Still Right
MSNBC political analyst Rick Tyler talks about his new book, "Still Right: An Immigrant-Loving, Hybrid-Driving, Composting American Makes the Case for Conservatism."
Greetings—Today, September 12, is my birthday! And the best gift you could give me (if you haven’t done so already) is to (a) support us on Patreon, and (b) give the podcast a five-star rating on iTunes. It would mean a lot to me.
Okay. Enough of the shameless self-promotion. A couple of weeks ago, I had political strategist and author, Rick Tyler on the Podcast. Rick recently wrote a book called Still Right: An immigrant loving, hybrid driving, composting American makes the case for conservatism.
Click here to listen to our full conversation.
During our conversation, Rick and I commiserated on how our industry (political journalism) incentivized tribalism and punishes centrism and independent thinking.
Here’s a lightly edited excerpt where we talk about that:
MATT: As a columnist, I'm looking for interesting things to talk about. So, the day before Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris to be his running mate, there was a news story saying that the Democrats and women's groups were preparing for sexist attacks on Biden's running mate—whoever that should be. And I wrote a piece just a reminder of the sexist attacks on Sarah Palin, and there were plenty...But my audience comes for the anti-Trump columns and tweets. And so, it was perceived that I was like somehow supporting Trump by writing this. I don't even think I mentioned Donald Trump. I suspect you're in a similar boat, right? Like if you defend capitalism, you're offending a certain portion of your fan base right now. And that's not a smart business move if you're in the business of being a commentator, how do you? What's that like for you?
RICK: Well, I mean, my book is to educate. And when I talked to the publisher, I said, “Guys we’ve got a big problem. First of all, my former party—the Republican Party—they don't like me very much. So, I don't think they're gonna buy my book. And we're gonna have a really hard time selling a book that espouses the virtues of conservatism to a liberal audience. So, what do you suggest”? And that's when the title kind of emerged, a very good friend of mine said to me, “you should call it Still Right”. And the reason I chose that title is that it's a double entendre, because people say, “Oh, Rick, you know, he's an MSNBC political analyst, you know, he's gone over to the left.” Well, I've been on Fox plenty of times. It's not really a channel to argue the conservative point of view to people who believe in conservatism, right? One of the reasons I wrote this book is because I don't like it when people bash conservatism as racist, greedy, selfish, because it's none of those things. In the same way, I'm sure the progressives would like me to point out, you know, that they, the progressive movement supported eugenics in the 1920s. …My book isn't about personalities, and it's not really even about Donald Trump. Although I juxtapose conservatism and its policies with Donald Trump. It's about the philosophy of conservatism which I'll break down to two words: ordered liberty. So like if you want to be a libertarian, just take out the “ordered” and you get libertarianism. Liberty means freedom.
… Also, this little anecdote, it's a great story, I think, is FDR, whose fifth cousin was Teddy Roosevelt, who was a progressive. And Teddy Roosevelt had this idea as a Republican, that government was a force for good. And that's a rational position. Government is a force for good. It's not my position. I think government should be limited and should do those limited things well, but it's not ever expanding. But anyway, FDR modeled his entire political career after Teddy, and after Wilson, who was a dedicated racist and Democrat and [part of] the progressive movement. After Teddy, [progressivism] took a really dark turn [and] had begun to support eugenics, which was the idea that…government could determine who could reproduce and who couldn't. And [the theory was] we could, within a generation, filter out the criminal element. And unfortunately, this guy took the turn of, you know, Blacks not reproducing, and it became very racist and very dark and ugly—based on “science,” by the way ...
And so FDR had a conundrum. He couldn't run as a progressive, because progressivism was on its decline, and he didn't want to be progressive in the sense of his fifth cousin, because Teddy was a Republican. So he came up with his own “Contract with America,” which is a litany of all of these progressive ideas. And you know what he did, he called him “liberal.” In his day, conservatives were liberal. They own the liberal moniker. … So, he stole it; he literally stole a great word “liberal” and applied it to progressivism, and so these are liberal policies. And as you know, the country loved FDR, every family had a picture of FDR in their dining room. They were so thankful that he was putting food on the table and his works projects. And I argue in the book that his economic policies actually extended the Depression until the war came. And he wasn't a great wartime president, but probably the greatest political leader of the 20th century, without rival.
MATT: We're gonna both talk about all the problems with the conservative movement today and the Republican Party, but I'm just wanting to sort of do some foreshadowing here. Your book is not about destroying conservatism…it's about restoring it, and for those who think, “why is Matt so nostalgic?” “Why does he not totally burn everything down?” here’s why: I was a nobody. And the conservative movement gave me this amazing opportunity. I mean, I interned at the Leadership Institute. I was down and out, and I had nothing really going for me. They gave me a stipend, they provided housing, and I ended up working there for four years. I could take all their classes for free. It was basically the equivalent of a postgraduate degree. They sent me all around the country, to train conservatives and to get confidence and to actually be not only organizing the meetings, but they gave me the opportunity to speak at them. I met some crazy people, but by and large, most were really good mainstream Reagan conservatives, and so, yes, I have an affinity for this. And it sounds like you do, too. Whether it's the people who gave you an opportunity through campaigns, or the Heritage Foundation, I mean, I assume you feel like a lot of loyalty and love for this movement?
RICK: I do. And it's funny that you mentioned Reagan, I read a chapter in my book. It's called “Reclaiming the Conservative Brand,” and it really talks all about Reagan. And I would like to have written about somebody else besides Reagan, because, it seems sort of like they're talking about Reagan again, Reagan was back in the 80s. I mean, that was a whole different world. It had no internet, and that's all that's true. Although, you know, guiding principles are eternal. And I just couldn't think of anybody who personified conservatism the way Reagan did. And Reagan wasn't always a conservative. In fact, he was…an FDR Democrat…Reagan didn’t like to fly, and they would send him around the country to talk to [General Electric] factories, and he was the host of the GE theater hour and he would come on and do this little monologue before each one and he became famous that way. And Reagan learned to go out into these GE plants and listen to the workers and then reflect back what they had told him all day. And they thought it was brilliant. And [GE executive Lemuel Boulware] would give him these pamphlets to read on the train. And slowly over time, he became a conservative. I don't know that he actually changed his views. I think he just identified with the things he was reading.