#142 How Talk Radio Took Over the Republican Party w/ Brian Rosenwald
Release Date: 09/09/2019
#304 National History Day w/ Cathy Gorn & Don Wildman
The Road to Now
Can learning the skills required to do good history serve as an antidote to conspiracy theory? & Don Wildman think so, and in this episode they join us to discuss their work to teach those skills in the 6th-12th grade classroom through National History Day, a program that reaches more than half a million students and tens of thousands of teachers each year. We agree with them and think National History Day is an American treasure, so we hope you enjoy this conversation about what goes into creating good history, how we can better teach that to the public, and how your kids can get...
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The Harlem Globetrotters w/ Ben Green
The Road to Now
Ben and Bob are heading to Tallahassee on April 27 for a live recording at Word of South Festival and the show is free! The Harlem Globetrotters are one of those great parts of American culture that almost everyone knows and loves. For most of us today, the Globetrotters are outstanding entertainers. But did you know that in the mid-20th century the Globetrotters were probably the single best basketball team on the planet? Did you know that they did travel the globe as agents of the US Department of State during the Cold War, but that they are not, in fact, from Harlem? If you want to know...
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#303 The Election of 2016 (and Ever After) w/ John Heilemann (Third Party Series #8)
The Road to Now
The election of 2016 was a lot of things. It was a showdown between two candidates who had been household names for decades. It was the second time in five elections where the winning candidate lost the popular vote. And, most relevant here, it was eight years ago and one of the candidates in that election is running again in 2024, so we’ve still got a long time before we can see the full impact it had on US history. For now though, we can say that the narrow margin by which Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton has already cast third parties- both candidates and outside actors- as central...
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#302 The Election of 2000 w/ Doug Heye (Third Party Series #7)
The Road to Now
Hear the extended version of this episode by supporting The Road to Now on Patreon! On December 13, 2000, Democratic Candidate Al Gore conceded that year’s Presidential Election to Republican George W. Bush. Gore’s concession speech marked a dramatic conclusion to an election that had been contested for more than a month, with partisans from both major parties flocking to Florida to recount ballots in hopes that the few hundred votes that separated the candidates would fall in their favor. Ultimately, however, the final decision on the election came from the Supreme Court, which...
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#301 The Election of 1992 w/ Julian Zelizer (Third Party Series #6)
The Road to Now
In 1992, President George Bush’s bid for a second term did not go well. Despite taking 79% of the electoral vote in 1988, holding office during the collapse of communism in Europe, and serving as commander-in-chief during the US victory in the first Iraq War, Bush found himself flanked by a smooth talking former Arkansas governor and a Texas businessman armed with a personal fortune and a lot of charts. When it was all over, Bush had garnered about ten million fewer votes than he had four years earlier and a 12-year run of Republican Presidents was over. How did Bill Clinton manage to...
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#300 The Election of 1980 w/ Rick Perlstein (Third Party Series #5)
The Road to Now
On November 4, 1980, California Republican Ronald Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter at the polls, beating the incumbent by almost 10 percentage points in the popular election and winning 489 of 538 electors. That type of victory combined with Reagan’s larger than life place in modern political history might lead you to believe the 1980 campaign was never in doubt. But it was. And in early 1980, both men faced viable challengers within their own party, as well as a third party candidate whose 5.7 million popular votes could have changed the outcome of a closer election. The Presidential election...
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#299 The Election of 1948 w/ Jefferson Cowie (Third Party Series #4)
The Road to Now
The famous image of a victorious Harry Truman holding up a newspaper headlined “Dewey defeats Truman” is clear evidence that the 1948 Presidential election did not turn out the way many people had expected. That April, Truman’s approval rating had sunk to 37%, causing even many in his party to consider dumping him from the ballot. That summer, a rebellion by southern Democrats led by South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond promised to deny Truman electoral votes that his Democratic predecessors could have counted on for a century. Yet, despite all this, Truman didn’t just win, he...
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#298 The Election of 1912 w/ Michael Patrick Cullinane (Third Party Series #3)
The Road to Now
The Presidential election of 1912 was an unusual moment in American history. It featured an embattled incumbent President facing criticism from his former allies. It offered voters a choice between the sitting President and his predecessor. And when it was all done, the two men who had previously won the Presidency found themselves bested by a college professor with just a few years of experience in politics. So why did the predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, become so critical of the incumbent, William Howard Taft, that he decided to break away from the Republican party to run against him?...
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#297 The Election of 1860 w/ Michael Green (Third Party Series #2)
The Road to Now
The Presidential election of 1860 is one we Americans know well. That election sent Abraham Lincoln to the White House, southern enslavers to the exit door, and the United States into a bloody Civil War. Lincoln’s leadership in those years and his tragic assassination in the last days of the war propelled the railsplitter into the pantheon of American Presidents. But sometimes we forget that just a few months before the election, Lincoln looked like a long shot. His experience at the federal level amounted to one term in the House of Representatives. His Republican Party, founded in...
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#296 The Election of 1824 w/ Lindsay Chervinsky (Third Party Series #1)
The Road to Now
The Election of 1824 was a turning point in American history. Long before the fall of 1824, Americans understood that the winner would be the first in America’s second generation to hold the Presidency. When the election began, all four viable candidates were technically from the same party. By the time it was over, the election had generated the rivalries and passions that formed the groundwork for a new national party system. How did Andrew Jackson win the most votes in the electoral college and still lose the election? How did John Quincy Adams win the Presidency but ultimately...
info_outlineBrian Rosenwald joins Ben and Bob to discuss his new book Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over A Party That Took Over the United States, which traces the emergence of talk radio as a major powerhouse in shaping the Republican Party. Brian explains how conservative talk radio and hosts such as Rush Limbaugh came to have tremendous influence over the GOP’s policy agenda, ultimately laying the groundwork for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Republican Primary. Brian also discusses how his conclusions have changed since his first appearance on RTN in November 2016.
Dr. Brian Rosenwald is a scholar in residence at the Partnership for Effective Public Administration and Leadership Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and an instructor at Penn. He also conducts research for the Slate podcast Whistlestop, and serves as one of the two Editors-In-Chief of Made By History, a Washington Post history section. You can follow him on twitter at @Brianros1.
Want to hear our first conversation with Brian Rosenwald? You can get it and the other first seventy-five episodes of RTN, along with Patereon exclusive episodes and other bonus material, by supporting The Road to Now on Patreon for as little as $5 a month! Click here to find out more.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.