- [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club forums on ideastream are made possible by the generous support of PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(energetic music) (belling ringing) - Hello and welcome to "The City Club of Cleveland", where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, Chief Executive here and also a proud member.

Today's February 12th.

You're with virtual City Club forum.

President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial continues today and it continues to highlight the deep divisions within the Republican party that began four years ago when he won the party's nomination.

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump elicited a profound level of loyalty from his base and managed to maintain a tight grip on Republican lawmakers.

Even the January 6th attack on the Capitol left many unswayed.

Recent polls suggest 82% of Republicans still approve of President Trump.

64% still believe he won the election and similar numbers say they would join a new party if he started one.

This leaves Republicans at a crossroads.

For the sake of the party, do they embrace Trump or divorce him?

And how much does the outcome of the Senate impeachment trial affect this decision?

There's another way to think of this, as well.

What's in the best interest of the GOP?

And what's in the best interest of the nation and democracy?

And what kind of overlap is there among all of these?

Today we'll talk with two Republican strategists about decisions facing the Republican party, how those decisions will be affected by Donald Trump's likely acquittal, and the chance of a new third party.

Let me introduce our Friday forum speakers.

Sarah Longwell is president and CEO of Longwell Partners, a full service communications firm in Washington, DC.

She's also a publisher of "The Bulwark", a news network started in 2018 that provides political analysis and reporting.

A graduate of Kenyon College, Ms. Longwell is a lifelong Republican and a Republican strategist, co-founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, now called the Republican Accountability Project, and the former National Board Chair of Log Cabin Republicans.

Also joining us, Tim Miller.

He's a Republican political consultant and a writer for "The Bulwark" and "Rolling Stone", a colleague of Ms. Longwell's.

He was previously political director for Republican Voters Against Trump and communications director for Jeb Bush's 2016 2016 presidential campaign, as well as the spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

A graduate of George Washington University, Mr. Miller began his career working on various gubernatorial and congressional campaigns, before moving on to the presidential campaigns of John McCain and John Huntsman.

If you have questions about our topic today for either of our speakers, text them to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

Or if you're on Twitter, tweet them @thecityclub and we will work them into the program.

Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, welcome to "The City Club of Cleveland".

- Hey.

- Hi, thanks for having me.

- [Tim] I wish I was in Cleveland with y'all.

- We wish you were too.

You would not be happy about the weather, however.

But let me start with you both, simply, what do you see this week revealing about the state of the GOP and the future of the GOP?

Sarah Longwell, let's start with you.

- [Sarah] Yeah, well, this is the week that the Republicans get to decide what their future is.

They can either vote to convict Donald Trump and put a stake through his political future.

Keep him from either running again, as the Republican nominee, or splitting off to start his own party, as he's threatened to do.

Or they can vote to acquit him and Donald Trump will run the party for the foreseeable future.

And what is sort of stunning to me is that, after just losing the White House, the Senate, the House, and then, inciting this insurrection, that a lot of Republicans seem to think, still, that having Donald Trump be the leader of the party, even sort of de-platformed and out in Mar-a-Lago is the better of the two choices, which is something I can't fathom.

- Tim Miller, what about you?

- [Tim] Yeah, I mean, I guess I pretty much agree with Sarah, except for, I'm not sure that they have the choice, right?

I think that the party's voters have kind of chosen Donald Trump for them and they're just listening to the party's voters.

I think that even if they decided to convict him, that would probably lead to a deep intraparty feud.

I think Rand Paul was, I think, maybe unintentionally, admitted what was happening here when he said that if we voted to convict, a third of the Republican voters would leave the party.

I think that sounds about right to me.

You'd lose about 30 to 40% of the Republican voters.

They would follow, again, not Trump himself, because he would have been convicted, but some kind of Trump figure, into a Nationalist party.

And I think that the Republican elected officials in Washington, with a few exceptions, a few brave exceptions, don't wanna have that fight right now.

And I think that they look at the playing field and despite the fact that the Democrats control all of Washington, they see that had 90,0000 votes flipped differently in key swing states, the Republicans could control all three levers of power.

I think they see that there's a big advantage right now in the electoral college and the Senate, that benefits the current Republican coalition.

And so they don't feel like they need to make the drastic change that would be made if they were to convict him and lose and kind of have to regenerate the party by bringing back some of the old suburban voters.

So I just, I think that is the political calculus that's being made.

So, I don't know that the decision, the decision that's in their hands is really more about about Donald Trump's personal future.

I think the decision about what's happening with the party has been made for them a bit.

- Tim Miller is a writer for "The Bulwark", a political consultant and strategist, as well, and formerly a lifelong Republican.

And we'll get into why he's not a little bit later.

But this question, I mean, the risk of losing 30 to 40% of the party, Tim, there's also a risk of losing moderate Republicans, as well.

But is it just that the numbers of moderate Republicans, the kind of Mitt Romney wing of the party, isn't large enough or substantial enough?

Or is it just that they're not vocal enough?

- [Tim] I think they've already lost a lot of those voters.

A lot of them were Republican voters against Trump (laughing).

And we were grateful to have them as part of our team last year.

Some of them left earlier, in 2018.

Some of them left even before that, during the Tea Party waiver, Sarah Palin.

So I think that a lot of these Republican voters have already moved on into the Democratic party.

And so the Republican politicians don't see them as part of their coalition anymore.

I think that there's still room for more to be cleaved off.

And I think that if you look at the results from from this past election in 2020, there were a lot of very literal Republican voters against Trump.

And they were people that voted for Republicans down ballot, and voted for Joe Biden, or didn't vote at the top line.

If you keep feeding those people broccoli that they don't want, eventually they're going to leave too, right?

