Reihan Salam wants to remake the Republican Party -- again

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

In 2008, Reihan Salam co-wrote Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream with his frequent collaborator Ross Douthat. After nearly eight years of President Bush, Salam wanted to remake the Republican Party to appeal to the working-class voters it needed. The vision was idea-driven: tax policy that helped the middle class, healthcare ideas that would mean more insurance for more people, and a generalized effort to remake the safety net to support modern families. In 2016, Donald Trump managed to make the Republican Party more popular among working class whites. But he didn’t do it the way Salam hoped. Today, Salam is executive editor at the National Review, and he’s trying to puzzle his way towards a new synthesis on the questions fracturing American politics. In this episode, we talk about the future of the Republican Party, the healthcare debate, and how he would reform our immigration system (and upend the whole way we talk about it). Salam is a fast, original thinker, and he packs a lot into this conversation. Enjoy! Books: Greater Than Ever: New York's Big Comeback by Dan Doctoroff How Change Happens -- Or Doesn't: The Politics of US Public Policy by Elaine Kamarck The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-war Immigration by David Goodhart

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