RadixJournal - The Republican Wing of the Republican Party

00:00:00.000 Well, Kevin, we've taken our country back. How does it feel?

00:00:04.820 Oh, thank God. Well, as Eric Erickson put it, Americans are in charge of America again, so. 0.61

00:00:10.820 Right. I mean, we're in charge again. I mean, I don't know what we're going to do.

00:00:15.900 I mean, I think it's important that we push for job creation in a pro-growth economy.

00:00:24.820 You know, if we can do those things, you know, I think I'd lift all boats.

00:00:27.960 Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

00:00:30.340 I think that we can lead the nation into the 21st century.

00:00:33.700 Right. Yeah. Well, as you might guess, we're talking about the recent midterm election.

00:00:40.620 And I would say that I made this joke about taking our country back, which is what conservatives seem to always believe whenever a Republican gets elected.

00:00:52.160 But I would say this. I just in my lifetime and not even in that and just the past five years, I think there's been a kind of muting of conservatism and conservative politics.

00:01:06.120 And what I mean by is this. I can remember 2010. And that was a very angry and maybe you could say radical, at the very least, you could say angry conservative election.

00:01:21.880 I just remember these things. It was the Dale Peterson era when he would come on and be like, you know, who is my opponent? What a dummy.

00:01:30.420 And he's like holding a rifle. Yeah. And you had Ted Kredo almost winning in a third party run and everything like that. 0.99

00:01:35.700 Yeah. And there was a I remember there was this congresswoman in Arizona who her whole campaign ad was about her firing a machine gun.

00:01:43.160 You know what I mean? It was like. And granted, we.

00:01:45.440 To be fair, there's still a lot of candidates who that seems to be their campaign.

00:01:48.800 Right. Joni Ernst.

00:01:49.440 A film of them firing a gun. Right.

00:01:51.300 Right. Joni Ernst talked about castrating pigs and we're going to make them squeal. 1.00

00:01:55.460 So I think there was a little bit of the spirit of 2010. But I would say on the whole, it was a much more muted discontent election.

00:02:05.940 I mean, midterms are almost always discontent elections and they are a chance for the opposition to gain some ground.

00:02:13.340 But I think this one was pretty muted. This was almost the, you know, 2010 was the they don't give a rip about Alabama election.

00:02:20.160 And 2014 was like, let's vote for Mitch McConnell so that we can stop Obama or something.

00:02:28.720 A couple of a couple of things happened here. I mean, one, looking back at 2010, I mean, Dale Peterson, the guy you're bringing up, he didn't win.

00:02:36.680 Right.

00:02:36.740 And that was the lesson a lot of Republicans took from 2010 was there were a lot of missed opportunities.

00:02:43.240 There were a lot of seats that they could have picked up, which they didn't.

00:02:47.560 And this isn't just, you know, the GOP establishment.

00:02:50.880 I mean, Ann Coulter made this point explicitly that Republicans need to grow up if they want to win these things.

00:02:55.800 They got to put forward good candidates and everything else.

00:02:58.400 So what you saw in this cycle was the establishment really trying hard to make sure that you didn't get these insurgent candidates,

00:03:06.800 that you didn't get these key party candidates.

00:03:08.600 Sometimes you could say that they did it pointlessly, like in Tennessee with, you know, you had the primary challenge to Lamar Alexander.

00:03:17.940 If the conservatives had won in that race, he still would have won the general election.

00:03:22.800 But it seems like the establishment was taking no chances this time.

00:03:26.620 Well, do you think that the Tea Party is over?

00:03:28.700 Well, it's under control.

00:03:32.020 It's definitely brought to heel.

00:03:34.040 I mean, to me, one of the things I saw on the site there, you had the article from 2010 about white America's last bender.

00:03:43.960 And it mentioned, you know, a great victory of the old right when Rand Paul got elected, which is hilarious looking at it now.

00:03:53.920 And you see how he turned out.

00:03:55.280 And I think the way what happened to him is sort of what happened to the Tea Party in general, where you had this kind of outsider coming in, taking on the establishment.

00:04:04.340 I mean, keep in mind, he was like at Mitch McConnell's throat.

00:04:08.060 McConnell hated him.

00:04:09.460 And now this time at Rand Paul, I mean, Mitch McConnell, frankly, owes his Senate seat to Rand Paul getting out there and campaigning for him, even at Rand Paul's campaign manager for a while.

00:04:20.440 So what's really happened is that the Tea Party—

00:04:23.400 The brilliant strategist Jesse Benton.

00:04:26.220 A Machiavelli for our era.

00:04:27.780 No, I just—I actually met him, and I kind of worked for him in 2008.

00:04:34.500 He was really—he has the intelligence of, like, a fourth grader. 0.97

00:04:39.540 And I'm not trying to say that as to be a jerk or something. 1.00

00:04:42.320 Like, he's an idiot. 1.00

00:04:44.280 I don't know what has happened. 1.00

00:04:45.840 He's one of the stupidest people I've ever met. 1.00

00:04:48.560 I just—I guess it's good to marry Ron Paul's daughter, and you get all these jobs. 1.00

00:04:53.600 I mean, that's the only thing I can think of.

00:04:55.340 Well, either—whatever the case, I mean, Rand Paul is definitely setting himself up for the presidential run.

00:05:02.880 I mean, everybody, you know, we've talked to knows they're already setting up a campaign.

00:05:06.740 Oh, yeah.

00:05:07.100 And what he did in this last election is he basically guaranteed a lot of people owe him.

00:05:14.540 And what's happened here is that the Tea Party, as far as I'm concerned, has ceased to exist as an outside force.

00:05:25.900 Yeah.

00:05:26.060 Um, it's just become another word for kind of the—the right—the Republican wing of the Republican Party, basically.

00:05:33.540 Um, and the other thing going on with this election—but, I mean, let's break it down, what happened.

00:05:40.100 I mean, the big story, I think, uh, first of all, it happened in Oregon, which is huge, where you had—it was the only immigration thing that was on the ballot.

00:05:47.560 Uh, and that was Measure 88.

00:05:50.640 Uh, and Measure 88 was—if it had passed, it would have given driver's licenses, what they call driver cards, to illegal aliens.

00:05:58.660 And it got crushed.

00:06:00.680 Uh, the no vote on 88 was greater than the vote for pot legalization, greater for the vote from the incumbent governor, greater for the vote than the senator.

00:06:10.620 Uh, the Republican candidate, of course, took no position on the issue and got crushed in the election.

00:06:15.880 Um, but more than—I think something like two-thirds of Oregon voters, uh, voted for no driver's licenses for illegals.

00:06:24.160 Um, so that's an interesting development.

00:06:26.700 Parallels what happened with the referendum in Montana, um, last time around, where, you know, you had, like, crushing defeats for the GOP ticket, and then this thing passes. 0.67

00:06:35.120 So, while the GOP establishment got a number of things right this election, you know, they're not—they're still the GOP establishment, it's still the stupid party, and they managed to not even make a real race in elections where you could have done something, uh, especially in Oregon, and especially in Michigan, was just, like, an absolute disgrace.

00:06:55.860 Well, yeah, but, Kevin, I—I think you—you—you—it's a—there's a danger in basically looking at one individual referendum about illegal immigrants and driver's licenses and then concluding that the whole population of that state is rabidly conservative or right-wing. 0.88

00:07:14.620 No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:07:15.380 But, I mean, if you—if you're going to put up a candidate, if you're going to put up a candidate who doesn't even take the position on it, and that candidate gets something, like, in the 30s, and then the thing—the controversial issue you didn't take the position on gets, like, two-thirds of the vote.

00:07:28.480 Right, yeah.