So I do think that there is a risk of losing still more people if the party doubles and triples down on Trumpism and losing some of the people that say might've, in North Carolina voted for Thom Tillis and Joe Biden.

There was a significant and decisive portion of voters like that in a few states.

But it's not nearly a third of the party like the MAGA base is.

- Sarah Longwell, our viewers and listeners who have been, say, listening to NPR this last week, or who have read a profile of you in the "New Yorker", will know how active you were in encouraging the party switching or the ballot switching that Tim alluded to, Republicans voting for Biden.

Why did you do that?

- [Sarah] Oh boy, nobody's asked me that in awhile.

(Dan chuckling) Why did I do it?

I did it because, look, from the moment that Donald Trump showed up on the political scene, and I mean that in the 2014, 'Barack Obama is a Muslim' sense, I have been against him, revolted by him.

I just was absolutely stunned when he became the nominee of the Republican party.

It showed me how out of touch I was with what the party was interested in.

And I felt like he was an existential threat to our democracy, to decency, to the truth.

I mean, I've just never seen somebody lie so much and so cavalierly.

I think that somebody with, both his business history and his history, whether it's assaulting women or the way he talks about people, the way he talks about Muslims.

I mean, this is just a person who, I thought it was a very clear cut case of someone who was unfit to hold the office of President of the United States.

And I gotta say, my buddy Tim was involved before I was, though.

He was, back when he was coming off Jeb Bush's campaign, he set up our Principles PAC and they were really fighting Donald Trump.

I was kind of just working at a PR firm and was a little bit more of a passive observer.

But once Donald Trump got elected, and I mean, the one thing that I did was keep the National Log Cabin board from endorsing him.

But once he was elected, I just started finding myself getting into every room I could, of Republicans like me, who wanted to think about, "What can we do about this problem?"

And I think what I saw in a lot of those rooms was people thinking about like, "Well, do we start a third party?"

"Can you primary Trump?"

People were, sort of, they didn't know what to do.

And I said, "Well, there's a few things we could do "out of the gate.

"Let's go do research.

"Let's understand what's going on "with the Republican party", which is why I started doing so many focus groups with Republican voters, to figure out why they'd voted for Donald Trump.

And frankly, from that research, stemmed a number of projects.

Republicans for the Rule of Law was our first project, which is where we tried to protect the Mueller investigation from political interference.

And then, basically all of that research informed our understanding of who could be peeled off within the Republican party.

But I just threw myself all in.

I ended up leaving my company and starting a different company.

And look, Donald Trump was a scary figure to me.

(Dan chuckling) And I felt like the best, one of the things that I learned doing a lot of the work that I've done in the LGBT world was, a lot of times, the most effective work comes from people who are holding you accountable from within your own party, or who are advocating within your own party.

And so I just, if the Dems were in full resistance mode, somebody from the Republican side had to stand up and say, "This isn't who we are, this isn't who we want to be."

And kind of fight him from the inside.

- I mean, it's sort of elementary that the reason more people didn't stand up was because he was then President and it's really hard to hard to do that.

Was it, emotionally, I would have to imagine, that as somebody who has devoted a lot of your time, energy, personal and professionally, personally and professionally, to the Republican cause, to find the rise of this figure under the Republican banner, to be, not just dispiriting, but kind of heartbreaking.

- [Sarah] Tim, you wanna take that?

We could both speak to this, but.

(everyone chuckling) - [Tim] Sure, yeah.

I mean, I thought was coming at you (laughing).

I was just thinking how dispirited and heartbroken I was, while thinking about what your answer was gonna be.

Look, yeah, I mean, at the most personal level, for me, I mean, I had been in the inside of Republican politics and Republican rooms.

I mean, these were my friends, these were my business colleagues.

And I think we'll get more into the history later in this hour, but I knew the possibility that kind of the Nationalists, you know, bigoted, populist could kind of takeover the Republican party.

And I'd been in primaries.

I saw that there was an appetite for this among voters.

I lived through the Romney/Huntsman primary, where I was first with Huntsman, then with Romney, and saw how barely Romney eked out a victory against Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

And so I knew that somebody could win.

What I didn't think is that somebody as, you know, Sarah laid out all of the demerits of Donald Trump.

We could spend all day on that.

I didn't expect somebody, all of my friends, to just go along with that, right?

And I didn't expect somebody as, kind of, clownishly and buffoonishly anathema to all of the things Republicans once stood for, all the things that I thought that I was getting involved in, you know?

And I think that was the part, those were the two things that hurt the most, right?

Watching my friends just go along with that and thinking to myself, "Man, when I've been in these rooms all my life," from when I was a kid, you know, I was volunteering for campaigns when I was in high school.

From when I could barely drive and looked like I was 12 and was an intern on Bill Owen's campaign in Colorado, all the way up until 2016 with Jeb, when we were talking about the American idea, right?

The "Shining City on the Hill", pluralism, free markets, free people, and just all of these kind of fundamental underlying things that I thought everybody that I was in these rooms with and that I was friends with, agreed with me on.

And then to have somebody like Donald Trump run, that's like, "No, America isn't anything special.

"Screw all these guys, screw the immigrants, keep them out."

And to have everybody to go along with it, yeah, it was extremely dispiriting.

It was, I mean, it was heartbreaking.

- [Sarah] And if I could just add, just because, similar to that, the thing is that it wasn't, the thing about Donald Trump is it wasn't a policy question right?

So a lot of politics, prior to Donald Trump, the dividing lines were around policy and things that you believe.

This was a values question, like, deeply a values question.

And so when you would see - [Tim] Yeah.

- [Sarah] People going along with Trump, who you had respected, and especially, I think, if you're kind of our age, right?

So I came of age when Bill Clinton was getting impeached.

