The Ricochet Podcast - Boilermakers

Episode Date: November 16, 2017

As more (Moore?) sexual harassment revelations (the Al Franken story was breaking as we were recording this show) appear, we thought it might be good to take a breather and visit (by phone) our old friend and ardent Ricochet fan, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels. We talk about the state of higher education, what he’s doing at Purdue to combat student debt, and the place of academic... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. I'm going to do a terrific show today, and I'm going to help people, because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson.

I'm James Lomax, and our guest today, Mitch Daniels. Bob Costa says it all right there, doesn't it? Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 378. We're brought to you by the fine people at Blinkist. The world's most successful people have one thing in common, and it is not a high IQ.

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And it was for a really sort of fatuous podcast that was going on forever and ever about something that never really happened. That's not us. Buy stars. No, we've got a quality product here, and that's why we're kicking off our annual year-end membership drive by offering you, well, what? Well, for the next several weeks, we're going to be telling you all about why you should plunk down that magical $5 a month to become a Ricochet member. Do I have to bring Rob Long back here?

Do I have to bring Rob Long back that browbeat you into doing it? No. Well, you know, it'll happen. Every week, though, a theme. This week's theme, Peter,beat you into doing it. No. Well, it'll happen. Every week, though, a theme. This week's theme, Peter, let's say it together. Community. That's Peter Robinson right there who helped found this community. See, it's not just a commentary site, Ricochet, where people pay to comment. More than that, we have an online community, and that only works because we have a wall to keep out the riffraff. If that sounds a little exclusionary and elitist, then I guess

we're exclusionary and elitist. Are we, Peter? Is that it? By definition, aren't we elitist by saying that only those who can pony up the money get to join? Doesn't seem like an elitist place to me. On the contrary. It's the best of the best, but it's not elite.

Draw that distinction out, James. Well, there you go a membership is predicated on a code of conduct that keeps the trolls and the insults and keeps it from devolving into the comment section like every other single cesspool you go to that's why we're asking you to be a part of ricochet because the best part of ricochet is the people are you a person well then you qualify five dollars a month even cheaper if you sign up for a whole year. We want you to try it because we know you will love it. So come join our community. Peter, this week, it's hard to avoid.

Let's just lay it right down there. You're in Alabama. You vote for Moore. I'm in Alabama. I still hope that Judge Roy Moore will step out. And apparently on Capitol Hill hill they're weighing the possibility of having the current member of the senate so all of this comes about because jeff sessions was the alabama senator he stepped down from his seat to become attorney general

the governor of alabama appointed a man called luther strange to fill out jeff sessions unexpired term luther strange is now Senator Strange from Alabama. And Judge Moore won the primary for the special election, which takes place December 10th, as I recall, but certainly the first third of December. So Judge Roy Moore turns out to be a nutcase of dubious character, to put it mildly. What do you do?

And apparently, according to one of the things they're considering doing is having Senator Luther Strange resign, having the governor of Alabama appoint, name someone else to fill the still unexpired term, and that will reset, that will cause a new special election to take place. The point is, everybody in the Republican Party, with the exception of Alabamans who are hardcore Roy Moore advocates, wants this guy to step down and have somebody else take his place.

And if I were in Alabama, I would be scheming right along with them to try to figure out how to save this seat for the GOP by getting rid of Roy Moore. That doesn't answer my question. I was hoping you wouldn't notice that. That was a very elegant way of not answering my question. I'll ask it again.

You're in Alabama. Do you vote for him? Well, listen, that's a very hard decision because he's a stinker, to put it mildly. But Republicans control the Senate by only two seats. You take away one of those seats, it's 51. I can hear people saying, character counts, character counts. Yes, it does count. But so does the country.

So does the country. So does the country. The policies under which Stop right there. So does the country. The policies under which the rest of us have to live. I don't know. Are you going to talk over me entirely just to avoid that you just get there? I know you do. And so would Dennis Prager. Dennis Prager said the same thing.

I was driving to work a couple of days ago, and Dennis was saying, nobody cares more about character than me. But, as you just said, character matters, but there's that fulcrum right there on which all principle – I mean, it's a teeter-totter, and right in the middle is the but, and it depends which side you want to bounce up and down on. So character matters, but because – well, this is what Prager said. Prager – I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm just asking you perhaps to agree. He had a series of comments on the matter. He said that Moore's character is exemplary as evidenced by his recent behavior. And this was on Wednesday before we found out about the Facebook posts and his wife releasing an old letter of admiration and snipping the dates out to make it seem like it was current.

