The Dispatch Podcast - All the Lonely Conservatives (Left, Right & Center Crossover)

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Sarah Isgur drags David French and Jonah Goldberg into the podcast multiverse, resulting in a dramatic Dispatch/Left, Right & Center crossover. The Agenda: As Liz Cheney goes, so go a narrow faction of the loosely-defined never-Trump Republicans Conservatism is not on the menu What a president can't do Are Israel attacks on Hezbollah a prelude to a regional war? Our thanks to our friends at KCRW's Left, Right & Center for making this collaboration happen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to left, right and center, I'm Sarah Isgir, senior editor at The Dispatch, and we're trying something a little different. We've got another David, David French, opinion columnist at the New York Times and permanent special guests on advisory opinions, our legal podcast at the dispatch. And we've also got Jonah Goldberg, editor, and she, for the dispatch and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Jonah and David are here for a special dispatch, left, right, and center, crossover episode. The three of us consider ourselves conservatives, but what does that mean?

To us and to other people, is conservative the same thing as Republican? Was it ever? We'll get to some of the pressing issues of the week, but we also hope to explore some of those questions. Hey, guys. Hey, Sarah. Hey, Jonah. To kick things off, I'd like to start with an answer Liz Cheney gave early.

earlier this month on ABC's this week. I've never voted for a Democrat. Wow. And it tells you, I think, the stakes in this election. You know, Donald Trump presents a challenge and a threat fundamentally to the Republic. We see it on a daily basis. Somebody who was willing to use violence

in order to attempt to seize power, to stay in power. someone who represents unrecoverable catastrophe, frankly, in my view, and we have to do everything possible to ensure that he doesn't

that he's not reelected. Given how close this race is, in my view, again, it's not enough. You have many Republicans out there who are saying, well, we're not going to vote for him, but we will write someone else in. And I think that this time around

that's not enough. that it's important to actually cast a vote for Vice President Harris. Cheney, who, of course, is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was a Republican on the rise and a member of House Republican leadership until she chose to denounce Donald Trump. Now she has endorsed not only Harris for president, but Colin Allred, the Democrat running against Ted Cruz in Texas. She's not the only one.

111 Republicans, former officials who served under President's Reagan, H.W. Bush, W. Bush, and Trump also endorsed Harris last week. saying, despite their policy differences with her, Trump is, quote, unfit to serve again as president. All right, so Joan and David, can I just start with sort of a random question that I have out of all of this, which is, it struck me as weird when Liz Chaney said in her whole life she never voted for a Democrat. Because look, you're going to move around the country, you're going to live in different places for school, et cetera. At some point, you've never encountered a Republican that wasn't as good as the Democrat. struck me as like real team player tribalism stuff, but I turn to you guys. Have you ever voted

for a Democrat? No, I have not. But a lot of years I haven't voted, you know, I never really, no, never, I don't think I ever have. I actually worked for a couple Democrats when I was very young hanging out for working for political consultants and stuff. But no, and I kind of disagree with you. I mean, like, I don't think it's that shocking. I promise you there are an enormous number of level-headed serious Democrats who've never voted for a Republican. And I think that's just the nature of the beast. But we are also past the era of split-ticket voting, you know, where people used to vote for, like, their Democratic senator and a Republican for president. I just don't know about it shocking as all.

David, have you ever split your ticket? So I was searching my mind to think if I've ever voted for a Democrat, and I believe the first vote I ever cast was for a Democrat in the Kentucky gubernatorial race. And this is way back in the 1980s when the Republican Party in Kentucky was just basically non-existent as a state party. And a lot of people forget that in the South, that even when the South started electing Republicans for national office, it was still democratically dominated

at the state level for a long time. And so there was not a functioning, really state Republican Party at that point. But I've never voted for a Democrat for a national office. And I can't say about other local races that were, for example, nonpartisan races, but I ended up voting for somebody

who was actually a Democrat. But I think one intentional vote, Sarah, one intentional vote back gubernatorial race in 1980s. This is wild to me because of the three of us, I actually have worked for the Republican Party. I mean, literally the Republican National Committee, you know, many, many presidential campaigns and down-ballot races. And I have split my ticket my whole life.