I was 18 years old.

So he's getting impeached for having an affair with somebody who's just a few years older than I am.

And I thought, I listened to Republicans at the time.

One of the reasons I was drawn to the Republican party is they had such a clear message then about right and wrong, about the Constitution, about not lying to the American people, about the way you comported yourself and you don't besmirch the Office of the Presidency.

And there was a real values boom around that time.

Character mattered.

That was what we talked about as conservatives.

It was a bedrock principle.

That and objective truth.

(Dan chuckling) And so to sort of watch the entire, everybody that you knew, suddenly have totally situational ethics, "Well, he doesn't mean that", or, "Well, yeah, he lies, oh well", on top of, clearly, character not mattering.

Clearly, all of the things that you've been told for 20 years as a person in this movement, nobody seems to think anymore.

It's like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

It's like you are looking at the sky and you're like, "That sky's blue."

And everyone's like, "No, it's green, I promise you, it's green."

It's that feeling of, "Am I going crazy?

"Or is the world going crazy?"

I've never, ever, the parable of the emperor having no clothes was so apt during this period of time.

Because you felt like you were the little boy the whole time saying, "That guy's not wearing any clothes" (laughing).

And everybody else has bought into a big lie or cover up, and you're just sort of by yourself and you're like, "Are they crazy, or am I?"

And that was how it felt to me.

- We're talking with Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller today.

They're longtime political consultants.

Tim is also a writer for "The Bulwark".

Sarah has been the publisher of "The Bulwark" and also, formerly chair of Log Cabin Republicans.

And we're talking about the current state of and the future of the Republican party, the Grand Old Party.

If you have a question for our panelists today, here at your City Club forum, text it to 330-541-5794, or tweet is @thecityclub and we will work it into the program.

Sarah Longwell, how did we get here?

Because it is not really, it is no longer the party of the values that you described during the Clinton impeachment era.

- [Sarah] We got here for a lot of reasons.

There's not a silver bullet reason.

Tim may have some better answers to this, because I think he saw it happening from within the party.

I think he could see the evolution, real-time, working in politics.

I will say, from my perspective, coming at it more from the media side, look, the rise of social media, the bifurcation of media ecosystems in general.

I mean, one of the things, it's not that people miss it, because everybody knows that Fox News has played a major role.

But when people says, "Look, the voters are what "these officials are scared of," right?

They say they're scared of the voters.

That's true.

But more to the point, they're afraid of the media ecosystems that they live in.

There are very few people in the Republican party who are more powerful than Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and even figures that I thought didn't matter.

I didn't think they really had purchase in the Republican party.

Like, Alex Jones or the folks over at OAN, "One America News Network" or "Newsmax".

That stuff was always kind of a crank side that didn't matter.

But as Republicans became more siloed over time, in their media bubbles, like, you look at something like impeachment and the case that was presented the other day and you think, "Well, how could anybody watch that "and not think that Donald Trump is guilty?"

And the answer is, lots of them will never see it.

Most of them will never see it, or they will see it filtered in such a way that completely distorts the essence of it.

And I think that's not everything about what happened, but it is a big piece of it.

- Tim Miller, is there, beyond the social media and the media environment aspects, the dynamics of all this, that I think everybody would agree with Sarah on.

Is there a policy thing that we're seeing the, sort of, end result of?

Ronald Reagan, very famously, ran and governed against the very government of which he was executive.

(Tim chuckling) You know, that whole sort of, the most fearsome words or whatever it was he said were, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help," right?

So, I mean, is there a connection there?

- [Tim] Yes, there's a connection there, though I would really kind of point the impetus of this back more towards the, kind of, groups that challenged, really, the Reagan-Bush hegemony from within the party.

I mean, if you look at Pat Buchanan, right?

Who I think is the real, sort of, precursor to Trump, George W. Bush is president in 1991 and Pat Buchanan and David Duke challenge him in a primary.

David Duke, obviously the KKK, Pat Buchanan running on this kind of Nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, isolationist platform.

They, combined, got about a quarter of the vote against the sitting president, in George W. Bush, during a time of, this was before kind of, the economy had turned, and which sort of gave Clinton the opening and allowed Perdot to get in the race.

So, a lot of these voters, so this kind of Nationalist strain was always there.

And so then what happened over time, and I think Reagan certainly participated in this, but during my era in particular, we did.

We tried to feed this beast, you know?

And you saw, obviously, the wall becomes a big issue during this time.

Obviously, the Tea Party had elements of this.

And I think the established Republican class tried to kind of feed this increasing Nationalist/populist fervor that was growing within the party.

I was, let's say it's a quarter, 25% in 1992.

By the time Bush is there, maybe it's a third of the party.

And then Bush makes this just massive error with the Iraq war, which radicalizes people further within the party.

And people who were kind of independently conservative minded.

And then this group grows, right?

They look at the establishment of the Republicans and they say, "No, these guys aren't representing me."

"Bush, the compassionate conservatism doesn't represent me.

"The Iraq war is a disaster.

"Why are we spending time over there?

"Why are my friends, and cousins, and nephews dying in Iraq, "when I don't care about whether there's democracy in Iraq," right?

And so, I just think that, sort of, the Cannonite wing grew, grew, grew, partly because of what Sarah talked about in the media, partially, because of mistakes within the Republican establishment, partially because this is a global trend, right?

There are Trump's in, like, half the countries of the world right now, running Nationalist/Conservative parties.

And the established Republican class did a terrible job of managing it.

And they fed the beast.

They made it worse.

They made mistakes that enabled it.

And I think that led us here.

So yeah, I mean, I think that the small government, some of the rhetoric that Reagan used and others sure, I think if you look back at it, it doesn't look as good in the light of day.