00:07:29.480 I mean, come on.

00:07:30.160 And, like, even if you were—and let's take—you know, let's break it down in another state how this happened.

00:07:34.520 Uh, Ed Gillespie in Virginia, who was widely considered to be, like, the great surprise, this is a race where he was down in double digits.

00:07:41.620 I mean, like, comically down, like, 20 points or something against Warner.

00:07:45.340 Nobody thought he had a real shot.

00:07:47.080 Uh, this is the definition of the GOP establishment.

00:07:50.380 Right.

00:07:50.600 Former RNC head, um, he's a professional lobbyist, a corporate lobbyist fundraiser.

00:07:55.040 I mean, like, the kind of thing that you have, like, caricature, really.

00:07:58.380 Yeah.

00:07:58.860 And he got out-fundraised.

00:08:00.960 Um, he had to go dark.

00:08:02.820 He couldn't even run ads for a while.

00:08:04.520 And what ends up happening, his Hail Mary play at the end of the campaign is to run ads bashing Warner for not defending the Washington Redskins' name.

00:08:13.680 Which is, like, the kind of thing that, you know, GOP consultants would, like, lose their mind over.

00:08:19.620 I mean, that's, like, the definition of, like, boob bait or whatever.

00:08:22.960 But it worked.

00:08:23.980 And, you know, he dramatically closed the gap in the final days.

00:08:27.080 Now, was it all because of the Redskins?

00:08:28.760 No, of course not.

00:08:30.060 But it certainly helped.

00:08:31.300 And it was definitely an indicator that they're getting better, I think, uh, the party is, at saying the right things to the base.

00:08:43.000 But they're also getting better at, like, controlling the base, making sure these guys stay on the reservation. 0.81

00:08:49.420 And you see this with, yeah.

00:08:51.440 And it's not like Ken, where you had, I mean, they're losing seats and you've got, like, intra-party fights and everything else.

00:08:57.180 I mean, the fact is, when you've got Mitch McConnell, uh, now a Senate Majority Leader, and Rand Paul basically joined at the hip, you know, that's, that's significant.

00:09:08.200 Uh, as an aside, it's funny that Ron Paul, Rand's dad, is sending out tweets to seem like, get ready for more war in Iraq now that the neocons are back in charge and stuff.

00:09:17.980 So, that's kind of hilarious.

00:09:19.280 Now that my son is in charge.

00:09:22.140 Yeah, well, I would say a couple of things.

00:09:24.140 I mean, one demographic aspect of all this that I think is very important is that the GOP voting base keeps getting older, and it also keeps getting whiter.

00:09:34.960 Uh, there, there was actually some interesting stuff, um, uh, on, uh, on voter turnout, and, uh, I'll, I'll put this in the show notes, but this is just a 538, which is a kind of interesting, you know, number crunching site.

00:09:50.360 But, I mean, Maine, 60% of the people in Maine vote, which is, you know, you know, almost 60% in Alaska and Colorado and Minnesota, and then you get down in these places like Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, uh, New York, Georgia, Alabama, and there's some outliers here.

00:10:08.840 But, basically, what you have is these deep red southern states that are demographically, if you just looked at the demographics, you'd think that they would be strongly, uh, Democrat states in the sense of they've got a lot of blacks or a lot of Hispanics.

00:10:22.860 Yeah, they vote 90% for the GOP.

00:10:24.940 Exactly. 0.98

00:10:25.620 Whites vote like blacks for the, like blacks vote for the Democrats. 0.99

00:10:29.640 Whites votes for the GOP. 0.99

00:10:30.840 Exactly right. 0.98

00:10:31.320 And then, also, basically, blacks, millennials, uh, and Hispanics don't vote enough. 0.98

00:10:36.880 And so, you have this weird, like, illusion where you think that Texas is like, oh, it just must be a bunch of white people out there, you know, voting for these hardcore Republicans, uh, on statewide offices.

00:10:51.000 But, in a way, that's, that's, that's an illusion.

00:10:53.440 That's not true.

00:10:54.260 Yeah.

00:10:54.500 And even if you look at, like, let's take Texas, I mean, that was going to be the great, you know, this is the year that Texas was going to go blue.

00:11:01.660 And they had, uh, you know, what was it, Wendy Davis, who was going to, like, ride feminism and abortion rights to victory, you know, through the votes of Austin alone, apparently. 1.00

00:11:11.940 And she lost the female vote in Texas. 1.00

00:11:15.420 Right.

00:11:16.120 Right.

00:11:16.620 So.

00:11:17.300 But it's going to happen.

00:11:18.540 Like, it, it, it, I, I think it, I mean, it, it shows, it shows the power of the GOP, and it shows the racialization of parties, at least in, in places that are not, you know, like, the Pacific Northwest, where, you know, maybe this is actually changing.

00:11:34.080 But in, in the Montana, places like this, you have a lot of Democrats, and these are generally pro-gun Democrats, and, and they're kind of like, they seem to me, at least, kind of like, backroom deal, let's bring in some money for the logging industry, unions, Democrats, which is, uh, fine.

00:11:50.860 I would, I would, I would vote for, I, I'm, effectively, I'm a liberal, if you look at, like, the issues.

00:11:56.140 Yeah, pretty much.

00:11:56.880 If you, if you were talking about, like, uh, I mean, in a lot of these states, if you were, if you were in, um, you know, Montana, or one of these Western states, a lot of the GOP stuff is, let's hand the state over to mining interests or whatever else.

00:12:08.480 Right.

00:12:08.840 You can see why people would be Democrats.

00:12:10.780 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:11.460 Um, but I mean, if you look at the South.

00:12:12.120 I would rather support logging unions.

00:12:14.580 Right, right.

00:12:15.300 They're a bunch of, like, good people.

00:12:16.920 Why don't I give them some welfare? 0.66

00:12:19.380 Anyway, uh, but, yeah.

00:12:20.960 If you look at the South, the last white Democrat lost, I think.

00:12:23.900 Oh, wow.

00:12:24.640 That's.

00:12:24.740 Arkansas.

00:12:25.140 Arkansas was, like, the one Southern state where you still had a certain remnant of the Democratic South, South.

00:12:32.320 Now, every single congressman in Arkansas, I believe, is a Republican.

00:12:35.940 And Tom Cotton, who, um, is being promoted as, like, you know, the next upcoming conservative star or whatever, he's pretty by-the-numbers guy, solid on immigration, but pretty interventionist as far as fall in policy goes.

00:12:48.520 Yeah.

00:12:48.960 I mean, he took out an incumbent senator, and it wasn't even particularly close.

00:12:52.220 Yeah, that was pretty shocking, because I, I thought, I mean, that, that was supposed to be, like, well, maybe the GOP can flip this one.

00:13:00.240 I mean, we knew that one before the night even really got going.

00:13:04.460 Wow.

00:13:04.580 Uh, but if you look at the states where they struggled, North Carolina, um, Tillis was, you know, a horrible candidate, uh, Speaker of the House, very unpopular state legislature.

00:13:14.980 And he ran, I mean, just, he was a political consultant, I mean, really kind of a, basically, Gillespie with, uh, Gillespie charisma, and that's not meant to be, you know, a compliment.

00:13:27.220 Like, he was god-awful stances on all these things, uh, and even he was able to pull it out just by sheer inertia, it seems like.

00:13:35.420 Yeah.

00:13:35.580 But, but also, just, I mean, the big one is Brown, I think, that's the one state where you've got to, like, take a step back and wonder what the hell happened.

00:13:43.300 I mean, you could say, look, he's taking on an incumbent, he made it close, uh, but Brown, I think, was the most interesting run of the entire cycle.

