b'Right now, Republicans of all stripes \\u2014 Ron DeSantis, J.D. Vance, Mike Pence, Glenn Youngkin \\u2014 are trying to figure out how to channel the populist energies of Donald Trump into a winning political message. The struggle to achieve such a synthesis is the defining project on the American right today. Its outcome will determine the future of the Republican Party \\u2014 and American politics.\\n\\nTo understand what the post-Trump future of the G.O.P. will look like, it helps to have a clearer understanding of the party\\u2019s past \\u2014 particularly the chapters that many conservatives prefer to forget. Traditional histories of American conservatism view Donald Trump\\u2019s election as an aberration in the lineage of the American right \\u2014 an unprecedented populist rejection of the conservatism of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr.\\n\\nBut Matthew Continetti\\u2019s new book \\u201cThe Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism\\u201d flips that conventional history on its head. In Continetti\\u2019s view, the \\u201cpopulist\\u201d energies that Trump harnessed in 2016 aren\\u2019t anything new for the American right \\u2014 they have always been central to it. The American right has always been defined by a back-and-forth struggle \\u2014 and at times a synthesis \\u2014 between its populist grass roots and its elites.\\n\\nI wanted to bring Continetti on the show because this history is crucial to understanding where the Republican Party could go next. And also because this is the first episode in a new series we are producing called \\u201cThe Rising Right.\\u201d Over the next few weeks, \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d will feature conversations with conservative writers, scholars and thinkers who are trying to harness the forces that Trump unleashed and build a superstructure of ideas, institutions and policy around them. But to see where that movement is going, you have to take seriously where it came from.\\n\\nMentioned:\\u201cCan Reaganism Rise Again?\\u201d by Ross Douthat\\n\\nBook Recommendations:Let Us Talk of Many Things by William F. Buckley Jr.Making It by Norman PodhoretzThe Prince of Darkness by Robert D. Novak\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\n\\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog\\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Jenny Casas; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.'