But I think that it was more, kind of, allowing this Nationalist strain to grow and feeding it through conscious decisions and also mistakes that made it more attractive.

- Sarah Longwell, earlier you mentioned the idea that Trump could splinter off into a third party, which sounded sort of, I think there was a lot of talk about that in December.

Post January 6th, it sounds like some people advising Donald Trump are saying that you're better off trying to stay inside the Republican party and control the Republican party.

In the meantime, CNN reported, in the last couple of days, that there is a moderate group of former Republican elected officials who are now thinking of splintering off into their own center right party.

What do you think is gonna happen here?

And as a political consultant, political strategist, what do you think is the right thing to do?

- [Sarah] Yeah, there's very much a conversation going on in, kind of, you can call it "Never Trump World," but it's bigger than that.

It's sort of all of the folks who are resistant to this sort of, populist/Nationalist agenda and direction that the Republican party's going, but who also don't consider themselves democrats.

As a strategist, I will tell you I am not a big third party person.

As I understand why people want to do it, as long as we have two dominant political parties, you are relegated to spoilers.

You basically have three choices, right?

You can either become a dedicated faction within the Republican party and fight to change it.

You can break off and be some kind of a third party.

Or you can become kind of the conservative wing of the Democratic party.

And I would say that in this moment, the danger in splitting off into this, sort of, third party idea, is that you probably ended up attracting as many center/left Democrats as you do center/right Republicans.

And I actually think, based on the last couple of elections, there's probably more moderate Democrats than there are moderate Republicans.

And so what you do is you actually diminish the Democrats' opportunity or ability to hold what has become a somewhat dangerous national Republican party at bay.

And so, I'm not in favor of that.

I tell you, I think that there is great value and it is important what people like Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney, and Jaime Herrera Beutler, and Mitt Romney, and all of these folks who are Republicans, who are kind of fighting to hold ground for the same wing of the Republican party.

That is extremely important.

We wanna help those people fight that fight.

At the same time, I think that as long as the Republican party is going to be anti-democratic, they're going to object to free and fair elections.

They're going to lie to voters about an election being stolen.

I think that those things are disqualifying when it comes to holding political power and that there is utility in ensuring that Kevin McCarthy doesn't become Speaker of the House, for example.

And so, helping moderate Democrats, like, a Connor Lamb, for example, beat, sort of, a MAGA Republican candidate in Pennsylvania, would be something that, even as a Republican, I would value because I think that, that while I desperately want there to be a strong, center right party in this country, I don't think you get there without Republicans being sort of beaten back a couple of cycles and realizing that they just can't win with their current orientation.

- Tim Miller, would you agree with what Sarah Longwell said?

That the Republican party, as it's constituted now, is acting in anti-democratic ways?

- [Tim] Yeah, I mean, now that's you're asking me if the sky's blue.

Yeah, the sky is blue.

I mean, the President just literally tried a coup.

I mean, for some reason, maybe it's because we're all in our homes with COVID or because he was so clownish and ridiculous that, I don't think for a lot of people that it's really sunk in that he tried to steal the election.

Like, he legitimately tried.

It wasn't a joke, it wasn't a farce.

It was an attempt to steal the election.

It was a bad strategy for stealing an election, but if you're trying to rob a bank and you come in with a gun and it only has one bullet in it, and there's a bulletproof glass in front of it and you shoot the bulletproof glass and hit yourself in the face, you still go to jail for trying to rob the bank, right?

I mean, just because it was clownish doesn't mean it was true, so yeah, it's anti-democratic and it's happening down at all of these state levels, where Republicans want less voting.

I think the one thing that unites the Republican party right now is opposition to Democrats' efforts to have democracy and voting reforms.

So, absolutely, I think that in some ways they're explicitly anti-democratic, like Donald Trump and trying to steal an election.

And other ways it's kind of, maybe a better way to put it is that the Republicans believe that they benefit from the inequities of the current democratic structure in America and that they wanna maintain and maybe even expand those inequities, rather than do something to level the playing field.

When you look at things like, the Senates made up, whether or not you should add any states when you look at the electoral college, things of this nature.

So, I absolutely think that's true.

I absolutely think they're a threat.

And just really quick, one thing on the third party point, because I think it's important, because this is a question I get everywhere.

Joe Biden, right now, is managing a coalition that runs for almost socialists (laughing), all the way over to free-market Republicans, right?

It is a big tent, it is unwieldy, it is not particularly stable, but he's managing it right now and doing a pretty good job.

He's only three weeks in, but everybody's pretty happy in that unwieldy coalition, with what he's been doing so far.

I think centrist folks, whether you consider yourself center-right or center-left, being the ones to break that coalition up, I think is a really dumb strategy, right?

And that's just like giving the Democratic party to the socialists and to the TSA wing.

And so, I think that the best strategic move right now is helping Joe Biden maintain the center poll in our politics if you're a center-right or a center-left person.

And if things change in 2024 or 2028 and somebody, an anti-capitalist has taken over the Democratic party and there's a Nationalist running the Republican party, then yeah, maybe there's room for a third party then.

That makes sense.

But I just think that the reality of right now, if you look at what Joe Biden's doing, really argues against a third party from a strategic standpoint, if you're a center voter.

- That's a very - Yeah, can I just- - Interesting point.

Sarah Longwell, go ahead.

- [Sarah] Well, sorry, just, if Bernie Sanders had been the nominee, that would be a different story.

- Right.

- But the nominee and the winner was Joe Biden.

- [Tim] Kind of handily, by the way (chuckling).

- [Sarah] That's right.

It makes no sense in this moment to be talking about third party runs for the moderate or third party attempts in the moderate wing of the Republican party.

And I think, look, it just speaks to something that is so tribal for people, right?

