The Ricochet Podcast - Back To The Future!

Episode Date: November 6, 2014

As you might expect, we’re in a celebratory mood this week as Rob, Peter, and Troy Senik (James is off this week) recap, react and analyze the results from this week’s mid-terms. Is this the start of a Reagan-esque Republican renaissance or just a glitch in the Matrix? Also, what Ricochet relative correctly predicted the stunning victory in the Maryland governor’s race? Finally, come on down newly... Source

activate program more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well i'm not a crook i'll never tell a lie but i am not a bully i'm the king of the world mr gorbache, tear down this wall. This is the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long, Peter Robinson, and Troy Sinek. James Lilek is off this week. We've got all your election recap commentary. So, let's have ourselves and not James Lilac's opening. There you go again. Hello and welcome to the Ricochet Podcast.

This is Ricochet Podcast number 237. 237. Amazing to me. I am Rob Long. I am coming to you from rainy, chilly, autumnal Baltimore, Maryland. On the line with me as always is Peter Robinson in Palo Alto. Peter, how are you? I am extremely well. The election results, I am extremely well. It's rainy and autumnal here by California standards, which means it's a lot less rainy and a lot less autumnal than back on the east. By the way, you are sitting in the largest city in a state long time blue, blue, blue state that has a new Republican governor.

Astonishing. We are going to talk a little bit about that. This is not just a blue state. This is a blue state that actually works for the federal government. This is a blue state that owes its livelihood to the Leviathan. And there's a little funny story behind that, which I will tell you. But before I do, we should say to our longtime podcast listeners, James Lilacs is off today and we are joined – ably joined by Ricochet editor-in-chief Troy Sinek. Troy, where are you? I am in beautiful, sunny, autumnal Tennessee where Tuesday night – I mean California got nothing out of it for Peter.

Maryland got this one big jump. For Tennessee, just another night on Tuesday. No big deal, right? Yeah, welcome to the new world, America. We've big jump for Tennessee. Just another night on Tuesday. No big deal, right? Yeah. Welcome to the new world, America. We've been here for a while. So we are kind of covering the – we're all over the map here. We've got the Mid-South.

We've got the Southeast, and we've got the – we've got La La Land, crazy California. I can say that now that I'm in the heartland. This is Ricochet Podcast 237. I used to do them by volumes and number. So it's volume a million, number a million, which means, Peter, we've been doing these. We've done 237 of these. This one is brought to you. We are very pleased by Harry Shave.

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week's featured title is Please Stop Helping Us, How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed by Jason Reilly. And Jason was on this podcast a couple months ago and it was like fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. And I was at, New York City is at a was on this podcast a couple months ago and it was like fascinating absolutely fascinating and i was at new york city is at a dinner with him um and he was like across the table it was one of those big uh fundraising things he was way across the table and i actually had to move closer to him because

i kept it's a wonderful book so if you haven't read it please do it and if you are we're also brought to you of course by Ricochet.com. And my question to you is are you reading our new daily newsletter, The Daily Shot? We've been getting some nice responses to The Daily Shot, Peter and Troy. Do you know that? Have you heard? I mean John Podoritz sent us an email today saying he loved it, no less than John Podoritz. And Matt –

Hold on. Just pause on that for a moment. For people who know John, and if you don't... If you don't know John, but you simply read his movie reviews, you will realize that John Podhoretz loves,

loves almost nothing. And yet the subject heading in his email to Rob and me this morning is, I'm loving it. And he's talking about the Ricochet Daily Shot. That is just – that is better for Fred Cole who composes the Ricochet Daily Shot. Fred, that is better than winning the Nobel Prize in literature.

John Podhoretz loves it. Right. And we got a nice note from Matthew Continetti, the Washington Free Beacon. So here's how – what's amazing to me is what we kind of envisioned about this was this is a way for you to subscribe, get a fun, interesting, fact-filled but not boring email daily blast in your mailbox every morning that kind of gives you a preview of what happened the day before and what's going to happen today and a couple little factoids kind of you know gives you a little ammunition if you're going to have any debates with your liberal friends kind of you know prepares you for the day ahead um the idea was that it was for like you know regular people like the people who have real jobs right not for uh self-confessed policy and political junkies like Continenti and Pedoras who really shouldn't even need this thing, but they love it and you'll love it too. So go to Ricochet.com,

subscribe on the upper right side. You do not have to be a member of Ricochet to get this newsletter and here's why, because we know that if you subscribe to it, in a week you'll say, I want to be a member of this place. This is exactly the place for me, and you're going to want to join our community. So go to Ricochet.com, subscribe to The Daily Shot. First one's free, like all drug dealers. Pretty soon we're going to have you wrapped up in our cult. And we should also welcome the auteur behind The Daily Shot, Fred Cole. Fred, are you there?

I am. So, Fred, where are you right now? I am in lovely, beautiful, cloudy Schenectady, New York. So Schenectady is a real place. People live there. It's not just a joke name. Yeah, no, no. And in fact, I'm not even in Schenectady. Schenectady, once upon a time, was big enough to have its own suburbs. I live in a suburb called Rotterdam. Rotterdam. Rotterdam. Rob, resist the temptation to have fun with upstate New York because if you start, I will instantly rise to Fred's defense.

I grew up in Binghamton even as Fred grew up in Schenectady, which means that when we looked at each other, actually I grew up in Vestal outside Binghamton even as fred lives in rotterdam outside schenectady all those sad that you people have it outside of these places i lived outside of the middle of nowhere i i grew up in an irrelevant town but no not in irrelevant town but out just outside of irrelevant town uh so fred how do you what's your just briefly what's your process for this Daily Shot? I mean we send you all these links all the time and everybody is bombarding you with ideas. What do you do? You sit there with a gigantic tumbler of whiskey and just think to yourself, OK, what will I want to know tomorrow? How does this work?

Well, I haven't been paid to write enough long enough to – I haven't been paid as a writer long enough to be an alcoholic already uh so i i don't start with the tumblr whiskey in the middle of the day all right um which is when i start these uh i start with some uh light web serving and then when i realize that i need to actually do some work i I start gathering material together. Well, the past couple of days have been pretty challenging in a way because of the – just the amount of – the sheer amount of material from the election. But it's also been pretty – not to say easy but like you know what you have to talk about, right? It's what everybody wants to hear about, which is the election. I'll just tell you this one story. You and I both got this email or I think maybe came in the support box. I don just tell you this one story. You and I both got this email, or I think maybe it came in the support box,

I don't know, from my dad. My parents live in Baltimore. That's where I am with my parents right now. They are kindly taking care of my beautiful dog while I'm itinerantly bouncing around the East Coast in the autumn. And my dad sent an email to support box. He wouldn't send it directly to me and said, love the daily shot. And I guess you had just done a roundup of the tight gubernatorial

races. And he said in the email, but why didn't you mention Maryland? That's tight. And I kind of like read the thing and I rolled my eyes. Oh, please, Maryland. And I think we had an email exchange. And I said, I'll explain to him when I see him why Maryland is not close. Right. And in my most dripping, condescending way of typing. And I forget who it was. I said, well, why isn't Maryland close again? And, oh, I just wrote two words.

