what we used to call normie Republicans.
At some point I just have to assume, hope, wish that when the Republican Party has exhausted the available alternatives, they will see their way toward a more sensible attitude toward immigration. But I don’t think that’s happening in the next two years. I wonder if it’s happening in the next 20. I believe that we have to hold out the hope that it might happen at some point in the future, because it has to happen.
.op-aside { display: none; border-top: 1px solid var(–color-stroke-tertiary,#C7C7C7); border-bottom: 1px solid var(–color-stroke-tertiary,#C7C7C7); font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, sans-serif; flex-direction: row; justify-content: space-between; padding-top: 1.25rem; padding-bottom: 1.25rem; position: relative; max-width: 600px; margin: 2rem 20px; }
.op-aside p { margin: 0; font-family: nyt-franklin, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.3rem; margin-top: 0.4rem; margin-right: 2rem; font-weight: 600; flex-grow: 1; }
.SHA_opinionPrompt_0325_1_Prompt .op-aside { display: flex; }
@media (min-width: 640px) { .op-aside { margin: 2rem auto; } }
.op-buttonWrap { visibility: hidden; display: flex; right: 42px; position: absolute; background: var(–color-background-inverseSecondary, hsla(0,0%,21.18%,1)); border-radius: 3px; height: 25px; padding: 0 10px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; top: calc((100% – 25px) / 2); }
.op-copiedText { font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 0.75rem; color: var(–color-content-inversePrimary, #fff); white-space: pre; margin-top: 1px; }
.op-button { display: flex; border: 1px solid var(–color-stroke-tertiary, #C7C7C7); height: 2rem; width: 2rem; background: transparent; border-radius: 50%; cursor: pointer; margin: auto; padding-inline: 6px; flex-direction: column; justify-content: center; flex-shrink: 0; }
.op-button:hover { background-color: var(–color-background-tertiary, #EBEBEB); }
.op-button path { fill: var(–color-content-primary,#121212); }
Know someone who would want to read this? Share the column.
Leonhardt: Clearly circumstance is going to play a big role in that, I mean, how popular Donald Trump is. But what do you think are the most important things that normie Republicans can do to make their vision more attractive? What mistakes have normie Republicans made that they can try to fix to bring about the transition that you’re talking about?
Stephens: Well, those mistakes would be my mistakes. One of them was, without a doubt, a derisive, holier-than-thou, moralistic attitude about the concerns that people have about migration. Until you recognize that those concerns are real and valid, you’re not going to be able to have a conversation with Republican voters about some other approach to immigration.
I think the second issue is, and this is a problem that Republicans can’t really solve: Republicans or conservatives see themselves locked into a kind of cultural existential struggle with a Democratic Party that they characterize, and to some extent caricature, as being essentially anti-American, essentially so far out of touch with traditional American values that any concession to that party is hopeless and ludicrous and dangerous.
It would help a lot to see the moderate wing — the Bill Clinton wing — of the Democratic Party reassert itself in a way so that caricature doesn’t resonate quite as much as it does with so many Republican voters today. To the consternation of some of my readers, I often find myself offering advice to Democrats like, “Please move to the center, not least to save the Republican Party from the kind of xenophobic bigotry that has overtaken it.”
Leonhardt: I guess the question is, do you want the Democratic Party to move to the center because that keeps it closer to you and you’re a conservative? Or do you genuinely believe that a more moderate Democratic Party, a more heterodox Democratic Party, would be more likely to win? Because if that’s true, in some ways, it would be bad for some of the things you favor.
Stephens: No, it wouldn’t be, because a Democratic Party that moved to the center, captured the center again and started winning elections, I think, far from having a radicalizing effect on the Republican Party, would have a moderating effect.
I know there’s some countervailing data. You can go back to 2008, 2009 and say, “Well, the origins of the Tea Party were with a Democrat who won by overwhelming margins.” But the perception among Republicans back in 2009 was that Obama was a real left-wing radical. Of course, he governed much more to the center than Republicans ever gave him credit for.
