The Ricochet Podcast - #Hot

Episode Date: May 14, 2014

This week, we’re hash tagging like the cool kids as we tackle hash tag diplomacy, global warming, oops, we mean, climate change, no sorry, climate action, oh, whatever. Then it’s some serous DC wonking out with the WaPo’s Bob Costa, followed by political consultant Rick Wilson. Who’s running, who’s sitting, what’s it like to work for Jeff Bezos, and what is Rob Long really doing in Amsterdam? We’... 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. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson in California and Rob Long in Amsterdam.

I'm James Lilacs in Minneapolis and our guests today, Bob Costa from the Washington Post, Rick Wilson, Republican strategist. We'll be talking about 2014, 2016, and beyond. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, everyone, welcome to this, the Ricochet Podcast number 214, brought to you by Encounter Books. Our feature title this week is Dancing with the Devil, theils of engaging rogue regimes by michael rubin we'll talk a little bit more about that later but in the meantime uh you can get this book or any encounter title for 15 off the list price by going to encounterbooks.com and using the coupon code ricochet at

your checkout and speaking of things that bounce around the world here is a rarity i believe an intercontinental member pitch by Rob Long in Budapest. Or is it Pest? Yeah, I can pitch membership to Ricochet in all the continents. James, thank you for asking. What is Ricochet? If you are listening to this podcast for the very first time, we are thrilled to have you. Welcome to the Ricochet podcast.

Welcome to the Ricochet community. If you are already a member, hey, welcome, friend. You're a member like the rest of us and we're pleased to have you. If you'd like to know more about Ricochet.com, please go to Ricochet.com. That's the sponsor of the podcast. That's the thing we're all talking about.

That's the fastest growing, wittiest, most civil conversation on the web between and among our members and our contributors. So it's a great place to start a conversation, get into a conversation and to – go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, I thought you'd cut out for a moment there.

I was just going to say you may go to this side or that side to read commentary and argue with people in the comments but rarely will you have a site that puts together a community that results in people getting together in barbecue restaurants in Fargo, North Dakota. I was going to ask. To share their membership. Well, I'll tell you briefly because I really want to get to why you're in Pesh and bring Peter in here. And Peter, you are here, right?

I am here, but I have nothing interesting to say by comparison with Far Fargo and distant Budapest. Well, when we were talking about the site and everyone was applauding 2.0 and the single format and the rest of it. When Peter's name came up, I just noticed that people's hands sort of automatically and subconsciously drifted to their neck as though to pat reassuringly a knotted sweater.

That's called community. That's absolutely right. It was great fun. We did indeed meet at Famous Dave's Barbecue in West Fargo. Not Fargo proper, but West Fargo, and just talked stuff, and it was grand. Apparently some Ricochet meetups are full of contentious, interesting, vivacious political discussion.

I kind of like just talking about anything but with these guys, finding out who they are and all the things they do. Here's a couple of guys, Whiskey Sam and his relative, who go around the country. And I believe what they do is they run this – they create, manage the software for fabricating plants, which is a job that you never think of existing. And then you meet the guy who does it and you learn all about what's required there. I mean think of that. Fascinating. Fascinating. Exactly. I mean if you've got a tractor factory in Fargo, and they have one, there has to be some sort of software that runs the robot arms, that runs the stamping things.

And so yeah, so it was great fun. Now, Rob, you're in Budapest or Pesh, which is – Well, I mean neither. I'm actually in Amsterdam. I flew to Amsterdam I guess last night. I landed this morning around noon and now it's 5 o'clock. So at some point in this podcast i'm going to stop making sense if anybody would notice that so you let it have been a long long day shuopol airport

you know i lived at shuopol airport i lived here uh i lived in holland when i was a boy so i i speak a little bit of dutch i actually bluff there really is no bottom to you rob long no there isn't i can bluff i can bluff. I can bluff Dutch. And the problem is that I have a pretty good accent and I can say like I'll have a coffee or the newspaper please or please take me into – get into a taxi. And then comes a torrent of Dutch and I don't know. What? That's too much. And no one can really believe.

It's not like French where they sort of believe that, OK, well, you know a little bit of French. Everybody knows a little bit of French. In Holland, they're so shocked that anyone knows any Dutch. They assume that if you know – why would you only know a little bit of Dutch? Fluency in Dutch isn't all that helpful. Why would anybody learn a little? Right. And the thing about Dutch is it sounds like kind of Game of Thrones English, you know?