00:13:52.860 And, has he won?

00:13:53.580 Because he's actually pretty good, he's good on immigration, and, and he's obviously, he's like, he's handsome, he's charismatic, and so on and so forth.

00:13:59.600 Well, he's a moderate, he's kind of a, uh, think of, like, Pete Wilson, right?

00:14:03.960 Yeah.

00:14:04.340 Where you have, Pete Wilson back in the day was, was somebody who was going to challenge kind of the pro-life, uh, plank on the Republican Party platform.

00:14:12.800 Mm-hmm.

00:14:13.060 Uh, social moderate and everything else, but how did he, how did he win?

00:14:16.140 Prop 187 and taking a strong stand against immigration.

00:14:19.240 Right.

00:14:19.620 Uh, back when California voted to save itself, and then the court said, no, that's not allowed.

00:14:24.500 I noted, passing, that Jerry Brown just got his fourth term as California's governor.

00:14:29.140 California, we were always, indeed.

00:14:31.920 But, Brown, Brown made it close, but had he won, he could have been kind of the return of this social moderate.

00:14:40.440 You can't really peg him as some pro-life fanatic, or anti-gay, or whatever else, but we're going to have common sense stances on immigration and things like that.

00:14:49.440 Yeah.

00:14:49.880 The question to me is what happened with, uh, foreign policy, how that broke.

00:14:54.620 Because he was also pretty interventionist on foreign policy.

00:14:57.500 I don't know how voters in New Hampshire like the idea of, let's say, the strong stand on the Islamic State and all that kind of stuff.

00:15:04.680 Well, I think, I don't think people are thinking about foreign policy.

00:15:07.460 I, I, you know, I...

00:15:07.960 Well, that's what he's contained on, which is just as bad.

00:15:10.020 If you're not thinking about it, you shouldn't be talking about it.

00:15:12.140 Yeah, no, I, I think that's true.

00:15:14.080 I, I'm sure, I'm sure there is some residual, there's some residual pressure.

00:15:18.680 I mean, I think the neocons have lost a tremendous amount of power, uh, without question.

00:15:23.460 But, nevertheless, I, I think in a way, these, these conservatives, they don't even know what to think.

00:15:28.660 Because the neoconservatives have been thinking for them on those issues for so many years.

00:15:32.540 They're, they're now like, oh, what do we do?

00:15:35.520 You know, I guess we should just talk like Bush.

00:15:38.700 Yeah, it's, it's striking.

00:15:40.320 I mean, to take a step back before we get, like, mired down, what happened in this state and that state.

00:15:44.260 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:44.640 I mean, I think there's, there's two really big takeaways.

00:15:48.580 One, uh, three, really.

00:15:50.320 The first, uh, just in passing, is that the GOP played it safe.

00:15:54.380 Um, they didn't, they did do some campaigning on immigration and things like that.

00:15:57.780 But they didn't really nationalize the election.

00:16:00.240 They didn't lay out an agenda.

00:16:02.240 They didn't really take it to them.

00:16:03.980 They just kind of, their campaign was, we're not Obama.

00:16:06.820 And that's, that was enough this time.

00:16:08.820 Second point is, now, of course, they have Congress. 0.91

00:16:11.720 They've got, you know, pretty ridiculous majority in the House.

00:16:15.420 Um, fairly strong majority in the Senate. 0.85

00:16:18.300 And they're going to be expected to do stuff.

00:16:20.180 And I don't think there's any consensus that, about what they should do.

00:16:25.480 Um, so that would be interesting.

00:16:26.480 And I think if I'm, if I'm the GOP, just being a cynical politician, what I would do is absolutely nothing.

00:16:33.400 I would just obstruct, obstruct, obstruct until 2016.

00:16:36.980 Because if the minute you try to do something, everyone's going to get furious.

00:16:40.800 And the last point is, looking at the white share, uh, nationally, they got about 60% of the vote.

00:16:47.680 And I'm getting this from, uh, from Peter Brimlow over at, at VDator.

00:16:51.020 Uh, but turnout was actually higher than what Romney got in 2012, white turnout.

00:16:58.460 Really?

00:16:59.040 Which is interesting.

00:17:00.160 And so, what's happening is that...

00:17:03.540 As a percentage of the voting population?

00:17:04.980 As a percentage of the, of the, uh, voting population, yeah.

00:17:07.280 Oh, well, that's actually not surprising.

00:17:10.280 Because, effectively...

00:17:11.680 Yeah, that's true.

00:17:11.700 A lot of people stayed home.

00:17:13.280 Only, only old white people voted.

00:17:15.080 I mean, did you vote?

00:17:18.060 I didn't.

00:17:20.900 I just talk about voting.

00:17:22.260 Long story, actually.

00:17:24.620 Um, I just record podcasts about voting.

00:17:27.080 I, I don't actually go into a booth.

00:17:28.940 I wouldn't even know where to vote.

00:17:29.680 I actually, uh, it's kind of embarrassing.

00:17:31.420 I actually went to show up, and, uh, I thought, I, I was, I should get off Sharpton on the case.

00:17:35.980 I was disenfranchised.

00:17:37.240 I, uh, I thought I had registered when I got my new driver's license, and, uh, it is.

00:17:41.920 Apparently, I didn't, so, oh, well.

00:17:44.980 I'm a bad citizen.

00:17:48.000 I mean, the, the bigger thing here is that, you know, the GOP, um, is actually, think of, think of where we were right after 2012, where the smart money was like, they have to pass amnesty.

00:18:02.040 They have to do more outreach.

00:18:03.660 They have to, basically, basically, they were going to be kind of a pro-corporate party with a lot more multiculturalism.

00:18:10.600 Like, that was, that was the plan.

00:18:11.880 That was the master plan that came out of the Beltway.

00:18:13.880 Right.

00:18:14.060 And when you had this time, if you had people talking about, you know, income inequality, you had people talking about immigration, you had people spending Wall Street.

00:18:21.620 Uh, it's all rhetoric, of course, but this is what they ran on.

00:18:24.360 And they didn't pass amnesty.

00:18:26.260 In fact, they just kind of didn't pass anything.

00:18:28.780 They just kind of held the line, um, the whole way.

00:18:31.640 Well, I, I think, uh, this is what I would say, and this gets back to what I was saying before, in terms of, basically, the GOP, uh, their job is to channel and, and maybe fence in the hopes and dreams of older white Americans. 0.60

00:18:49.500 I mean, that, that basically is its function.

00:18:52.360 And, uh, you know, and so, and that's why even I say this.

00:18:56.060 I mean, I'm, I'm 36.

00:18:57.340 I'm not, I'm not exactly a, I guess I am a millennial of some sort.

00:19:00.780 I'm not exactly a, a young person.

00:19:02.720 But I, I feel very distanced from any conservative politician.

00:19:06.760 They, they don't speak my language in the slightest.

00:19:09.960 Uh, I don't really like them.

00:19:11.740 Uh, I don't resonate with them, uh, at all.

00:19:14.460 And, um, I, I think they're just, it's not my party.

00:19:17.680 I, I think I, uh, if I feel this way, I'm sure someone who's 26 or 16 feels this way intensely.

00:19:25.440 Um, so I, I think also, you know, I mean, gosh, I, uh, I keep going off on these tangents, but I'll say one thing.

00:19:30.800 I, I think, you know, you can't underestimate the degree to which, yes, something like immigration or going after affirmative action, that, that is a more powerful, that's a more popular issue than people imagine.

00:19:44.660 And people imagine that it's controversial.

00:19:46.180 In fact, it's actually quite popular.