That it is hard for a lot of people who've been republicans all their lives, maybe they're socially very conservative.

The just can't figure out how to just accept even making a short term kind of bet on being the, sort of, right wing of the Democratic party and instead they just kind of have to think of themselves as Republicans, which I think is worth, I don't think we have to hold on that tightly to that identity.

I think you have to think about it from a democracy standpoint, what's best for the country.

- Really, there are two things, as we're talking about these dynamics, there are two things that occurred to me.

One is that it's really good for democrats if the Republican party is strong as well, right?

This situation, this instability right now is not just bad for democracy, but also kind of bad for the Democratic party.

It's an instability that kind of creeps in there as well, because these parties sort of create ballast in the system.

But the other thing is that, as you're talking about the anti-democratic actions of some Republican lawmakers and leaders, that this history of our country has been about kind of slowly expanding access to the tools of democracy.

The franchise was not given to everybody in the beginning, and that there is, always, throughout our history, this this ongoing tension between our aspirations to be a truly democratic, more perfect union, and the reality that we're nowhere near that.

And it's always sort of a journey.

That's just me getting philosophical for a moment.

But I wanted to share that with you (chuckling).

- [Tim] Well, Sarah went to Kenyon, so I'll let her do the philosophical (laughing).

I was a GW hack, as you said at the start, so.

(Dan laughing) - Let me just remind everybody that we are with Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller, time Republican strategists.

Tim does not consider himself a Republican anymore.

Sarah's -ish on that one, she said, before the program started.

(Tim laughing) We'll get into that.

I'm sure one of you will ask.

And if you wanna ask them a question, please text your question to 330-541-5794.

Or you can tweet it @thecityclub and we'll work it into the program.

And let me throw a question from one of our viewers at you.

"Are there enough Republicans in Congress "willing to work with President Biden on actually passing "some beneficial legislation, like an infrastructure plan, "for instance, or is it still the objective of most "to thwart, undercut, and block anything "he and Democrats propose?"

Tim Miller?

- [Tim] I think that's a big maybe right now.

I wouldn't be optimistic about it, but I don't think that there's a 0% chance.

I think that getting to a 50/50 Senate sort of changed the calculation on that a little bit.

The problem is, with the filibuster, are there 10 Republicans in the Senate that will work with them on something?

Mab, that number is pretty big, right?

I think that in some ways, right now, Biden almost benefits from it being 50/50, because there's almost very little hope to get to 10, for most things.

Maybe an infrastructure, maybe one or two things, some criminal justice reform, something they could get 10 on, but- - Amazing, really, that criminal justice reform is the thing they could get 10 on.

I mean, that's about- - Yeah, right?

- That's a huge shift, a huge shift.

- [Tim] Yeah, there has been a huge shift on that.

That's a good point.

But if you look at Obama, right, he was dealing with 58, 59, 57, right?

56 democratic senators at the beginning of his time, right?

So getting to 60 was sort of this golden goose, right?

He was like Charlie with the football a lot of times, where he's like, "If I could just get Olympia Snowe "we can make it happen," right?

Where now it's like, to get to the 10th person, you need these kind of republicans who haven't shown much interest in working in a bipartisan fashion.

So I think, in the end, the democrats will end up doing most things on party line with Biden trying to find a couple of things that he can get Republicans on board, that aren't really hot button issues.

I'd have to think about it more.

Infrastructure and criminal justice are two things that pop to mind as potential options there.

- [Dan] Sarah Longwell?

- [Sarah] Yeah, I mean, I'm always more optimistic about this than Tim is.

(Tim laughing) And part of that is, so take what just happened.

So, Republicans showed up, trying to deal with Biden.

The 10 of them, in fact, wrote a letter and they made a counter-offer on the COVID bill.

And Joe Biden said, "No, thanks.

"I'm not even gonna haggle on this with you.

"It's too low."

And I do think that that's an interesting play.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed that there wasn't more back and forth, because I do think that we need to get back to working on this muscle of how you wheel and deal and then create a negotiation where everybody's a little happy and everyone's a little unhappy.

- [Dan] But- - [Sarah] But I do think in Biden doing this, sorry, I'll just finish this.

- [Dan] Yeah.

- [Sarah] I do think in Biden kind of laying down the law on "That was too low," that it gives Republicans a little bit of an incentive to be like, "Maybe we'd come back with something closer, "he might've worked with them."

Biden is interested in working with them.

And so I think that this might be his opening gambit and that down the road with infrastructure, or even some other things, if they wanna get credit for it, right, there may be an ability.

- Yeah, and I'm glad there's optimism in this conversation.

I think we would (laughing) really be down if there wasn't.

But I think in this case, with Biden, he had reconciliation available to him as a route.

So he didn't necessarily didn't need the Republicans as much as they kind of, - That's right.

- Sort of needed to be part of a COVID deal.

- [Tim] Dan, I haven't even gotten dark yet.

You thought we've been pessimistic so far?

(Dan laughing) I feel like I've been pretty even keel, so.

- You have, you have.

So yeah, bear down.

- It's been a long Cleveland winter so far.

- [Tim] Yeah (laughing).

- And so, we do need some sunshine.

Here's another question for you both.

Well, we've talked about the third party.

"But what do you see as, who is the future leader "or a Never Trump kind of movement?"

Both of you were kind of operatives inside of that Never Trump moderate movement.

Is it Mitt Romney?

Will he remain in his role as a sort of senior member?

Are we gonna to see Liz Cheney, or Adam Kinzinger kind of rise, or Senator Cassidy?

- [Tim] Yeah, I'm gonna go first in this so Sarah can think about a good answer, because mine's gonna be sad.

I don't think that there's a real answer to that question.