I mean, I don't mean for every single race, I've definitely split my ticket. But like, I have been a ticket splitter on the regular. But let's flip the side of the coin here. Do you believe that a never-Trump, a never-Trump Republican, a never-Trump-Ber, whatever we're calling them these days? You know, someone who came out in 2016 and said, nope, not on my watch, who was a longtime Republican voter. Do you believe that person can still fairly be called a Republican in 2024, Jonah? I'm not trying to dodge these scintillating and penetrating questions, Sarah, but I think

I think it's worth keeping mind. There are many rooms in the mansion of Never Trumpism. There are people who have basically just become straight up liberal Democrats who started out as never Trump Republicans. There are people who will be sort of. follow Liz Cheney's lead and say, I'm still a conservative, but I'm going to vote for Harris. There are people who are to say,

there's no way in hell I'm going to vote for Harris. But you changed that. You said I'm still a conservative, but I'm voting for Harris. I don't doubt you'd be a never-Trump conservative. I'm asking whether you can still be a member of the Republican Party at this point, eight years in, and say no way, no how to Donald Trump,

because now so much of the party has been remade in his image, so many people following him. I mean, look, I mean, there were Nelson Rockefeller Republicans walking around like Mastodons eating palm fronds until the mid-80s, you know, pro-choice, big, squishy Republican liberals. Factions last a long time. And I just know personally a bunch of people who still consider themselves Republicans, and their basic, the attitude is, I'll be damned if I'm going to let these people have my party. Now, what that means in practical terms, because it's not like the Bolshevik party in 1920, right,

where there are like strict rules about entry and membership and all that kind of stuff. In this country, if you're registered as a Republican and you call yourself a Republican, I think you count as a Republican. But you are definitely in the minority if you don't like Donald Trump and are willing to say, I think there are a lot of people who don't like Donald Trump who are unwilling to say so because they don't want to give the libs the satisfaction and their team players. What do you think, Damon? You know, I'm going to disagree with Jonah on one point, which you use the phrase never Trump

mansion. I think isn't it actually more like a never Trump double wide, Jonah? Like this is a small group of people. Those don't have lots of rooms in them. How about the never Trump motel six? So I think there has been a real distinction if you're going to sort of see where the never Trump movement has gone over the last eight years between the people who were never Trump who started off who were not particularly socially conservative, maybe more socially conservative than your median Democrat, but not that wasn't sort of the core of their republicanism versus those who were like me much more socially conservative. And I think what you've seen is the folks who are not as socially conservative have had really. the ability to find a home in the Democratic Party, in the center-left part of the Democratic Party

that's more internationalist. It's easy, for example, to be more fiscally responsible than Donald Trump. I mean, by some projections, Trump's proposals for, you know, 2024 and beyond would add five times as much to the deficit as Kamala Harris's proposal. So if you are a, you know, if you are somebody who really the social conservatism was not the bedrock of your conservatism, I think that they, I've seen a lot of those folks feel much more at home in the Democratic Party. But if you're a social conservative, if you're a pro-life conservative, that is a much harder transition to make. And you find yourself much more in that Never Never Land because, you know, the Republican Party

is moving away from you, the Democratic Party, while it's moving towards the center on a number of issues that's not doing that on abortion. So I do think that there, you find some distinctions in the never Trump world. in the world of social conservatism, and a lot of the socially conservative never-Trumpers are more reluctant to say, I'm just not a, I'm not a Republican anymore. Right.

So, latest poll from Echelon Insights had Harris up seven points against Donald Trump, which, if it held in swing states, would be an electoral college blowout. We'd have new swing states on the map, potentially even at that point. I'm, of course, a bit relieved. I would love for this election to be a blowout,

no matter which direction it goes, frankly. I would rather a Trump blowout than a close election. And I'm curious, though, what y'all think of what happens to republicanism and what happens to conservatism in either case. Let's give all three examples. The Trump blowout, the very, very close election that goes either way. And the Harris blowout. David, I'll start with you. How does this affect

conservatism as we understand it, which is, you know, policy principle based that may or may not fit within a political party at any given moment? And certainly it's almost, it's the exception that it was fitting for our lifetime in the Republican Party when you think about it. And how in fact, the Republican Party, you know, Trump loses by a blowout? What, do conservatives just march back in and take the field and go, ah, phew, bring Paul Ryan back, leader of the party. So I think if Trump loses big, it will be cataclysmic for MAGA. And I don't know what will happen. I just know there will be an opportunity, a very clear opportunity to supplant MAGA,

