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Overview

Online meetup for curious minds to explore GOP futures—civil, viewpoints-rich discussion that broadens perspectives and sharpens your take.

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This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Click on the link above at the scheduled date/time to log in...

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THE FUTURE OF MAGA & THE GOP: WHICH LEADERS & FACTIONS WILL PREVAIL?

INTRODUCTION:

In this discussion, we'll explore the various factions within the MAGA movement and the Republican Party that have clashed over the past year and try to understand who they are, why they disagree, and what this may mean for the future of the GOP.

Normally, I link some video clips under each section of the discussion outline, but for this meetup I'm just asking our members to check out 2 videos, one from The Hill's "Rising" program and one from a new Youtube channel I found called "The Briefing Room".

This first video is from 4 years ago (Dec. 2021) when Andrew Daniller, a research associate for Pew Research Center, went on The Hill's Rising TV show and discussed their 2021 Political Typology Quiz and had the two hosts - Ryan Grim & Kim Iversen - take it to see their results. This clip is a little under 16 minutes and you can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO4VJUSfs6Q

I'd also encourage our members to take the quiz themselves (27 questions), and then read the summary of the results based on a representative sample of 10,221 American adults. You can read about the survey methodology as well if you're interested. By finding correlations between the way people answered the various questions, Pew Research Center was able to sort them into 9 general categories. Since this discussion is focusing on factions within the GOP, we'll only be referring to the first 5 groups in this discussion - they are:
(1) Faith & Flag Conservatives (10% of US public, 23% of those who lean Republican): intensely conservative in all realms; they are far more likely than all other typology groups to say government policies should support religious values and that compromise in politics is just “selling out on what you believe in.”
(2) Committed Conservatives (7% of US public, 15% of those who lean Republican): express conservative views across the board, but with a somewhat softer edge, particularly on issues of immigration and America’s place in the world.
(3) Populist Right (11% of US public, 23% of those who lean Republican): less formal education than most other typology groups and are among the most likely to live in rural areas, are highly critical of both immigrants and major U.S. corporations.
(4) Ambivalent Right (12% of US public, 18% of those who lean Republican): youngest and least conservative GOP-aligned group, hold conservative views about the size of government, the economic system and issues of race and gender, but favor legal abortion and legalized marijuana and most say they would prefer Trump not continue to be a major political figure.
(5) Stressed Sideliners (15% of US public, 15% of those who lean Republican): lowest level of political engagement, and have a mix of conservative and liberal views.

While the Pew Research Center's Political Typology is considered one of the most empirical & non-partisan analyses of the American public, it's only moderately helpful in explaining the rifts between factions we see in the GOP today because it was done 4 years ago when some of the issues that became dividing lines recently were less salient. Also, the factions we see at the elite level of politics (i.e. politicians, lobbyists, pundits, etc.) are often not present in the general population, since it's a common finding in political science that the general public tends to be "partisan but not ideological", i.e. they tend to have a strong preference for one party, but there's only a few issues where they have a strong opinion. This is why we need a more recent analysis of the factions that have split the conservative pundits & politicians over the last year...

The Briefing Room clip is entitled "The Four Factions Tearing MAGA Apart" and it's about 25 minutes long - you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4amPW4j85Z0

This clip offers an account of the internal civil war within the MAGA movement that focuses on the differences at the level of pundits, politicians & influencers and explains their conflicting goals:

  1. The Neo-Neocons: favor aggressive foreign policy
  2. The Skeptics: favor radical government transparency
  3. The Tech Libertarians: favor business freedom & global talent
  4. The Nationalists: favor protectionism & cultural warfare

Unlike the Pew Research Center's political typology, the Briefing Room's 4 groups appear to be the result of armchair theorizing rather than statistical analysis of polling data. It's also unclear who the speakers are and they're based in Hong Kong, but nothing they say appears blatantly false. The rest of their channel's videos appear to have a strong left slant, but in this clip they merely appear to be more sympathetic to the "Skeptics" (a euphemistic term for conspiracy theorists) and the non-interventionists among the Nationalists and more critical of the Tech Libertarians and Neo-Neocons.

Still, to give ourselves a more well-rounded analysis, we can look at some similarly impressionistic accounts of the emerging GOP factions by journalists at The Washington Post, The Financial Times, and Newsweek - click on the hyperlinks to check out the articles.

* Natalie Allison at The Washington Post sees 6 GOP factions: (1) MAGA Populists, (2) Traditional Republicans, (3) Small-Government Conservatives & Fiscal Hawks, (4) Religious Right, (5) Tech Right, (6) MAHA and other converted Democrats
* James Politi at The Financial Times sees 5 GOP factions that align closely with Allison's breakdown but with the Religious Right - I've reordered them to make the parallels obvious: (2) MAGA loyalists, (3) Hardline Conservatives, (5) Pro-business Moderates, (4) Libertarian Tech Bros, (1) Lapsed Democrats.
* Jesus Mesa at Newsweek sees 3 GOP factions split along 2 axes: Populist vs Institutional Conservative, and Loyal to Trump vs Autonomous - the autonomous populist quadrant is empty (although Nick Fuentes is close to the dividing line).

