And now turning to U.S. presidential politics, the Republican race in the United States is well underway.

The candidates are stepping up, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to join later this week after South Carolina Senator Tim Scott threw his hat in the ring yesterday.

>> I am announcing today that I am running for president of the United States!

>> So far the GOP primary field still dominated by Former President Donald Trump.

What will it take for Republican candidates to beat him to the 2024 nomination?

Editor-in-chief of the conservative editorial magazine the national review Rich Lowry joins Walter Isaacson with some answers.

>> Thank you, welcome to the show.

It is a busy week for the Republican primary possibilities.

If you people getting it, but let me start by telling our viewers where you are coming from.

You are very much a traditional conservative who is a protégé of William F Buckley.

For more than 25 years editor-in-chief of the great national review.

And if I remember correctly, you were very resistant to a Trump candidacy back in 2016, tell me what you felt then.

Whether you have come around, what you feel now?

>> We ran a famous cover against Trump before the Iowa caucuses.

In 2016 a bunch of folks on the right made a case against Trump and we ran a tough editorial opposing his nomination.

If you look back there are some things we were wrong, we did not really believe a lot of his assurances that he would be conservative uncertain important policies.

And he was.

For the most part when he was president.

But our concerns about his character and about the effect he would have on the conservative coalition have proved out.

So we are again when he got in this time, we ran an editorial with one-word title, no.

We are open to most of the alternatives but oppose Donald Trump.

>> You seem to be favorable to Ron DeSantis in some of your columns in political, near posts.

When he ran originally in 2018 he was pretty much a traditional conservative.

He has now embraced, and correct me if you think I am wrong, more of the cultural resent and.

Not just the optimistic conservatives like Ronald Reagan.

What do you make of that?

Is that a good strategy and is that something you're comfortable with?

>> A couple aspects of that, is it a good strategy?

Yes.

If he is going to be Donald Trump he is going to have to run a Trump from the right.

He is going to keep in mind, which he will never forget, but some observers forget, the people he needs voted for Trump twice.

They like Trump, they feel defensive of Trump.

They hate and distrust Trump's enemies.

Those are the voters he needs to win.

The substance, a lot of it has been terrific down in Florida.

On the line is government should have an influence over institutions by definition so government should determine how we run our public schools.

Including public colleges and universities within limits.

You need to honor free speech and other principles.

At the edge case that has gotten a lot of attention is Disney, which is not a government entity it is a private company.

But it is a beneficiary of a massive government favor, and that is what DeSantis threatened.

In retaliation to things that Disney had said and is now embroiled in a legal dispute that will go on for years.

>> It seems that he is targeting them simply for their political views and political speech.

Doesn't that make you uncomfortable as a conservative?

>> It does.

That is a bad aspect of it.

Again it is a special government favor that it had Disney said 50 years ago when this district was set up, by the way in several decades we will become a company sympathetic to progressive ideology and oppose legislation to stop children from being taught inappropriate sexual material at a young age, they never would have gotten the special district.

So I think that is what makes it a little different.

And I think it is a very bad thing for a country that corporations are so eager to weigh in on culture war type issues.

>> Why is that?

>> I think it adds to the divisiveness, >> Shouldn't private companies, ever since General Motors a hundred years ago feel that they have a part of society and part of the discourse?

>> Yes they have the right to do it I am just saying it is a bad thing and adds to division in our society.

It adds to the sense that everyone has to take sides on everything.

>> Let me push back on this a bit.

It seems like Ron DeSantis is doing more to add to the divisions in Disney.

He is the one who is taken this to a pretty strong cultural war thing.

>> I don't know.

Who was the aggressor if children are being taught about gender ideology in second grade?

>> Disney has not a right to have its opinion on these subjects when its employees live there?

>> Know that is not what I asked.

Who is on offense, who is on defense.

If you have these teachers who think it's appropriate to teach very young children that are not their kids and are being sent to school just to get an education, if they are being taught any version of changing your gender at a young age, who is being the aggressor?

If they are being taught, who is the aggressor and who is on defense?