He said this was brought up as a smear. It was 40 years ago. And the actions described vary from appropriate to very inappropriate but do not constitute rape. And the only question, said Breger, is whether his election helps defeat the left. All other questions are irrelevant. And this is the formulation that we're all grappling with, isn't it? This is what we have arguments about all the time on ricochet isn't it all other matters are irrelevant because we're in a war and we have to defeat those people and that means that whoever comes along

with an r on our side who can be counted upon to be voting with the gop pull the lever i can't i can't agree i can't agree with dennis's uh formulation that care that nothing else matters if that's what dennis said i can't agree with that's formulation that nothing else matters. If that's what Dennis said, I can't agree with that formulation that everything else is irrelevant. All other questions are irrelevant. No, I couldn't agree with that. I do take the point as follows. By the way, the idea that Judge Roy Moore has done nothing odd or strange or anything to question his character or judgment in the last 40 years is crazy because he was all right there's a lot on the record about judge moore but i will grant

i will insist that it is a very reasonable people reasonable people to whom character does count could disagree on whether to vote for judge moore or not because control of the senate matters to a lot of us uh the policies that we have to live under that's it i and i and i think it would be a close excruciating decision and i want to get away from more specifically because this is a larger shoe facing the party um and it's going to happen again it's going to i mean by the time that this podcast hits he could have dropped out of the let's hope let's going to happen again it's going to i mean by the time that this podcast hits he could have dropped out of the race let's hope let's hope but i don't think so it doesn't look like it uh so i mean this is the question though and the problem is is that i mean when prager said

a couple of days ago that his character is exemplary as evidenced by his recent behavior you know it's it's a hard thing to say because then stuff comes along and you have to readjust and you're constantly when you get behind these miscreants, you're constantly having to readjust and recalculate and re explain and defend yourself. So eventually you reach a point where you say, I can't, I cannot defend this person because it's come out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, the people that you've been excoriating for the last two or three weeks are looking at you with a little bit of amusement because two or three weeks ago, this was binary. This had to be done. There were no other questions. No one cares more about character, but, and all of a sudden you've come over to that side because that person reached the level that you could not accept. And you were keeping contempt on those other people whose level was set differently than yours. And that's what I see happening constantly to people on the right is they're defending people and their

standards keep getting readjusted until eventually there is nothing to it comes down to again all the questions are irrelevant if anthony has said this before anthony weiner is running as a republican it is imperative to put put Anthony Weiner in the Senate because the alternative is unthinkable. Go on. No, no. Lovely peroration. I'm with you in principle and so forth.

However, at this stage of the game, Republicans have behaved pretty well. You've got this Senate majority leader saying, get rid of this guy. You've got the Republican National Committee has cut off funding to his campaign, which is all they can do to express their disapproval. One senator after another, Mike Lee of Utah, has called on him to step down. Ted Cruz has called on him to step down. Right. You're talking about the establishment.

You're talking about the apparatus. And that's great. Ted Cruz is the establishment now? He is now. And that's great. And I applaud that. I'm talking about that section of the electorate that is coalescing behind Moore and listening to Hannity batter his foes and saying, yeah, Rush, when Rush is saying that this story can't be true because she says she was locked in the car when she was 14 or 16. Motorized car locks were not invented at the time that she told that story so i mean you have a

whole bunch of people who are peeling off and saying it's the wapo it's the fake media it's bernie bernstein and the rest of them was coming out after us that's the part that well they're hardcore they're going to defend but there's an awful lot of people in the squishy sort of middle who are saying i'm going to defend them but there's an awful lot of people in the squishy sort of middle who are saying, I'm going to defend them simply because the alternative is a Democrat. That's what's out there, and that's what I think is corrupting and churning and splitting the party. We see it on Ricochet.

I mean, read the comments. Read the comments, Peter. All right. But no, don't read the comments. No, I mean, yes, that's the point of Ricochet. No, no, I read the comments because no i mean yes that's the point of ricochet but no no i i read the come from after our last podcast i i i said things that i thought were innocent and defensible and they got twisted james things my words were used against me in the comments no and you and you stepped right in to make sure that people figured out what you were

saying at that and i i appreciated that too because i looked at that and said, did he say that? Heck, I was there. Listen, it's hard sometimes to take away the lessons that need to be taken away, but there's a place that distills a lot of this information for you and puts it on your phone where you can get information

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We're talking to Mitch Daniel, a former governor of Indiana and the current president of Purdue University. And when we called him up and were put on hold, we heard fight song music that made us want to stand up and rah, rah, rah. How are they doing this year? Well, we're much improved if you're talking football, and we were a whisker away from being bowl eligible already. That's a big improvement. Meanwhile, our Big Ten championship basketball team's off to a strong start, so we're having a little fun. Fantastic. Mitch, Peter Robinson here, and I'm calling you Mitch, A, because we're old friends, and B, because every time I try to call you governor or president, you just tell me to knock it off and call you Mitch.

So it's Mitch. First, higher ed, since you are, as I recall, you're in your fifth year now as president of Purdue, and tuition has done what under your presidency? Stood still. We have kept tuition flat for, this is now five years, and we've pledged at least one more. We take them a year at a time. And Peter, you might recall, but we've reduced the cost of food, room, board, and books, and so it'll be less expensive to attend our university in nominal dollars in 2019 than it was in 2012.

And, you know, as a consequence of that, I just saw the new numbers, but student debt is down 37%, even though the student body is slightly larger. And a big majority of our students are now leaving here debt-free, which we've all learned is very beneficial to their chance of a fast start in life. So you've held tuition? This is something we're serious about. Tuition is flat in nominal dollars, which means it's declining in real dollars. You've cut the costs of books and meals and so forth. What's happened to faculty salaries?

They've gone up. It's real important. People always want to know if there's some shell game or sleight of hand here. I'll tell you what didn't happen. We didn't get more money from the state. That's been roughly flat. We didn't take it out on our staff or faculty. Our pay raise pool has been at or above the peer mean every single year. We didn't stop investing in our university. Look at this window I'm looking at. In fact, I hope that all the new growth we have in faculty and capital stock has been prudent. But we have one of the highest ratios, by the way, of tenure track to total faculty. A lot of schools have dealt with financial challenges by moving to cheaper so-called contingent faculty. We have not.