Like early English. I've always felt it, yeah. Well, you old Dutch bluffer, where are you staying in Amsterdam, that lovely city? I am staying in, you know, there's a fantastic hotel in the little, in the canal district called the Dylan Hotel, D-Y-L-A-N,

and it's spectacular it's really great and it used to be it was a kind of a fashionable thing in amsterdam when i was a kid for uh a hotel uh hotels to sort of buy uh five or six you know those tiny little narrow dutch townhouses together and sort of you know connect them all and uh this that's what this one has done too but it's done a really cool job. So I mean, kind of a weird loft, like, it's very Dutch, modern Dutchie kind of thing, you know, where they're, everything seems very both practical and, and well-designed. Well, Rob, I know you and I know, I know you are, you're gastronomical tastes.

What is it that you're looking forward to eating and to drinking in Amsterdam? Well, not much. I mean I'm really here because I got a free ticket. I've like free miles on KLM. And so I thought, well, I'll just fly to Amsterdam. And I'm so cheap and I'm a very cheap person when it comes to that stuff. So if I'm going to spend money on my own ticket, I fly coach. I'm not ashamed of it.

I'm not proud of it either. It's just the way it is. But I have to fly back from Europe all the way to LA. And that's a business class. That's a business seat for me. But that's also good. I have to use miles. So I'm flying to Amsterdam, and then tomorrow I go to Budapest to hang out with John O'Sullivan, a husband of Ricochet's own Melissa.

He runs the Danube Institute there, and I'm going to give a couple of presentations in Budapest. And after that, my brother is having a big birthday bash for himself. And so this is going to be a little bit fun, but mostly right now, my lower lip is kind of falling off because I'm incredibly, incredibly jet-lagged. What I will eat, though, tonight is probably little herring, tiny little pieces of herring on brown bread. They do that really well here. Got it. Because there's nothing that really comes to mind as Dutch cuisine.

I remember walking around Amsterdam and seeing everything but pizza restaurants, gyros, gyros, however except Dutch food, as though they themselves don't want to even eat it. Well, the problem with the canals, of course, is that in mere weeks, the water is going to flood over the canals and drown the city because, of course, the western Antarctic ice shelf is falling off. Climate change is going to inundate us all. And apparently Marco Rubio believes that this is something that we ought to get behind, that the conservatives, the GOP have got to address this. Right? Is that how you're reading what Rubio says?

Do you think that he's making a convenient positioning of himself on this for, oh, dare I say, a presidential run? Yeah, Rubio made perfect sense to me, to tell you the truth. I don't – it's hard for me to imagine that he can rehabilitate himself in the minds of Republican primary voters between now and 2016 after his catastrophe on immigration where he went from leading all the polls in Iowa to dead last, single digits, low single digits in Iowa. Maybe he can. I doubt it. But on climate change, I believe what he was saying was perfectly sensible, which is he was suggesting that he had doubts when it was described as a purely theoretical matter,

and he was suggesting he had doubts when it came to computer modeling. But what he wanted to see was the physical evidence. Now, I haven't read it all through in detail, but this melting, the crumbling of a gigantic set of ice shelves in Antarctica, which it's not as if they're all going to melt like ice cubes tomorrow. This is something that takes place over a century. if there's physical evidence that's coming in any conservative would pay attention to it it's the it's it's the uh when global warming or climate change or what is it called now climate disruption is the disruption style of term of art when it's presented as a kind of faith you must believe this because there's a total consensus on computer nonsense. Rubio was standing with Dyson, Freeman Dyson, the great scientist Freeman Dyson who has kept saying we need physical evidence.

Some may be coming in. Struck me as reasonable. That's what I'm saying. Yes. Yes, indeed. I was driving around North Dakota last week and I asked my daughter as we passed Agassiz School. I said, why do you think that school was named Agassiz? And she didn't know.