I wrote machine state. It is exactly – I just sounded like – looking back at it now, I just sound like the classic brainless, unoriginal, idiotic pundit just pulling an answer out of the air, this clichéd answer that's supposed to be true uh and um so when i came i drove in last night my dad was sitting there kind of looking at me like uh yeah get something to say i owe my dad a drink yeah oh he was right about that and i it's i i couldn't believe it not that like i i didn't believe he was on to something it It was just from the data that I had, it was like, no, how is this a thing? And then suddenly it was a thing, and I just – I think we all got blindsided by that. Fred, two things.

This is Troy. One, I want to inform you that you're terribly mistaken that pay is the variable that determines alcoholism in a writer. There's no correlation there. Second, a question that I have for you, being this immersed in the news in a way that you were before, there have been posts on a while – for a while rather on Ricochet from Claire Berlinski about the fact that she sort of put herself into a news quarantine for a while and felt better as a result of doing it. When you get this immersed in it, does this – does it make you feel

better about the state of American politics in the world or worse to be seeing everything that's sort of coming across the transom? I had – before this, I hadn't really practiced any kind of quarantine. I had reduced my news consumption dramatically because I had reached the point where I was so cynical and jaded that I just didn't want to, you know, why bother? Now that I have to immerse myself in it again, it's no worse for me because I was pretty bad before. And, you know, when it's bad enough, you have nowhere to go. That's true.

Fred, have you got an emerging formula? You've got a quotation. You've got offbeat piece, some politics, some culture. Have you sort of – are there holes in your mind that you fill each day as you put it together? Is that still taking shape? No. We have a nice format that's flexible enough to be interesting every day, but it's structured enough that I know what I'm doing each day. When I'm actually ready to actually get down to work, that's when I find the quote because

that's – I find the quote and then that sets the tone for the day. Really? Really? That's fascinating. OK. That's good. I love the quote. That's what I've ever taken.

I also – OK. Go ahead. Finish. I have to – I also have to say I have no idea how people wrote anything ever before Google existed. Well, they made it up. Oh, I can tell you my revealing a trade secret here. Yeah, we made it up. I can. One little. You're far too young, of course, Fred. But asking that question shows you're far too young. In days of yore, when yours truly was on the White House speechwriting staff, we had a staff of six writers and we had a staff of six researchers.

And there were interns who helped the researchers. And those researchers spent all day going to and from libraries, pulling down books and looking things up. And let's see, I have no idea how the Obama speechwriting shop is run, but the George W. Bush speechwriting shop had zero researchers. There were a couple of junior writers whose job it was as well. Troy, actually, you know this better than I, but my impression is there were zero people whose full-time job it was to research. For the most part, There were actually a couple. It wasn't that there wasn't any. But we still had every now and again people who were –

there was an intern that I once had to send to the Library of Congress to get an obscure piece of early 19th century Greek nationalist poetry, and she never forgave me. Well, I would never forgive you. I never forgive you for saying that. Hey, Fred, we should let people know. How did we first meet? How did we come to know you?

Can you phrase that question differently? No, no. I mean, how did you come to – Rotterdam is holding up just fine against Rob this morning. Go ahead. How did you come to write The Daily Shot? Oh, well, so here's the thing. And this is really a great testimonial for Ricochet.

I was just a schmo. I still am. And I... It's our employment model. It's good because you find good people that way. I was just a schmo and listened to the podcast for probably a year and then finally joined Ricochet and just started posting. And, you know, it was explained to me once upon a time

that there's always a shortage of people who know how to string two words together. And so I have, you know, a mild amount of talent. And I stood out right away. I was saying interesting things. I was bringing up interesting points to discussion. And just by standing out like that, I got noticed just by the virtue of my own writing. And, you know, I became higher profile in the community, got promoted. Uh, my first ever post on Ricochet got promoted to the main feed and it just went from there.

And then, uh, you know, you get noticed, you start talking to people and, uh, one thing led to another and here I am. That's right. And we are thrilled to have you And if you're listening to this podcast And you are not a member of Ricochet That's one great reason to join Because your voice gets heard Another great reason to join is so that you can comment And have a little conversation With our contributors and our members

Like Fred and me and Troy and Peter Or you can simply vote things up You can like something And get it onto the front page. You can still make your voice heard as a member. But the most important thing you can do right now is go to Ricochet.com and sign up for the Daily Shot. It comes in your mailbox in the morning.

Plenty of time for you to read it and skim it over a cup of coffee and be prepared to sound very smart and very witty for the rest of the day. Hey, Fred, thank you very much. Can I add one more thing? Absolutely. You know, if anyone out there is listening and you ever wondered how to break in to things, you know, I'm interested in this. How do I get from A to B? How do I ever break into this?

This was my way. This is how I got in. This is – if you join Ricochet and you start writing things and people notice, that's an avenue. I didn't know anybody. I have no connections. I still don't know anybody or have any connections, but that's how I got from A to B. You know Rob, but you're right. You have no connections.

Zero. Less than – anti-connections. Well, I think that's a great testimonial. That is our membership pitch for this podcast. It comes from a member himself, Live, and also the author of The Daily Shot, which you should sign up for right now. Fred, thanks very much. Hey, thanks. Fred, thank you. Give my love to upstate New York. I will. They're waiting for Peter to return. All right, so, fellas, we got some time. We got a bunch of time left.

I pitched that we organize this conversation a little bit. Go ahead. Go ahead. Because there's so much to talk about um tuesday night i see i i suggest we talk about what we expected what the what this what the what the uh uh profile of the republican party and the movement was before tuesday what happened on tuesday and then what's going to happen now because that that way we're kind of all talking about the same thing at the same time because I actually found myself on Tuesday night and yesterday especially just absolutely sort of in a blizzard of things. And I couldn't quite organize my thoughts. The situation, as I understood it on Monday night or Tuesday morning, which was that on the one hand, I had heard from a lot of conservatives that – and moving conservatives that they felt the Republican Party in DC, Rance Priebus, were too establishment and too cautious.