We're at the other end of that spectrum. So basically, we've just been careful about expenses, tried to concentrate on the core missions of teaching and research. And we have a larger student body, which is, we know from our, because we ask them, that to some extent, attracted by the knowledge that we're trying to be careful about costs, about their costs. So here here's the to me, the big question about higher ed. There is Mitch Daniels in Purdue making it less expensive to attend the university for the kids and paying his faculty better and updating the physical plant, putting up buildings as needed, and how much of higher education responds by doing the same?

Pretty nearly none of it. You and I believe in free markets. Why is it that the market in high, that you are an anomaly? There you are at Purdue showing that it can be done and virtually no other institutions are following the example that you're setting. Why does the free market not work in American higher education? First, Peter, we never preach or proselytize in anything we're doing here as for anybody else. We're just trying to do what we think honors our mission at Purdue. I will point out that higher ed is not exactly a pure free market. It has many of the same, I think, distortions that health care has.

You stop and think about it. You're selling what is deemed to be a necessity. Now, that's becoming more often questioned these days. Do you really need a college degree, the kind we've known, to get ahead? But historically, you have. More people have thought that. Secondly, there's an enormous third-party subsidy. We're talking about the federal government primarily, which has cushioned the consumer, at least initially, against the cost that's one reason it costs so much is because so much of the money

floods in from third-party payment, just as it does in health care. So, you know, if you wanted to design a system or, let's say, distort a market to ensure that things cost more than they should, that's what we've done in higher ed. So how do we change that exactly? Because my daughter's going to college next year, and I'm terrified of the bill that's coming, too. And we keep talking about the merits and the value of the education. As you mentioned, it's regarded today that you've got to get one, not necessarily because

of anything that it bestows, but it's the obligatory credential. How do we come up with a system in this country that sort of readjusts the notion of credentialing somebody? It seems impossible because so much virtue is placed on the college degree. I think that's a very central question, and a reckoning may well be coming. Some very smart people believe it will. There are two directions from which the higher ed world we've known could be very substantially transformed. One is what you just mentioned, alternative certifications, proof of ability, that don't cost a fortune to acquire. A very substantial percentage of the new hires at the high-tech companies around where you

guys are sitting right now do not have a conventional four-year higher ed degree. For a lot of jobs, Google doesn't care if you've got a piece of parchment. They want to know, can you code or help build the next product? I was just going to say that the technology, of course, is moving ahead very fast. I don't claim for a moment that any of the changes that we've made here at Purdue, the ones we've talked about and others that we haven't, will necessarily suffice to preserve this institution over the long haul against the creative destruction that's already started. There are small schools going out of business all the time these days, and that phenomenon is only going to spread, I think.

I just learned the other day, somebody pointed out the other day, in the world there are something like 21,000 degree-granting institutions, and 20% of them, or almost 25% of them, are in the United States with only 6% of the population. That's probably not a sustainable situation. Mitch, you were talking about the technology. Purdue just bought, not just, I think it must be a year or 18 months ago now, but you bought Kaplan, the online or largely online test prep service. What's the thinking there? What's the plan there? Right. It's actually

only been about seven months, and we're waiting on the third of three regulatory approvals before we can actually commence. But we did not buy their famous test prep business or anything else that they have operated except their online degree granting business. And we had two reasons. One, because we don't believe we can live up to our land grant mission, that is, to bring education to the broad masses in society. In this day and age, we don't think we can do that if we stop at age 22. There are 36 million Americans who started college and didn't finish, just to take that example. And neither they individually nor we as a society

can afford for them to be stuck short of the educational attainment that is now possible. So that's the first thing. We want to add a third, I think of it, concentric ring to the universe that we're serving. The first was the so-called sons and daughters of toil that Abe Lincoln talked about. And then the second was post the second world war was returning veterans who had saved the country and our freedoms, but had missed out on college. And now these adults, these working adults, and that's, that was reason one. Reason two was just in a strict business sense, we were floundering around and encumbered by the bureaucracy, which is really inherent in most higher ed, not really getting looked at this as a make-or-buy decision, and we decided to buy the capabilities that we didn't think we could build.

Got it. James? I was going to say, great, the technological aspects and changes by alternative means as being as meaningful as the ones you got because you sat sleepy in a room at seven o'clock in the morning and listen to somebody drone on a monitor but it'll happen and the realities you mentioned before out in the in the technological world they don't need that sheepskin they want to know if you can do something alas the entire self-image of the left is predicated on the credentialing and the bestowing of authority through university degrees and positions and names and the rest of it and when you combine their love of that degree with their love of the government there's only one way i mean you can't not see that the next presidential candidate the democrat side is going to promise

debt relief and free tuition which will completely corrupt and water down the point of the degree in the first place. Do you see that coming? And what arguments do we marshal in 2020 to say that free college is a disaster for the very people it hopes to do the best for. Couldn't say it much better except to elaborate and point out what Americans of all viewpoints, I think, in their common sense moments know. Nothing's free. The only question is in whose hand the old maid comes to rest, if you remember the old

card game. I do. I do. That's a starting point. A skeptic might further point out that we're dead broke as a country anyway. The last thing this country can afford to do is create yet another monstrous entitlement Entitlement Program when the ones we have, one of our gravest, certainly our gravest domestic issue is how to save the safety net before it implodes. So there's two places that the skunk at the party could start. Well, let's look at a large picture, the rest of the country.

