If you ask most Americans who shapes public policy, they’ll picture ivory-tower academics, Capitol Hill staffers, or Twitter influencers posing as experts. But beneath the noise, a new generation of policy strategists is quietly shifting the conservative movement’s center of gravity—away from broad slogans and toward data, cities, real people, and real solutions.

That shift is the focus of our latest Breaking Battlegrounds conversation with Jesse Arm, Vice President of External Affairs at the Manhattan Institute, who recently published a major analysis titled “The New GOP.”

Arm argues that the future of conservatism won’t be decided by cable news panels or legacy institutions—it will be decided by the coalition reshaping the Republican Party from the bottom up.

The Manhattan Institute’s Distinct Role

Chuck Warren kicked off the conversation with a simple question: What makes the Manhattan Institute different from other right-of-center think tanks?

Arm’s answer was crisp: the Institute is meritocratic, multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, and deeply invested in America’s cities.

Unlike many conservative policy groups that write white papers at 30,000 feet, the Manhattan Institute is doing something different:

  • Defending colorblind equality

  • Championing meritocracy

  • Leading the fight against DEI bureaucracies
    (with figures like Christopher Rufo at the forefront)

  • Tackling urban issues: economic mobility, immigration, policing, public safety

  • Pushing to reclaim “blue” institutions—higher education, cultural centers, and major cities

This is conservatism that refuses to abandon the country’s hardest battlegrounds.

“The Google Street View of Public Policy”

Sam Stone described the Institute perfectly:
they’re not watching from the sky—they’re at street level.

While many think tanks behave like universities without the students, Arm emphasized that the Manhattan Institute is different:

They’re campaigners, not commentators.
They’re activists, not academics.
They don’t just publish ideas—they mobilize them.

Arm explained that his work goes far beyond polling and analysis. It includes:

  • Building cross-state coalitions

  • Working directly with lawmakers

  • Developing policy blueprints that can be introduced anywhere in the country

  • Driving real, actionable change instead of theoretical debate

This is the machinery that often determines whether an idea becomes a law—or a headline.

A New Picture of the GOP

Arm’s new report, The New GOP, examines the party as it actually exists—not as pundits imagine it.

The coalition is changing:

  • More working-class voters

  • More minority and multilingual voters

  • A broader cultural range

  • A more urban and suburban mix

  • A new generation of voters shaped by real-time economic and social disorder

This is not the GOP of the early 2000s.
It’s something more fluid, more dynamic, and more difficult for traditional institutions to predict.

Arm’s analysis highlights that the media’s narrative of a shrinking, isolated Republican movement is simply outdated. The data tells a different story—and the Manhattan Institute is studying it in closer detail than almost anyone else.

A Coalition Built for Action

The most compelling part of the interview came when Arm explained what makes the Manhattan Institute effective: they work like a political campaign, not a think tank.

They’re not just writing papers—they’re driving legislation, shaping model bills, and influencing policy at the state and local level where real decisions are made.

It’s a strategy rooted in practicality, not theory.
In action, not abstraction.
In the everyday realities of American life.

Where the Right Goes From Here

If Arm is correct, the Republican coalition of the next decade will be defined by:

  • A renewed focus on merit, equality, and excellence

  • A rejection of DEI-driven bureaucracies

  • A more working-class and multi-ethnic base

  • A growing presence in America’s cities

  • A willingness to fight for institutions the left once monopolized

  • A data-driven, ground-level approach to policy change

It’s a shift happening outside the spotlight—but shaping the future all the same.

As politics becomes louder and more theatrical, the Manhattan Institute’s quiet, methodical approach may end up being one of the most influential forces in defining the next era of American conservatism.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Our next guest up today, Jesse Arm, Vice President of External Affairs at the Manhattan Institute. He recently published a new analysis titled The New GOP, Survey Analysis of Americans Overall, Today’s Republican Coalition, and the Minorities of MAGA. Jesse Arm, welcome to the program.

Jesse Arm: Thanks for having me. Great to be on with you guys.

**Chuck Warren: **Jesse, let’s start right off with this question. What separates the Manhattan Institute from other conservative free market think tanks? What niche do you feel?

Jesse Arm: Absolutely so the manhattan institute is a public policy organization based in New York city but with employees and scholars all over at this fine country. Were sort of we would call ourselves meritocratic multi-ethnic and a little cosmopolitan so we do a lot of work relating to cities and the real through lines the core areas of our work that we do a lot on our defending colorblind equality, meritocracy. My colleague Chris Rufeau was very involved in the fight against DEI bureaucracy.

That is diversity equity and inclusion which we know brings about very little of any of three of those things and we have to a lot of work on economic immigration policing and public safety defending the west in American exceptionalism but I would say above all else what separates the manhattan institute from the other right of center policy organizations in the United States is that we care about cities.

We’re not willing to throw away and we care about other kind of blue institutions in American public life higher education work working the fight for reclaiming the institution

**Sam Stone: **Jesse, the way I put it to Chuck, because I’m a huge fan of the Manhattan Institute before you came on here, is you guys are the Google Street View of public policy. You guys are actually down there where a lot of people are up at 30,000 feet. You guys are touching the issues that affect people’s everyday lives.

**Jesse Arm: **I like that I like that comparison there are a lot of politicians out there think tanks which are basically colleges without student collections of people who might otherwise be at universities working in academia writing books maybe filling out the occasional column in a newspaper.

We’re a little bit different. We’re a group of campaigners were a group of activists we we get involved might main job in addition to overseeing our polling and public opinion research work it could be a lot of makers to build coalitions and create policy blueprint model for legislation that lawmakers can take all over the country and run with internal actionable results.

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