The 700-plus attendees at the 2024 Principles First Summit in Washington DC come from various locations and backgrounds yet attended this event for similar political reasons: all are concerned about authoritarian trends within today’s GOP.  Blaire Egan, for example, had been questioning her GOP political orientation since interning on Capitol Hill for a Republican legislator. Jeff Mayhew points to congressional gridlock, especially within the US House, as a major obstacle to functional, representative government. Mike Cantwell has long been a politically engaged military veteran working ..read more

“I’m still in it to hold a mirror up to my GOP colleagues,” former RNC Chair Michael Steele tells us in this episode. “To show them how unLincolnlike they have become.” Michael Steele has borne painful witness to that transformation over the past two-plus decades as the first African American Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, then RNC Chair in 2009-2011, as well as US Senate Candidate.  Steele may have been one of the first prominent Republicans to push back on the populist redirection of the party back in 2009 when he tussled with popular right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh over who led ..read more

“I'm the only candidate that was Head of the DEA, that was in charge of border security in the Bush administration, governor for eight years,” says our featured guest, Asa Hutchinson.  Yet despite possessing perhaps the most impressive resume among GOP presidential candidates, Hutchinson failed to receive substantial media attention or garner significant support from  Iowa caucus goers. There's just so much happening in his world that you have to say is newsworthy,” says Hutchinson of Trumpian media attention.  It's hard to get any other message out.” Hutchinson also speaks t ..read more

“I'm the only candidate that was Head of the DEA, that was in charge of border security in the Bush administration, governor for eight years,” says our featured guest, Asa Hutchinson.  Yet despite possessing perhaps the most impressive resume among GOP presidential candidates, Hutchinson failed to receive substantial media attention or garner significant support from  Iowa caucus goers. There's just so much happening in his world that you have to say is newsworthy,” says Hutchinson of Trumpian media attention.  It's hard to get any other message out.” Hutchinson also speaks t ..read more

“I had been a conservative critic of mainstream media bias for many years,” says author and MSNBC columnist, Charlie Sykes, a “contrarian conservative” and our featured guest. “It  suddenly occurred to me that we had succeeded in not just critiquing the liberal bias, but in destroying  the credibility of  fact-based media altogether.” Sykes is the author of the notable 2017 book, How the Right Lost Its Mind. Within our interview, as in the book, he is unsparing of himself and other traditional conservatives for paving the way for MAGA populism. Yet he emphasizes there is still ..read more

“My goal in this book isn't just to diagnose the problem,” explains Nick Troiano, Executive Director of Unite America. “But to give people a solution that is viable and can happen right there in their own states.” That book is “The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes,” published this week by Simon & Schuster in time for another polarizing primary season. Yet Nick notes in the book, as in our interview, that a record number of 2024 state level efforts to reform primary elections may soon shift the US Congress from gridlock to governance.  “This will be the most ..read more

“Every time I talk to someone about running for office, the first thing they say is, Eric, you have to pick a team,” confides Navy veteran Eric Bronner, COO of the non-partisan group Veterans for All Voters.  “And something didn't sit right with me. So the pump was primed, as my parents would say, for some kind of awakening.” That awakening occurred  listening to a Freakonomics podcast episode with former Purple Principle  guest Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry. In that episode, as in our own 2021 interview, Gehl  highlighted the lack of incentives our e ..read more

Support us on Patreon! HBO's Veep, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, is likely the most successful American political satire in television history. Yet, in seven seasons, the show never mentions the party labels "Democrat" or "Republican," instead using terms like "the enemy camp" or "my extremist colleague from across the aisle." In "Hollywood Presidents for a Partisan Nation (Part Three)," The Purple Principle speaks with Veep showrunner and head writer David Mandel, about this convention and the many challenges to creating a popular political satire at a time when real-wor ..read more

“The rise of the conservative movement on the right and the decline of liberalism on the left have been a preoccupation of mine for 40 years or more,” Thomas Edsall confides in our latest Season Two episode, “Woking up to Backlash.” Edsall describes for us the high amperage polarities between the two parties – how the far left can be the right’s greatest ally, and vice-versa.  He further notes that while the excesses of each party are not morally equivalent, they can often be politically equivalent. And he firmly states that the Republican Party under Trump’s influence has become del ..read more

In a time of extreme polarization, how does Hollywood portray a POTUS with broad audience appeal?  That question is at the heart of our multi-part series on Hollywood Presidents, starting with special guest Rod Lurie, the first to create an independent President in a major TV series, Commander in Chief (starring Geena Davis as President Mackenzie Allen in 2005).  “I definitely made her an independent, then tried to keep the topics we were dealing with something that both sides could relate to,” says Lurie.  Lurie himself has a plotline worth tracing. A West Point-educated milita ..read more