We've got a tax debate going on now where all of a sudden things are on the table that didn't seem to be on the table before. All the deductions and the rest of it. Some people are saying that if we eliminate a lot of these things, then the states will be moved to act and we'll see tax reform on a local level because the rates that they're charging are unsustainable. Not darn likely. How do you see the national tax policy playing out, the debate playing out in the next few months? I'm ambivalent, but I'm hoping that we'll see reform in the end. I think that the value of what's being discussed in terms of strengthening the economy for the long haul is an opportunity not to be missed.

And I do think that in its overall design, the changes that are being talked about would have a very direct and positive effect on growth rates. And that's a starting point to success on so many other fronts. Now, absolutely, I was part of two, back when, two sets of reforms of the tax system, and always the goal ought to be fewer exceptions, lower rates. Somebody reminded me recently, I used to run around saying, wouldn't it be nice if we had a tax code that looks like someone designed it on purpose? the state and local deduction, just to pick the

biggest single one, really ought to go. It not only is an unnecessary complication, but we subsidize folks where you guys live and other places. There's no reason for Hoosiers to be subsidizing the spending excesses of people in high-tax, high-spend states. But that's what that does. It's regressive. It favors rich people vastly more than low-income people. There's really nothing good about it.

And that money would be so much better used, lowering rates for everybody, and in particular, spurring more business investment. The only ambivalence I've got, and I'm sorry to take so long, it's such an important question. The ambivalence, of course, is that this should be accompanied by genuine spending reduction

so that it doesn't have the prospect of adding further to the long-term debt. And that's very regrettable, but if they can get the essence of it, I still hope they'll do so and then turn, I hope one day soon, to the can't wait problem of runaway autopilot spending. Mitch, Peter here. One last question. You've got a university to run and we promised we'd keep you on only so long. One last question. I know that you just returned from a number of days in China. This wonderful fact that Purdue University in West Lafayette, Pennsylvania has alums working all around in China. Can American higher education remain the most sought-after education in the world? Are the Chinese going to figure that out too? It can, but it's not foreordained. And so, you know, here at Purdue, which is in Indiana, by the way, Peter.

What did I say? I said Pennsylvania. I'm losing my mind. I know. Sorry about that. Couldn't resist teasing him. You know, there are a whole lot of other big questions. One is rigor. Here at Purdue, we have stood apart up to this point from the so-called great inflation issue, in which one reason people are legitimately questioning, as you did, the value of today's degrees is everybody walks off with 3.34567 grade point averages. Not clear that these were earned in the way they once were. So we're working on this campus to see if we can maintain a culture of rigor that I guarantee you that the new universities they are building in Asia will insist on.

And, you know, I think it is still fair to say, and the world market reflects that we have the finest, with all their imperfections, the finest network of higher ed institutions in the world, and we should be proud of that and doing all we can to preserve an edge that won't be there if we don't make the right reforms. I'll give that remark an A. An A-plus, as a matter of fact. So your comments on great inflation? I told you great inflation was endemic, and there you see it.

Thanks for dropping by. We'll talk to you again, and as ever, good luck with tackling the beast of higher education. Keep Ricochet coming. I've told you before, it's the highlight of many of my days. Listen, good luck with something really important the rest of the football season. Boiler up, as we say out here. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Did he say boiler up? He did. You're a Midwesterner, James. I figure you know what that means. I don't. I have no idea whatsoever. If I followed football on a college level, it wouldn't be Minnesota. It would be North Dakota, which, of course, is the Bison.

Ah, okay. Bison, I believe, one of the quarterbacks who's now doing very well in the NFL this season is an old Bison kid. So, yeah, you want to go see some quality football, North Dakota State University. Anyway, so stop, full stop, because we don't have rob around do we no we don't there's no point of coming up with any sort of introduction into this we can just charge right into it like the kool-aid man through a brick wall and tell you about our next sponsor which is bowl and branch which is a two words that assure well what are the three most comfortable words? Stop. I'm going to reset that. I'm looking at this copy. I just said the wrong word. Three, two, one. And that's

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this is Peter here, Bob. Roy Moore, how does this end? Actually, forget about how it ends. Tell us about the next 10 days. The Republicans are trying to get this guy to step down. Go ahead. They all want him to step down, it seems, except for a select few on the right.

And they don't really have a lot of options. It's a limited hand for Majority Leader McConnell. The latest gambit they're thinking about is maybe Senator Luther Strange, who lost in the primary runoff, maybe he resigns. And then Governor Ivey down there, a Republican who was appointed earlier in the year after a sex scandal got out the other governor. Maybe she could call a special election, making this current special election in December null and void. Of course, I'd be immediately challenged in the courts. I'm not even sure if they could pull it off. But right now, here's the situation.