or certainly, absolutely to supplant Trumpism. I don't think that you're going back to the quote-unquote Reagan consensus necessarily, but a perhaps moderated form of populism, one that is, less purely reactionary, I think there's real opportunity. If there's a blowout Trump win, I mean, it's MAGA now and is MAGA for the next generation. I mean, I think that's the clearest possible outcome sort of to project. The close win for MAGA, I think, will be treated internally in the Republican Party as if it was a blowout. I mean, the triumphalism after they barely won in 2016, with a popular vote loss and just tens of thousands of,

of votes in a few states, and there was an enormous amount of triumphalism. So I actually think in the Republican Party, a close Trump win or a blowout Trump win would be remarkably similar in their effects. And a close Trump loss, that's where you see MAGA hanging on most tenaciously. That's where, and that's where they're going to have their greatest chance, even in spite of a loss to hang on, because they'll deny the validity of the loss again. They have primed the Republican public so much for this idea. get this all the time, even from completely reasonable non-Maga Republicans. I'll say,

I hear that millions of illegals are going to be voting. What about this? This is something that's just being brainwurmed into the larger Republican Party. So I don't believe that seven-point echelon poll, but I would like it to be true. Jonah, what do you think? Where's David wrong? On so many ways, so many ways. We're not going to get into Aquaman. are we? So, no, I largely agree with that. I agree that it would be best for the Republican Party and for conservatism first, and then for the country second, for a blowout, or whichever order you want, really, for a blowout defeat of Donald Trump. And then, frankly, a somewhat unpopular presidency, one-term failed presidency by Kamala Harris. So that the internalized message is just

this very flawed candidate could still beat Donald Trump because Trump and Trumpism are the problem. One of the reasons our politics has been so screwed up for the last 20 years is that we have this historical abnormality where we have tied parties and tied elections, right? We have been basically stuck. Political scientists used to talk about a sun and moon party where there was a majority party and then a moon party sort of orbited it. We now have two moon parties since the 2000 election. And because of that, neither party, both parties have come to accept that they can't get past like 50.1 or 51% of the vote.

And so I think a crushing defeat for Trump and Trumpism would be good for the Republican Party. I don't think that's the likely to happen. I think one of the reasons why a close defeat of the Republican Party would be bad is that that would give the opportunity for the Republican Party to say it was a stolen. election and we get all sorts of election fraud stuff and possibly violence. A blowout Trump victory, which a guy that is really unlikely, right? Because we all know he's got a high floor and a low ceiling electorally. But it looked very likely when he was going against Biden. I mean, we were headed towards a Trump blowout victory.

So, I mean, we say that now, but there was a time. Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. I think would be truly disastrous, not just for the Republican Party, because I think that he He's going to claim a mandate no matter what. Both of these people, if they win, are going to claim mandates. And I think mandates are a fiction. But if he actually had a sizable win, I think he would feel much more empowered to try the kind of deportation regime that he's been hinting at and that Steve Miller fantasizes about.

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Times and Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief at the dispatch and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. We're taking our best swing at bridging the political divide this week, discussing the conservative considerations on the 2024 presidential race. One thing that continues to fascinate me, and I'm sure the two of you as well, is how much we hear from both sides that the other candidate will be an existential threat to the country if elected. But when it comes to actual policy proposals, they're getting hilariously similar. no taxes on tips increase the child tax credit

build the wall owning guns the biggest difference is that one wants the government to set the price on food and the other wants the government to set

the price on credit card interest rates David explain to me how both can be true that Donald Trump I mean you've endorsed Harris Donald Trump

is an existential threat if he wins but also all their policy proposals sound identical to me Well, some of their policy proposals, because I would say we began to see some of the articulation of the genuine differences when we, after the Zelensky visit, on one of the most important issues in the race, Donald Trump went on an anti-Ukraine screed, just an absolute screed against Ukraine in a way that had demonstrated what we've long known about him, that he has

real resentment and bitterness towards Ukraine. This goes way back to the 2016 election, where there is a very bizarre and completely false MAGA conspiracy that Ukrainians actually hacked to the DNC server, framed the Russians for election interference in 2016. And this bitterness goes back. This bitterness was part of the origin of first impeachment. So yes, on some of these domestic policies, you are seeing a very similar move to pander. there's just no question about that. But there's some really big differences that remained. Ukraine, huge difference.

