Heather Cox Richardson on Why “The Republican Party No Longer Exists”

Scott Galloway opens by asking Heather Cox Richardson, eight days before the midterms and with nearly 30 million Americans already having voted, whether history offers a comparison for the current moment. Richardson says the political situation resembles the 1850s, the 1890s, and the late 1920s and early 1930s, but she is most intellectually focused on the 1850s. In that period, the Whig and Democratic parties broke apart, new parties emerged, and the Democrats became associated with oligarchic power while the Republicans formed around opposition to that power. Richardson says she would “lay money” on the American parties being reconstructed. She sees the Republican Party as having ceased to exist as an ordinary party and becoming a MAGA movement tied to Donald Trump. Trump, she argues, was always more salesman than politician, and Republicans have tied themselves to him financially: they have lost a broad donor base and effectively put their email lists and fundraising machinery into Trump’s pocket. She sees room for a new Republican coalition among people who opposed Trump’s direction but do not yet know what they stand for. New issues—including data centers, climate change, and AI—could let previously separate constituencies make common cause. Richardson compares this to the 1850s, when former Know Nothings, despite their anti-immigrant origins, moved into the Republican Party once it became the strongest anti-oligarchy vehicle.

Galloway proposes that the central conflict today is not one single issue such as slavery in the 1850s, but “entrants versus incumbents,” or young people against older beneficiaries of institutions. He cites a statistic that people aged 75 and older have increased their net worth by 37% since 2022, while people under 25 have seen theirs fall by 23%. He says anger over data centers, water, and noise may be a vessel for broader resentment about income inequality and a system in which younger people are asked to pay for a prosperity they did not experience. Richardson reframes the Civil War-era conflict. She says the fundamental question was whether government would protect property controlled by a small elite or protect the community as a whole. Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” and government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” represented a rejection of the idea that the Constitution existed primarily to protect elite property. She sees a similar question today: whether government responds to a few powerful people or serves everyone else. She says the current backlash is directed more at billionaires than at retirees, and that opposition to data centers symbolizes resistance to decisions made for a narrow group of powerful interests. Galloway agrees that the modern version is income inequality and regulatory capture, with wealth and influence running away to a small number of owners.

Galloway asks how public anger over inequality becomes laws and durable political movements rather than merely producing an election swing. He argues that the past 40 years focused on creating wealth, while the next decade may focus on the responsibilities of wealth. Richardson says this question caused her an intellectual crisis while writing about the Republican Party: she had emphasized political ideas and the “zeitgeist,” but discovered that a small dinner party could influence the course of Reconstruction. Her conclusion is that ideas and policy influence one another. When people are broadly content, they do not pay close attention to politics, and dissidents can be dismissed as eccentric. As leaders fail to respond, dissatisfied people find one another and begin speaking up. The decisive step occurs when new political figures become vehicles for those demands and win office with the support of the organized public. Richardson points to candidates such as Florida’s Nixon and Iowa’s Ryan Poindexter as people who could not have broken into the system ten years earlier but are now running strongly. She compares this process to the Progressive Era, when younger politicians with new ideas gained power around 1900. Her lesson is that social change requires both pressure from below and candidates who can carry that pressure into government.

Galloway worries that if Democrats take the House and Senate, they may mistake voters’ preference for Republicans losing for genuine enthusiasm about Democrats. He describes the likely result as “they hate us less,” or a “red rip tide” rather than a blue wave. He asks what a successful party does after a midterm victory and how Democrats could build a relationship with centrists before 2028. Richardson agrees that the first vote in periods of major change is often primarily against the other party. The governing party then has to “hit the ground running.” She says Democrats have identified popular measures such as extending the child tax credit and extending Affordable Care Act subsidies. If Republicans block those measures in the Senate—or if Trump or Vance vetoes them—Democrats could make the opposition own the decision publicly. She also points to the post-Watergate period. The legislators elected in 1974 passed laws in 1975 and 1976 to restrict presidential power, and the Carter administration then passed substantial social-welfare and progressive legislation in 1977 and 1978. Richardson says historians often overlook this because the oil and hostage crises dominate memories of the 1970s. She now wonders whether those four years of legislation helped provoke the Reagan Revolution as much as Reagan’s earlier opposition to civil rights did.