Roy Moore is a train, a runaway train in the Republican Party heading toward this December 12th election. And he's slipping in the polls. He's either going to win by a narrow margin or he's going to lose to a Democrat, Doug Jones. And that's that. The latest poll, I was just Googling around a moment ago, shows the latest poll shows him 12 points down. The Republican, 12 points down in Alabama.

That cannot have been the case for 40 years. It's a stunning poll, but it tells you a lot about Alabama. Alabama is not all rock-ribbed, Breitbart-reading Republican voters. Some of those voters, the same voters who elevated then-candidate Trump in 2015 in that big rally in Mobile with Jeff Sessions. Of course they are. But I've been down there. I was with Trump in Alabama throughout 2015 and 2016. There are suburbs in Birmingham.

There are suburbs in Mobile. There are women voters down there, just like women voters around the country, who are turning away from this kind of conduct and behavior in public life. And you see a lot of anecdotal reporting really starting to bubble up and showing Doug Jones, not because he's Doug Jones or not because he's a Democrat, but because he's not Roy Moore. He's picking up speed. Right. James Lilacs, jump in any time here.

I've got one more for Bob right off the top of my head, though. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who won a narrow re-election in the Senate from Wisconsin, won re-election narrowly in last year. And he has announced that he is against the Republican tax reform that I thought looked as though it was going to pass. They were going to hold people together. McCain was going to vote for this. Republicans have 52 seats in the Senate. Now they're down to 51. What does Ron Johnson think he's doing? It's actually not that surprising. This House plan, the House tax plan, is going to pass on Thursday, almost undoubtedly. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

How many Democratic votes? 10, 12? Any Democratic votes in the House? Scattered, if any. Here's the Johnson problem. So they're going to pass a bill out of the House, but the Senate bill is stalled. Why? Johnson's whole complaint is that at the end of the day, this taxctions and attaching the Obamacare individual mandate repeal and attaching the child tax credit champion via Ivanka, all this is noise to Johnson because he sees this is really a plan in his eyes to get the corporate rate down from 35% to 20%. And he thinks this is helpful to corporations. He actually is a growth-friendly Republican.

At the same time, is ron johnson he comes out of small businesses in wisconsin and he thinks all the deductions that small businesses covet they're seeing those scrapped and yet the big corporations are getting a huge cut and so he thinks he's being a voice for small business right now okay so this is not a john mccain style move where ron johnson is preening before the liberal media and trying to tank it. This is just a canny negotiating ploy by Ron Johnson. Fine, fellas. I'll give the corporations in your states the break they want, but let's talk.

I need something for my people, too. That's a better way of understanding it? That's right. Ron Johnson is a flinty guy. I've covered him since his first race in 2010 when no one thought he was going to win. And he's always kind of had this maverick streak. He's enjoyed talking to President Obama over the years. He has a rapport with President Trump, but he does, he's not close with McConnell. And ever since McConnell didn't get full, in a full-throated way behind his 2016 re-election,

Johnson, it feels like he has a lot of room politically to not have to play team ball. Got it. Got it. Okay, speaking of the team, I've got one more, and then, James, I'm going to force you to come in. I'm here. Okay, so here – so, Bob, this is the first time we've had a chance to talk since the off-year elections took place in – the big one, of course, was Ed Gillespie, Republican, ran for governor of Virginia. There were some down-ballot elections in other places, including Georgia. Whereas Ed Gillespie, when he ran for the Senate in Virginia two years ago, lost, as I recall, by roughly three points.

This time around, he lost by nine points. I was especially struck by the figures Loudoun County, which is a suburban county, not a hard northern Virginia county like Arlington, but it's a suburban county. And Ed Gillespie two years ago carried Loudoun County by – I'm going to pull a Michael Barone. I think the figure is 453 votes, but it's somewhere between 400 and 500 votes. And last week, he lost it by more than 23,000 votes. So what does this mean? As long as Donald Trump is president, Republicans are going to lose? What does this mean, Bob?

What it means is, I thought Gillespie was for sure going to be the next governor of Virginia after he barely lost to Mark Warner a few years ago in a Virginia Senate race. Yet he is indicative of the struggle every Republican can have, and I'm talking to as they plan for 2018. They say Gillespie, he's trying to get the Trump voter, but he can't win over the independent voter who's maybe tired of the Republican push on health care or retired at Trump's tweets. And the Trump voter is skeptical of anyone who's not rah, rah, rah Trump all the time. So Gillespie was trying to have this balancing act, and he couldn't pull it off. And it's pretty foreboding for Republicans as they look to next year. What's the magic style? What's the magic approach if you want to win re-election?

And Gillespie has disappointed a lot of people because he showed that you can't really figure it out if you try to be both a Trump guy and a suburban guy and a mainstream Republican. Well, nobody's going to vote for a Democrat because the Republicans were bad at repealing Obamacare. But some of these issues that you have in your Washington Post piece, this line, the Republican gubernatorial nominee ran on countering gang crime and illegal immigration and protecting Confederate history, cultural issues that Trump has made a touchstone of his presidency. Now, I can see somebody saying, I don't like the Trump tweets when it comes to the issues countering gang crime and illegal immigration are not necessarily things that are going

