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,...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“I know that I would not be in this position if we didn't have the Final Four system,” Representative Mary Peltola (D-AK) tells us in this first Purple Principle episode of season four. “Because I would not have made it through a partisan primary.”  A native Alaskan, Representative Peltola gained re-election to the US House on the third ballot of the nation’s first Final Four election in 2022. Final Four Voting combines a unified open primary with a ranked choice general election. The...

“The American people want serious people to solve serious challenges,“ declares former Texas Congressman Will B. Hurd in this season finale on the U.S. House of Representatives. “That’s the lesson we should take away from 2022.”  But he’s quick to add, “I don’t think that lesson is going to be implemented in this new congress.” Hurd then dissects the GOP factionalism at work in the contested house speaker’s election and confirms that most House members are more interested in “messaging...

“It appears to me that the fever has broken,” observes Bob Corker, former two-term GOP Senator from Tennessee. ”And there's gonna be a real serious debate on the Republican side of the aisle as to where the party is gonna go in 2024.” Fading GOP loyalty to former President Trump is the elephant in the room as we discuss the 2022 election, successes of the current Congress, and prospects for governance going forward.  “Right now you got a lot of folks feeling their oats over in the House”...

Happy Thanksgiving from The Purple Principle team! This week we’re revisiting an episode from November 2021.  In the aftermath of another fractious election season, and heading into the holiday season, it feels appropriate to bring psychologist Tania Israel back into the feed. She explains the active listening methods we need to have genuine conversations across the political divide and across the dinner table, when opposing viewpoints are in the house. Are we Americans trapped in our end...

The 2022 election will consume us over the coming days, weeks, and months. There will likely be recounts, runoffs and court challenges before a new Congress takes shape.  This Purple Principle episode highlights concerns surrounding this election, with many GOP candidates questioning election integrity, while providing context and perspective from a variety of guests.  For Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability Project, the question is whether Democrats nominated “broadly appealing...

Alaska will soon be the first state in the country to hold a ranked choice voting election for all representatives, state and federal. But can RCV moderate our severely polarized politics? If the August special election and current congressional campaign are any guide, the answer is a hearty, “Maybe.”  That’s according to Matt Buxton, editor of the Alaskan political blog The Midnight Sun and co-host of the Hello Alaska! podcast. TPP Reporter Dylan Nicholls interviewed Buxton just after the...

TPP wraps up its series on Hispanic American Swing Voters with three very different yet highly insightful guests. Northwestern University historian Geraldo Cadava tells us that both parties have spun overly-simplistic narratives of the Hispanic voter – a mythical concept in his view.  Carlos Mencia has always been an iconoclast aiming satire in all directions. He reflects on his immigrant childhood, as one of 18 children, and living with relatives in a rough East L.A. neighborhood. And he...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey How large a role will Hispanic voters play in 2022 elections? (Hint: It’s big.)  How are the major parties appealing to this diverse voting bloc? (Not so effectively.) Can Latino candidates turn down the heat on our political rhetoric? (No sign of that yet.) In the 2nd episode of our Hispanic American Swing Voters series, these questions frame our discussion with...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here to answer our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Today, we're re-podcasting the first episode of our 3-part mini-series on Hispanic American swing voters. The series continues into October for National Hispanic Heritage Month. Is a large and growing segment of Hispanic American voters now leaning independent? That’s the operative question in this first episode, featuring three noted experts: former Florida...

How’d you hear about The Purple Principle? Click here for our one question survey: https://fluentknowledge.com/tpp-survey Massachusetts has long been a bipartisan enigma at the state level, electing moderate GOP governors for 30 of the past 60 years while seating a Democratic legislature. But the governor’s office is expected to revert to Democrats in 2022 and beyond. In our second MA episode, we discuss this unique history and inflection point with former moderate GOP Lt. Governor, Dr....

“There are all kinds of ways in which we, as a community, enable the American story,” says Deval Patrick, implying that our success stories overemphasize the individual.   Patrick’s own American story is a remarkable one, starting in a tough South Chicago neighborhood, journeying to a planet called boarding school, then onto Harvard and a distinguished legal career, before two terms as Governor.  He recounts how then Senator Barack Obama was initially quizzical, though supportive, of...

Fluent Knowledge, producers of The Purple Principle (TPP), have a new podcast in the health, wellness and medicine realm, My Body Odyssey (MBO). With TPP staff on summer break, we’re introducing TPP listeners to MBO with our second episode, featuring IronWoman Diane.  Imagine taking on a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile cycle, and then a 26.2 mile run. And in a single day, not a week or a month. Now add the additional challenge of type one diabetes. “My entire race plan,” Diane tells...

In our continuing state series, TPP visits the state with the highest percentage of non-partisan voters (58%): vast and varied Alaska. On August 16, 2022, for the first time in the US, Alaskans will use the final four voting system, which combines a unified open primary with ranked choice voting in the general election. Our special guests for this episode, each interviewed by TPP Reporter Dylan Nicholls, offer three perspectives on Alaskan political culture, the new election system, and the...

This week we revisit an episode from 2020, adding some fresh questions and analysis on its lessons in GOP history from a 2022 perspective. Is Donald Trump losing his populist grip on the Republican Party after 6 long years, a failed re-election, a failed campaign to reverse that result, and the January 6 insurrection?  According to recent polls, critical editorials from The New York Post and Wall Street Journal, and an abscess of Trump coverage on Fox News, that may be the case. But does...