>> The governor has done many things that involve these cultural issues including teaching of gender and sexuality in schools.

But also equity, inclusion, pushing back on that.

I just read that even the NAACP issued a travel warning.

Do you think since you said you are worried about people stoking up cultural divisions, that some of that should be tamped down a little bit?

>> With all respect you do not answer my question.

If a small child is being taught in a public school, cutting edge gender ideology type material, is that OK?

Everyone should be fine with it or is it OK for the government to say don't teach that?

And is it really so offensive and terrible if the government says don't teach K through three kids gender ideology?

Let's teach the math, English and how to read.

Why is that so radioactive and toxic in your mind?

>> I think the voters have a perfect right to vote on those things.

I am not arguing one side or the other I get to be the interviewer here.

I was just wondering why Disney does not have the right to say its own opinion.

>> It does have that right but it also has inherently a right to a special favor from government?

>> In terms of the Republican primary it is not just a question of ideology but sometimes temperament.

The question of those who are a little bit stronger in the cultural issues, a little more about the resentments that people understandably feel in this country.

On the others we have somebody like Tim Scott coming in.

Who I think is almost as conservative as anybody else but is running with a different temperament.

What is your take on that?

>> I think one reason they lung Trump is the combativeness.

They want us to fight and that sometimes ends up being a permission slip for all sorts of things you would not want him to say or do.

And it is a big question whether people think...he is being tough on the border, on immigration policy and China and trade, a tendency towards non-interventionism.

Or are they into the persona and affect in the style.

What DeSantis is trying to do is a version of Trump without all the personal characteristics.

Tim Scott is just a totally different phenomenon and more of a throwback to a Reagan type conservatism.

Although people can have an overly rosy view about Reagan who was very tough about the other side as well even though he did it with a smile.

I think Scott has great promise.

We will see, it looks like a two man race but very often this early in a primary you end up being surprised and what looks like is going to be the early dynamic does not pan out.

So it may be that Scott finds a running mate there.

>> what do you think DeSantis needs to do in order to catch up to Trump.

He seems quite behind now in the most recent polls and not really taking off?

>> He has had a bad several months, Trump's had great months.

The inflection point clearly was the Bragg indictment that was politicized.

The indictment that was launched against anyone who wasn't named Donald Trump and a rally around flag effect among Republican voters.

There were a couple polls last week were Trump has been about 60 and DeSantis has been in the teens.

I think DeSantis team is glad to be in this thing and actually have him be formally a candidate and traveling the country and making the case for himself, but it is an uphill climb.

He is taking on the 800 pound gorilla that looked like in January maybe it would shed some pounds and maybe is only 450 pounds or 500 but now may a thousand pound gorilla.

People have gotten used to the idea of dissent is running but this is an audacious project.

Taking on this guy, no one else has beaten, everyone else has been humiliated by and thinking you can find a way to take him down.

>> in what way would there be to take him down if you are a DeSantis supporter?

>> First of all tactically, clearly it is all about Iowa.

Were Trump has been softer or not as strong in the polling.

And there may be some souring among evangelical leaders about Trump.

DeSantis is going to have to focus heavily on Iowa.

He needs to find issues where he can attack Trump from the right on the pandemic response for instance.

Abortion policy is another potential flareup.

But he is not going to win with making a case against Donald Trump that is a very small slice of the electorate.

He needs to win these voters that are very conservative and sympathize with Trump and make the case he did not do a lot of the things he said he was going to do, he very well could lose another national election with bad consequences and I am more conservative than he is on X, Y, and Z.

>> You said that may be DeSantis could take on Trump from the right when it came to abortion politics.

Tell me how you think abortion plays out both in the Republican primaries and in the general.

>> In the primaries, pro-lifers have a very strong position especially in Iowa.

And the heartbeat bill DeSantis signed will be a benefit to him.

The question is in general cannot be used against him.

It is an open question how many of these candidates including Trump and DeSantis are going to endorse federal abortion restrictions and where they come down there on the spectrum.

It would not surprise me if DeSantis comes out for a 15 week federal band and may be Trump gets pushed into doing the same thing.