It's also good to consider the 5 GOP factions outlined in a recent article at The Economist which resulted from their analysis of data from almost 14,000 Republicans who took part in the Co-operative Election Survey in 2024. The Economist's 5 groups are:

  1. Culture Warriors (30%): wealthiest group; pro-gun, majority evangelical Christian, anti-abortion, very conservative
  2. Economic Populists (26%): poorest group; majority female, favor taxing the rich and social spending
  3. Neo-Cons (20%): oldest, whitest & most educated group; pro-Israel & pro-Ukraine, pro-US military intervention, conservative
  4. Moderates (14%): youngest group; pro-environmental regs, pro-gun control, moderate on immigration, skeptical about Trump
  5. Isolationists (10%): smallest group; opposed to foreign intervention, skeptical of institutions, distrustful of election fairness

Lastly, it would be useful to check out the Manhattan Institute's recent survey of 2,294 Republican voters (and 500 additional registered voters) entitled "The New GOP Survey Analysis of Americans Overall, Today’s Republican Coalition, and the Minorities of MAGA". The authors split the GOP into 2 analytically distinct blocs, and then explain how they differ :

  • Core Republicans (65%)—longstanding GOP voters who have consistently backed Republican presidential nominees since 2016 or earlier; and
  • New Entrant Republicans (29%)—recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.

This bipartite division isn't as enlightening as the multiple factions described by other sources, but they explain how these 2 groups differ on a wide variety of issues. The report says:
The findings point to a coalition that is divided into two broad segments. The majority segment—longstanding Republicans who have backed the party for many years—are consistently conservative on economic, foreign policy, and social issues. They favor lower taxes, take a hawkish view of China, remain firmly pro-Israel, and are highly skeptical of progressive agendas on transgender and DEI issues.

But a sizeable minority—new entrants to the GOP coalition over the past two presidential cycles—look markedly different. Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives. A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence. Yet they overwhelmingly identify as Republicans today and voted for Donald Trump in 2024...

The picture that emerges is one of a GOP with a solid, cohesive core and a younger, ideologically unstable outer ring—a coalition that is broader than any Republican coalition in recent memory, but also more internally contradictory and harder to manage. Understanding which voters are likely to stay, which can be integrated into a durable conservative coalition, and which may drift away, will be central to the GOP’s strategic future.

Since we won't be able to explore all the possible disagreements that these various factions have with each other in this meetup, we'll focus on just 3 major wedge issues:

I. THE DEBATE OVER H1B VISAS (AND IMMIGRATION IN GENERAL):
In the 1st section, we'll look at the way the fight over legal high-skill immigration tried to H1B visas highlighted the split between the Tech Right (e.g. Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, Mark Andreesen) and the NatCon/America First Populists (e.g. Steve Bannon, JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham). The charitable view of the H1B critics is they're concerned with exploitation of foreign workers as well as the depressing effect on high-skill wages in some sectors. The less charitable view is they're motivated by a mix of racist nativism tied to "Great Replacement" fears and economic ignorance that leads to zero-sum thinking (i.e. the "lump of labor fallacy"). The H1B visa debate is part of the broader debate over illegal & legal immigration, which otherwise tends to focus on concerns about low-skill immigrants failing to assimilate and committing crime, terrorism or welfare fraud - although these issues don't split the GOP. Here's some additional articles (optional reading):

II. THE ISRAEL DEBATE (AND INTERVENTIONIST FOREIGN POLICY IN GENERAL):
In the 2nd section, we'll look at the way the fight over the US-Israel relationship highlighted the split between the Neo-Cons & Christian Zionists (e.g. Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Elise Stefanik) vs the Non-Interventionists & Groypers (e.g. Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes). The charitable view of right-wing Israel critics is they're motivated by the plight of the Palestinians, critical of Netanyahu's leadership & AIPAC's lobbying, and exhausted by America's "forever wars" in the Middle East. The less charitable view is the concern for the Palestinians is fake (they're otherwise hostile to Muslims), and they're motivated by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, dramatically overestimating the amount spent on aid to Israel (and foreign aid in general), and ignorant of the ways in which Israel (like Saudi Arabia & other gulf Arab states) functions as a US proxy in an oil-rich region which ties into the national interest. Of course, Israel is merely the latest in a series of debates over US foreign policy that have divided the GOP into interventionist & non-interventionist camps. Here's some additional articles (optional reading):