Leonhardt: Yes, he did.
Stephens: But I do think that a Democratic Party that is able to take many of the cultural issues off the table — not just immigration, but some of the more polarizing issues when it comes to transgenderism and other hot-button cultural topics — would have the effect of forcing Republicans to actually move more centerward, knowing that that’s where the real political contest lies, rather than to the extremes where they find themselves now.
Leonhardt: What would you say to Democrats who say, “Look at Joe Manchin: He got drummed out of Congress. Look at John Tester: He lost. And look at the excitement around Zohran Mamdani in New York.” That the answer is not some sort of average between A.O.C. and some Republican. It’s an authentic, confident version of progressivism, embodied by A.O.C. and Bernie’s tour and by a Mamdani victory in New York.
Stephens: Mamdani, running one of the most brilliant campaigns — and I say this as someone who’s no fan of Mamdani — in one of the most progressive cities in America, eked out 52 percent of the vote against a weak and divided field. Compare that to Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, running as centrist, pragmatic, get stuff done, national security credential candidates.
I think you see starkly that outside of the progressive bubbles, the winning tickets for Democrats are all at the center. The editorial board has made this point very admirably in a close analysis of most of the races where the Democrats who won contested seats or difficult seats were all leaning toward the political center.
There’s a real problem in American politics today in that the noisiest factions are rarely the most representative. Cutting through that noise to understand that American politics maybe isn’t so different than it was 15 or 30 years ago, is a really important task for commentators like us.
Leonhardt: When you look around the world, do you see countries that offer something of a model for what you want the United States and its politics to become? What I mean by that is these populist forces and the version of relatively elite social progressivism that you do not like, are not distinctly American phenomena. We see versions of them across most of the wealthy world.
Have you seen countries where either a center-right has managed to marginalize the populists, or the center-left has managed to marginalize the elite progressives in ways that you think offer lessons for what you hope will be the Democrats and Republicans of our future?
Stephens: Good question. As you were asking that, I was doing a mental scan of the globe, looking for leaders who would fit that description. The name that came to mind — and I’m thinking aloud here, David — so, it’s dangerous. But actually the name that came to mind was Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who, by the standards of Italian prime ministers, runs an extraordinarily stable government because she has managed to adopt the language of populism and the politics of pragmatism.
One leader after another who has dealt with her notes that she is anything but what she was billed as being when she came to office as the ostensible heir to the fascistic movements in Italy. She’s sensible. She’s able to talk to populists. She’s been particularly persuasive when it comes to offering a European view that Donald Trump can accept. Maybe it’s her charm or a combination of charm and wit, but that ability to talk populist and govern pragmatic — I’m being deliberately nongrammatical here — I would say that’s probably the right prescription. Tonally, you have to be populist, but you also have to do stuff that works.
The problem that Donald Trump now has politically is that, never mind the tone, it’s the policies that are leaving people scratching their heads when it comes to the destructive absurdity of DOGE or the destructive absurdities of the tariff policies that are not making life better for Americans.
Leonhardt: That’s a great point. I think too often outsiders lump the European far right into one basket, but actually there’s a huge difference between Meloni, which as you’re saying, is what I think we should want the far right to become. And the German far right, the AfD —
Stephens: The problem with the German far right is that they really mean it. They’re every bit as bad as advertised.
Leonhardt: OK. Coming back home to the United States to finish, what do you think are the most likely scenarios — I don’t mean names, although, feel free to mention names — what do you think are the most likely scenarios for the kinds of candidates that the Republicans and Democrats nominate in 2028? And we’ll start with the Republicans.
Stephens: Well, I find it difficult to conceive that JD Vance isn’t the nominee. JD is very clever, very opportunistic.
Let me tell you a story about him that’s interesting. A couple days before the 2016 election, I was invited on Fareed Zakaria’s show, along with an up-and-coming writer from Ohio, a certain JD Vance. We were talking about the election, and afterward we went for a little walk around Columbus Circle.