00:19:48.200 That being said, I think people underestimate the degree to which conservatism, quote unquote, is deeply unpopular amongst people who are under the age of 50.

00:19:59.700 Uh, I mean, no one wants, the, the idea of a kind of Bible thumping George Bush, let's go invade the world.

00:20:07.500 Let's talk about the culture of life.

00:20:10.500 That stuff is just toxic.

00:20:13.660 And I think actually the big problem for people who are interested in immigration reform, I, I think their, their fundamental problem is not that the GOP is too wishy-washy or something.

00:20:23.720 You want wishy-washy politicians.

00:20:25.380 Those are, those are good.

00:20:26.580 They'll do things for you. 0.96

00:20:27.920 The problem is that immigration reform is associated with these, uh, Bible thumping lunatics. 0.98

00:20:33.500 And so that, that's why that's, that was the Scott Brown thing.

00:20:37.260 If Scott Brown had won, that would have changed that perception.

00:20:39.900 Yeah, no, I, I think that would have been interesting.

00:20:42.160 I mean, I, I think, uh, a liberal, like, you know, things like, again, I, I, I, I don't, all the gay rights stuff, I, I wish we would just get over that stuff. 0.87

00:20:51.220 But anyway, you know, at the end of the day, most millennials want gay marriage. 0.89

00:20:55.440 They, I think most millennials just want to get, get, they, they want to just pass by this whole saga and just get over it and say, yes, allow them gay marriage, stop talking about it, and let's move on.

00:21:07.560 I, that is my impression of people, um, of their, their vision of, of gay rights.

00:21:12.780 So, yeah, I think in a way, uh, the, the, the great hope for immigration reform would be a anti-Wall Street, anti-foreign intervention, anti-George Bush, pro-gay, and, uh, pro-gay social moderate who, yeah, I think that would, if, if you could associate immigration reform with stuff like that, uh, I think it would get so much further. 0.60

00:21:36.740 Because now, I mean, we, you and I know that Ted Cruz and these type of people are bad on immigration, in fact, or Rick Perry.

00:21:44.720 But the problem is, perception-wise, you know, when you think about immigration reform, you, you have all this baggage.

00:21:51.080 This is who you associated there, yeah.

00:21:53.240 I mean, who is the number one guy who's actually been talking about, who's actually connected the dots, don't give the masters of the universe they're in, amnesty and everything else, it's been Jeff Sessions.

00:22:03.480 Yeah.

00:22:03.620 But what's the problem with Jeff Sessions?

00:22:05.660 He's from Alabama.

00:22:07.640 And, you know, Sessions, now, it's actually kind of funny, Sessions literally won with 100% of the vote because, you know, he ran on a vote, which is kind of funny.

00:22:16.900 But, uh, the Saddam Hussein of American politics, I mean, that is a compliment. 1.00

00:22:22.400 Right.

00:22:22.840 But, uh, but, I mean, the thing is, let's say, I mean, Ed Sessions has been brilliant on the issue, the way he's been trained.

00:22:29.660 Yeah, he's a good guy.

00:22:30.680 Yeah.

00:22:30.800 Yeah.

00:22:31.160 But, you know, if, to, to look at your critique, uh, let's say you put him up there in a debate, okay, he's running for president, he won't, but let's say he did.

00:22:42.080 Right.

00:22:42.220 And then the debate comes, he talks about immigration, he hammers Wall Street, whatever else, and then the conversation turns to gay marriage, which is something that the electorate has kind of moved past, and he'll still be railing against, you know, this kind of stuff.

00:22:55.740 Uh, and a thick Southern accent and everything else, and fair or unfair, that's going to be used against him.

00:23:02.060 Yeah.

00:23:02.540 So, he's not, I mean, that was the thing, I think, I think the Brown defeat, uh, was as absurd as it sounds, I think that was, like, the most important thing that happened. 0.99

00:23:13.660 That's a good point.

00:23:14.340 Because he was the one, he was the one guy who could have actually been a new direction.

00:23:19.040 And the thing is, like, um, and again, this is, this is what Peter Brimler said, you know, the ball just kind of bounced in the right direction.

00:23:25.640 It wasn't, it wasn't a wave election the same way as, like, 94 or 10, where it's just kind of this crushing, you're crushing defeats, and people are just, like, losing their minds, and everybody's furious and everything else.

00:23:38.080 I mean, you basically had a number of close elections break the right way, and you had a number of people win, you know, by a few percentage points.

00:23:49.040 Um, and, and the real question, a lot of this is, like, what we're not talking about.

00:23:52.300 I mean, you have, you had Ebola, you had the rise of the Islamic State, you had Barack Obama basically saying, no, we're just, we're just not going to enforce immigration laws with this, this surge of the, the, the so-called children who are, in fact, mostly adults coming from Central America. 0.67

00:24:07.740 I mean, you had about a perfect, and you had Obamacare, nobody likes it.

00:24:11.580 You had this, this perfect lineup of circumstances, and they couldn't even make a race of it in critical states.

00:24:17.940 And, and also, California, I mean, it seems, we, we almost don't even talk about it, but, I mean, the state is essentially just lost.

00:24:25.100 I mean, it's not even, it's, it'll never be competitive again.

00:24:28.260 Uh, and that's, you know, the GOP, the, the racialization of the electorate that you pointed to is going to keep the GOP competitive for a few more cycles.

00:24:39.460 But, you know, eventually you really do elect a new people.

00:24:43.220 And in California, that's already happened, where the GOP put up, you know, their minority candidate, he's going to be young and vibrant, he's going to do all this stuff.

00:24:52.060 And it wasn't even close.

00:24:52.880 I think, exactly.

00:24:55.360 I mean, I, I, we might disagree, excuse me, we might agree too much.

00:24:59.100 Perhaps I'll take some crazy issue just so that we can have some debate in this podcast.

00:25:04.300 But, yeah, no, I, I think you're absolutely right.

00:25:07.560 I mean, I think what we might see is this, this transition where, you know, at the end of the day, the, having a party that is based around older white people, that is better. 0.92

00:25:19.920 One older white person is, is the equivalent of 20 Hispanics or blacks, just in the sense of that older white person is going to vote regularly and reliably. 0.64

00:25:31.600 And, yeah, in the midterms.

00:25:32.840 And they're going to vote in the midterms.

00:25:34.940 I, I, I'm sure a lot of Americans just didn't even know that there was an election yesterday.

00:25:39.840 I mean, I mean that seriously.

00:25:40.840 I mean, it's just not on the, on the radar.

00:25:43.800 I, I kind of forgot about it myself until it was like 3 p.m.

00:25:47.460 I was like, oh, yeah.

00:25:48.420 Yeah, yeah, but one thing, I'm going to, I'm just, go ahead.

00:25:51.860 Okay, let me finish real quick and then I'll let you riff on this.

00:25:54.000 But I, I just think we're in this transition state where, you know, I think it's going to be very difficult, maybe impossible, for a, a, a white Protestant Republican to win the presidency again.

00:26:07.980 Oh, yeah, that's done.

00:26:09.020 Very difficult.

00:26:10.020 We've seen the last of that.

00:26:11.000 Yeah, but we might actually, we might just have this for the next, maybe even the next 10 years.

00:26:17.640 We might have the situation where the GOP, they get these big House victories.

00:26:22.420 They win these statewide or regional congressional elections and so on and so forth.

00:26:27.000 And this is the kind of status quo we're going to have for maybe the next eight years or so.

00:26:32.220 But, but again, it will happen.

00:26:34.080 I mean, that, what I was pointing to before about Texas being, oh, it's deep red.

00:26:39.400 Yeah.

00:26:39.680 Oh, yeah.