They should have nationalized this election. This election was a state by state kind of battleground state by battleground state instead of making sort of a national coherent contract with America appeal to voters. And that was going to be a mistake. That or the other hand, that we were running sort of we had certain high flying candidates. But in fact, the Democrats had a better machine and that machine was going to win on Tuesday morning. And then the third thing was that Republicans as a whole didn't stand for anything. So even if we win, even if we're going to win on Tuesday, it was going to be essentially meaningless and not really going to have much momentum. That was the dark, my dark understanding of one side of the Tuesday morning debate.

Anybody else have another perspective? I was hearing similar things. I'm curious for both of you. Did you agree with the nationalization argument? That never struck me as particularly reasonable and I will tell you why. I mean the contract with America was very carefully pulled. I mean they figured out a list of items that would garner majority support throughout the country. If you're going to do something like that,

that's the way you do it. But when you are looking to widen an electoral coalition, this was the great insight that the democrats had during the last decade when Rahm Emanuel was running their campaign committees. You give people some line. You allow people to do different things in different parts of the country and there are different concerns when one is running in the running their campaign committees. You give people some line. You allow people to do different things in different parts of the country and there are different concerns when one is running in the south versus running in the upper midwest or running in the mountain west. I never thought and maybe we're giving too much credit to just this single variable, but I never thought that that was necessary and I think that the outcome shows that it wasn't. I mean this seemed to be

pretty effective in the absence of a national message, which let's be honest, if there was some national platform, the conversation today and yesterday would have been about how do we deliver on it, which we wouldn't have been able to in this environment other than sending up legislation that gets turned around and gets vetoed. I think they actually made the smarter move approaching it the way they did. Yeah, I guess what I'm most struck by – well, I had the same feelings and thoughts that the two of you have just expressed. So let me try to say something a little bit different.

I was especially struck by the press going into the election. The press had latched on to two stories, one so preposterous, not stories, but themes or memes, one so preposterous that it doesn't even bear discussion, I don't think, which was that the Republicans in victory would lose. I know. This is Hitler's bunker talk. They've lost by winning. Yeah, that's right.

This was going to be good for President Obama. It's just preposterous. Just preposterous just preposterous but it's fun to read isn't it yes exactly i mean it just shows speaking of drinking good lord they must all have been started drinking early when they wrote started writing reading those stories but the second one was that this was the and in fact george will who i think may want to take a couple months and go off someplace and read for a while and do some writing and just spend a little less time on television for a couple of months because he's starting to look for a little frayed to me. And he said this was the Seinfeld election, which I don't even think was an original line to him.

Another sign that he needs a vacation. This was the Seinfeld election. It was an election about nothing. By which he was getting to the point that the Republicans had not articulated a specific agenda. Guess what? It wasn't about nothing. It was about Barack Obama, the liberal agenda of the last six years in which the government got bigger and bigger and bigger and proved more and more and more incompetent. It was about Obamacare.

It was about the inability of the federal government to keep adequate records in the IRS to prevent guys carrying knives from hopping over fences and making it all the way into the East Room of the White House to get a grip on the correct protocols for handling Ebola and on and on to the inability of the federal government. I have to say I was so struck when I interviewed Peter Thiel a couple of weeks ago. He was talking about the decline in competence of the federal government.

On the one hand, you have John Kennedy in the early 60s saying we will put a man on the moon by the end of this decade and the country did just that. And now – and Peter said, you know, I am a libertarian. But even I, Peter Thiel, would not have predicted that the federal government couldn't even design a website. Right. So this was not an election about nothing. It was a rejection of something quite specific. And that's good enough. That's good enough. That's good enough. And I also feel like the one thing – I mean I agree with everything you said, Peter.

But even if you wanted to take the very narrow view of this election, the super narrow mandate, it is to drastically, almost unrecognizably reform and or repeal Obamacare. That is without a doubt, it is unarguable. You could argue, I guess, if you're on the other side or you're George Will, well, I don't know. Those other issues weren't really on the ballot. These other issues were really discussed. That's fine. You can make that argument. You simply cannot make that argument about Obamacare. Obamacare was repudiated across the board at every level, statewide and also by congressional district, by the voters in America on Tuesday night. And I think that was something that – I think that's the reason for the delusion leading up to Tuesday from the other side was they simply couldn't – they cannot accept almost on a psychological level. These are Freudian themes here that the president's signature and only legacy item is universally loathed and repudiated by the voters. There's no other thing.

There's nothing else that this, the past six, seven years have brought us except this. And the voters have said, not that, not that. And so it's a hard thing. I mean,

I sort of, in a way I have this sort of weird, creepy sympathy for the guy because what else do you say? You have to ignore that because if you don't ignore that, you're in big trouble. Well, that's the thing. You have the delusion going into Tuesday night for Democrats around the country. You have that same delusion on Wednesday for the president. If you saw the statement that he gave in the White House yesterday, which didn't get parsed closely enough, there were a couple of things that sort of stole the story there.

He spends the first paragraph of that statement trumpeting the great condition of the American economy and American healthcare, message not received. I mean it's stunning. If you think back to 2008 when the Obama campaign was spending a lot of time – Democrats are out of the country. We're spending a lot of time blaming George W. Bush for the fact that he was A, divisive and B, stubborn and unwilling to change. Two years prior to that, George W. Bush in the same situation that Barack Obama finds himself in now sacks his secretary of defense and entirely changes his strategy for Iraq. And then you look at the analogy in Barack Obama's – he's not changing anything. Remember that George H.W. Bush moment? It's a horrible, awkward campaign moment where he said, message, I care. I care.

And this really was message. I'm I don't give a damn. Yeah. Another contrast, Troy, would be with my sainted hero, Ronald Reagan, who did not do well in the Senate. Right. In his last election, 1986, we lost eight Senate seats. Seven of those were razor close. Obama lost seats by larger margins. So there's a little bit of a difference. But the main difference, even as George W. Bush changed, made changes after that big defeat, Ronald Reagan had something to go to in the final two years of his presidency, because all the groundwork that he'd been laying for the first six years, particularly in the first term in foreign policy, he was able to

harvest in those last two years of the presidency. Gorbachev was in charge. Reagan in 87 gives the speech in Berlin and Gorbachev is signed in by December of 87. He's in the East Room of the White House signing the INF Treaty and the Cold War is effectively collapsing, ending during those last two. There were big moments for the president to turn to in those last two years. Where does Barack Obama turn? What has he got going? Well, unfortunately, I think what he is going is a secret deal with Iran.