That is going to be a major issue in the campaign obviously.

Polling for a 15 week abortion ban tends to be fairly strong, but you would end up restricting at least some abortions.

Not a lot but at least some in places like New York and California.

They are very strongly pro-choice.

So that is going to be a major flashpoint.

You our Republican governors in 2022, Brian Kemp and Georgia Kim Reynolds in Iowa, there's the governor of Ohio as well signing six-week bands and winning handily.

It just depends on the place.

It depends on the quality of the candidate but he is going to have to be prepared to defend himself on this stuff.

That is the last thing, Republicans can't duck and cover on this issue.

>> Let me read something I saw one of your columns.

He said Republicans at the national level are scared.

You can hear it in their silence on the issue of abortion after the judge in Texas struck down the FDA approval of what is sometimes known as the abortion pill.

Tell me how that is going to play do you think and why were you saying that Republicans are scared of this issue?

>> They clearly had not through what the post row environment would be.

What there consensus position would be to the extent it was possible to come up with one.

And some of them would just prefer this to go away, but it is not going to go away.

The Democrats won't let it go away.

Among other things they want may be for ballot measures if I'm not mistaken in 2022 in various states over abortion policy and Democrats won them all.

They are putting them on a bunch of other states including most significantly Ohio.

Republicans just mumble and look at their shoes and evade this issue.

Plus it is a hugely moral issue so you should not be trying to evade it.

I think it is sort of strategic shrewdness and some courage are called for an Republicans that say they are pro-life, they want a country that was going to welcome every child and they will fight for that.

But in the midterm, in the interim you are going to have to take some intermediate steps.

You have to have the free exceptions everyone talks about and depending on the state, how restrictive you are able to be depends on the political environment in the states and you hope to move the ball forward.

From a perspective the optimistic argument is that this 50 year battle to overturn this Supreme Court decision, finally achieved victory in Dobbs, there are more restrictions on abortions and the abortion rate has dementia somewhat.

Than ever before and Republicans still won the house.

It does not mean there is not a lot of work to do and a lot of vulnerabilities, but just running and hiding is not an option.

>> early on Governor DeSantis and fighting off the immigration influx that had happened, was sending people up to Martha's Vineyard and other places.

To what extent do you think he can make a strong case against immigration policies and how's that going to play in the primaries?

>> This is an issue I think Trump fundamentally transform the party and in my view changed the party for the better.

Just making immigration, being an immigration hawk is almost as necessary as being pro-life to survive in it Republican national politics.

I think the border has been a mess.

He inherited Joe Biden a stable situation, threw away a lot of policies that actually worked and were humane and we have been reaping a whirlwind.

The DeSantis operation sending these immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, obviously a political stunt to make a point.

The large-scale bus and from places like Texas and Arizona, I think has been fine on the merits because they ask these migrants where do you want to go and they say Chicago and New York and they say OK this is the bus.

And by demonstrating two blue cities that are in sanctuary cities that this is a real problem, that these folks are desperate.

But are also a burden to public services and taxpayers.

Chicago has declared an emergency over a thousand illegal migrants arriving since last August.

The city of 2.6 million.

What do they think it is like at the border?

What are they think it's like in El Paso?

I think actually that policy has really brought home that point and we would not hear the mayor of New York Eric Adams saying we need to close the border into a better job unless New York had skin in the game the way border cities do as well.

>> do you think there is room in the field where somebody could get tracked in by running against Trump and the Republicans primaries and who without most likely be?

>> Running against him?

>> Yeah Chris Christie, you know Sununu.

>> Having that as your main rationale, I am doubtful.

I think it is important to make the case against him on a number of fronts, and this is going to be tricky for someone like DeSantis who wants to win over a fair amount of these voters, you've got to be willing to say he lost in 2020.

Because if he didn't what electability case to have against him?

If he is not a loser he's a victim and maybe he should be the rightful heir to the nomination.

To right this wrong.

So I think that is a key area where you can't dance around, you've just got to say the election was legitimate, he lost in the problem is that he could lose again.

>> Thank you so much for joining us.