00:26:40.240 It's this place.

00:26:41.420 No, it's not.

00:26:42.100 I mean, I think politics are a lagging indicator and they're, they're an illusion.

00:26:47.420 Very lagging.

00:26:48.060 Yeah.

00:26:48.220 And it gives people false comfort, you know, this, the Erickson thing is very revealing

00:26:53.680 when he says, you know, Americans are in charge of America again.

00:26:57.400 Well, what does that mean?

00:26:59.420 Keep in mind, you know, red state kind of like bans people from talking about immigration

00:27:04.540 too much and things like that.

00:27:07.360 They feature writers who say like the great thing we should do is pass amnesty and that

00:27:11.260 will take away the issue somehow.

00:27:13.020 Yeah.

00:27:13.260 But of course, you know, like, like Peter always says, you can't, you can't get beyond the

00:27:17.080 immigration issue.

00:27:17.780 Like it's always there, but you, no matter what you pass, it's just going to keep being

00:27:21.300 there.

00:27:21.640 Immigration is an issue in South Africa for God's sake.

00:27:24.680 Um, so if you look at, let's, you know, to go a step further with what you were saying,

00:27:30.940 it's going to be longer than eight years.

00:27:33.320 One of the big things that happened, perhaps more important in the long run is the GOP won

00:27:37.740 some pretty crushing victories on a lot of these state legislatures.

00:27:40.880 If you look at a map of where the GOP controls states, I mean, it's staggering.

00:27:47.020 It's just the sea of red and the key there is of course redistricting.

00:27:52.240 So what you're going to do, I mean, they basically are going to set up a system where the GOP is

00:27:58.740 going to control the house for a very long time.

00:28:01.860 And all the minority voters are basically, I mean, they can say whatever they want about,

00:28:07.680 oh, we're going to do outreach and we need to do this.

00:28:10.560 But I mean, you see the GOP's true colors when it comes to redistricting.

00:28:14.600 They don't need to do outreach.

00:28:15.520 And when it comes to like voter ID laws, they're just going to pack them into these little districts

00:28:19.040 and you'll get, you know, Sheila Jackson Lee will get her congressional seat forever, 0.98

00:28:22.640 but the Democrats are not going to get, you know, any moderates in there anymore.

00:28:27.220 You're not going to get these, these districts where you might have like enough minority voters

00:28:31.080 that'll push you over the edge.

00:28:32.140 So the GOP is going to control the house for a very long time.

00:28:36.500 The second thing, the second thing, and I think this is, this is where I'm actually going to agree

00:28:41.900 with a lot of the hard leftists and hopefully take this conversation into some more,

00:28:47.320 some sexier territory, so to speak.

00:28:50.640 You know, you gotta, there are certain times in American politics where you can change the underlying dynamic.

00:28:56.960 So, you know, if Buchanan had gotten elected somehow after, uh, after Reagan or after Bush's first term,

00:29:06.720 I think he would have set up the country in such a way that, you know, we'd be much farther to the right

00:29:13.340 than where we are now, just because so many of the underlying things, so much of the momentum,

00:29:17.380 uh, the demographics, uh, just the way the law is structured, the courts, all of that would have been adjusted

00:29:24.860 because people, you know, think of gay marriage, right?

00:29:28.560 I mean, once you make something possible, people tend to like it a lot more.

00:29:32.660 Yeah.

00:29:34.000 And one of the things that I think Barack Obama did wrong is he should have gone big before the election

00:29:40.240 with unilateral executive amnesty, because had he done that, he would have gotten,

00:29:47.320 I mean, Colorado was supposed to be this huge thing where the Latino vote was going to push the Democrats to victory

00:29:52.160 and it wasn't even close.

00:29:53.820 And those people stayed home.

00:29:56.000 Had he done that, he would have gotten a lot of these activists.

00:29:58.740 He would have given the Democrats something to run on.

00:30:01.540 You could say, oh, well, the GOP would have gotten angry or the moderates would have voted against them,

00:30:06.440 but all those people voted against them anyway.

00:30:08.080 Um, and I think Obama, just judging from his press conference today and just judging from, you know,

00:30:14.080 what his options are, I think he's going to pull the trigger on this.

00:30:17.640 And I don't think the GOP is going to have any idea how to stop him.

00:30:22.320 That's interesting.

00:30:23.240 I mean, what would you do?

00:30:24.480 I mean, if you were Obama, right? 0.98

00:30:26.000 And you say, okay, y'all, I'm a lame duck.

00:30:28.940 They, they're, they've got, you know, uh, both houses and you got the house and the Senate.

00:30:34.760 Uh, there's not much I can do as far as getting the policy initiative to through.

00:30:38.020 There might even be some effort to screw around with Obamacare. 0.99

00:30:40.580 What can I do to, to retake the offensive?

00:30:43.180 You, you do this because all these moderate GOP senators and the Lindsey Grahams of the world and everything else.

00:30:51.160 They'll, they'll quibble about the technicalities, but they're not going to quibble about the substance.

00:30:55.760 And at the very least, you're going to create some sort of a compromise where they'll be like, oh, we'll pass a bill that will retroactively legalize 90% of what you just did.

00:31:04.380 And that'll be the great compromise.

00:31:06.100 And I think a lot of the GOP wants it to happen.

00:31:08.680 They just don't want to take responsibility for it.

00:31:11.340 Right.

00:31:11.760 Yeah.

00:31:12.180 I would, I would say this.

00:31:13.880 I look at it from a slightly different angle.

00:31:16.160 I, I would say that I, my view of, uh, what Obama would want to do is to get the Republicans to put forth an immigration bill that they would like.

00:31:28.040 Because remember, Obama, despite all of this rhetoric of Obama being this crazed third world communist, he, he's actually, he's actually a kind of accommodating president.

00:31:39.040 I mean, he, he's, he's more realistic than people give him credit for.

00:31:42.600 I mean, he, he didn't create socialized medicine.

00:31:45.980 He created the Heritage Foundation's plan for, for, for immigration.

00:31:50.920 He did the Romney care.

00:31:52.540 You know, he, he, he kind of does things.

00:31:54.580 He, he has not been a radically anti-war president.

00:31:57.300 He's kind of scaled things back.

00:31:59.420 Yeah, right.

00:32:00.040 Not being anti-

00:32:01.040 Yeah, right.

00:32:02.180 Not in Afghanistan. 0.88

00:32:03.120 He's not being, he's not radically anti-Israel by any stretch, but he, he has actually kind of moderated his, his views of that.

00:32:11.040 He, he, he's, he's much more of a moderate president than, than people imagine when they imagine he's like crazed and angry.

00:32:17.500 He's simply not.

00:32:18.960 But anyway, I think from one standpoint, one strategy would be to kind of get the Republicans to do this on their own.

00:32:25.420 Because there are a lot of forces within the GOP that want some kind of amnesty.

00:32:29.020 And yeah, they, they are under the illusion that, as, as Peter points out, that, that immigration could go away.

00:32:34.760 But of course, it's not even, it's not even immigration in a way.

00:32:39.020 It's just, it's demographics and race.

00:32:41.260 That's never going to go away. 1.00

00:32:42.840 And you can't wish it away by doing some stupid legislation. 1.00

00:32:47.520 Legislation is meaningless. 1.00

00:32:49.340 It's like a little sandcastle and there's a title, there's a big tidal wave of race and demographics.

00:32:56.820 It will just knock it over. 0.95

00:32:58.660 Legislation's meaningless.

00:33:00.520 So I, I think from one standpoint, an Obama strategy might be to just get the GOP to do it for him.