The conversation turns to the 1920s and the growing fortunes of people connected to the current administration. Galloway cites figures including a reported increase in Trump’s revenue from $622 million the year before taking office to at least $2.2 billion in 2025, a Forbes estimate that Trump became $2.7 billion richer after winning in 2024, and a U.S. Gini coefficient of 0.85. He jokes that extreme inequality historically ends with “piano wire” or a guillotine. Richardson says she cannot understand how billionaires who claim the economy is fine fail to recognize the danger of such inequality. Richardson argues that farmers, workers, entrepreneurs, and small-business owners could form a broad coalition against concentrated corporate power. Entrepreneurs who cannot enter markets dominated by billionaires may join workers and farmers in demanding change. She invokes Franklin Roosevelt’s approach during the Depression: FDR did not claim to be destroying capitalism, but argued that regulation and social protections were necessary to preserve it against fascism and communism. The New Deal’s “great compression” narrowed the distance between the top and bottom of the income distribution. Both speakers see an opening for a new era of trust-busting. Richardson says Reagan-era antitrust policy, influenced by Robert Bork, focused narrowly on consumer prices and permitted harms to workers and the environment. Returning to a broader assessment of social costs could change corporate power without new legislation. Galloway argues that breaking up companies can benefit competition, employment, tax revenue, and shareholders; the main loser is often the CEO who wants to control a larger corporation.

Galloway says a new trust-busting movement would need to address Big Tech, meat, pharmaceuticals, and other concentrated industries. He argues that the breakup of AT&T shows that dismantling a monopoly need not destroy shareholder value: within 11 years, each of the seven successor companies was worth more than the original AT&T. He says the one stakeholder who loses is the executive who wants to sit on the “iron throne” of a larger company. He asks whether Citizens United has a historical equivalent and whether it could be overturned. Richardson says there has not been an identical Supreme Court decision, although the 1890s featured industrialists who controlled large portions of the economy and political system. She compares John D. Rockefeller’s control of roughly 2% of national GDP with Elon Musk’s reported 3% and says concentrated political power has been dismantled before, beginning in the Progressive Era and continuing later. Richardson agrees that Citizens United is the first problem to address. She compares the present to the 1912 election, when Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and socialist Eugene Debs all ran on versions of reform. Roosevelt wanted to break up trusts while preserving a strong federal government capable of preventing them from reforming. Richardson warns that simply returning authority to the states, as parts of the right advocate, could leave mega-corporations free to operate without effective national rules.

Galloway asks whether the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America represents a structural transformation of the Democratic Party or merely a temporary political fashion. Richardson distinguishes the national DSA from candidates at the state and local level who use the label. She says many non-Republican candidates now call themselves democratic socialists, prairie populists, or independents, especially in heavily Republican areas where the word “Democratic” may be a liability. In her view, these labels often communicate support for popular policies rather than a fully developed socialist program. She cites universal health care as an example, saying it has the support of 57% of Republicans as well as independents and Democrats. Other candidates emphasize reproductive health care or workers’ rights. Richardson says the labels conceal less ideological distance than people assume: the important divide is between this broad group and MAGA Republicans. She does not yet see a party-wide platform. For now, the coalition is organized around “we are not them” and support for popular measures. Richardson expects the next two years to determine whether these candidates develop a common political identity. She compares the current moment to other periods when coalitions formed first around opposition to concentrated power and only later worked out the details of their party program.

Galloway describes Elon Musk as a traitor to the West and compares Musk’s reported ability to disable battlefield technology with a hypothetical Charles Lindbergh controlling an aircraft company during World War II. Richardson says the situation looks like Benedict Arnold, an American general who defected to the British and tried to weaken the strategically important fort at West Point. She says no private citizen should be able to override U.S. foreign policy and adds that Trump’s relationship with Russia also raises serious concerns about whether the country has been compromised. Asked about the possibility of Trump leaving office before 2029, Richardson says she is not a doctor but believes Trump is not healthy and may be moved offstage during the next two years. She is watching JD Vance’s public appearances, his effort to consolidate power, the support of technology billionaires, and the apparent exclusion of some members of Trump’s inner circle. Galloway says biology is undefeated and argues for age limits or “age gating” alongside term limits. Both criticize an average elected-official age of about 62 in a country whose average age is about 38. On social media, Richardson rejects a wholly negative interpretation. It has spread disinformation, but it also lets vulnerable communities organize quickly and prevents politicians from delivering contradictory messages to different audiences. She compares it to the telegraph’s role in exposing politicians who spoke differently in different regions. She supports guardrails for algorithms that privilege bots, trolls, and disinformation, while defending the First Amendment. Galloway notes that the same technology helped create Richardson’s large, direct audience outside traditional media gatekeepers.