Yeah. And there's still rumblings of of executive amnesty. So he does have these incredibly divisive, incredibly disastrous ways to light the rest of his party on fire if he wants to. But look, I mean, I think everybody expected on Tuesday night that there would be. Some big wins, but I think we expected a lot more closer shaves. And speaking of closer shapes, Oh, look at that.

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So let's – can we just focus a little bit now on the Republican Party and the way this can be interpreted Tuesday night? Before Tuesday night, Republican brands in trouble. There's a gender gap. There are progressive movements in formerly red states that are becoming – turning blue states. Hey, there are 12 or 15 national magazines and national news outlets saying, is Texas about to turn blue. We felt like we were mired in this kind of very, very narrow voter ID profile. Wednesday morning we wake up to discover that we won Asians, that our party elected both the youngest candidate, the first African-American senator since Reconstruction. Craig DeMeo, gay congressman from San Diego.

Oh, he won? He won, didn't he win? Wow. I think it was tight, but he won. Got it. OK. Reelected Scott Walker, union buster in Wisconsin. Surprisingly – you look at our candidates versus their candidates we we we republicans elected uh women um african-americans mia loved one and it does seem

like the profile her good for her didn't know that either good for her does seem like the profile of the republican party i mean you can go you can go too far with this – has changed. To me, I posted on this yesterday that it feels to me like the Asian Republican majority on Tuesday night, which may not hold for their general. That's obviously going to be a different kind of kettle of fish. But for now, that seems astonishing, doesn't it? It seems astonishing. It seems hopeful. It seems hopeful. It seems necessary.

The, oh dear, I don't want to go into big thing stuff. Well, I'll give it a try because I know Rob and Troy are on the line to stop me if I start sounding too terribly pompous. But the theory, I'll tell you who I had dinner a few months ago with Haley Barber, former governor of Mississippi. And and he'd been being briefed by some political scientists. In any event, in the old days, you had the Protestant WASP elite that were the dominant figures in the country. When I say the old days, I'm talking about decades ago. But fundamentally, the cultural paradigm was established by people who had immigrated to the country before the first – before the middle of the 19th century. They were white.

They were Protestant and they dominated the culture. recent immigrants, the people who came through Ellis Island as opposed to landing at Plymouth Rock, tended by and large, in some cases it took decades, but they tended to want to assimilate to that quite distinctive American culture. And it was broadly speaking, the Republican Party that represented people who came through Plymouth Rock and the Democratic Party that represented people who came through Ellis Island and more recently across the southern border. And what shook people like Haley and certain political scientists were when Obama gets elected, the thought is that there's an entirely new paradigm here and that it's flipped, that the dominant culture is now going to be the culture of recent immigrants. I'm not even talking about politics. I'm talking about what people want to assimilate to, what they aspire to. And of course, it has a political implication because that's the

democratic coalition. Okay. That's a lot of pompous. It's not quite nonsense, but it's sort of pompous big thing stuff. But if it's true, if somehow or other, the voters who now make up a majority of the country are in effect turning their back on this older culture that is by a large represented by the Republican Party, then the Republican Party really and truly is doomed. We'll lose in 2016, continue to get smaller and smaller. What we saw two days ago was the last hurrah. However, what we saw two days ago is that it doesn't seem to be true. And that's what's so profound, if it holds, about the election results. Not necessarily that the, in fact, not full stop, that the old WASP culture in some way or other continues to dominate the country, but that the Republican Party, that the message of smaller government and personal responsibility and individual initiative and enterprise, that that message works no matter when your people immigrated to this country.

And no matter what your cultural position is within this cultural landscape, the message of small government and growth works for everyone. That's a thrill actually. Well, let's say a couple of pieces of this. One, the whole idea about the Republican brand being in peril. There's no question that we're going to be up against a different in the United States Senate. They have a majority in the United States House of Representatives. They have a majority of governors in the United States. They have five of the nine four-and-a-half Supreme Court justices. And they have an overwhelming majority in state legislatures. That is not a party in mortal peril, whatever weaknesses there may be.

Right, right. Well stated. Well stated. I don't think we're out of the woods though though, certainly when it comes to 2016, because you're going to be talking about a different kind of electorate and you're going to be talking about minorities turning out in a way that they didn't. Minorities, unmarried women and young people are the three constituencies that always come up here.

And the two questions there are what inroads we can make with those groups and to what extent the levels of turnout we've seen for them are uniquely reflective of Barack Obama. I mean a lot of people, myself included, thought that you would not see them come out at the same level in 2012. We're wrong about that. Does Hillary Clinton get you that in 2016? I kind of doubt it but I'm not certain. The other thing that I think is interesting about what we saw the other night, fascinating in fact, if you look at the breakdown of the results, you had republicander gets reelected in Michigan and we pick up the governorship in Illinois, which I don't know that much about Bruce Rauner. But I hope that he is going in there with the intent of just breaking stuff. He'll probably be the first Illinois governor that doesn't end up in jail.

Have the last three of them ended up in jail? Well, what a tremendous potential example for the country, right? I mean, this is every once in a while you have this. This is Rudy Giuliani in New York City. I'm not saying Renner is that, but I'm saying he could be. This is what we thought we might get with Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, and it fell through. But every once in a while you get these opportunities and there are so many things that he could tackle in Illinois that could become sort of national object lessons. My point, though, in bringing up all these people is Republicans are making pretty substantial – we lost Senate race in Michigan. But we're making pretty substantial inroads in the upper Midwest because this is a place where the traditional sort of blue-collar liberalism is not enough to keep people hanging on anymore because the National Democratic Party is not that under Barack Obama.

This is not the Bill Clinton people who work hard and play by the rules people. These are people who work in coffee shops and play cards against humanity. So there is a real I think potential to find a counterbalance in that part of the country for some of the other places, the Mountain West, the Colorados and the New Mexicos of the world where the – Nevada to a certain extent where the democratic changes are cutting against us. I don't think that means that we sweep that part of the country in 2016. But if you peel away one or two, that becomes pretty significant. It becomes hugely – by the way, strictly on the level of crass, raw politics, governors – That's what we're here for, Peter. Is there any other kind? By the way, strictly on the level of crass, raw politics, governors have a lot to say about how well presidential candidates do in their states.

By no means are they decisive, but on the ground, governors have a lot to say. And they make the other side work harder too. They make the other side, work harder to make the other side, work harder and look at the upper Midwest. If you're Hillary Clinton, you're saying, oh, my goodness, the only state we have left in the the Great Lakes states is Minnesota. You just went through the list, Troy, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Republican governors, all. It's just a – that's a big, big deal. So let me ask you this. So I'm going to – just so we can put a little dark cloud around here.

