The Ricochet Podcast - CPAC #12: Brent Bozell

Episode Date: February 28, 2015

Jim Geraghty interviews Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell. Source

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Teas and seas apply. See OnPost.com. Hi, this is Jim Garrity with the National Review Ricochet Podcast here at CPAC. I am joined by Brent Boesel, the chairman of For America and the founder and president of the Media Research Center. Gave something of a barn burner of a speech earlier today. But I first want to ask you, I imagine this has got to be, if not, this is not your first rodeo. This is not your first CPAC. So how many CPACs have you been at so far?

I would say 20, 30. I was listening to you. Lost count all the way back to the Mesozoic era or something. All right. So compared to all this. Before half these young pups were born. Good Lord, that's awful. Very easily.

So what's the mood of this year? Is it standing out? Does it feel a little bit different than previous years? Yeah, it does. It does. I think that you're seeing a real vibrancy because people, it's a twofold thing. People are mobilized to do something about the disaster that's been created by this president. But I think there's also genuine excitement about the level of candidates

that are presenting themselves for next year. You know, you've got a good dozen conservative heavyweights out there. So it's good to hear them from the stage. And it's huge crowds hear them from the stage. And it's huge crowds that they've got. Serious people. In some CFACs in years past, they might not have been. There's a whole lot of drinking going on

in the rooms with students telling their parents afterwards that they attended the speeches. Not so now. It's very serious. That is terrible. People get engaged in too much drinking and all that. All those great stories. I'm not going to tell you. Stephen Glass was merely precognitive.

Not necessarily. I was going to say, I get the feeling coming into this that a lot of people put a lot of effort into electing a Republican Senate to expand the conservatives and Republicans in the House, thinking there was going to be a check on President Obama and his agenda,

going to really kind of rein him in. And that has really not happened. If anything, we've gotten President Bulworth in the sense that there are no strings on him anymore. Do you think that's kind of driving the mood of this, the sense that we did what we were supposed to and we're not getting the results we want? Well, I think there are two realities, Jim, and they were both predictable before the election, and they've both come to pass. Reality number one is that the Republican leadership, particularly in the Senate, is not conservative.

Never was. You have people who ran for office the way they run for office every six years as conservatives, and they had no intention of governing as conservatives. Let me give you two examples. Obamacare. There were 35,000 commercials run by Republicans in the month of October alone pledging to defund Obamacare. So you bring in, by landslide, Obamacare being the number one issue, you bring in these Republicans. What did they do? The very first thing they did before the new members

came, they approved the funding of Obamacare for the next nine months. They didn't have to do that. In fact, you wouldn't have Obamacare if Republicans had defunded it. We've had it since 2011. If we're going to be honest, Republicans own Obamacare. They've been funding it since day one. Okay, that's reality number one. You're not going to have strong conservatives on Capitol Hill. The second issue, by the way, amnesty. 10,000 commercials in the month of October alone. What have they done?

They've run from this. They pledged to stop this. They've run from it. The other side of the coin, which is even worse, let's get really depressed, is that you knew that this is an administration that if the Republicans took the Senate would have no opportunity to get anything done legislatively. So therefore, they would do it by government fiat. These are radicals. These are, and I argue in my speech, they're cultural fascists. They believe and they've got dictatorial abilities simply because Republicans won't fight back.

So look at the things they're doing. Every day you wake up to another shocking revelation. One day, 5 million people, illegal aliens, are legalized. That snaps its finger. One day, the FCC has taken over the Internet. You wake up yesterday, they banned bullets. All these things that, A, the public doesn't want, and, B, they wouldn't tell.

Doesn't it amaze you that in the days leading up to the net neutrality thing, Republicans begged them, please show us what you're intending to do, and they refused to release it. They do this, the most transparent administration in history refuses, with all their legislation, going back to the stimulus plan, they refuse to tell the public what they're going to do. This is an imperial nature.

And guess what? The sad thing is, Jim, we're going to see it until January of 2017. We are going to be shot week after week at various forms of the federal government where the bureaucracy is going to usurp the authority of Congress and just by fiat begin imposing these dictatorial controls. It's going to shock us. They sent me the advanced copy of your remarks. These are the words, cultural fascism. I'm just going to shock us. You know, they sent me the advanced copy of your remarks. And the term, just the words, cultural fascism, just kind of jump off the page.

How would you make a, one, if that seems, as you describe it, a less outlandish or incendiary term for what we're witnessing, how do you fight against cultural fascism? What do you do when you see something like this? Is there, you know? Well, the first thing you have to do is recognize it. What I think we as conservatives do is we've seen all its components, whether it is stifling free speech on academia, whether it's stifling free speech in Hollywood, whether it's stifling free speech on talk radio, whether it's stifling with how many people know that Senate Joint Resolution 19?

I mean, it sounds so archaic. But last summer, there was actually a bill that was put forward that would have given government so much power that they would be regulating our discussion right now as political speech. They would be deciding if movies, if books could be aired on television leading up to a campaign or if that was a political contribution. Bumper stickers, flyers, everything could be deemed a political contribution and therefore regulated by the government.

That was stopped. But then Ted Cruz did something very interesting. He offered a solution. He offered the First Amendment. Every single Democrat on the Judiciary Committee voted against him on that. So that tells you where we are. But it's in all these various levels. Look at the attacks on Christianity.

Look at the attacks of people who are pro-life and are being told, you must pay for the murder of some child. You must pay for that. You believe it's murder. You must pay for it. Look at the fact that we've learned that there's scientific evidence that shows that at 20 weeks, the child not only feels his body being ripped apart, but because it's so sensitive, the nerve endings are so sensitive, it hurts more than anything you or I will ever experience. And yet the government

is saying you must pay, Pay for that body to be ripped apart. So this is the kind of dictatorial cultural fascism where the state is taking over and when the state doesn't succeed, then come in the radicals with a campaign of sheer dishonesty

and character assassination to get their wills. Ends justify the means. This is not George McGovern's party anymore. They are vicious. They are dishonest in their viciousness. And they are relentless in their campaign. So we have to know this. Having identified what you characterized as cultural fascism and having called it out,

what is next for a group like For America? Well, storytelling. This is what conservatives have to do. This is what you're doing right now. We now have the ability through social media to converse with millions and millions of people, and nobody can stop us. There's no filter of an NBC or CNN to stop it.

We can have that conversation. So what conservatives have to do is take advantage of these technologies and start telling our story. Tell a freedom story. Tell a story of virtue. Tell a story of strong national defense. We take these things for granted as something that the public is committed to understanding. But the young generation, look, they haven't had this for 40 years. We have to get back to storytelling. Brett Mazzell, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you, Jim. My pleasure.

Good luck to storytelling. Brett Mazzell, thanks very much for joining us. My pleasure. Good luck to you. Ricochet. Join the conversation.