That's a giant difference for me, for example. I think this is a war that historians will talk about in 100 years that has immense influence on the future course of the global world order and American national security. And then here's a big, big difference, Sarah. Huge difference, historic difference. If Kamala Harris wins, Donald Trump is prosecuted. if Donald Trump wins, Donald Trump is not prosecuted.

That is a big difference. It's a historic difference. And I think it's a difference that really matters for the rule of law in this country. Hmm. I don't know that I agree that. Yeah. Go ahead, Jonah. I will ignore David's evasion of the question and his rank consequentialism.

And no, look, I agree with everything David says. I think his response to the Ukraine stuff was terrible. I do think it was a mistake for Zelensky to say some of the things and handle that trip the way he did, even though in normal times it would have been fine. But given the hair trigger that the Trump crowd has on these things, I think was probably ill-advised. But I think the reason why neither of these people are running with any ideological, serious ideological coherence is because they both really, want to win, and their parties are willing to forgive them for throwing whatever sick of cows they need to throw overboard to win. Now, the psychological permission structure and the sociological permission structure of both parties are very different. Trump is a cult of

personality, and whatever he wants to do is fine as far as people, a lot of people are concerned. And so even though he's doing it to win, right? He's throwing pro-lifers under the bus. He's throwing free marketers under the bus, all these kinds of people on the bus. Harris has the permission of her party to do it, not so much because they love her or it's a cult of personality about Harris, but because they're so afraid of the cultural personality around Trump that they're willing to put everything on hold and say, you let the pros figure out how to run the race in a way that'll let you win. And personally, I think more concerned.

should be celebrating this approach. Because even though I don't think mandates are a real thing, in democracies, politics is about making arguments. And she's not making an argument for any broad agenda other than, say, for the abortion rights stuff. And it'll be very difficult once elected for her to do the catastrophizing things Republicans say she's going to do if she didn't run on any of it. If she didn't say she was going to, you know, pack the court, if she didn't say that she was going to, I don't know, seize the means of production and nationalize the railroads or whatever people are accusing her wanting to do, it just makes it politically much more difficult to do it once elected.

And her ambition is actually a sign the fact that she is doing everything she can to win over the median voter, I find reassuring. The Republican talking point is, oh, this just proves she has no core principles. or she's a liar and all that kind of stuff. I would rather her do what she needs to do to win and have that flexibility once elected to get reelected than to be a Bernie Sanders committed ideologue. And I don't think you can, you can't claim she's a flip-flopper

and a unmitigated ideologue simultaneously. Those two things are in conflict. I mean, okay, but is there any chance we're starting to see some common ground that could lead the way towards bipartisanship in Congress? Like, if they're really both proposing many of the same policy solutions, can I find some silver lining here, David? I think on the border.

I think on the border. I think if she wins and Trump is out of the picture, and she has very clearly said she's going to bring that Lankford border bill back up, I think you would see it pass. And I think you would see some real progress on the border. Look, on all of this other stuff, whether it is no tax on tips, or it is price controls on credit cards, or a lot of this stuff is so plainly, so plainly late campaign pandering that it's hard to take any of it really seriously. Like, who's going to be really picking up the torch on capping credit card interest at 10% and moving that through a very closely divided Congress? I mean, a lot of this stuff is just kind of fantasy land, late campaign overpromising that we constantly see, and yet we're seeing it, I think, worse because both sides are taking such an existential approach to this election that it's, what do I need to say here?

What is it that I need to do here to win this thing? But one thing that, you know, I try to be very curious with my very MAGA friends and neighbors, and I ask them, can you please explain to me exactly what you think Kamala Harris will do that will end the country, that will destroy the country. And there's really nothing, there's really nothing coherent that comes out of that answer other than, other than this idea that an open border will sort of swap American cities. towns, et cetera. And that's the one area where I think that she has moved farther almost than any other area by declaring she's going to sign this border bill. So once you say, okay, let's say she signs this border bill, then what? Then what is going to destroy this country? And people, you know, come up empty really fast on that, really fast. And, and, and, but that rhetoric is so omnipresent. It is so constant, especially in Christian circles where people will use terms like

demoncrat instead of Democrat, that there's just, it's an article of faith that this country will die. And then the next question is, how, what exactly will happen? And then that's where people start to come up empty really fast. You're listening to KCRW, and we're talking about what these candidates actually differ on with David French and Jonah Goldburn. Jonah, we're talking about policy here, and it's easy to say one or the other is just lying. They're pretending to have these policy views that match with the other because they're fighting over the same 100,000 voters across these few swing states. But maybe that's a good thing if both sides are pandering to what they actually believe is the median voter in the country,

because it means that all of this bluster aside, they actually know what the median voter in the country wants? yeah I mean I mean you're gonna there's a pony in there somewhere Sarah yeah I mean look