to drive people away from the Republicans. Are they? I mean, those are no one's going to go vote Democrat because they're not because they say, oh, M13, let them have their way. Well, I mean, the Gillespie tension was always, he talked about MS-13, he talked about the Confederate monuments, and he almost lost his primary to Corey Stewart, the Trump supporter in the state, main Trump guy. And he knew he had to get those Corey Stewart supporters, but Gillespie, I think, was always uncomfortable talking about illegal immigration and talking about gang crime and all that kind of thing, because Gillespie was at the forefront of the Republican Party post-2012 doing the autopsy saying we need to move more to the center on immigration,

embrace the rising Hispanic population in the country. And when he was on the trail in Virginia, I saw this was a guy who'd rather talk about his wonky, Paul Ryan-esque tax plans and economic growth plans than talk about culture and immigration, yet that's where the party is, and that's where a lot of his ads went. So, Bob, Peter here once again. So the problem that Gillespie faced is the problem that Republicans are going to face a year from now in November. How many Republicans are up? Well, a third of the Senate is up as usual.

The entire House is up. And so the problem runs as follows. I'm putting this to you to make sure I've got it right. Something like a third to half. It'll vary from state to state and congressional district to district, but something like a third to a half of the Republican base loves Donald Trump. And something like a third to a half supports him only grudgingly and really would like to send him a message. And Ed Gillespie just proved that you cannot hold both of those wings of the party together. This is going to be a nightmare for the GOP, or am I overstating it?

It reminds me a little bit about President Obama. I mean, the Trump voter, the Republican voter is still with President Trump, but they seem to be a lot more skeptical about the lower ranks of the party. And you saw Obama in 08 and 12. He's doing fine. He wins reelection. But the rest of the party gets devastated in the state legislatures, in the House and in the Senate. Republicans haven't figured out how to ride Trump to political success.

I mean, they did it in 16, of course. But there's a lot of nerves going on on Capitol Hill about this. And one last question on these senate races so the big figure that gets repeated again and again is only four republicans are up for re-election only one of them looks uh in in danger i think it's heller in nevada looks as though he's but he's a good politician who knows he may squeak it out but there are 10 democrats in the senate who are up for re-election in states that Donald Trump carried. Question, how is the Republican candidate recruitment going? Are they finding good candidates or is everybody displaying

cold feet? Well, I think the answer is pretty simple. Can you tell me who's running against Joe Donnelly? I cannot. Exactly. Can you tell me who's running against Tammy Baldwin? I don't have a clue. See, they're struggling with recruitment. And not only are they looking at tough recruitment in a lot of these states, I mean, there's a competitive primary in Wisconsin. This guy Nicholson, former Democrat, is getting some traction. It's pretty crowded, though a lot of people want to run against Baldwin.

In Indiana, it's just state Trump won by 16 points. Right. And 16. There's still no emergent frontrunner. But the more complicated things you've got to pay attention to on the fringes is look at Arizona. Flake's gone. McCain may step down at some point for health reasons. You could have two Arizona seats in play. And this is now – if Doug Jones wins on December 12th, he's got a 51-49 Senate.

And look, I've been following these 2018 Democrats. I was with Bob Casey a few weeks ago in Pennsylvania. Bob Casey in northeast Pennsylvania in Scranton was talking in a hard, taking a tougher line on trade than Trump. He had union crowds rowdy. Bob Casey, who's not

the most energetic speaker, he's figuring out he's going to steal the issues back from Trump and stay safe in Pennsylvania. Wow. In scranton scranton is trump country i mean it's one of those it's scranton wilkes-barre carbondale all of us right right right okay uh last question we're talking about republicans having good reason to be rattled and you're up there on the hill talking to these people you know that they are rattled does that make tax reform more or less likely to pass? Do they get frozen into inaction or do they say, good Lord, we need to enact something? I mean, that's what the Ryan and McConnell allies always tell you.

Oh, we need to do this because the donors wanted, the activists wanted, the conservatives wanted, the voters demand this. It will be a political disaster if we do not get taxes. I don't really buy that as a reporter because, look, I already have members telling me we may have to run on a campaign of cultural politics and judicial nominations in 18. Tout Gorsuch, tout the circuit court nominations, wrap ourselves around Trump when he goes after the NFL players and that kind of thing and just hope for the best because there's really no consensus on taxes. Plus, they're showing their hand on taxes, delaying the corporate tax cut, the child tax credit. They're worried about the populism on the right and left, and they're trying to show that they're not totally pro-corporate. But this is a corporate-friendly bill, and the Democrats can't wait for this bill to pass because they're going to all run against the Republicans.

They're trying to take away your health care and cut taxes for corporations. Oh, and don't you remember all the corporate stars in the cabinet? They were misusing funds to fly planes around the country. And Steve Mnuchin and his wife are posing with dollar bills. They got it all ready. Democrats are ready to run class warfare campaign. Republicans, Trump sold out the Trump voter. Wow.