00:33:06.440 But another strategy, if he wanted to be a little harder and a little more edgy, he could basically do a, do a, you know, a executive order amnesty.

00:33:18.600 And he could kind of racialize politics.

00:33:21.820 He could, because remember the GOP, they, they want to, you know, any company that you want to maintain repeat customers.

00:33:29.340 Before you start outreach to new customers, you want to maintain customers.

00:33:33.940 And just like the GOP, they're going to hold on to being an older white people party. 0.74

00:33:39.140 They're going to be the kind of the Christian party in some generic vague sense.

00:33:44.020 They're going to be the party of, you know, not against abortion and, and, and slightly against gays. 0.65

00:33:50.740 You know, they're going to be the kind of the normal person's party.

00:33:53.460 And that's how they're going to, they're going to, they need to do that to maintain their hold on this population.

00:33:58.460 And I think in a way, Obama could kind of tempt them to become a little more racial.

00:34:03.500 Like they, they, if he did an executive amnesty, which again, that's very much in the cards.

00:34:08.920 Maybe it's even probable in the next, in the coming year after the election.

00:34:12.320 If he did that, he would really racialize politics.

00:34:15.660 And he would actually inspire all of these Latinos who don't vote to go out and vote Democrat.

00:34:21.900 You know, I mean, it would be almost like maybe you need to kind of, you need to divide people a little bit.

00:34:26.540 You need to, you need to polarize people in order to, to rile up your base.

00:34:32.120 And, you know, at the moment.

00:34:33.060 Well, that's a democratic platform.

00:34:34.640 And that's, that's all it is.

00:34:36.160 I mean, all it is right now is it's just this kind of, one thing that happened. 0.96

00:34:39.900 And I think white males voted GOP like 65%, like nationally, just like some stupidly high margin. 0.94

00:34:46.860 And, you know, for her whole country, basically. 0.82

00:34:49.280 And the democratic, basically the democratic balancing act is their whole, their whole platform these days, or at least a media presence.

00:34:58.040 It's just kind of this, this politics of resentment against white privilege or whatever else.

00:35:04.820 But the problem is like, these people can still vote.

00:35:08.320 And occasionally it just bleeds out into the, certainly in the media, that any election where, where white males or white people generally have an electoral impact is somehow automatically illegitimate.

00:35:21.700 I think Amanda Marquette was basically saying something like that in, in Slate today.

00:35:25.780 Like the revenge of the angry white male, as if like the real problem is that they're still allowed to vote.

00:35:30.760 So, I mean, I think that, I mean, in the long run, in the long run, that is, in the long run, that is the problem.

00:35:38.860 But what they're trying to do is, you know, in North Carolina, for example, I mean, it, it, if Tillis had lost, I mean, this would have been a big thing.

00:35:46.620 And the fact that you didn't need an ID to, to vote, the fact that you had O'Keefe going in, James O'Keefe going in there showing, you know, voting 20 different times with all this kind of stuff.

00:35:57.620 I mean, you got to imagine for every one of these things we find out about, there's like a hundred that we don't find out about.

00:36:03.260 And, you know, every one person who does that undoes the vote of somebody else who obeys the law.

00:36:11.020 So, I mean, at this point, the, the numbers game of American politics, the, just the very cynical head counting one tribe against the other tribe.

00:36:20.120 And this is how we're going to do it.

00:36:22.020 It's becoming more blatant.

00:36:23.600 It's becoming more explicit.

00:36:24.680 It's becoming more racialized.

00:36:26.880 And what's happening really, I mean, the critical thing about whether this will just be kind of a slow decline,

00:36:33.260 of, of America from first world status, or whether you're going to see some kind of real shakeup in the years to come,

00:36:39.960 like everybody on the right seems to predict, is whether whites start voting as a, the way, nationally, the way they do in the South.

00:36:50.400 Where, you know, you'll still have people in the media and you'll still have the Lena Dunham's of the world, you know,

00:36:56.360 campaigning against them and everything else.

00:36:58.240 But when all is said and done, like the president of Singapore said, in multicultural societies, you don't vote your interest, you vote the group.

00:37:05.540 Yeah.

00:37:06.380 And there are some signs that that's starting to happen.

00:37:10.900 The GOP doesn't want that to happen.

00:37:13.060 They, they certainly don't deserve the votes of the people they take for granted.

00:37:17.980 But they might have to move in that direction just because they can't win elections any other way.

00:37:23.440 I mean, hence, Gillespie, you know, trying to portray himself as a great opponent of political correctness.

00:37:28.780 I think they are in that direction full on.

00:37:32.780 I, I, I, full throttle.

00:37:34.580 Sixth gear.

00:37:35.380 I mean, I, I, I think this is, we really underestimate, I mean, again, this is maybe one of my criticisms of, of, of the VDR type thing,

00:37:43.040 which is why don't they just talk about immigration and, and, and affirmative action?

00:37:46.760 What, if they did that, they would win.

00:37:48.420 They already do it.

00:37:49.680 And they, in a way, don't need to do it.

00:37:51.940 You know?

00:37:52.900 I mean, if you, Lena Dunham is the greatest gift.

00:37:56.520 For, for GOP, they just want to focus on this woman.

00:37:59.540 Who, why, why do we, why are we thinking about this woman? 1.00

00:38:02.960 Like, why, the more we think about her and criticize her and care about her stupid book, the more power she has. 1.00

00:38:10.920 Just, I, I don't want, I don't want to have a life in which she takes up brain space. 0.99

00:38:16.380 Anyway, they, they don't need to do it.

00:38:18.240 They, they basically, they can, they have channeled this population successfully.

00:38:24.320 And they've done it to, to a large extent through race baiting.

00:38:27.240 I mean, I think it's just, the, the idea that you can, I don't think you can underestimate, uh, the degree to which the GOP race base, and, and the left are the only ones who, who point it out.

00:38:37.980 I mean, Keith Olbermann is right.

00:38:39.940 When Newt Gingrich, when he talks about, you know, the food stamp president, all of that is subliminal race baiting.

00:38:47.760 It is exactly what the left says it is.

00:38:50.660 They are kind of, they're, they're playing footsie with their base under the table.

00:38:54.600 They're saying, we are the party of normal people.

00:38:57.440 We're the party of good, upstanding Christian people.

00:39:00.720 We are you.

00:39:01.760 That, that is the message.

00:39:03.100 And there's a little bit of, of anti-black and anti-Hispanic stuff thrown in the mix.

00:39:08.340 But it's basically, we are the party, we are the normal party.

00:39:11.040 You are normal.

00:39:11.760 You vote for us.

00:39:12.400 And it's a way for them to control these people.

00:39:14.700 And they've been doing it for decades.

00:39:16.900 I mean, and everything the left says about the GOP is correct.

00:39:20.140 Like the, the, the, what was the George Bush, the Willie Horton ad?

00:39:24.860 That was the most race baiting thing ever. 0.99

00:39:28.800 It's associating Democrats with black criminals. 0.99

00:39:32.800 This is what the GOP does. 0.98

00:39:34.620 And this is why I think we need to resist it.

00:39:36.820 We don't need to give into it.

00:39:38.060 We don't need to encourage them and say, oh, if only they talk about this more.

00:39:41.660 We, we need to, we need to resist them because this is the, this is one of the ways that they,

00:39:46.780 they psychically control white people.

00:39:49.260 And I, I don't, I know that might sound a little like a goofy way of saying it, but it is, it is what it is. 0.93

00:39:56.440 You know, they, they, they, they know who their base is.

00:39:59.420 They know who butters their bread.

00:40:01.060 And they're going to ride this horse, to mix a metaphor, until it drops.