I think that, unfortunately, the best possible future for a Republican party is going to be with a leader that, at some level, dealt with Donald Trump and collaborated with him.

And I think that, that is why I'm not a Republican anymore, right?

I'm never gonna be able to get there.

It was just too poor the judgment for me.

But I think that there is potential, particularly if things continue to go as bad as they have as they have for Trump over the last two months, that somebody that was skeptical Trump at times, you can talk about this Nikki Haley profile, others, maybe used to, at sometimes to criticize him, but genuinely can be trusted by MAGA voters.

That's a tough tight walk to walk, but I think there's at least a hope for that type of person, a Haley-type to take over the party.

I don't think that there's much of a for a Kinzinger-type, who I really think has been amazing over the last two months.

I admire him a great deal.

I think that, potentially, there is room in governorships and at state levels for there to be either moderate Republicans running or former Republicans.

I look at David Jolly, who's looking at Florida.

He's considered as an independent.

I'd love for him to try to run as a Democrat.

I think that, in a state like Florida that's similar to Ohio trending a little more red, a former Republican running as a Democrat might be a great solution for kind of winning a governorship and then sort of being able to sort of form more of a center wing to the Democratic party.

That seems more realistic to me than somebody like a Kinzinger- - Than a pro-democracy Republican?

- [Tim] Than a pro-democracy Republican.

Yeah, I'm pretty pessimistic about that.

- Sarah Longwell?

- [Sarah] Yeah, I mean, I don't think, Never Trump is not really a thing to speak of going forward exactly.

And so I think when you're talking about it, right, what you mean is kind of the hardcore pro-democracy way of the Republican party, who really resisted Donald Trump.

And I think Tim is right to name-check Nikki Haley.

And I don't say this, I say this with, I agree with Tim that, for me, it's going to be very difficult to ever support somebody who I watched just absolutely buckle for Donald Trump and not speak up when it mattered.

As far as I'm concerned, most of these people have been weighed and measured and found wanting.

We saw how they behaved when the democracy on the line.

That being said, we are a much smaller faction to appeal to, than the majority of the Republican party.

And I think the vast majority of kind of passive observer Republicans who are there for, kind of, broadly speaking, the economic policies or the tribal reasons, right down to almost the base.

I think that Nikki Haley is the one person whose figured out how to straddle to, to kind of hold out hope for those of us who are Trump skeptical, to be the hopeful person and dangle it in front of us from time to time, while also posing with diamond and silk, and making sure to show up at the Turning Point USA events.

And so, I think she is the future of the Republican party.

And frankly, she's the best case scenario future for the Republican party, because there's the alternative.

A close friend of mine, who's a writer for "The Bulwark", Johnathan Lass, argues that I'm wrong to say Nikki Haley.

That I am far too optimistic, that they want pure, uncut, Don Jr., Trump again, or some other - Tucker.

- [Sarah] Trump-like figure, Tucker.

And that Nikki is actually yesterday's news.

- [Tim] Can I just talk to one other thing?

- [Dan] Yes, please, go.

- [Tim] Yeah, I mean, because Ross Douthat, who I don't agree with very often actually, made a point this morning that I did agree with, which is that he thinks the best case for a future republican leader is somebody that probably wasn't even a figure during the Trump era, right?

And I think that if you look at the, I mean, look, the last two presidents, right?

I mean, Barack Obama was not really a public figure four years out.

- [Dan] Mm-hmm.

- [Tim] It was that '04 convention speech as a state senator and then he's the President.

Obviously, Donald Trump was, I guess, a public figure, but not really a serious political figure in any way before he wins.

- [Dan] Mm-hmm.

- [Tim] So I don't necessarily- - Like a Pete Buttigeig of the right?

- [Tim] Pete Buttigeig, right, exactly.

I mean, I think had things broken a little differently, Pete maybe could have been the nominee in the Democratic party.

So, I think that, that is maybe your most hopefully.

That somebody can kind of avoid having to navigate all of the muck and scandal and controversy of the Trump era, and kind of take the posture, which I don't agree with, but again, which is going to be better than Tucker Carlson or Don Jr., which is like, "He did some good things (chuckling)."

He should be a little tight on immigration and these guys did care a little too much about foreign wars.

But we also need to care about and pluralism and not banning people for their religion from the country, right?

Like, that somebody could kind of emerge like that, that isn't quite as stained by the Trump era, maybe that's a state-level political figure now, maybe that's another outsider.

- In focus groups with Trump voters that I've watched, and that you both have probably conducted and watched as well, some Trump voters have said, after all of this, after January 6th and believing that the election was stolen, that they are completely done with the party, they're done with elections, they're done with political participation.

Do you think that's true?

Do you think that those hardcore Republicans, of the 10 million who Trump brought into the party, that they are actually going to not vote again?

- [Sarah] Those are not Republicans.

This is actually one of the keys to this, right?

These are Trump voters.

And this is the reason that Republicans don't know to do right now, because they do not know how to get 74 million people to vote for them.

They just don't know how to do it.

They look at what happened.

They're basically, look, if the coalition for Republicans is a straight line, on one side you've got Trump's people, low propensity voters, people who never voted before, but now they are and suddenly you're viable in ways in which you couldn't have imagined in 2012 you'd be viable, turning out these white, working class voters.

But on the flip side, your ride or dies, the people who've been with you forever, these college educated, Republican voters in the suburbs, they're starting to peel off, because they don't want to be in a political coalition with Marjorie Taylor Green.

And so you start to be kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't.

And I think the worst case scenario for them is Trump is now out of the picture and so you lose all of those people who were just there for the pure, uncut Trump, but you've still got Marjorie Taylor Green and the party going off the rails.