And I said, that's because that's the name we gave the giant lake that used to cover this entire area a long time ago. Where we are now was, I don't know. I thought it might have been a tennis school. No, two, three hundred feet under the water, Lake Agassiz, because it used to be different around here. I think what Rubio said was the climate is changing, the climate is always changing, which, again, this always pulls at the absolute dead bottom of anything that anybody says people are interested in right now. I think you've got a better chance of banging the drum on jobs

and not inequality, on jobs and not climate change, on jobs, period, in the economy. Even the alarmists can't work up that much alarm anymore. I agree with you. Better to talk about jobs. Well, if you only have 100 years to move, you'd best get at it then. I mean, I think you can take maybe 10, 20 years putting wheeled casters on your chair and then start to slowly move yourself toward the door. Maybe if you give yourself 150 years, you'll avoid being drowned by the tidal wave.

It's preposterous. What is not preposterous, however, and this is interesting to me, I read the other day that the Washington Post, far from cratering and sundering and evaporating before our very eyes, has hired about 50 more people. Amazing what having Jeff Bezos' bank account behind you will do. This will be fascinating to watch. Well, I mean, that's... Hey, Rob, yes, I'm back.

I was there and trying to get on the Skype thing and didn't... There seemed to be some confusion, probably on my part. The Washington Post thing, it's a good sign. Look, the New York Times is doing well.

There's a solution for all of these newspapers, and that's to stop printing the news and to start printing features. The New York Times makes lots of money on its fashion and travel and food and all sorts of its general interest, you know, non-political, non-partisan, non-axe-grinding subjects. If I had a newspaper, that's what I would be doing. Well, the interesting thing for newspapers is the Washington Post is unlike any other paper really in the country.

The only thing that's going to save newspapers in towns, well, like myself, Minneapolis, is for them to go intensely local because you have a news team that knows the town and has resources that nobody else has. And what people really want to read about is what's going on in their community. They want to snap open that newspaper and see about the fire, the murder, the kid who fell off the 11th floor window, that kind of stuff. The Washington Post, on the other hand, has a national mandate. Nobody who picks up the Post wants to see what happened in the shooting in Southeast last week above the fold. That's not what the newspaper

is about. But if they're hiring 50 new people, it tells me that they're interested in doing as far more than the Post used to do. And when I was in Washington, it was a great newspaper. Yes, it had its biases, but it was well-written. It was incredibly well-written. It had a great newspaper. Yes, it had its biases, but it was well written. It was incredibly well written. It had a lot of fine, fine talent, and it was a big, thick thing every morning that was absolute required reading. And I don't think that's, I don't think, I don't know if that's the case anymore. We'll ask Bob when he comes on. And by Bob, of course, I mean Bob Costa, the newly minted political reporter for the Washington Post. But of course, most people know him as the host of the beloved Beltway Buzz podcast. Let's welcome him back to the Ricochet flagship podcast here on this fine Wednesday morning. Hey, Bob, how are things in D.C.? Hey, great to join you. We were just talking about the Washington Post adding staff as a sign of health. Tell us about who they're hiring. This is before we get to the nuts and bolts of politics. Where are their new acquisitions aimed at? The digital, the print, the both, the local, the national? What is Bezos doing to the paper? It's hard to keep track, actually. There are so many new hires at the Washington Post. There

have been, I think, 50 hires in recent months, and they just heralded that throughout the newsroom, so there's a lot of energy at the post. I think a lot, a lot of digital hires, a lot of people who are very familiar with the web graphic design, selling stories with pictures and interactive text, as well as reporters on the politics team. For example,

we just hired Katie Zesma who covered New Jersey politics for the AP, Jenna Portnoy from the Newark Star-Ledger. Phillip Bump from the Atlantic. So a wide array of people. The question is, of course, whether or not these new hires are on the male side, the chestless, whiny, up-talking neuters who seem to infest the medium these days, or the old-style guys with a bottle of rye in the drawer who have a good fistfight on the way out of the office one day.

Yeah. Bob, you don't have to answer that, by the way. Is there any company in America left where you can have a bottle of rye whiskey other than National Review? That was my favorite part of National Review. There's a lot of good stuff there, kind of a Mad Men vibe. But unfortunately, at some of these more corporate places,

it's not as fun in that sense. Yes, Bob? Hey, Bob. It's Rob Long. I'm actually speaking to you from Europe. So I've got two questions. One is just because the last time I saw you, you were at

ARN. I haven't really seen you since you've been moved over to the big times. But are you having fun? It seems to me like to be a political reporter right now in 2014 must be a blast. Is it a blast? Oh, it's the greatest job. I love it. I cover national politics, campaigns, Congress, and with a focus in some respects on the Republican Party. I think for a reporter, the fact that Romney lost and it's led to a lot of soul-searching in the GOP, some battles and tensions about how to move forward on policy, on tactics, it's a great story. It's a colorful story. It's really more interesting, I think, in a lot of ways, from the Democratic side of things. And getting out there on the trail, and I just was in figure out the way to put this, but you know what I'm asking. Did anybody ever say to you, hey, listen, we've got to make this coverage more fair?