Not a dark cloud, but just another way to look at it. Tuesday night was the repudiation of the – and I'm using these noisy words with understandingbys establishment, Washington, D.C. Sharpies who ran – who figured out how to let the individual candidates – first of all, recruited strong candidates, let them – as Troy said, gave them a lot, a lot of headroom. So, you know, Ernst in Iowa is, she runs a much more value-centered campaign than other candidates did for the Senate. Cory Gardner in Colorado expands the values conversation, the social conservative conversation to include birth control over the counter. But for instance in maryland the the the republican gubernatorial candidate expressly says i'm not going to change and i'm not running to change any of maryland's social legislation by which he meant gay marriage and they all won mm-hmm is it was tuesday night the the empire the establishment strikes back troy i i don't uh i don't he's going to use first troy because he knows what he's going to get i

know i'm getting from you peter so i'm excited well no i don't i don't think it is actually because if you think if you look at the races that we actually ran this year there was no i mean it may just as much be the people that the quote-unquote establishment was choosing versus the people that – there were not a lot of really dynamic Tea Party-type candidates who went up this year. This is what always sort of frustrates me about the analysis on this topic. Tea Party is not one thing. I mean the Tea Party gave us Mike Lee. The Tea Party gave us Marco Rubio actually. People forget that. The Tea Party gave us Mike Lee. The Tea Party gave us Marco Rubio actually. People forget that. The Tea Party gave us Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and the Tea Party also gave us complete non-starters like Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle in Nevada.

I mean the Tea Party is not a monolith. And in some places, it has done some very, very good things for the party. In some places, they pick bad candidates. party. In some places they pick bad candidates. In some places the establishment picks bad candidates. Regardless of what side the cross currents were coming from this time, we just got good people. And I don't see a sharp ideological division there. I don't think that you've got a lot of people who are coming in in this class of senators who are going to be voting in ways that, that make a tea party loyalists shutter. And I don't like Mr.

Long. May I ask you gentlemen in the back with the sweater around his head. Ooh, wait just a moment. I'll take that from Rob, but I don't want you to. Whoa. The establishment got two candidates this time around that is to say they really

they really shoved these as best i can tell they only shoved two candidates down anybody's throat one of those was thad cochran in mississippi and the moment the establishment pushed him over the line and got him the nomination he was going to win and he did. But it was ugly. Nevertheless, Ed Cochran is now a United States senator from Mississippi again. And the establishment got Scott Brown in New Hampshire. And I myself like Scott Brown a great deal. I thought he had a very strong chance.

But like everyone else, I'm now wondering maybe they should have gone with a homegrown teen party candidate maybe the carpetbagger aspect of scott brown but those were the only two candidates as far as i can tell where there were backroom deals cut and a little bit of force used on on on party regulars at the ground level i guess i just meant more generally yeah okay but so so you have so you you have you have a lot. And I mean, I don't mean to say this. As you know, I don't mean to say disparagingly. You got a lot of rhinos now. A lot of rhinos in the certainly rhinos in in in state capitals, in governor's seats. If we're true, true. So two points, if I may. One is that the last night, what happened two nights ago was that the Tea Party, which shows how much the Tea Party has infused the whole Republican Party, including the establishment.

Does anybody suppose that Tom Cotton is going to Washington to be an establishment figure or Ben Sasse of Nebraska or Dan Sullivan, the count. They're still counting. Or Joni Ernst. Joni Ernst is going to Washington to break furniture. Does anybody does anybody think the people I just named, these new members of the United States Senate, even Cory Gardner, who you have to you know, you have you have to reflect the state that you're from. He's not going to be on the social issues where Joni Ernst is on the social issues. But does anybody think they're all going to go up to Ted Cruz the first day when they take the oath of office and say, hey, Ted, back off, will you please? We're here now. Calm down. Let's cut a few deals. Let's support this. Absolutely not. These are young people who are – they have picked up the excitement and in many cases the issues of the Tea Party. But the social issues were not there.

No, no, no. I grant you that. I grant you that. That – no, that's true. That – on the social issues as – who was it? Irving Kristol said the culture wars are over. We lost. Nobody took on the social issues. issues as – who was it? Irving Kristol said the culture wars are over. We lost. Nobody took on the social issues. Matthew Feeney, Jr.: Marc Andreessen, who is a very, very smart guy and a libertarian and invented the browser. The guy is a smart guy. He has made a billion dollars several times over by inventing things and selling them. He tweeted a couple of days ago losing – a thesis, like a question. Losing the culture war on issues of gay marriage abortion has made the Republican Party more powerful, not less.

Partially true. I'd say partially true. I'd say it's true insofar as gay marriage is concerned. I think the trend lines on that are pretty unmistakable. Republicans have stopped talking about it more than anything else. I think everybody in elected office has kind of come to the conclusion that, look, there's nowhere that we can go with this. I don't think it's true on abortion. In fact, I would argue that Republicans aren't losing on abortion. If anything, I think public opinion is cutting a little bit in the opposite direction.

Now, they're not leading with that. You could say that that's betraying the cause. I would say that in politics, you start with your 70 and 80 percent issues and not with your ones where you're at 55. And you can be a lot more – you can be just as effective on these abortion issues when they come up for a vote. If you ran on the economic stuff and didn't prioritize, all that matters at the end of the day on that issue is where you can vote. If it's going to be a headache for you to lead with it in your campaign, you don't lead with it in your campaign. It doesn't change the underlying principle. I think they've just gotten smarter about how they've approached these things.

The gay marriage thing is real. That's changing. But abortion, we're not losing on. I'd subscribe to that – to everything that Troy just said. You really have to draw a very sharp distinction between those two social issues. The idea of bundling the social issues doesn't make any sense anymore. By the way, it took me a while. The reason I was slow on the uptake there –

Because I thought your head exploded for a minute. Aside from being – Oh, my god. Peter's had a stroke. We have to call 911. It took me a while just to unscramble the meaning of the suggestion there. So this is like – what was it? Somebody. It may have been Papu, somebody anyway, in the old days, somebody said, well, Ronald Reagan needs to campaign

against the Panama Canal Treaty and hope that his side loses. Meaning, if the Panama Canal Treaty had gone down, it would remain an issue that would fester and get in the way of his running. You want certain issues just taken off the table. As best I can tell, what's emerging here is the Republican position on gay marriage is gay marriage is a matter for the states to decide. And what we have had in the last 18 months is not the states deciding. No, every place where I believe there's only one exception, but in every state with the one exception that eludes my memory at this moment, where the matter has been put to the voters, gay marriage has been banned.