00:40:06.040 And, you know, if, if we're going to ever have an America that is based on European values and based on European traditions and so on and so forth,

00:40:15.460 we, we have got to destroy the, the Republican Party.

00:40:19.380 I mean, it is an evil force.

00:40:23.380 There's one thing that I would, I would say, I guess it's a bit more complicated.

00:40:28.840 I think the, you're right about the, the race baiting thing and how often they use it.

00:40:34.500 But I, and, and certainly a lot of them know what they're doing.

00:40:37.960 But one thing that I've learned is that a lot of them really, truly, and you've said this in the past,

00:40:43.560 really, truly do believe their own propaganda.

00:40:47.400 You know, if you look at Tim Scott in South Carolina, right?

00:40:52.920 First black Republican senator since Reconstruction and everything else.

00:40:56.920 Won something like 80,000 more votes than Lindsey Graham. 0.93

00:40:59.820 In Utah, you had a number of Hispanic governors reelected and all this kind of stuff.

00:41:03.280 You can say, Oh, this is winter dressing.

00:41:05.620 They didn't win the votes for all these people.

00:41:07.420 You know, they still ran on all these things.

00:41:09.500 Okay.

00:41:10.520 But I think if you go up to the average Republican voter, the most hard line, hard right voter,

00:41:18.800 they're really excited about this kind of thing.

00:41:21.040 And it's not like a game.

00:41:22.380 They're not doing it to like, to look good in front of reporters.

00:41:25.180 Like they really do believe this.

00:41:27.180 And this is the kind of thing they're pumped up about.

00:41:28.920 But more than that, you go into a, you know, open bar with Republican political types in the beltway.

00:41:36.900 They're really excited about it, too.

00:41:39.620 So, you know, there's what everything you just said is true as far as the way they're moving

00:41:45.020 and the kind of techniques they use.

00:41:46.640 But that explicit connecting the dot, that is not there.

00:41:50.660 I think it's completely, I mean, it's so obvious.

00:41:52.980 It's so obvious to leftists and it's so obvious to people looking, to like you and people looking at it from a demographic point of view.

00:42:01.900 But to them, I mean, I think they don't, they literally don't even think of it.

00:42:05.860 It never crosses their mind.

00:42:07.580 And insofar as it does cross their mind, it like makes them ashamed and want to back away from it.

00:42:11.640 Yeah, no, look, I think it's true.

00:42:14.200 And I'm not trying to be wishy-washy when I say it's both.

00:42:17.700 Because remember, this is not, when we're talking about, because we're not even talking about politics.

00:42:21.420 We're in some ways talking about society.

00:42:24.900 Psychology and society and culture.

00:42:27.560 And that's, it's not, it's not mathematics.

00:42:29.800 You know, two and two don't always equal four.

00:42:31.800 It sometimes equals five.

00:42:32.980 And I think it's both.

00:42:34.280 I think both things are going on.

00:42:36.700 And both, in a way, they kind of need each other.

00:42:39.760 You need to kind of flip between race baiting and then, you know, oh, Mia Love is, you know, what a, she's so articulate.

00:42:48.300 Whatever they say.

00:42:49.560 I would, I would say, South Carolina.

00:42:53.020 I don't know what kind of, I don't know what kind of campaign she ran and everything else. 1.00

00:42:56.440 But I assume she was, you know, pretty, quote unquote, conservative because, you know, it was Utah.

00:43:03.300 And since Scott was like, what, Chief of Staff or Strom Thurmond or something like that at one point.

00:43:08.160 Interesting what you think about it.

00:43:09.760 Interesting when you think about the Strom Thurmond.

00:43:11.820 Yeah, South Carolina, they now have a, a America, the first black senator and, and America's first, obviously, gay senator.

00:43:19.500 So they, they should be proud.

00:43:21.320 It's a really.

00:43:23.340 You're probably going to drop the mic and walk off that.

00:43:27.520 Yeah.

00:43:28.700 No, no.

00:43:29.860 For those of you listening, you totally, you probably wrote that like half an hour ago.

00:43:33.220 Oh, he's just been waiting this whole time just to, just to deploy.

00:43:38.520 Yeah.

00:43:39.200 No, no, but, you know, no, I, I, again, I, I think it's a little bit of both.

00:43:44.460 And I'm sure a lot of those Utahns, Mia Love, I'm sure she, she basically said all the right stuff.

00:43:50.600 She was a down the line, said the kind of conservative talking points of the last 20 years.

00:43:55.760 And, you know, and I think a lot of white Utahns kind of, they felt really, they had this gooey, sugary feeling in their little tummies after they left the voting booth.

00:44:05.460 They're like, oh, look how good I am.

00:44:07.540 I just voted for a nice, good black woman. 1.00

00:44:10.860 They, they felt, they felt morally righteous.

00:44:13.580 When you see Twitter, it's, it's interesting how that is, where they, it's very aggressive, like throwing the pictures up and everything else.

00:44:20.140 And, and this is the thing.

00:44:22.140 There's a lot of self-selection.

00:44:24.120 It's sort of like when you go to a, an evangelical Christian college.

00:44:28.700 Back when I was working at, at Leadership Institute, when I go to Patrick Henry, when I go to Liberty, when I go to any of these places.

00:44:34.220 The most racially integrated places in the country, the one place where you can literally say race really doesn't matter too much as far as how like ordinary people deal with each other, are in these evangelical Christian campuses.

00:44:47.740 You see a lot more interracial dating.

00:44:49.560 You see people sitting together, talking together, friends, you know.

00:44:52.780 You don't see that at like the University of Michigan.

00:44:55.480 No.

00:44:55.760 Where you'll be, you'll have like your tires slashed if you say you oppose anti-white racial preferences.

00:45:00.900 But if you go to Patrick Henry College or Liberty, I mean, nobody cares about what color you are.

00:45:08.500 Just to interject.

00:45:09.740 It doesn't matter because you're all coming from the exact same tiny little pre-selected social religious background. 0.68

00:45:16.480 Right. 0.99

00:45:16.840 Where if you, if you have differing values, you're going to be out on your butt. 0.99

00:45:20.700 So, just to interject. 0.97

00:45:22.900 Just to interject, I mean, I, I've spent time at the University of Virginia and University of Chicago and Duke.

00:45:27.860 All three of those campuses were radically segregated.

00:45:31.500 I, I remember when I, when there was, there was a, there was a, there was a, there was two bus stops, I remember at UVA near the library.

00:45:38.360 And I, I imagine it's probably still like this way.

00:45:40.340 And they were basically equidistant from the library.

00:45:43.340 So, there's no reason to go to one or the other.

00:45:45.720 And there was a black one and there was a white one. 0.93

00:45:47.900 It was remarkable.

00:45:50.260 And basketball games at Duke, when you go to the gym, there's the black basketball game and then there's the two white basketball games.

00:45:56.420 I mean, it is just radically segregated.

00:45:59.340 And those are all liberal places.

00:46:01.260 I mean, those are not, these are not conservative bastions.

00:46:04.940 These are like postmodern leftist places.

00:46:08.180 I mean, and, and, and, and Liberty University might be the opposite.

00:46:11.240 I mean, it's really remarkable.

00:46:12.440 But, yeah.

00:46:12.780 But go on to what you're saying.

00:46:13.640 And, and the thing is with the party, but not the voters, because now you're dealing with huge sample sizes.

00:46:18.760 Right.

00:46:18.920 But if you deal with the politicians, you deal with the activists, you deal with the type of person who, you know, defines their life by saying, I am a Republican Party activist, you actually are going to get a good bit of diversity in there.

00:46:31.040 You actually, you actually are going to get a good spread of candidates.

