The Ricochet Podcast - CPAC #18: Former Md. Governor Bob Ehrlich

Episode Date: February 28, 2015

Jay Nordlinger and Jim Geraghty interview Bob Ehrlich, who was a Republican governor of Maryland before it was cool… before it went mainstream. Source

At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to €10 if your horse loses on a selected race. That's how we celebrate the biggest week in racing. Cheltenham with LiveScoreBet. This is total betting. Sign up by 2pm 14th of March. Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets.

Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie I am Jay Nordlinger with Jim Garrity at CPAC for National Review and Ricochet. And our guest is the former governor of Maryland, the formidable Bob Ehrlich. Nice to see you, Gov. You forgot handsome, Jay. I figured we'd work that in later.

It's just an audio thing. It's not a video. It's good to see you guys. I'll tell you, a year ago, right? A year ago. That's right. Just downstairs last year. And not you, but it's good to see you both.

Welcome to Maryland. by the way. Multi-party democracy is broken out yet again. I was going to say, my first thought is, obviously you're a public, please just punch with Larry Hogan becoming the governor of Maryland. My oldest friends in politics. Does it make you a little bit less special as a Republican governor of Maryland?

Not according to my wife and my parents. So that's still okay. Larry was a member of my cabinet, my appointment secretary. The first campaign I ever volunteered for in law school was his dad running against Paul Sarbanes. Oh, wow. The United States Senate in 1982. So Larry and I go back that far. It's basically a lot of my folks come back, obviously, to Annapolis, a lot of my cabinet secretaries, a lot of my senior staff.

So I could not be more proud. Where in Maryland are we right now, Gov? You're in Prince Richard's County. A very difficult county, but you are in a... It's not Ehrlich country, necessarily. This is not Ehrlich country, although maybe a few miles down the road you might get some friendly Ehrlich. This is a tough county, but it's a beautiful county, And National Harbor is, as you guys know, absolutely beautiful. We started this project under my administration.

And it is a real destination venue now. Gov, are you running for president? Next question, Jeff. I thought you said you didn't want to ask me. Well, you could have made really big news here of being the one person not running for president. You'd be the two. That's right. I'd be one of the few.

You'd be good, let me say, as a longtime admirer and semi-chronicler. You'd be damn good. America could do worse. And let's hope it won't. Well, I'll take the compliment from you, from both of you, and thank you. The truth of it is that the folks in New Hampshire have invited me out four times. I was just back this week, just past Tuesday. Every time I go up there, there's more enthusiasm.

The crowds are really nice. We've started to get invited now around the country, particularly Florida. I'll be going back to Florida. I was in Florida two weeks ago. Back to Sarasota in a couple weeks. Actually, back to Tallahassee next week. And, Jay, we're just going to look at it. And unlike everyone else, the 1900 running right now,

this listening tour is real. It's not phony. It's getting around and seeing how people respond to my message, my platform, my history, my values, my personality, and me. And that's exactly what we're doing. Gov, you are a pro-choicer who believes strongly in restrictions. Yes. I consider you a semi-pro-lifer.

Well, actually, a pro-lifer supported me in my races in Maryland. Tell me about your position. Not all, obviously, but a lot. I got you, I got you. When you, when this comes up in a Republican or a conservative Q&A, what do you say? Since I voted on this issue a couple hundred times, maybe a couple thousand times when you add the state legislature and Congress, my records, my record, my views are, my views are very independent on the issue.

And since Roe v. Wade is pretty much the predicate now, the questions come up around every other issue, whether it's parental consent, parental notification, stem cell research, late-term abortion, Medicaid financing, whatever it happens to be. And my views are obviously pretty mainstream with most Republicans and many per life Republicans and Democrats on those views. I have to say, Jay, that the issue does not get brought up nearly as much as marriage

these days. Clearly marriage, at least on college campuses, is not even close. You don't hear abortion ever. It's all marriage. But even in other audiences, it seems to be, there's not a replacement litmus test, but there's another litmus test, and it's called marriage. And what do you say on that question? I support traditional marriage. And my views, and as you know, you've reviewed my books, you've read my books. I devote an entire chapter of my first book to that issue. I understand

that people of the same sex can love each other, kind of relationships. I think that however, my views with regard to this issue are well established. I was not viewed as anti-gay, I think by any measure,

as a governor of Maryland. And hopefully, my views on this issue would not give me that moniker either. But this is clearly the hot issue with young people today, particularly in the libertarian right. One of my favorite traits about you, and I have many, is that when people call you a racist, you tell them to shove it. You don't cower. You don't wring your hands. You don't apologize. You don't say, please don't hate me. I'm not. You tell them to go to hell and burn. And I must say, I think it's thrilling.

Thank you, Joe. You read that question so well. I was about to say, was there a question in there? Well, more like a commendation. Well, I'll take it and I'll just say this. I have written two books. You've read both, both of you, I hope. And my moral in those books is do not back down when you know you're right. Now, it's not do not back down, period.

It's do not back down when it comes to issues of common sense. Whether it's culture, and you've heard the multiculturalism attacks on me and all that, it's when we don't back down, and we're right, and we double down on the truth, and what's just logical to most people, after the initial condemnations and the Washington Post and New York Times and all the lefties going crazy, guess what happens? Nothing. Nothing. Because they go away because we don't back down.

We get in trouble when we do back down. You were in the House for a long time. I was. And we have noticed right across the river, things for Republicans in the new House and Senate majorities aren't necessarily running quite smoothly, still trying to figure out how to deal with the executive order amnesty and DHS funding and things like that. If John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were to come to you and say, all right, Governor, we don't know what to do, what do you know. We're stumbling out of the gate.