What we have seen over the last 18 months is, and I don't think the term is too strong, although now I'm exceeding my brief. I'm not saying the way Republicans are going to talk about it. But what we've seen is a judicial coup. The courts have taken clearly expressed opinion by the public and simply overturned it. Well, the way the Republicans are going to address that, I believe what we see here is they're not going to talk about gay marriage, but they are going to talk about the Constitution of the United States and insist on democratic processes. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the right way to address

the issue. Massachusetts should have gay civil unions. Let them work it out the way they want to. But don't jam it down the throat of Texans, for goodness sake. Anyway, so I think that's roughly what you guys – oh, dear me. Yeah, sorry, sorry. I think that's roughly what – oh, dear me. Well, you know. Yeah, sorry, sorry. I think that's right on the merits but I think that's too optimistic on the politics. I don't see a whole lot of – well, I don't see a whole lot of evidence that republicans are saying, OK, we'll give you the issue on substance. It's a federalism thing but we're going to fight back

at the judicial over – they're ignoring the judicial over. Well, wait. Just wait until Justice Ginsburg finally steps down from the bench. Something may happen in the next two years. And I you can be sure that Mitch McConnell's top top priority, if there is an appointment to the Supreme Court, is going to be to stop it. Don't you think? No. If Barack Obama appoints a liberal. Well, it puts a liberal, but I don't i don't yes but you never know the supreme court this is the supreme court justices are awfully slippery um i mean we have obamacare because of uh supreme chief justice john roberts so you never really know uh i i don't who know i mean i think i mean again i'm a fan boy for scott walker i think scott walker had the right answer

which was um up to the states. Next topic. Let's talk about jobs. Before we get to talk about jobs and the future, that's our next segment here. Let's talk about the present. Let's talk about encounter books. This week's featured title is Please Stop Helping Us, How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed by Jason Reilly. In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason Reilly examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding back black Americans.

Minimum wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft on crime laws, which make black neighborhoods more dangerous to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm traditional public schools. In theory, these efforts are intended to help the poor and poor minorities in particular, but in practice, they become massive barriers to moving forward. This is a great, great book. And it's really – I mean why – it should be a bestseller.

Everyone should read this. To get this book for 50% off list price, go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code Ricochet at checkout. We thank EncounterBooks for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast and I thank them for publishing Jason Reilly's book. Can we go back – can we just talk about the future now a little bit? Back to the future. Back to the future. Big winners. I mean, I hate to do this, but I really do feel big winners last Tuesday night were Republican governors. The 2016, I mean the big winners I think were Republican primary voters for the presidency in 2016 because there are some great, great governors who are going to run, some really strong candidates. And the big loser seems to me to be the Democratic field

for president because I don't – I do have a dark horse. I do have a dark horse prediction. But before I do that, let me ask you guys, who do you think emerges from Tuesday night? The strongest just I can't believe the way you just structured that now, no matter no matter what Troy or I say, everybody, I have a crazy I have a crazy prediction. I have a crazy, but everybody's going to be thinking I wish they'd shut up so we could, everybody – Oh, I have a crazy prediction. I have a crazy prediction. Everybody's going to be thinking. I wish they'd shut up so we could hear Rob's prediction. I'll give it to you right now. I'll give it to you right now.

Wait, your prediction is on the Democratic side? Democratic side. OK. This should be good. OK, this is crazy, but I think this is going to happen. Major primary challenger, the major – most major primary challenger for Hillary Clinton. Yes. Who might get the nomination away from her. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper.

No, Rob. Well, his name won't fit on placards. Too long for bumper stickers. That would wrap all the way around your car. The Hick. What do you know about Hickenlooper that makes you i have to confess i don't know a darn thing about hickenlooper except that he just squeaked back in squeaked back in uh a little unfairly i think he's an energy pro-energy democrat look a moderate or a plausibly moderate democrat governor from is a strong candidate and he's from you know the rocky mountain state i think he – were I sitting in his – sitting there swirling, I'm sure, a glass of one of those Colorado micro-brews or something at night thinking, what am I going to do with myself? I would do it. Absolutely.

Allow me to push back just a little bit. Go ahead. Hard is what you like. John Hickenlooper – well, because we know that there's a difference between these candidates on paper and these candidates in front of a camera. I agree. John Hickenlooper is the most boring man on the face of the planet. John Hickenlooper makes Orrin Hatch look like Ted Nugent. The idea of – and I'm not sure – you can paint him as a moderate democrat. But remember Hickenlooper saw back and forth in the wind on this gun control thing that they did in Colorado.

That's going to hurt you in democratic primaries in the interior part of the country. I would be surprised, Rob. But there's definitely a space for somebody like that. Are you surprised if he ran or surprised if he did well? Actually both. Actually both. Actually both. I don't think that there's much of a catalytic factor there to get him into a race. But there is always – I don't think they can win anymore, but there's always a space for that kind of candidate in the Democratic primary.

Somebody like Brian Schweitzer who used to be the governor of Montana, that kind of prairie populist. There's room for that. I don't think those people can take the nomination anymore because that's not what their coalition is made up of anymore. I think if anything, you're going to get the sort of upper crust coastal candidate, full progressive, whoever it is. I mean Elizabeth Warren is the beau ideal of that. But failing Elizabeth Warren, you're going to get someone. You're going to get a Russ Feingold or a Howard Dean. Not that it would be those people but those kinds of people.

That's the ascendant part of the Democratic coalition. The Democratic Party has a guy problem. The Democratic Party has a huge guy problem. There were – in the races, in the Senate races, there was a 15 – sometimes a 15 percentage point gender gap, male-female. They lost men. They're losing men, married women. Now they – 50 percent of Asians voted for a Republican. That's a trouble.

If there's a gender gap issue, it's not on the Republican side. It's the Democratic side. Okay. So I subscribe to everything you just said, Rob, and also to everything Troy just said. Hillary Clinton. Yeah, I'm taking a stand. And now, ladies and gentlemen, back to Rob. Hillary Clinton, there is a lot to be said

for freshness and energy in presidential politics. And neither of those two characteristics. No, she's an open tomb. She is. She is an open. Oh, that's just, oh my. Remind me never, ever to cross you, Troy. Oh, an. Oh, that's just. Oh, Mike, remind me never, ever to cross you, Troy. Oh, devastating. Beautiful, but devastating. So if you're a

Democratic Party, you have exactly the problem that Rob just outlined. You have a the gender gap is now your problem, not the Republican Party's problem, your problem. You're not attracting enough men. You you need energy. You need someone who's going to draw out youth and minorities. You're going to because when Ronald Reagan ran for president, everybody called him an old candidate. And Hillary Clinton will be the same age when she runs that Ronald Reagan was when he ran. The term they used then applies to her. She's old. Now, if you're a Democrat, you say, how do we get rid of her? Who do we replace her with?