Never. No one's ever spoken to me about my personal views at The Washington Post, which I think is great. I mean I was a reporter at National Review. I covered Republican Party and national politics, and I'm really essentially doing the same exact job at The Washington Post. And look, clearly I came from National Review. People, that's not a secret. It is what it is. I had a great experience at National Review, great people there. I really enjoyed my four and a half years there. At the same time, I think the Post deserves

some credit for not going to the usual minor leagues of sorts. Jonathan Martin, for example, of the New York Times, he spent some time at National Review as well. So maybe National Review is a respected publication, regardless of

its tilt. Despite my work for it, I guess it must be. National Review is a respected publication regardless of its tilt. Bob, Peter Robinson here. Despite my work for it, I guess it must be. I love your work for it, Rob. Okay, enough of that nonsense. Bob, Peter here. You're beat, you're beat, you're beat. Nebraska yesterday, Tea Party candidate wins.

This is good news or bad news for the GOP? I think it's good news for the GOP. I think Ben Sasse is not only a Tea Party candidate in the sense that he was endorsed by Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, but this is an accomplished former Bush official, former assistant secretary of health. He's eloquent. He's endearing on the trail. I think he's almost more of a political talent than Cruz in a sense of being engaging, personable. Cruz is, but Sass just has a certain charm to him that I think a lot of people like. So that's a big win. How is it shaping up generally?

The question as of three weeks ago or four weeks ago was, will Tea Party, will the Tea Party win primaries, putting in place candidates who are so far to the right and so obnoxious that they're going to lose their races? Will the Tea Party doom the GOP's chances of capturing the Senate in November? How's that looking? I think that whole so-called narrative doesn't really play out in any race. You look at Georgia, Paul Brown was considered the Tea Party candidate there. He's made some comments about Obama being connected to the Soviet Union, raised some eyebrows in Washington, became that kind of colorful Tea Party candidate. He's struggling in the polls. You have David Perdue, a businessman, a Mitt Romney type in his persona against Jack Kingston, an appropriator. They're leading the polls in red state Georgia. In Iowa, the Tea Party candidate, Sam Clovis, he's struggling to get any kind of traction and some money. And Joni Ernst, who's been embraced by the Iowa Republican establishment, she's doing well. She's been

endorsed by Sarah Palin. And then Mark Jake was a businessman, another Romney type. He's leading the polls in Iowa Senate race. And you go across the country. In Alaska, Joe Miller, the Tea Party favorite from 2010, he's struggling. Who's doing well? The establishment, Lieutenant Governor Meade Treadwell, the establishment favorite of Rob Portman, Dan Sullivan. So I think the narrative that the Tea Party could screw up the GOP for 2014, I'm not seeing it. So there's not a single Tea Party nutcase who's likely to win the nomination? Not that I see it right now on my radar. Okay, next question.

What about Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader? He's not going to lose his primary. Is he in trouble in Kentucky? I think Grimes is going to have so much money, and she has a winning personality, and she's in her early 30s. She doesn't have a voting record. She's won statewide. This is a serious candidate, and I think the greatest asset for Grimes beyond her personality and her appeal in that sense is that she doesn't come across as very liberal. She doesn't come across as a progressive. And she's very, she's buddy-buddy with the Clintons. And if Bill Clinton goes in there in October, that's going to be powerful. And I think McConnell, his numbers are hard there. He has a hard negative in the mid 40s, which is hard for him to get rid of. And it's going to be a difficult race for him in some ways. Okay. So the last question before I return you to the good graces of Rob Long in Amsterdam, who's champing at the bit to get back at you. Call the Senate. I know we will hope to talk to you many times between now and November, but what's it looking like right now? If you said 50-50, Republicans capture control, two to one they will. How's it looking? I mean, Republicans need to net six seats. I think they're in line to get at least four or five.

But I think Republicans are nervous when they look at a state like Louisiana. Landrieu's a tough competitor. All the energy interests back are down there. A lot of money. Daughter of Moon Landrieu. She's no pushover. And same with even Pryor in Arkansas. Deep family roots in the state.