I think the question of what positions either of these candidates take at this stage is I mean I agree with David it's fundamentally a question of marketing and messaging

rather than any sort of policy formulation And I think that, you know, I've probably written this column a half dozen times about how I can't stand it the way presidential candidates talk about the things they're going to do on day one that they have no power to do on day one. Yeah, although let me push back on one thing I'm really concerned about is that one of the things that Harris has said she's going to do day one or whatever this means is that she will get rid of the filibuster, but only for abortion legislation, which is bonkers. on two fronts, right? This idea that you are going to get rid of the filibuster for one piece of legislation and that that won't hold for everything else. And, of course, that the filibuster is one of the things keeping some amount of stability in the system where we don't just have massive statutory swings every couple years as a new party takes Congress. So in that sense,

Harris seems like the one who's saying she's going to be less stable as a president, although, of course, if you ask really anyone, Republicans will get rid of the filibuster the second they come into office, too. They're just not saying it. Yeah, so, but this, I think, is a perfect illustration of my point, which is that the president cannot get rid of the filibuster. The president has no power to get rid of the filibuster. On day one or on day 1,000, right? You need the Senate to get rid of the filibuster. Only the Senate can get rid of the filibuster.

And I do not believe that there are 51 votes to do it, which I think you'd only need in the beginning when you're setting the rules. But then after that, you need 60 votes to get rid of the filibuster. Once you set the rules, I don't think there are 51 votes to get rid of the filibuster. Because I think there are enough sane Republicans if Trump is the president to say, you know, Mitch McConnell's not going to vote to get rid of the filibuster. I don't think John Thune is going to vote to get rid of the filibuster. I could probably come up with four or five others of sort of normie Republicans who get why it would be a dumb idea. And I think there are a bunch of Democrats who also would not vote if Harris wins to get rid of – and the other party is definitely not going to vote for it, right? So like – right.

So, like, you know, one of the things the filibuster does, to your point, and I know, you know, part of the problem is we know each other's positions on a lot of these things really, really well. the filibuster is one of these things that is a normalizing it has it has these cascade effects throughout various parts of our political and legal culture that force people to behave themselves because you have to be at least tolerable to 20% of the other party to get appointed to the Supreme court or various other things at least when you had the filibuster and the same thing with with legislation there are a bunch of democratic senators who like to claim they are moderates who would be crushed in a filibuster-free Senate because they would either be forced to vote moderately and screw the Democratic Party or they would be forced to vote with the base

of the party and then lose election. The filibuster protects a lot of people from places like Virginia, a lot of senators from places like Virginia from taking hard votes. I just don't think Harris can get rid of it. but it's amazing to me the motive, you know, you have Republicans who insist Harris will get rid of it,

and that's why you have to vote for Trump. And, but then you say, well, you know, Trump's against the filibuster too. He pressured McConnell all the time. They'll say, well, yeah, but the Senate's never going to get rid of the filibuster. It's like, well, wait, pick a lane. Either you think Trump can get it,

get rid of the filibuster and Harris can't, or you think Harris can get rid of the filibuster and Trump can't, but it's like, they think one president has the ability to do, it's a nightmare, scenario under the if the democrats get into power and it'll all be fine if republicans do and i think it's it just shows you what a rorschach test all of the partisan rorschach test all this stuff is david yeah jona's exactly right harris cannot get rid of the filibuster trump cannot get rid of

yeah yeah that's all i need to say trump can't get rid of it but again this is actually a outside of foreign policy foreign policy is where the president's power is at his her apex. Outside of foreign policy, politics, and even within foreign policy to some extent, but outside of foreign policy, politics is very much a team sport. And this idea that Harris is going to do, A, B, C, D, E, and F, no, no, it's only Harris if Harris wins the House and Harris wins the Senate when it's an extraordinarily unfavorable map for the Democrats in the Senate. And so for Harris to have a free hand to do, to enact the parade of horrible, that are sort of being used to whip up Republican turnout,

she's got to win a lot more than the presidency. And it is really remarkable and I think also dysfunctional in our politics. And it's one of the things that is breeding dysfunction in our politics is we place so much emphasis on the presidential election that a lot of Americans think, well, when I'm voting for a president, I'm enacting my will. And I'm voting for the person who can enact my will.