James, go ahead. Well, that leaves, of course, then the fever dream of impeachment, which isn't going to happen. Wow. James, go ahead. or is that simply just a D.C. story because it seems to have lost its shine beyond the Beltway? I mean, it's always there. Tom Steyer is paying for these ads across the country talking about impeachment. It's a turnout mechanism for Democrats. You get the millennials to turn out on the Obama coalition that sat home for Clinton may come out if they think they can impeach Trump, get the pink hat brigade that really has been kind of exhausted ever since

earlier this year. Maybe they come out about that. Bob Casey, Joe Donnelly, Tammy Baldwin, they're not talking about impeachment on the campaign trail, but they know that helps their base come out. So they're talking about trade, talking about health care, but this is a Democratic Party that still sees the writing on the wall. If they win back

the House, it's certainly an option. Bob, thanks for joining us today. Do you write for the Washington Sunday magazine? Do they coalesce and condense a lot of your stuff and put it in that Sunday magazine? Oh, good. Well, thanks for talking to us

and I'm going to hope that it's in that magazine because I'm about to do a plug for them. This is shameless. James is using you. He's using the great journalist Bob Costa to build a segue to the next product he has to announce. Bob, thank you for joining us.

I'm happy to be used by James. It's my bridge to the 21st century. Thanks, Bob. We'll talk to you later. See you. You know, the Star Tribune has a magazine, a Sunday magazine, which is great. It runs quarterly. You know, the Star Tribune has a magazine, a Sunday magazine, which is great. It runs quarterly.

And the reason that we did it was because we realized that people liked the Washington Post Sunday magazine that we were including as well. Because people like magazines. There's a perspective. There's an idea. There's a personality to a magazine that really no other medium comes close to. Websites, yeah, but websites stole that from magazines. Now, for example, do you hear that squeaking in the background? I hear a squeezy toy being played with in the background.

That's the puppy? That's my dog. And unbeknownst to me, when my wife, last time she went to the store, she bought a magazine devoted entirely to Labradors. Now, he's a mix, so I've got to find out if there's a Labrador mix magazine specifically targeted at him. And you know what? You know where I've got to find out if there's a Labrador mix magazine specifically targeted at him. And you know what? You know where you can go to find magazines like this and build your own little custom creation?

Well, of course, that's the Texture app. That's what I'm talking about. Now, whether you're looking for dependable political reporting, high-quality storytelling, or the latest on culture and entertainment, magazines deliver it all with high-quality writing and beautiful photography, and now you can get all of your magazines in one place on Texture. Scout, Birch, I'm sorry, Scout, I'm still calling him that. Cut that, please. The Texture app gives you unlimited access to over 200 premium magazines.

You can find National Review on your Texture app, and you can find well-known titles like Time and The Atlantic and The New Yorker. Look, if you're looking for a break from news and politics, Texture has you covered as well with Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Squeak Toy Monthly, Labrador Monthly, Forbes, Better Homes and Garden Entertainment Weekly, Food Network Magazine. Why do you get the.200 premium titles? And I'm sure there's one in there about dog obedience. Birch, stop. When Rob Long isn't here to harass you, your own dog does. Dog is.

The thing itself, but for my wife, because there's a lot of stuff in there that I wouldn't be interested in that maybe she would. And so you just call them up on the iPad and leave it around. The next thing you know, you're sharing the account, you're sharing different magazines, and you find out stuff you never found out before. That's what Texture's for. Or you can find out the stuff that you already know and want quick access to. That's what Texture's for. So Te can find out the stuff that you already know and want quick access to. That's what Texture's for. So texture.com slash ricochet for a free trial. It's normally $9.99 a month, and you get 200 magazines for that,

but you get a 14-day free trial at texture.com slash ricochet. 14 days free, texture.com slash ricochet. And our thanks to Texture for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, Peter, say something here because I have to mute myself temporarily and take the squeeze toy to the dog's mouth all right i will say something here to all the ricochet members to everyone who's listening to this but to the ricochet members in particular can you explain to me why purdue calls its purdue calls its teams and its alums the boiler makers as since mitch daniels was on on, and he said, go Boilers,

that puzzled me. I've looked it up, and Purdue calls its teams the Boilermakers, reduced to Boilers for short. I have no idea why this should be the case, and I'm going to count on Ricochet members to explain it all. If there's anybody who's a Purdue alum

or anybody from West Lafayette, Indiana, explain that in the comments, if you would, please. Well, it's either the drink or it's some industrial title, right? I mean, literally, perhaps they were founded by people who literally made boilers and furnaces and the rest of it, or it's the drink. Either one is fine by me, but you're right that some of these names are mysterious. I'm sure that there will be some effort on campus to get rid of it because it either promotes binge drinking, which leads to rape culture, or it's a gendered term because the industry was historically male. We can't have that.

But it is nice, at least, that they seem to be avoiding the usual college insanity. Right? Is that your impression? Yes. Oh, with Mitch there, they're avoiding all kinds of insanity. Yes. Yes. So we have to, before we leave, we now have Democrats saying, gosh, now that neither Bill nor Hillary is particularly useful anymore, we can finally turn on him. Is that convincing, Peter? Have you been watching the, you know, Bill did behave poorly back then. Does this matter at this point in the culture? Yeah, I think it does. I think it does matter. Look, the other side cannot treat Judge Roy Moore like a criminal, Judge Roy Moore, who, as Dennis Prager points out,

these allegations date back, what, three and a half decades, something like that, three and a half or four decades. And we know for certain what Bill Clinton did in the White House. Those allegations date back, are much more recent. And we have all, there are as many charges against Bill Clinton by aggrieved women, have been over the years. I haven't actually counted, but I believe it's roughly the same as there have been against Judge Roy Moore. You just cannot.