And I am delighted to say that I myself can't rid of her? Who do we replace her with? And I am delighted to say that I myself can't think of any way they do that. You get a challenge from the left, an Elizabeth Warren, somebody who just wants to rev up the troops and have a little fun. But I don't see how that challenge possibly succeeds. As best I can tell, Hillary Clinton, if she chooses to run, she may run this calculus in her own mind and say, I've had enough. But if she chooses to run, she's the nominee. And I don't think there could be better news for the GOP. Wait, do you think do either of you think that there's a serious chance that she she doesn't run an open tomb?

Oh, my Lord. No, I don't think it's a serious chance. If she hears that she's going to pull out. Well, I just assume that, you know, sharks keep swimming because they'll die otherwise. Like this is what Hillary Clinton does. Yeah is what the Clintons do. Like she'll cease to exist if people aren't looking at her. I can't imagine a scenario under which she doesn't actually run. She can't. I just don't. I can't imagine a scenario in which she just did what she did for the past month and a half of stumping for candidates that she's not she's not dumb.

She knew Alison Lundergarten, Alison Lundergarten, whatever name Grimes is going to know what you for candidates that she's not she's not dumb she knew allison london allison london garden whatever name grimes is going to you know what you don't have to worry about pronouncing it correctly yeah bill clinton knew when knew that uh that mark prior was going to lose in arkansas yeah these are not surprises to to political watchers like those dudes that that couple they knew they they knew what that number was going to be. They may not have known the size, the margins were surprising to everyone, but they were not living – they do not live in a delusional bubble. But she still went out there and stumped.

She's running for president. Absolutely. The question is who is she going to run against? And this is sort of what I find the most interesting thing and I would point everyone up to – Henry Olson has got a great piece. I'm going to post about it later today in the National Review online. It's really wonderful and it does suggest that there is a challenge for republicans in the future is to connect away from the elites. So he takes one of his examples is tax reform. Obviously, the tax code needs to be

looked at and reformed. But the instant – the knee-jerk reaction for republicans is always to go to marginal tax rates and this kind of incremental change that basically benefits the rich. Expand the base, lower the top rate. And he suggests that that's a mistake, that Republicans should be looking and trying to connect with working people and have a jobs agenda that's focused entirely on jobs and not this kind of sideways thing. And I feel like that's when we start when we're going to run against Hillary Clinton, that is how we have to run against her. She's old, but she's elite and she's powerful and she's connected to Wall Street. And she represents this kind of she represents this kind of Harvard, Yale elite.

The system is fixed. She's an aristocracy. And we need to come up with someone who represents the opposite of that, who represents – I think these Midwestern governors are great. I think the governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez, is great. I think someone who represents a Republican identity for the voter that says if you work for a living and you're a working American, we're for you. So theoretically a perhaps blue- blue collar preacher's kid from the upper Midwest who never graduated from college, just to throw out a hypothesis.

In theory, this would. Yes. Yes. New new dream ticket, boys. New dream ticket. Walker Ernst. Hmm. No, no. Walker Martinez. Yeah, mine's closer to Rob's. Walker Rubio. Okay. Walker Rubio. Well, I don't like senators, so I say Walker Martinez. She's done something. That's true.

That's true. Senators, all they do is talk. Well, that's all a vice president does, but you're right. There's always a possibility that the president will have an aneurysm or something. They are human beings. In either one of those scenarios, if you're talking about Martinez or Rubio, you put them with a walker. Let's just – I mean just play out this hypothetical.

You're talking about the kind of blue-collar upper midwesterner who can appeal to that part of the country because it's not – if you think about it, it's not a mystery. I mean this gender gap for the democrats, it sort of intuitively makes sense, right? They are not offering anything for you if you're a dude at this point. Like Obama had this sort of kind of basic bro appeal and then when you get rid of him, it's a party of schoolmorms. I mean it's the last thing. It's one big homeowners association. There's not a lot of appeal there for guys.

Unbelievable. Open tomb, homeowners association. He's on a roll. I've been drinking pretty heavily, Peter. But if you take absolutely right. And it does seem anti-male, doesn't it? Yeah. It seems like, well, you're basically a race. You're racist. You're basically a sexist. You're a rapist. You need to be you know, you need to pay. It does seem like it's against men in a way. I agree. OK, so if you put a guy on the top of the ticket, just to finish this thought, who has that kind of that appeal to sort of blue collar, probably non-college graduate whites, and you pair them with a Hispanic running mate.

The reason I would probably prefer Rubio to Martinez is, oh, by the way, I've got a Hispanic running mate from the largest swing state in the country. That's not a bad electoral formula to be starting with. It's not bad at all. Here's a question about Scott Walker. There is this aspect of the presidency that is the not just the head of government, the chief executive, but the head of state aspect. There is that little bit of the presidency more in times of crisis when the president needs to go on and unite the country on television, unite the country. There is this elective kingship aspect to the presidency of the United States. I have to say one of the things that's impressed me about Scott Walker from the very beginning is that this guy has nothing going

for him but his convictions. No fancy education, not a lot of money in the background, not movie star handsome the way Ronald Reagan was. There's really nothing there except his convictions and his willingness to act on them. By the way, I even find it appealing that as far as I can tell, you could do a Google search, you could do an extensive Google search, and you will not find Scott Walker so much as hinting at any point since becoming governor that he wants to run for president. He is up there to handle business in his state. All of that said, and I love every bit of it. And I was very struck by the post that David Kreps put

up on Ricochet the other day, David Kreps, who teaches here at Stanford Business School, he's a smart guy. And he said his candidate is Scott Walker. What we need is competence. I grant every bit of that. Will people look at Scott Walker and say, this man could be the leader of our nation? Could he handle that? Does he have the gravitas, the standing to convey the head of state aspect of the presidency? That's the big question I think.

I mean it's sort of the Mitch Daniels problem, right? I mean you've got everything in terms of competence. You've got everything in terms of intellectual firepower. But you wonder when I put this guy in front of a camera. And I think it says something good about conservatives that we actually gravitate towards these people because I think the natural tendency amongst conservatives is not to romanticize the presidency in that way and certainly even more so after Barack Obama has been in there. But you've still got a much wider electorate that – it matters. It matters, but we say that sometimes the spotlight makes the star, and sometimes a star becomes – emerges in the role. And was Harry Truman? I don't know.