but there are only one part of a multi-branch government that has to act in together to enact your will. And we have a situation where people are putting an enormous amount of focus around the presidency to a degree far greater than Congress. When the presidency cannot do what the voters want it to do and what their voters critically intend, for the president to do when they cast their vote. So they're living in this world of kind of perpetual frustration because they're demanding from the presidency and demanding from that vote for the presidency, what the presidency cannot possibly deliver,

again, outside of some foreign policy context where frankly, people don't really vote on foreign policy or care about it that much unless there's an absolute crisis. So one of the things that could de-escalate our presidential elections is greater civic knowledge that the precedent, you're not electing a monarch. So I agree that entirely. I'm sorry.

I agree that entirely. I've been complaining about how we think people vote like we live in a parliamentary democracy when we don't. But there's one place where I think it's an important place where exceptions to the rule. My colleague at the American Enterprise and Zuvalli Lavin makes this point that there are things the president has the power to do by deciding.

And then there are things the president has. the ability to do if they're a good executive, right? And so he can, with the stroke of a pen, simply decide to impose tariffs because Congress has given the president that power stupidly. And those tariffs could be really bad for the economy, I think. He actually can't do the rounding up of 10 million people easily because that requires coordination. and management and getting law enforcement agencies and the military and all that kind of stuff and buy-in from the bureaucracy in ways that I don't think he's up to doing. He could do a lot of damage trying. But there are things that he can do with the stroke of a pen on day one that

Harris could do too that could have really devastating effects. I just don't know what those things are that Harris would do on day one that are like first order threats to the economy or to national security the way there are for for Trump. So here's the problem as I see it. I mean, you guys, right? It's totally correct that as the president kept getting more power, everything else has become more dysfunctional. And until and unless we get Americans to put that pressure back on Congress or the Supreme

Court refuses to allow the president to do it, here we are. And I just, I continue to find it, the peak of irony, hilarity, whatever. you want to call it, depression, that the same people who are so mad about the Supreme Court's decision in Loperbright, for instance, which stripped the president of a lot of power in terms of deferring to the president about how much power he has, are the same people who are like, oh, my God, but Donald Trump would be the worst president ever. Like, yes, do you see this? Do you see what you're saying? If there's a 50-50 chance that the worst person ever is going to be president, Why don't we have less power invested in a single person?

Well, Sarah, a lot of people, a lot of people are not caught up on the ideological shift at the parties. They still think of the Democratic Party is the party of government, and the Republican Party is the party of less government. And so they read the decisions like Loeperbright, wait, you're tying the hands of the government? That's us. That's what we, that's our people. They don't realize the right has made a massive shift, a massive shift towards bear-hugging government power and bear-hugging executive authority. And they don't realize that Loperbright would hamstring a Republican presidency

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fall experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Back again with left right and center. I'm your host Sarah Isger in for David Green this week. We're here with Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief at the dispatch and a columnist for Los Angeles Times and David French, opinion columnist at the New York Times. The situation in the Middle East continues to escalate. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues on in Gaza, Israel executed several strikes in Lebanon this week as they turn their

attention to the terrorist group Hezbollah. Israel's turn to Lebanon has drawn the attention of the international community, to say the least, particularly the coordinated explosions of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon last week. These attacks come in the wake of months of rocket attacks by Hezbollah into northern Israel, including one that targeted a children's soccer game killing 12 children. David, I'll start with you. Is there a concern that this is on the verge of turning into a full-fledged war with Israel at the center of a multi-front war in the Middle East? I think that's absolutely a concern. But Sarah, I will say I'm actually a little less concerned about it now than I was even two weeks ago before the pager attacks because a number of

things have unfolded where hesbola has been hit very hard hesbola has taken extreme losses and especially at the ranks of leadership it has taken large-scale losses in its rocket force its rocket force has proven to be not as effective as much of it was hyped up to be the same with the Iranian missile force that was shot down almost entirely when it attacked Israel. One of the things that I think is missing from a lot of the commentary around this issue, people pay a lot of attention to how do Israel's allies feel about it? What's the domestic political situation in Israel? What's the day after in Gaza?

