Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1351 | We Need This Wake-Up Call Before the Midterms | Kevin Roberts
22 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
After Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the right almost immediately fractured.
Chapter 2: What fractures are currently affecting the conservative movement?
Now we have all these different factions and it's hard to know what the future is of conservatism. What is the future of America? Do the midterms even matter? Today we've got the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, to give us the lay of the land, give us some action steps, and to help us know what's next and how we can get involved.
You're gonna love this episode and be so encouraged and educated by it. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's goodranchers.com. Code Allie. Kevin Roberts, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
It is a pleasure. You know that all of us at Heritage think the world of you. Thanks for what you do.
Well, likewise. The feeling is mutual. So I thought there's no better person to ask about the current state of conservatism. And to me, it is not really a simple question, especially post Charlie's assassination. There's just a lot of, I don't know, growing pains, dissensions, fractures going on. So what is your lay of the land from your vantage point?
Chapter 3: How does Trump 2.0 impact the future of conservatism?
Lay of the land in sort of two big ways. Number one is a lot, maybe most of those pain points, fissures, come from the conservative movement growing. And so one thing that's a silver lining to what is some very frustrating and unseemly commentary, especially online, is that it's because it's growing.
And therefore, and I'm gonna look at this as a historian, when any ideological movement grows, that the proverbial problem of a big tent becomes really difficult. But the second thing that I would say to tell you something that you and your audience know well is that this is aggravated by social media.
Not everyone on social media, but the fact that we can fire off something without fully thinking about it then just inflames those tensions. And so the upshot for me, for us at Heritage, because our ethos is not just to add and multiply to make the movement bigger, but to make it more cohesive is is to try to appeal to those principles, those concepts that cohere almost everyone.
We might have some differences of opinion on how we get there. For example, Heritage's family policy paper.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of marriage in American society?
We happen to think it's really bright, right? Otherwise, we wouldn't have published it. There are some friends in the movement who don't love the idea, but we credit them for how they've gone about the discourse of that, right?
And what is Heritage's position on that?
Our position is being conservative, not libertarian, that there's a role for government to help spur greater marriage and birth rates. And there are some policy specifics there that would cost us some money. That's the bottom line, right? And that's the rub, but a very friendly rub between us and some thoughtful friends on the right. And I use that example
to offer a hopeful example of how it's still possible for us as a conservative family to have productive conversations, not for the sake of destroying each other, but for the sake of saying, as these friends on the right have said, we credit Heritage for starting this conversation.
Chapter 5: What leadership lessons can be learned from Kevin Roberts?
I think my colleagues are owed that credit. But we want to refine some of these proposals this way. Those are the conversations we need to have about real policy substance that affects everyday Americans. And that might be the sort of rule of thumb, that we talk about real things rather than just sort of ephemeral things that are easy to opine about.
yeah there was this back and forth speaking of social media between matt walsh and nick fuentes and i wouldn't typically quote nick fuentes but i actually think his position here is representative of what some people think so it's kind of worth noting that matt argued that if we're going to have a dividing line on what's considered the right
Chapter 6: How do the 2026 midterms shape the political landscape?
That he believes, as I do, it should be that those who believe in natural marriage are willing to fight for it, who believe in the cohesion of the family, and who fight for the unborn. That those are essential allies. That we can disagree on some other things or how to go about protecting those things, but those are the core issues.
And Nick Fuentes replied, no, it has to be America first versus Israel first. And again, I think that that is actually representative of what some people on the right think. So what do you make of that back and forth?
Yeah, on the substance of the ideas, I've learned not to talk about personalities, right? On the substance of the ideas, the idea that we're going to define conservatism primarily by our belief in the family being the most important institution is correct. That's always been the case for conservatives.
Obviously, we can expand the movement to cover some other policy objectives, but this increasingly popular criticism of the state of Israel on the right is something that's problematic.
Chapter 7: What divides the Right regarding America First versus Israel First?
And it's problematic on a couple of levels. First of all, let me be sure that people understand, we can distinguish between political Zionism, which is our fervent belief in the state of Israel's right to exist, right? And theological Zionism, which is not adhered to by every Christian. And that's okay, certainly at Heritage, that's what we believe.
But on the right, particularly among young men who follow certain podcasters, there is this desire to create this division between what might be America first and what might be a smart foreign policy regarding other countries. On the facts of the matter, just to delve into this in one more level of detail, Israel as a state is a model ally for the United States.
It's a stronger military ally than Great Britain has been. It can at least field an army, which would be questionable, unfortunately, about the British. We think we have an emerging equally strong ally in the Far East, in Japan, and in a lot of ways, Japan in similar ways could be equally effective in the Far East as Israel is in the Mideast.
The reason that I say all of this detail is focusing on the substance of the matter allows us to see the certain questions, whether it's the family, whether it's Israel, whether it's other questions in the movement with a lot more clarity rather than just using it as a trope, which I'm afraid sometimes that it is. Ultimately, how do we get past this?
We talk about the substance and we welcome the debate as long as the debate is within the confines of acceptable conversation, right? And what we're trying to do at Heritage is have those family conversations rather than say, oh, what you're seeing online, people don't really believe. No, some of them do believe it.
And it's very important that we engage with them so that we can, as we would like to do at Heritage, convince them of the right policy proposals.
And when you're talking about the limits of acceptable conversation, I think what you're saying, but correct me if I'm wrong. Okay, yes, we can talk about some policy disagreements that we might have. Or maybe you're someone who believes that we give too much support to countries in general. Or maybe you have some questions about the alliance that we have with Israel or other nations.
The conversations that are no longer productive are those that are like, well, all Jewish people are responsible for X, Y, Z, or choose to run the world, or the Zionist lobby has disproportionate. power and is persuading all of these podcasters and politicians.
Is that kind of how you're distinguishing between productive, acceptable conversation and then the conversations that kind of devolve into conspiracy, et cetera?
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Chapter 8: How is generational divide influencing foreign policy views?
Facts or even theories versus conspiracy theories. And it can be very difficult to figure out what someone's motives are. But when people online are saying that Donald Trump of all people was into this current conflict with Iran because of Israel? That's just absurd on its face, if for no other reason than knowing how Donald Trump operates, right?
It doesn't mean that we can't have a conversation about the future of America's alliances with other countries, about the wisdom of certain policies of the Israeli government, but having those conversations, which are legitimate conversations,
actually is a way of giving oxygen to the kinds of discourse we need to be engaged in on the facts and even some of the well-informed theories, rather than giving oxygen to the conspiracy theories.
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I haven't read those, so you might want to check them out before your kid reads them. I'm sure they're awesome. Good, clean fun for the entire family. Go to PennyPangolin.com slash Allie. PennyPangolin.com slash Allie. I saw this poll that said that among Gen Z, 75% consider themselves pro-Palestine, and then the 25% consider themselves anti-Israel.
Obviously, as you were saying earlier, all of us want to multiply conservative ideas, and we want more people to vote for the policies that we support. How do we go about on what seems like such a polarizing issue? It does almost seem like the polarizing issue right now.
How do we go about bringing people in when the Republican Party is largely pro-Israel and the younger voters seem to be completely opposed?
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