He certainly seemed that way. I mean look, I think that when – Although he didn't have to get elected the first time. That's true. Key distinction. But when a president responds to or reflects or captures a certain part of the imagination of the people, he's elevated by that. Yes. Well, and I think that I think that's what I would hope. I don't know. I don't really know if it's going to help. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't even know if he's going to run, although I suspect he is.

I just feel like we should be the party of working Americans on their side, expanding an economy, creating jobs, trying to understand that wages have been stagnant for 30 years almost, and that we are going to come in and we're going to try to fix that. And that's what we're going to focus on. And their side, they are going to nominate an elite, tired old person with tired old ideas who is connected to all the rich people and is really kind of in this for her own personal gain and whose husband was kind of a sleazebag, even in his last moments in office, was on the make. And – You mean granting pardons?

Yeah, and it's kind of dirty and let's get clean. And let's focus on what we're supposed to do here. I feel like that could be – I mean maybe it's Scott Walker. Maybe it's somebody else. But I would – that would be my argument for the – my anti-establishment argument for the new crop in DC is remember who the audience is and it's not – it shouldn't necessarily be the old guys at Heritage or wherever they are in DC. You should remember that it's the working people in America are going to be the future. I mean Asians are a great bellwether because they are small businessmen and they are small business owners, not like entrepreneurs like Mitt Romney wanted you, but they are little republicans, right?

And they have careers and they work hard and they have families and they yell at their kids a lot and they seem like a little incubation – incubating force for who we really are and we need to speak to them. We need to speak to a lot of the white families, the African-American families and Hispanic families that are emerging who may feel like the system's stacked against them. Rob, you're the Shakespearean here. What is the phrase?

Some men are born great. Can you remember that, how that goes? Others have it thrust upon them. Some men, some men are born great. Some men achieve greatness and some men have greatness thrust upon them. Scott Walker would be option number three. Exactly. Let us hope.

Let us hope. Well, this is good, fellas. Two days after the election, we've coordinated the next guy. Let's go home. It's done. But look, I think you ought to say we have some very strong candidates and they're all in, I think, in the governor's seats. This brings me up to the sort of final – the member feed. There's a great member post.

First post by a member. Bodia's rising. Local elections are no fluke. About Sandra Fluke who lost her bid in a local election here in California. I guess Bodia's rising is from California. But the gist of the post was that no matter what happens, California is going to stay progressive for a long time because the leftists, the liberals are already playing the local – they're already in that local election game. And Republicans on our side, we always want to start at the top, and we forget local politics. Do you buy that, Troy?

Yeah, that's entirely right and especially in a place like California where there's a lot of infrastructure to organize that. I mean between the union establishment, the environmental groups and – yeah, there's two solutions to that. One is to try and counteract it and get really involved in sort of the opposition, countervailing force in local politics in a place like California. The other is to pull a Senate and just haul out over to Tennessee and not pay an income tax anymore. I recommend the second. But if you want to play the long game … Stop. You are torturing me. By the way, just by matter of contrast, when it comes to local politics, Tennessee earlier this week had –

we don't do ballot initiatives like California, but we have constitutional amendments that go on the ballot. There were four this year, two of which were kind of technical. But the other two, one of them clarified that the state constitution does not contain a right to abortion, which means that – functionally means that the legislature gets to make that decision and judges don't get to just write it into the original draft. The second locked the lack of a state income tax into the Tennessee state constitution. Boys, I feel very happy with the decision I've made. Very happy. All I need is a quarter acre.

Keep your eyes out. Please. You need more than a quarter acre in Tennessee, Peter, because you'll be racing craps. I like that idea. Just make sure you untie that sweater because you'll be racing craps. I like that idea. Just make sure you untie that sweater because it's going to get caught. You'll be like that dancer Isadora Duncan. It's not going to be pretty.

Guys, it's been great. Let's remind everyone. First of all, we're off next week. We have to do the National Review Cruise, but we're going to be recording a lot of podcasts there for our Thatcher and Reagan-level members. You get special podcasts. What is a Thatcher-level member and what is a Reagan-level member? Well, thank you for asking, Peter. There are three levels of membership for Ricochet. If you are listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet, we are pleased and honored and thrilled to have you as members along with the three of us.

If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member, as we said before, go to Ricochet.com, sign up for the daily shot and browse around and see if you like it. We'd love to have you join our community. There are three levels of membership. Of course, there's the sainted Calvin Coolidge level. That's the basic level. You get everything. You get to post and comment and vote and participate.

Of course you get all the podcasts. There's also the Mrs. Thatcher level, which is sort of our second tier level, which is great, and you get extra podcasts for that and we have some meetups for that. And of course the highest level of membership – there can be no higher level than this level is the Ronald Reagan level and that. You get some special podcasts and we also have a dinner every year. We're trying to see if we can do one twice a year. But right now it's for once a year for Reagan-level members. So check it out, Ricochet.com. At least – the very least you should do is sign up for the Daily Shot because we know if you sign up for that, you will soon be a member of Ricochet.com.

And if you are a member, we're having a meetup this Saturday, November 8th at 7 o'clock at TAP 42 in Fort Lauderdale. There's more information on the site. I'll be there. James will be there. We're going to bring a bunch of guys from NR there. We're going to try to get Drag Jonah over. You can pretty much get anybody from NR to come by offering a free drink. So very, very cheap dates.

So please, I'd love to see you. Members only, so if you're not a member and you're in the area and you want to come, please do, but join first. It's members only. Fellas, this has been fun. Two weeks from now. Two weeks from now. See you then. Have fun

on the high seas in the meantime. Will do. Peter, Troy. Post pictures. Take care. See you then. Have fun on the high seas in the meantime. Will do. Peter, Troy. Post pictures. Take care. See you guys. I'm back in the saddle again Out where a friend is a friend Where the longhorn cattle

feed on the lowly gypsum wheat. Back in the saddle again ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ I sleep out every night and the only law is right. Back in the saddle again. Whoop-a-tie-i-oh, rocking to and fro. Back in the saddle again. Whoop-a-tie-i-yay, I go my way. Back in the saddle again Ricochet! Join the conversation. I'm back in the saddle again

Out where a friend is a friend where the longhorn cattle feed on the lonely gypsum weed back in the saddle again i'm telling the truth doc you gotta believe me then tell me future boy who's president of the united states in 1985 ronald reagan ronald reagan the actor then who's vice president jerry lewis