All of those things matter a lot. But military outcomes matter a ton as well. And Hezbollah has been hit really hard. Iran has been publicly and militarily humiliated. These are not, Hezbollah is not necessarily in the same condition that it was in back on October 6th of last year, before October 7th, when it could unleash its full arsenal against Israel. Military outcomes do matter. Diplomatic outcomes matter, political outcomes matter, but so do military outcomes. And since October 7th, both Hamas and Hezbollah have been suffering a strong.

of really catastrophic losses. And so I'm not quite sure that they're up for the full-scale war that a lot of people have been anticipating. I'm not quite sure that they're going to be able to fight it in the way that many people expected they could. So I do think Israeli military actions have had an effect. Jonah, David and I have talked a lot about the laws of war and, um, international law when it comes to all of this booby trap language that people point to who don't

actually aren't lawyers who do this. So set aside that legal argument. If you want to hear more, you can check out advisory opinions where we've talked about it plenty. But just from a political standpoint, an international standpoint, is this isolating Israel more? Does it matter? Does this give greater credibility to these terrorist organizations who are now somehow becoming, you know, the sympathetic figures to the American left, for instance? And I have stopped seeing the word terrorist in front of Hezbollah, something I thought we all agreed on. Yeah, which the United States government has dubbed Hezbollah a terrorist organization for a very long time because they've killed a lot of Americans. You know, I mean, yes, I think objectively, you could say that there's a PR hit involved in doing this. I just, I find it very difficult to remove my subjective contempt for the arguments behind it being a negative PR hit.

One of the mental exercises I often will use is, what if Israel did the opposite, right? So instead of this incredibly precise, which still had, you know, a few civilians, including some kids who were tragically killed here, would have it did what you would expect of most almost any other military power and just drop bombs or sent commandos in shooting up trying to kill an equivalent number of his bala commanders. People would condemn that as indiscriminate and outrageous. So it doesn't do that. In fact, does what I've yet to hear any military exes.

expert contest this description, the most precise military operation against embedded combatants in an urban population in human history. And they still say the same thing, which my point is, is that I think a lot of the time, what people do is they start from the premise that Israel did something wrong and then reason backwards. And they construct the argument, they reach their conclusion first, and then they construct an argument to justify it. And it doesn't mean Israel does everything right. But I do think facts on the ground, as David was getting to, matter enormously. And which is why we're seeing a lot of reports that the two most important players in all of this, outside of Israel and

Hezbollah themselves and maybe Lebanon itself, the two most important players in all of this, America and Iran both want this war to end. You know, for political, for all sorts of reasons domestically here, Americans wanted to end. But Iran is really afraid of getting dragged into this and has been pretty humiliated and does not want to lose Hezbollah as a viable proxy. And that would not happen but for the fact that Israel was so successful in these attacks. Yeah, I mean, David.

You know, one, I was going to say one way to think of the distinction, prior to October 7th, you had two cocked pistols aimed at Israel from right next to it. In Gaza, a cocked pistol of Hamas, in southern Lebanon, a cocked pistol aimed at northern Israel, and from Hezbollah. And right now, Israel has done a great deal to destroy those two cocked pistols, not permanently, not forever, not to settle the fight. But the situation is fundamentally different. And there's a lot of reporting right now,

as Jonah said, that Iran wants out of this because it is not gone ever since October 7th. It is not gone the way they wanted. And it is more reminiscent of a Pearl Harbor style, you got your surprise attack in, but it was the beginning of your ruin than it was the beginning of the end for Israel. But again, that's only in the short term right now.

Here, over and over and over again, Iran or its proxies, or if you want to go, you know, way back, just other countries in the Middle East, attack Israel, get their butts handed to them, and then complain about Israel. But, like, they're always the ones starting it. And then, I don't know, like, so this isn't the first Pearl Harbor. It's like the seventh Pearl Harbor where Israel wins. And yet Israel's still the bad guy on the international. international stage and particularly in the American left. And that is getting worse. I think there's

more hatred for Israel on the American left as the attacks against Israel have continued. Oh, yeah. I would have, I would have, there has been more hatred on the left and odd, and more hatred on the right. I don't know if you saw Yar Rosenberg's piece in the Atlantic just sort of showing how these major right-wing populist figures have begun trafficking in anti-Semitism. In some, some ways, just the most gross possible anti-Semitism. So you have this horseshoe theory far left, far right merging in this anti-Semitic abyss. And it's awful and ugly to see.