Cotton's popular in Washington with conservatives, but he's not exactly storming ahead in the polls. I think eventually those races could trend to the right. But if Republicans can't win in Arkansas and Louisiana, this idea that they're just going to automatically sweep six seats, it's up for question. So you'd say pick up four to five right now, but control remains very much in doubt. That's right. I think for exactly. You look at someone like Tillis in North Carolina. He seems poised to beat Hagan and he's seen in some other more red states. Republicans are going to do fine. But there's still some definitely some toss ups. OK, presidential. I'm waiting for Rob, who seems to be Rob is in Amsterdam. I know because he sent

me a note he wants back in, but now he's having trouble with Skype. So I get to keep you for a while. Oh, you get one, Peter. Oh, I get one. Oh, you're wait. Oh, you're metering. I'm on a meter. In that case, I'll talk fast. You're on a meter.

Presidential politics. Really briefly, we were talking for a moment before you came on, Bob, about Marco Rubio, who appeared on the chat shows, the television shows over the weekend, said he considers himself ready for the presidency, made some comments about global warming that sound as though he's trying to position himself as a reasonable – the man is running for president of the United States. And yet because he backed the huge immigration – the omnibus immigration reform bill that passed the senate but died in the house, his numbers tanked among likely Republican primary voters. Does he have a chance of rehabilitating himself in Iowa, where you just visited between now and 2016? It's going to be tough for Rubio, very difficult. I think a lot of the reason he's doing some of these early moves is he's nervous about Jeb Bush. Bush, Rubio can't be in the same race. His people know it,

Bush's people know it. And if Bush keeps moving towards a run, I think Rubio can't be in the same race. His people know it. Bush's people know it. And if Bush keeps moving towards a run, I think Rubio is going to have a difficult decision to make. But I think immigration hurts him in a deep way. And he's trying to talk up climate change and his position on that and other things. Is it enough to push over someone like Cruz or Mike Pence or Scott Walker in Iowa? I don't think so. And I think where else has Rubio played? Did he go up to New Hampshire?

Maybe, but that seems like Rand Paul territory. Does he wait to Florida and South Carolina? South Carolina doesn't like his immigration position. So I think in some ways maybe Rubio's playing for the number two slot. But in terms of really catching momentum, you would think with the indecision of Bush, with Christie's problems, Rubio could become more of that hawkish establishment favorite, but it just hasn't happened. Hey, Bob, this is Rob Longan.

I have to follow up on that. Jeb Bush gave a speech at the Manhattan Institute two nights ago, and it was, from all reports, extremely well-received. It's a lot of money in that room at Hatton Institute. There are a lot of people in that room saying he should run, and that there's almost an equal number of people saying, great guy, smart, terrific leader, has all the right ideas, would be a disaster if he ran. How would you parse those two? How would you balance those two competing interests? I mean, stipulating that he's a great candidate and a smart guy

and a strong conservative and all sorts of terrific things, but nonetheless has a fatal flaw. I think Rubio has a – he does have an almost fatal flaw in immigration. Well, no, I'm sorry. I meant – I'm talking about Jeb Bush. Oh, Jeb Bush. Excuse me. Sorry.

I think – look, I think – you mentioned Jeb Bush's speech at the Manhattan Institute dinner. I watched that speech. Right, right. And you see someone who has hunched shoulders. You see someone who's a little rusty politically. And you see someone who's not identifying with the conservative movement in any way not even trying to he does connect with people like russell moore the baptist minister uh... head of the southern baptist political arm and he and he's doing a speech in grove city college a christian college this weekend for commencement but jonah goldberg i think was

spot on with his national review column today where he talked about jeb is out there defending george hw bush's tax increase he's out he's out there defending George H.W. Bush's tax increase. He's out there defending his father's record. Is that going to fly in a Republican primary in 2016? Doubtful. Right. Right. Well, that was my feeling, too, although it was everybody I spoke to who was in that

room. He is a talent. I mean, even though he's rusty, this is someone who has a two-term record in Florida that conservatives and National Review once put him on the cover multiple times. And I mean, this is someone who comes with the most powerful family in Republican politics. It would be a natural fit for a lot of these donors who have become a little – they're starting to squirm about Christie. So as much as he has a lot of issues, an asterisk, someone who could still waltz right to the front runner position in the, in the race, I think.

