This is the latest in my Former Member series, where I talk to former members of Congress—Democrats and Republicans—to get their perspectives on what it was like to serve, and how things are different then vs. now.
Last week, I spoke with Bob Inglis, a former Republican Congressman from South Carolina who served two separate stints in Congress: from 1993 to 1999, and again from 2005 to 2011.
He isn’t your typical elected Republican—he works on addressing climate change at RepublicEn.org and endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024. But he served with an ascendant Newt Gingrich and still considers himself a Republican.
Give it a listen.
Topics from my conversation with Bob Inglis
Want a transcript of this conversation? Click the “Transcript” tab towards the top of this page.
0:00 – 2:05: Introduction, more on RepublicEn.org, and how Republicans are talking about climate change.
2:06 – 6:45: How climate change is already impacting people across America—changes to housing costs, insurance markets, and more.1
6:46 – 8:34: Serving in Congress in the ’90s, and the rise of Newt Gingrich’s Republican Party.
8:35 – 11:22: The rise of—and surviving in—the Tea Party.
11:23 – 15:48: Trump getting older, and whether Congressional Republicans really like him. (Spoiler: no, not really. But they’re afraid of losing their jobs.)
15:49 – 17:09: What we can learn from Billy Tarver, the unluckiest man in South Carolina.
17:10 – 22:06: Anything you regret from your time as a Republican in Congress?
22:07 – 25:09: How do you reach people whose “facts” are so disconnected from reality?
25:10 – 27:04: What do you miss about serving in Congress?
27:05 – 28:06: Can you still be a Republican at this point if you endorsed Harris?
28:07 – 32:14: Policy solutions for climate change, and wrap-up.
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Point of clarification on something I said in reference to Patrick Witt. While it is likely that we’ve met before—I think I interviewed him at one point while I covered football for The Harvard Crimson and he was the quarterback for Yale—I am honestly not 100% sure.
(As the Yale QB, he was at the center of a scandal that made national news. Now, he’s just run-of-the-mill nuts.)
But I don’t want to make it sound like I have any personal relationship with him, because I don’t. What I was referring to (inarticulately) was the fact that I know people who knew him in law school, which is true.
In any event: Witt ran for the Republican nomination for Georgia Insurance Commissioner and got absolutely smoked despite Trump’s endorsement.