Hey, maybe it's another policy thing the two parties agree on. I should have added it to the last segment. Bipartisanhip. Get the Jews. Jonah, domestically, does the Israel issue have any impact on this election or on domestic politics moving forward after the election? sure because this election is going to be so unbelievably close at least that's what we think so the problem is we can talk about what Jews in the Philadelphia suburbs how they're going to vote or how Arab Americans in or Muslim Americans and Dearborn are going to vote or we can talk about the weather because when you're talking about such narrow margins everything is decisive and nothing is decisive.

David? I think where you're going to see more long-term effect is campus politics and not necessarily in the way that you think because one of the things that's very clear is that the encampment protest movement massively overplayed its hand last spring, massively. And you're actually beginning to see moves towards higher ed reform to protect Jewish students, to impose institutional neutrality, to protect free speech properly understood, more movement in that direction in the last two to three months in higher ed than I'd seen in 25 years of looking at this issue. And I think one of the lingering effects is domestically is not going to be

less support for Israel. That's a long-term trend. I think that likely will continue. But the big change from 10-7 is going to be diminished support for the far left on campus because it overplayed its hand in a major way. We're going to have to leave it there. We've reached that time. again for our famed left, right, and center rants and raves featuring pet peeves and projects from across the political spectrum. Jonah Goldberg, what didn't we get to today? Well, if it's a pet peeve, I wrote about this for the LA Times recently, and I made allusions to it throughout this conversation.

The idea that there is such a thing as a presidential mandate is actually a extra-constitutional, almost nationalistic, mythopoetic bit of romantic nonsense. um it starts with basically in the united states with with andrew jackson and the idea is basically that because the president is elected by the whole of the people he has he or she has special power or authority to have their agenda implemented what this leaves out is that there's nothing about that in the constitution the mandate is not the word mandate is not in the constitution or the federal papers and the president um still has to get stuff through congress and all of those people had mandates too. And those mandates revolved around actual issues where people live.

And I wish we could get the press and partisans on both sides to stop talking about mandates and instead talk about having a mandate to do the job and work with Congress to actually get things done. How adorable, Jonah. David, what's on your mind? You know, I'm going to go for something that maybe nine people listening care about, but they care about it. And that is, can we do something about the first four weeks of the college football season? I mean, really, every one of us is so excited to start this new season, conference realignment, and it's always the same every year. The first four weeks, all the best teams schedule games against like Southwest North Missouri State or East West North Appalachian Community

College. And it's not real football. It's not the real start of the season. call it an exhibition, and then get to the real stuff. But no, I think that, you know, one of the more serious part of this is college football, one of our most popular sports may be kind of broken. It might be kind of broken right now in this transition. You have a player, for example, sitting out at UNLV because they didn't get enough name image and likeness money. You have, as I was saying, this kind of farcical start to the season.

I hope it can write the ship, but we're in a transition period right now. And a lot has got to change, Sarah. A lot has got to change. And I didn't even get to my beefs with the NFL and why are my Titans so bad. But college football's got to fix itself. All right. We'll do a whole separate podcast on that, David. And for my rave, rant, I don't know.

We'll let you decide. I have been seeing these things on Twitter where, again, I guess the point of Twitter is just to like have your three minutes of hate or something. It started with shopping carts, but I've seen others about babies crying in specific places. You know, the mom's there by herself trying to eat her food and the baby's fussing and stuff. And I saw the most amazing response to that. I went over and actually just helped the mom and held the baby for a few minutes so that she could eat her food. Or I saw the mom trying to figure out how to get all the groceries and the kids in the car only to realize she then needed to take the grocery cart back to the bin so i took it for her so maybe when you

see something on twitter that is absolutely outraging to you and reaching that social norm think about what you can do the next time you're out and about to just help your neighbor in some meaningless to you but deeply meaningful to them way it'll cost you two minutes maybe less so that's my rant and rave That's all the time we have for today. Thanks to Jonah Goldberg and David French, Left, Right and Center is produced by Marque Green, with production help from Miriam Fernanda Alcala Delgado. Our executive producer is Arnie Seifle.

The show is recorded by Sue Margulise and mixed by Phil Richards. Todd M. Simon composed our theme music. Left Right and Center is a co-production of KCRW and Fearless Media. We are distributed by PRX. I'm Sarah Isger. David Green will be back next week. Thanks for joining us. Tune in next week for more Left Right and Center.

I'm going to be. Thank you.