So suburban voters are also like, "I'm outta here, "because Joe Biden's a perfectly normal politician "that I can vote for."

And they find themselves sort of cratering without being able to do either of those things with anybody but Trump.

- Help us understand how Ohio fits into this picture.

We have Republican leadership across the state in Mike DeWine and Senator Rob Portman, John Husted, Dave Yost, and others, and we have, also, Congressman Jim Jordan (Tim chuckling) and Larry Householder, the former House Speaker, now under federal indictment.

Would George Voinovich recognize any of what's going on?

- [Tim] Well, George Voinovich would probably have put on a MAGA hat, Dan.

I don't think that there's any reason to have hope for people from the past.

Everybody that lived in the present put on the MAGA hat, except for, like, two of us (chuckling).

So, I don't look back with a lot of hope that people would have acted differently from a different era.

I hope I'm wrong.

I apologize if any of the Voinovich family is listening.

But look, I think that Ohio is unique in that, I think Kasich staying power, political staying power, and Kasich kind of had this ability to attract working class white voters in a little bit of a different way than Trump did, and much healthier way.

Obviously, I'm partial to Kasich.

And so, I think that kind of the transition to Trumpism happened at a different time in Ohio.

When Borges, who got wrapped up in that scandal as well, was head of the Ohio GOP, it was really one of the last Republican parties in the country that was not Trumpified, right?

The Kasich Ohio party in '16 was one of two or three parties that didn't really go along with it from an institutional - John Kasich won Ohio in the primary.

- [Tim] Yeah, exactly.

So from an institutional standpoint, now all 50 Republican parties are run by absolutely insane people, you know?

The, I believe that Hugo Chavez stole the election and every local state party is crazy now.

The Ohio one stayed longer, so I think that, DeWine, obviously there's the family connection, Husted.

So these are kind of vestigial republicans, right, that are running the state.

So, I think it's an interesting laboratory, this primary coming up, actually.

The Ohio Senate Republican Primary is a very interesting one and I think that what you've seen Mandel do over the past week, which is basically tell the big lie and say that Republicans have stolen the election shows you where he thinks the party is.

And I think he's the front runner.

And so I think that'll be interesting.

- Sarah, I know that there's some domestic disturbances behind you it sounds like.

- It's mine.

- That was Tim's!

- Oh, it's yours Tim?

- That was my daughter.

- It was Tim's, I totally thought it was yours, Sarah, because you smirked.

- That was so sexist.

I'm gonna just call you out on that right now.

(everybody laughing) - [Sarah] You think it's the woman's- - [Tim] Yeah, I didn't we were gonna be parenting today.

We thought that the movies, "Monsters Inc." was gonna solve the problem, but I guess not.

- [Sarah] See, I knew it was Tim's because Tim's child makes frequent appearances on livestreams and podcasts.

- Well, Tim, if your child would like to run for Senate, please bring them forward now.

(Sarah laughing) A lot of people are throwing their hat in that ring.

Sarah- - I don't think she'd be a good fit in the Republican primary in Ohio, but.

- Sarah Longwell, what do you make of how that Senate primary, I mean, we're two years out from the election of 2022.

But what do you make of how that's coming together or emerging?

- [Sarah] In Ohio specifically?

- [Dan] Yes.

- [Sarah] Yeah, it's interesting.

I was so concerned about Jim Jordan being the nominee, who I think is a unique - Why?

- [Sarah] I think Jim Jordan is a uniquely unpleasant figure in American politics.

(Dan chuckling) I think that my litmus test these days really for how disqualified I think somebody is for public office is the extent to which they were promoters of Donald Trump's lie that the election was stolen.

And I think that Jim Jordan certainly makes the top 10 list of people who push that really hard.

He has been somebody who has made, sort of stumping for Donald Trump his raison d'etre.

And so that was my concern.

And then, of course, he says- - [Dan] I should mention that we've invited Jim Jordan to speak here at the City Club a number of times And he has said yes, but hasn't scheduled it ever.

- [Sarah] Oh.

- But hope does spring eternal.

Sarah, continue, please.

- [Sarah] So when Josh Mandel announced, in the way that he announced, which is to also say, "I am here to provide all of you with uncut support "for Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda," and also with the lie the election was stolen (laughing).

- Yeah, and you are almost quoting his announcement verbatim except for that I think you inserted the word 'uncut'.

- [Sarah] Yeah (laughing), and so, I think that I didn't know that it could get worse than Jim Jordan and I'm not necessarily sure that on the worst scale, but it seems as though Mandel is insistent on being among some of the worst.

- [Tim] The interesting thing with Mandel, and I just think the telling thing about this Ohio Senate primary as it's shaping up with a former party chair and with Mandel and others is, these are not kind of a new MAGA generation running in this primary.

Yeah, right, I know, maybe somebody else will get in.

But Mandel, so in 2018 as you guys know, he kind of flirted with the alt-right and had this sort of controversy where he was getting Mike Cernovich and all of these other really grotesque, racist figures that he was playing footsies with.

But in 2012, when he first ran against when he first ran against Sharid, he kind of positioned himself as just a general Republican guy.

I mean, in 2012, Josh Mandel wasn't any different than Marco or, sort of, Rob Portman, right?

And he didn't really position himself as significantly more outside of what you would have thought of a Rob Portman-type Republican.

And so to see now him in 2018, have to kind of try to court the far right, and then now he's doing this, sort of, big lie nonsense, I think is telling, right, for what is happening with this party, right?

Which is that you have a very small number of people who are pure MAGA, that they want the party to be Nationalist, that they are maybe racist themselves, that they are conspiratorial themselves, and they wanna overthrow the establishment.

But that's only like 20% of the politicians, maybe even less.

