Danny and Derek welcome to the show writer Paul Heideman to talk about the transformation of the Republican Party from the main party of business interests to a fragmented, personality-driven coalition. They discuss the historical relationship between Republicans and capital, the disorganization of American employers, the political economy of the 1970s crisis, Reagan-era fragmentation, Gingrich and fundraising, globalization and bipartisan neoliberalism in the 1990s, the Koch network and Tea Party, Republicanism after Romney, the conditions that enabled Trump’s rise, and much more.
Read Paul’s book Rogue Elephant: How Republicans Went from the Party of Business to the Party of Chaos.
More content from this blog
- To Outlive Tyranny, by Yangyang Cheng – 18 September 2025
- Organization and Its Theories, Part I, by Jasper Bernes – 2 July 2024
- Democratic Republic of Congo: Eternal Return of the Same? by François Polet – 25 June 2024
- What Are You Fighting For? Sally Abed and Jess Bricker in Conversation – 16 October 2025
- A Win for the Left? On the results of the recent presidential elections in Sri Lanka, by Kavita Krishnan – 2 October 2024
Except where noted otherwise, original writing and translations produced by the Left Renewal Blog Collective are published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Republished and translated material remains subject to the licence and terms of its original publication.