00:46:33.800 And because he wants to put up these people, just like any party does, it's not because they're necessarily more artificial than the Democrats or whatever else.

00:46:44.380 The Democrats have their own little kind of quasi-affirmative action.

00:46:47.440 They put Jim Webb up, you know, here's this Scotch-Irish guy who can appeal to the world whites, that kind of thing.

00:46:51.680 They, they are going to have these candidates that they're going to put up.

00:46:58.320 And, you know, the old joke about CPAC, what do you call the one black guy you see at CPAC?

00:47:04.700 Keynote speaker.

00:47:05.680 And that's, that's going to remain true for, it's going to remain more true as the decades go forward where I think the, the GOP electorate is just going to get whiter and whiter and whiter.

00:47:14.260 Well, Kevin, should we put a bookmark in this conversation and come back to it?

00:47:21.960 Or is there something we want to circle around?

00:47:23.800 Before we go, let me, let me just get this, because you're, you're more tuned in to the immigration stuff than I am.

00:47:30.460 Do you, do you think we're going to, in this window of the next, let's say the next three to maybe six months, you know, before everyone starts focusing on the presidential election, and before everything gets kind of set for, for that, do you, do you think we're going to see an executive amnesty?

00:47:52.120 I'd say, yeah.

00:47:53.100 And you're not going to see the next 36 months, you'll see before the new year, if it's going to happen.

00:47:57.080 Oh, you think it's going to happen really soon.

00:47:58.420 The only, the only thing that, the only question I have is whether he's going to, he being the president, kind of lead the, makes the GOP come out with something.

00:48:11.080 And then he does his own thing.

00:48:13.020 I mean, what he, what he's essentially going to do, and I'm sure he's already doing this, or at least he will after the Louisiana election gets settled, is he's going to put forward, this is what I'm going to do.

00:48:26.700 This is the, the text of the executive, uh, amnesty for however many millions of people, however he chooses to define it.

00:48:33.980 And the GOP is going to look at that and they're going to have the choice between either fighting that or coming back with a more limited amnesty.

00:48:42.740 That will also be, you know, legal, that'll go through the Congress or wherever else.

00:48:47.380 And then he'll be back, the ball will be back in Obama's court to decide whether, yes, I'm going to accept this or no, I'm going to go farther.

00:48:54.860 Um, now I think he might do that.

00:48:59.920 I mean, I think he will do something.

00:49:01.860 I think he would go big, uh, just because yeah, why not?

00:49:07.360 You know, I mean, like the disaster has already happened.

00:49:10.820 Uh, one of the insider baseball things that I really do believe is that he just despises Hillary Clinton and the feeling is mutual.

00:49:17.900 So he's not going to do anything.

00:49:19.900 He's not going to do anything to like ease her path to power.

00:49:23.460 Right.

00:49:23.680 Uh, he needs to protect the legacy.

00:49:27.400 Um, if Michelle wants to have a political career, I mean, you want to do it by, by setting up your, yourself as like the great, you know, continuing the great social justice crusade and whatever else. 0.97

00:49:38.160 Uh, his, his replacement for Eric Holder at attorney general is, is much the same mold as everything else.

00:49:45.700 So there's no sign to him backing down there.

00:49:48.460 I wouldn't need to do it.

00:49:49.920 Um, and frankly, I'm sure he's kicking himself for not having done it before the election.

00:49:53.700 Yeah.

00:49:55.660 Well, I'm not going to lay off.

00:49:57.820 I mean, he's got, if he doesn't, if he doesn't do this, uh, he's going to have his own party sniping at him for the rest.

00:50:03.960 Uh, that civil war, this is Gutierrez's phrase.

00:50:06.200 You're going to have a civil war among Democrats and Obama's just not going to have anything to do because once you've lost the house and the Senate, I mean, in his words, I don't want to be president without the Senate.

00:50:16.980 Yeah.

00:50:17.500 So, I mean, if Obama has one, uh, trait that's kind of defined the threat of life, that he just kind of jumps from one thing to another and doesn't stick with anything very long.

00:50:26.320 He might do it out of like, uh, like Moadie even do it.

00:50:29.200 He might just do it out of on Lee.

00:50:34.040 I hope, you know,

00:50:35.440 I might start paying attention to politics again.

00:50:38.780 The power to destroy a thing is the power, the, he who can destroy a thing controls it.

00:50:42.720 Right.

00:50:43.600 That's what he, that's what he's got.

00:50:45.320 Out of spite or on Lee.

00:50:47.440 That's perfect.

00:50:48.160 If Barack Obama were actually like that, I would start to support politics again.

00:50:52.980 I might even.

00:50:53.540 Yeah.

00:50:53.960 Although if he starts like turning into a giant sandworm, I might think about moving to Canada.

00:50:58.040 This is, this is the ultimate Raid external podcast.

00:51:09.160 This is what our audience wants.

00:51:12.140 Esoteric references to Dune while we talk about voting results.

00:51:17.060 Uh, no, no, we, we should, we should do this again.

00:51:24.180 Uh, Kevin, I definitely, I, I think we should, let's just put a bookmark in it.

00:51:28.120 Cause I, I think there's more to discuss, but I think we've, uh, we, I think we've gotten a good 45 minutes in and I think that's a good place to stop.

00:51:35.260 So, but Kevin, thank you.

00:51:36.680 I definitely enjoy talking to you.

00:51:38.180 Hopefully we can do it again.

00:51:39.160 I think it's been almost two years since we did a podcast.

00:51:41.840 So hopefully we can do one, uh, do one, uh, do one soon because it's a lot of fun.

00:51:48.920 So, um, thank you.

00:51:50.460 And I think also, you know, the next, if, if you are correct and you very well might be the next, uh, three months might be very interesting.

00:51:57.980 Maybe.

00:51:59.020 Not even the next three months, the next two months at most.

00:52:01.920 Yeah.

00:52:02.360 The next two months.

00:52:03.040 Maybe also in a way, if, if Obama can take away that immigration issue, if he just forces it down their throat, maybe, maybe this will be a kind of opening for us to, to move on to something, you know, more, just to something bigger and more civilizational.

00:52:18.560 Um, if we, if we start.

00:52:20.060 Well, it's going to force the GOP, I mean, not to reopen it at the end, but I mean, once that you did see, uh, which we had neglected to mention is one thing that won a lot with a lot of these state things on the minimum wage.

00:52:32.160 Uh, that got approved.

00:52:34.180 And if you're Obama, again, think of it from a completely cynical objective point of view, you do this immigration thing, you take that away.

00:52:42.800 The GOP is propping at the mouth, but they're already like that.

00:52:45.420 And then you start chipping away at their white support by going after white workers with things like minimum wage laws and all this kind of stuff. 0.66

00:52:54.640 Now, of course, if you're going to have this immigration, you're screwing those people over anyway, but it's still going to be something to campaign on. 0.99

00:53:00.580 Yeah.

00:53:00.680 And you might get, you know, two, three percent more, which is enough.

00:53:04.300 Yeah.

00:53:04.400 Yeah, that, that is a very...

00:53:06.680 It should also be noted in passing, uh, just for some of our things that, uh, here in Virginia where Gillespie lost, the reason he lost was a libertarian spoiler candidate.

00:53:14.860 So, let it not be said that those, uh, third parties don't have an impact.

00:53:19.760 Interesting.

00:53:21.380 Well, Kevin, let's do it again soon, and thank you for being on the program.

00:53:26.220 Yes, sir.

00:53:27.120 Thank you.

00:53:27.600 Thank you.

00:53:27.620 Thank you.

RadixJournal - July 11, 2014

The Republican Wing of the Republican Party

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