I mean, it's just fundamental consistency. Yes, I think you're right. The problem is that they're going to use their dismissal, their distancing from Bill Clinton. That's going to cover 20, 25 years of apologizing for him. No one will ever hold the Democrats say, what about Bill Clinton? They say, well, I said something. Yes, but you said that last week as opposed to 10 years or 20 years before that. You had the opportunity and nobody ever did. So it's – I think Al Franken is the next one who's being described as a – I mentioned a few weeks ago, politics is where this goes next. It's where people start speaking out against the people in politics who've done the groping and the toying and the rest of it and that'll be the final convulsion before we before we settle into a new puritan age uh but it's fun to watch and it's odd to think that at the end of this we get more democrats in power um because there's the usual

mid-term revulsion and uh and we get the party of libertinism after we've just had a spasm about men behaving like well like democrats right it was a rather confused culture at this point peter oh actually do we know what we want by the way the other thing so we began the show by talking about i think think I didn't persuade you, but I'm insisting that there are difficult decisions to be made. Reasonable people can disagree on whether to vote for Judge Roy Moore because the control of the Senate matters so much, so forth. All right, we've started with that. Here's another one that's extremely difficult. How do you say, of course, people should not engage in that kind of behavior while at the same time saying, look, a little carve out here, Judge Moore, this election is going to take place

on December 12th. We won't have to, he'll be gone by then at the latest in any event. And we're going to have to revisit a certain matter here, which is the extent to which careers can simply be wiped out on accounts that are offered in the press, on blogs. It just feels as though there's a touch of hysteria in all of this. That's true. And so the trick here is how do you say, of course, I'm opposed to that behavior, but I'm also opposed to hysteria, and we need to calm down about this somehow. You can't say both of those things in the present moment because it's too hysterical. We will have to revisit all this, I believe. It's very instructive because, for example, you're always hearing people on the right who want to fight as dirty as the left, which is funny because the left views themselves as being pristine combatants and views the right as capable of absolutely everything.

But there are a lot of people on the right say, look, we got to do what the left does, which is call names, destroy reputations, boycott, you know, all that stuff. The only thing that will ever change the culture, these people say, is when the left has their own rules applied to them. Well, what we've just seen in Hollywood is exactly that. We've seen after being lectured for years about their sexual egalitarianism and enlightenment that actually their industry is full of a bunch of frauds and really awful awful men so you would think at this point that uh they would say okay this hysteria is getting a little bit out of hand but they can't because in the hierarchy of grievance of victim grievance that they uh that they subscribe to the women are paramount now so the the women have got all the power and they are able to say no we're going to keep this me too thing going until all of these awful men are extirpated from the face of the earth or at

least the industry or at least we get more movies so it's not going to change their behavior to have this hysteria and i don't know exactly what will convince them that hysterias and witch hunts are a bad idea um because apparently uh they're they're they're happy this one is happening so they can they can show what what what great fine feminist men they are. Does that make sense, Peter? That makes perfect sense. And here's one that I'm going to leave to you to investigate and evaluate for the rest of us. It turns out there's a new blog post up this morning.

I think it's just this morning. And here's the headline. Senator Al Franken, Democrat of the great state of Minnesota. Senator Al Franken kissed and groped me without my consent, and there's nothing funny about it. Over to you. Let me ask you this. Does that strike you as possibly consistent with the personality and character of the man that you've seen on the public stage for these years? Oh, I have a high opinion of his humor and a low opinion of his character i'm sorry to say right well it's like you're there you're a minnesotan yeah but he's uh out there he's been

off for many years what it's like the blog posts that say three more people come forward to accuse tom hanks of being nice. You have a fundamental feel about certain people's characters. Tom Hanks pushed me in a closet and did awful things would seem so, so anathema to the, to the conception that you have. So you have to ask yourself, well, is my conception right? Am I really that good a judge of character? So yes, anybody can be accused of anything, but there are some people for whom it's quite difficult to say, yeah, I buy that right away. I get that. And that's the thing because you get a feel. But Garrity wrote a piece the other day saying we all think that we're great judges of character and then when it comes down to it actually no we're just subject to the usual tricks of manipulation and cosseting behavior that people have been beholden to since you know since the roman senate first convened so i don't know where

the historic hysteria eventually ends um but it is interesting we were having the packwood discussion how many years ago oh my goodness that was in the 80s wasn't it or early 90s of oregon and what did he do i can't even remember i can't even remember either and and and and it's it was certainly it was harassed what we would today call harassment of some kind wasn't it or yeah i think so there's elevators and pushing and the rest of it and now 30 years later we're having the same thing we've learned nothing we're going to have a purging and then 30 years later, we'll have the same damned thing again. Almost as if human behavior and character is immutable

over the course of the centuries and not amenable to changing by government. Anyway, so there you go, folks. BlinkList, Bolan Branch, Texture, three fine sponsors. Please support them for supporting us. And head off to iTunes

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you know, double that at five bucks and get the whole site. You will never regret it, ever. And we'll see you. As a matter of fact, if there's anything

that I said that seems particularly inane or anything that Peter said that seems particularly brilliant, don't twist it around like you did last week. Go to the comments and administer kudos, and we'll be there to respond. And as usual, thank you for joining and reading Ricochet and listening, and we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 3.0. Next week, James. Thank you. We're in our friends We see them back They're grateful They're true

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