What should we do? What would you tell them? I have some strong views on this, as you two might imagine. I have not only seen this movie, I've played in this movie as a member of the shutdown caucus and all that silly stuff the left used against us in the 90s and early 2000s as a member of the House leadership, as a deputy whip and all that, in the 90s and early 2000s as a member of the House leadership, as a deputy whip and all that, in the whip organization. If you can't count to 60,

I don't understand why you would want to back yourself in the same corner we've lived in in the past. We just got out of it from Obamacare, and yet here we are again. When you know you're going to back down, when you know they're not going to back down, and when you know you can't count to the magic number, why we keep repeating the same mistakes. Now, I know why. But the last time I checked, this administration is over in the courts. And I mean over, other than

that little Obamacare thing, which they had to make up. So they're not technically over. But they're about one to the third. Those are the words of a baseball fan, folks. I'm sorry. Those are the words of a baseball fan. Absolutely. And that means they're hit list

other than that one little tax thing in Obamacare. But the fact of it is, most people I know, and I'm a former attorney and all that stuff, they're going to lose this one. A federal judge told the Pound stand the other day, I think when it gets to the court, we're going to win this one again. So my, and look, this is not easy. As a WIPP organization, I was able to herd cats sometimes, not others.

But we need to be able to articulate to our base why we're doing what we're doing. And if we keep raising false expectations that we can't get it done, and those expectations are repeated in National Review, on Sean Hannity, we've got a problem because there's only so many times we can go to that trial. And we're losing credibility. And we've got to stop it. I was about to say, playing devil's advocate,

isn't, you know, if there was a government shutdown, if you said, you know what, we're Mr. President, we are willing to go toe-to-toe, we're willing to shut down the government over this. I know. I realize this is a dangerous thing to say in Prince George's County. I contend you can shut the government down for like two or three days before anybody notices. Well, we did, by the way.

That's right. There were two of them back in 1995. When we were trying to kill Smokey the Bear and other animals in the National Parks and all that, nothing accused of everything. All of a sudden, it wasy the Bear and other animals in the National Parks. They've been accused of everything. The Baltimore Suns closed the parks in Maryland. Here's the problem, though. You run into pragmatic politicians. You run into moderate Republicans in tough seats. You run into those Republicans going back to town meetings saying,

you've gone to Washington, you're part of the right-wing nutcake crowd and all that. And as a result, when we come back to the WIP meeting, it's, we got a cave. Now, if you know that's going to happen before you start, don't follow that strategy. It's my point. The other thing is the timing here in this particular agency is not real good. It's not fortuitous because you have ISIS every day murdering, doing their raping and pillaging. And now you have what agency you're talking about? The one that protects us in the homeland?

Yeah. Bad timing. I'm not, we're right on the, Ted Cruz was right in the Senate floor, by the way, on substance, on Obamacare. We've got to stop raising hell of expectations that are incorrect and that make us look weak to the people we need to show up, not just every other year in all term elections, but make us look weak to the people we need to show up, not just every other year in all term elections, but make us again a national party. Because last time I checked, we've lost five of our last six national popular votes. Jim, I'll tell you something about Bob Burlick.

He may sometimes play kind of a populist, lunch bucket conservative, but he's actually a Princetonian. He's a fancy pants Princetonian who eats off of silver plates and all this stuff. But I mention this because I want to bring up this. How much he values freedom. Is it not true that your senior thesis was on Solzhenitsyn? Yes, that's true. What got you interested?

I was a Churchill-phile from an early age, but there's a lot of Churchill files. Watching an author sentenced to the gulag, the worst of all circumstances I could imagine at the time as a not-Silver Spoon kid at Princeton came in the back door from Arbutus, Maryland. You know, Jay. Watching someone willing to fight the establishment, to fight the all-powerful communist regime, and to not worry about the consequences, to me, just spoke to me. It spoke about leadership. Churchill lost elections because he spoke up when it was unpopular. He was talking about the Nazis in 1934. Nobody wanted to. So this personality type, Jack Kemp was my hero, as you know,

always running, throwing spitballs in the bleachers, always saying, you know, we need to do things differently. I like real leadership, not phony, pseudo-populous stuff at CPAC. It sounds real good when you say it real fast. But people of substance who are willing to stand up and speak unpopular truths. Do you like the Prime Minister of Israel? If you were in Congress now, would you show up for that speech? I love the man.

I've met him a number of times. I've been to Israel three times. It's so interesting. And as both of you know, large Jewish constituencies in Maryland, we made history as someone who could get some significant Jewish votes in Maryland. Did you get double digits? Oh, big time we did double digits.

Good for you. Particularly my first time. In fact, we won precincts that had always won them a credit, Jewish precincts. But my relationships with the Jewish community in Maryland over the years have been deep and real. Now, you have existential threat, you have a world's leading sponsor

of terror, and you have a weak American administration, and you've got the guy next door who's asking for support from America, and he's nervous. You better darn say I believe I'd show up. Governor Ehrlich, thank you for all your time here at CPAC. It seems like we run into you every year. You're as much an institution as the guys on stilts, the Imperial stormtroopers, and Captain America and Iron Man around here. So to me, you're one of the things that makes CPAC what it is. Love you guys. It's good to see you.

Let me say that if a conservative or anyone else in America wants a breath of fresh air, take a look at Governor Bob Earl. He is fresh air. Thanks very much for your time. Here's my 20 bucks, Jay. Thank you very much. Check is in the mail. Ricochet.

Join the conversation.