We spent our time insistently agreeing that not only did Donald Trump have to lose in order to save conservatism for the future, but he had to lose by the widest possible margin to drive the lesson home that Trumpism could never be mistaken for conservatism. So, every time I see him on TV, that memory flicks through my mind.
But, I think he’s the likely candidate. I think he could lose, however, especially if in three years, Americans find that their lives are no more affordable, no easier, that their schools are no better, that their safety is no greater than it was at the end of Biden’s term.
There’s a real opportunity for a unifying Democrat who doesn’t alienate large parts of the center. I don’t know if it’s Spanberger, I don’t know if it’s Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, Elissa Slotkin. There are a lot of names. Actually, the field of outstanding centrist Democrats is broad and deep. I just hope that the party has the wisdom to understand that the imperative in 2028 is to ensure that Trumpism does not become the consolidated establishment of American politics.
Leonhardt: When would you guess the next time you, Bret Stephens, will vote for the Republican presidential candidate in the general election?
Stephens: 2036.
Leonhardt: So that’s three presidential elections from now.
Stephens: Yeah. I mean, fingers crossed. I would dearly love, David, to be able to vote in good conscience for a Republican candidate who believed in the things I grew up believing in: lower taxes, less regulation, free trade, a belief in the virtues of immigration and sticking it to the Russians. That’s the Republican Party I grew up in, and maybe it will come back again.
Leonhardt: I want to close this by asking you to help spare me from some deep pessimism, because we began by talking about how the optimism of Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party is part of what attracted you to it.
There are times when I look at our society, much broader than politics, and I look at the level of anger that is out there, and I look at the level of isolation, and I look at measures of mental health, and I look at the fact that almost any measure of how well our children are reading and writing has gone backward, and I look at our fractured media ecosystem, which you’ve mentioned, and the fact that people don’t trust institutions.
I worry that as a society, we’re just kind of falling apart and we’re going down that path of an empire in decline. In my darkest moments, I’m not completely sure how we get out of it, even though I desperately want us to. I’m curious how much of that fear you have and how you keep it from becoming overwhelming?
Stephens: So, the conservative in me has always liked the line from Adam Smith: “There’s a lot of ruin in the nation.”
If you think of this historically, let’s go back 50 years, to 1975: an America humiliated in Vietnam, in the midst of skyrocketing oil prices, a society that was shifting uncomfortably fast for many people, urban decay, a perception that the Soviet Union was on the march and we were losing out against it. Basically an era of deep American pessimism, and all the data points were valid.
The paradox of open societies is that, in a democracy, you focus obsessively on everything that’s going wrong, and you spend precious little time thinking about what’s going right — and that’s normal. The nature of democracy is that we are problem obsessed, but it also means that we are trying to address those problems — however imperfectly, we’re trying to deal with them.
Paradoxically, if you look at an authoritarian system like China’s, they hide their problems and advertise their strengths, but it means that as problems grow, they often fail to comprehend their magnitude and fail to address them in a timely and rational way. So, authoritarian systems, even though they appear strong, are actually extraordinarily brittle.
Democracies tend, over time, to solve problems in unexpected ways. We would not have known, if we were having this conversation 50 years ago in December 1975, that someone named Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison was tinkering with the toys of the future and that they were going to create multitrillion-dollar economies, whose very nature we could scarcely have conceived back then. But that’s, in fact, what happened.
This is a recurring cycle in American history. So, that’s my source of optimism, David — that we’ve been this pessimistic before and we’ve been wrong before and we’ve experienced a lot of terrible presidents, a great deal of illegality and bigotry coming from the highest reaches of government, and we’ve somehow made it through.
One of my favorite lines from a presidential Inaugural Address is from Bill Clinton’s first inaugural. He said something to the effect of: There’s nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what’s right in America. I think it’s a beautiful phrase, and I think it has the virtue of being true.
Leonhardt: Bret Stephens, thank you very much.
Stephens: David, a pleasure.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post Bret Stephens on the Fight for the Future of the Right appeared first on New York Times.