III. THE EPSTEIN FILES DEBATE (AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES & GOV'T TRANSPARENCY IN GENERAL):
In the 3rd section, we'll look at the way the fight over the Epstein files highlighted the split between the Trump loyalists (e.g. Laura Loomer, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi) and the "Epstein Truthers" (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Joe Rogan, Jack Posobiec). The charitable view of the Epstein Truthers are that they're genuinely concerned with the plight of Epstein's victims and want to see his collaborators brought to justice - as well as uncover any of possible ties to foreign or domestic intelligence agencies and evidence his suicide in prison was actually an assassination. Their split with Trump over the Epstein files could be interpreted as valuing "principle over party". The less charitable view is that the Epstein Truthers are deluded and the public obsession with him is merely the latest manifestation of right-wing conspiracy theories about elite pedophiles and sex trafficking that drove QAnon & Pizzagate. Proponents of this view argue that the Epstein files probably contain a long list of powerful friends & associates but no "client list" or "kompromat" - since if Trump was implicated, Biden's DOJ would've released the evidence, and vice-versa for Trump's DOJ being motivated to release any evidence implicating Democrats. They also tend to argue that Epstein probably didn't work for an intelligence agency, and almost certainly died by suicide (which is fairly common in prisons). From this perspective, Trump and his supporters that made unfounded allegations about Jeffrey Epstein during the Biden administration became like the "dog that caught the car" once Trump was elected - and the more savvy Trump loyalists understand that raving about the Epstein files isn't useful anymore or just don't care to pursue it if Trump said to drop it. Since allegations about Epstein are merely the latest in a string of conspiracy theories that have divided Americans going back to 9/11 or even JFK's assassination, we could also think of this as part of a broader debate over declining trust in institutions and the need for government transparency. Here's some additional articles (optional reading):

RELEVANT MATERIALS FROM PAST MEETUPS:

Back in June 2024, we had a meetup entitled "Which Party's Coalition Will Crack First?". The 1st & 2nd sections that looked at the rightward shift of young people and Blacks & Hispanics (particularly men) - both groups Democrats had largely taken for granted. The 3rd & 4th sections looked at how Trumpian populism might alienate major corporate donors and the suburban, college-educated middle class (particularly women).

In June 2022, we had a meetup entitled "Is 'Constitutional Conservatism' Dying?" The 1st & 2nd sections traced the development of post-war conservative "fusionism" as a reaction to the New Deal, the effects of the Reagan Revolution, and the Bush & Obama years as a transitional period where the Tea Party's populism laid the groundwork for Trumpism. In the 3rd section, we looked at the split between the conservative followers of Leo Strauss into the pro-Trump "Claremonsters" on the West Coast and the Neocons on the East Coast who are mostly "Never Trump conservatives". 4th section, we looked at the debate between "post-liberal conservatives" like Sohrab Amari & Patrick Deneen and "constitutional conservatives" like David French & Jonah Goldberg over whether the latter's "live & let live" approach is undermining social conservatism.

We addressed immigration more broadly in a meetup back in back in Nov. 2021 entitled "Understanding the Immigration Debate" where discussed the issue form the perspectives of moral psychology, ethical philosophy, economics, and sociology. Also in Nov. 2021, there was a related Skeptics meetup entitled "Is Mass Migration a Crisis or a Moral Panic?" that covered some of the misconceptions that surround the issue of illegal immigration, particularly concerns about rapid demographic change, an illegal immigrant crime wave, overburdened social programs, and widespread voter fraud.

We address the US-Israel relationship in an meetup back in Oct. 2023 entitled "Should the U.S. Support Israel?" We looked at the debates over: (1) the formation of Israel leading up to the 1948 war and the debate over whether this was an act of European colonialism or Jewish self-determination, (2) allegations that Israel is an apartheid state & war criminal and rebuttals that it's merely acting in self-defense & tries to limit civilian casualties, (3) proposed solutions to the Israel-Palestinian conflict & the debate over whose fault it is they haven't worked, and (4) the debate over whether supporting Israel serves America's national interest.

We addressed Trump's foreign policy more broadly in a meetup back in April entitled "Is There a 'Trump Doctrine'?" Specifically, we looked at: (1) where Trump's tendency towards transactional thinking & non-interventionism came from, (2) the possibility that Trump could achieve a "reverse Nixon" strategy to pull Russia away from China, (3) Trump's aggressive stance towards countries in the Western hemisphere as a revival of the Monroe Doctrine & Manifest Destiny, (4) whether Trump was seeking to join an "axis of autocracies" with Russia & China.

The Skeptics addressed allegations about Jeffrey Epstein working for Israeli intelligence in the 4th section of a meetup back in 2019 entitled back in Oct. 2021 entitled, "Has Israel Conspired Against the U.S.?" They also discussed conspiracy theories about Israel perpetrating the 9/11 attacks (or at least having foreknowledge), rumors about the "Apollo affair" where nuclear materials were allegedly stolen from a US facility and sent to Israel, and the sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty during the Six-Day War.

The Skeptics addressed conspiracy theories more broadly in a meetup back in Sept. 2023 entitled "Evaluating Conspiracy Theories". They looked at: (1) defining "conspiracy theories" as a linguistic & social phenomenon, (2) using logic to evaluate conspiracy theories, and (3) using probability & network analysis to evaluate conspiracy theories.

Intellectual Discussions
Conservative and Libertarian Politics
Republican Party
Political Science
Political Polarization

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