The big group, 60% of them, are scared of the 20 and are just kind of playing cosplay, racist MAGA, in order to get by.

And I think that that's what you're seeing from most of the politicians, which is why it's so disappointing and enraging and frustrating.

And I think that it's possible that every candidate in the Ohio Senate race will end up being in the middle 60%, which is people who, if Mitt Romney had been President, they would have been Mitt Romney Republicans.

But now that they see that the tea leaves are moving the other way, they're gonna pretend to be MAGA Republicans.

And that's where I see all of, basically, the main Ohio players right now, besides Jordan, who I think is really the uncut, real deal.

- Is there room in the future of the Republican party for the Dave Joyces of the party, members of the Problem Solvers Caucus?

- [Tim] (chuckling) I love the Problem Solvers Caucus.

It just seems so silly now.

We'll see.

Look, there were 11, 10?

I had 11 because of Romney.

10 House members voted to impeach.

10, like that was it, right?

So.

- And Anthony Gonzalez, you know?

- [Tim] Yeah, and Gonzalez.

And I think Gonzalez is actually an interesting model.

I'm glad you brought him up, because I meant to bring him up.

He's an interesting model, because he is not positioning himself like Kinzinger, right?

As somebody who is a friend of the "The Bulwark", Never Trump crowd, right (laughing)?

He very much is positioning himself as like "I'm a new kind of conservative, who has some," he's conservative ideologically, I think that he's sympathic to Trump in some of the kind of changes within the party, from maybe sort of this old-line, Republican party that was outdated.

But at the same time, he's like, "I also see reality.

"And up is up and down is down, and this guy tried to coup "and incited a mob that killed a cop.

"So I have to voter to impeach."

I'm intrigued by that.

Now, Mandel attacked him, but I'm glad that there are Gonzalez's out there, because one thing we've been missing the last four years, is people who don't go full anti-Trump, who just say, "I'm gonna call some strikes here "when you're over the line, but I'm still gonna be "a conservative, still gonna be a republican."

Ben Sasse tried that for, like, a minute.

And then we went in hiding until he won his primary and then he came back out and started doing it again.

But I'm interested in a Gonzalez type to really give that a try.

Because that hasn't been tried yet, and I'm encouraged at the fact that, that might work.

- And like many of those other nine Republican Congressional Representatives who voted for impeachment, he faced local censure attempts, but in the end they didn't succeed in censuring him.

Sarah Longwell, another question from a viewer.

"In the wake of Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, and Richard Burr "all making these early announcements that they will not "seek reelection, do you see more "republican incumbent senators deciding "they don't wanna be a part of the party's future?"

- [Sarah] Yeah, well then Shelby retired, also.

I mean, there is, the way that I would describe this is, it's like the dinosaurs fashioning their own meteor.

Because people like Rob Portman, people like, let's talk about Marco Rubio, okay?

That chances of Marco Rubio getting primaried by Ivanka Trump are pretty good.

And when he got asked about this on national TV, he kind of (chuckling) started stammering around.

Neil Cavuto had said to Marco, "Well, I hear that Ivanka Trump's thinking about a primary."

And he goes, "Oh, um, uh, well, I like Ivanka Trump."

He didn't, these guys have created the environment in which the Trump brand is everything.

The whole litmus test for their reason for being is their fidelity or their commitment and loyalty to Donald Trump and none of them can be MAGA enough for people.

Look at Lindsey Graham.

When Lindsey Graham decided he was gonna buck Trump after the insurrection, he said, "I'm done.

"I've been loyal to him but I'm done."

What happens?

He gets shouted down in an airport, in a scary way, just like the mob comes for him.

And so, yes, people are leaving the party, because they don't know how to exist as a traditional republican with voters who, all they want from them is loyalty to Donald Trump.

And the fact is, these guys have been so loyal to Donald Trump.

They've gone along with everything and it's still not enough.

Donald Trump still is telling people who just even made the slightest peep that he's gonna come primary them.

And I think some of them, these are young people.

Toomey had a lot of time left, Portman had a lot.

Young in Senate years.

(everyone chuckling) - [Tim] And they are though.

- [Sarah] And they're out, because they don't wanna do it.

- [Tim] Yeah, North Carolina is another interesting one.

If Lara Trump gets in there, that's one I'm keeping my eye on.

She's an interesting case, because she's full MAGA, unlike Ivanka, who I think wants to still be like the New York and isn't as dumb as Don Jr. And so, if she were to get into that North Carolina Senate primary, you could really imagine, and North Carolina went for Trump, you could imagine having a Trump in the Senate.

That's an important thing to watch.

The Ivanka thing kind of seems more like a fun parlor game.

I don't know that she'll actually primary Marco.

But I think having his daughter-in-law in the Senate is not 100% chance, but 40/60, right?

30% chance now and I think that would kind of create a much different point of view of where we are at within the party in 2022.

- We could do this all day, but we have to leave it here.

Tim Miller is a, I know, it's already over (laughing).

- [Sarah] I didn't know, I'm sorry.

- That's okay, no, no, no, it's okay.

Tim Miller's a writer with "The Bulwark", also a political consultant.

Sarah Longwell has her own political consultancy, as well.

We're so grateful to both of you.

These are big challenges for democracy and I think you've helped shed some light.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

- [Tim] Thanks, Dan.

Thanks, Cleveland.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thanks also to our members, sponsors, and donors, and others who support our mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

We've got a lot of great conversations coming up in the next week or two.

Please check it out at cityclub.org.

And you can check out what you missed there, as well as find them on PBS Passport, Roku, Amazon Fire, and other places, as well.

A special thanks to City Club member, volunteer Steve Hinkel.

You've made this forum today possible.

Thank you all.

Stay safe and healthy.

Our forum is adjourned.

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