Is Christie done? Okay. Yeah, I think, I think he is in some ways, but there is going to be that inevitable Christie comeback tour, whenever that is, maybe it's in six months,

maybe it's in a year, but it's going to happen. And this is what I love. You're so good. You can write the stories before they happen. Oh yeah. All right. So I got one, I got, I have one last question, Bob. what I love. You're so good, you can write the stories before they happen. Oh, yeah. All right. I have one last question, Bob. I'm sorry. I just want to keep it quick.

So going back to Nebraska, so we see what Sass has done in Nebraska, and people keep calling him a Tea Party candidate. But you could easily say he's just an establishment candidate who's got Tea Party credentials. Help me out. What, in 2014, 2015, 2016, what exactly is a Tea Party candidate? I think it's style. It's tactics and strategy and presentation. I mean, look at Ben Sasse, Tea Party candidate, Ben Sasse. Work for Bush is polished, but it's more just the way he went against McConnell. McConnell was very unhappy with the way Sasse on the trail in the primaryans will say we understand the reason why uh there's a need to defund the health care law and make a push for it but the way it went up they went about it if you cheer it you're likely a tea party person in the way the republican

party should strategize and divide a government if you have have questions about how the Republicans and Cruz handled the shutdown, you're likely not a Tea Party person at this point in time. Hey, Bob, Peter – So it's just style. It's really a question of style now. Yeah, style and strategy. Bob, Bob, let me make an assertion and then you grade it on 1 to 10 for truthfulness, all right? Or accuracy. Here's my assertion. My assertion.

My assertion runs as follows. Ben Sasse is handsome, charming, well-spoken, a product of small-town Nebraska and Harvard University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University. On every issue on which he has commented, he is in the same position as Ted Cruz or Mike Lee. That guy is Ted Cruz with charm. And as of today, he is one of the hottest talents in the Republican Party, even though he's six months from taking the oath of office as a member of the United States Senate. Rate that one to 10. 10 being the most accurate, I'd give that a 9.5. I mean,

Sasse, I don't think it's totally polished as a candidate, but he's almost there. He's 42 years old. I mean, this is someone who's such a fresh voice for the conservative side of things, and he's in a safe red seat. He's going to be a powerful voice in Washington. And just his demeanor is different than Cruz. And it's different than Sarah Palin. It's different than Mike Lee. This is someone who has – he's almost like if you made – if you turned Paul Ryan and if Paul Ryan was a machine and you could make him about five degrees more easygoing, that would be Ben Sasse. Right, right. So, OK, I keep – Rob's going to be cross with me again.

So here's my last question, Bob. Then you have to go – I mean Jeff Bezos ain't paying you to talk to us. So here's my last question. The Senate after this election, after January when the new senators take the oath of office, forget about whether Republicans quite get control or not. You've already said they're very likely to pick up four or five seats. We've talked about some of these younger candidates. None of them is a nutcase, but all of them are thoroughgoing conservatives. Is it the case that for the first time in this administration and for one of the rare times in the last century, the action, policy action, interest, color, most fascinating figures,

the action moves from the House of Representatives to the United States Senate? I think so. I really do. It's going to be full of personality, full of vigor, young people, young conservatives in their 40s and 50s trying to get things done. It's going to be a new scene. It's going to be something McConnell's going to have to grapple with, and same with the president. Well, bless you for calling somebody in their 50s young. You're welcome back here anytime, Bob. Exactly.

Lilacs here in Minneapolis. I have a question when we're talking about 2016 and Bush again and Paul Ryan again. How come nobody is talking about Rick Perry again? Well, because people remember Rick Perry 2012. And I think a lot of donors are skeptical. I think Perry has the energy to do it. I ran into Perry a few weeks ago.

And this is someone who is comfortable with himself. He knows how to laugh at himself. He's not dumb, even though he came across like that sometimes in the debates. He's very sharp on policy. Yeah, I know. Well, that's just he's not dumb. And I've been through it before. Right. When he's not hopped up on goofballs, I think he's a quite a charismatic character in a way that none of these other guys we're talking about are. And regardless of how you feel about Perry's positions here and there, if you're going to appeal to people in the middle, you've got to find somebody who can evince a certain amount of confidence and optimism and fellow feeling with the common American experience, who doesn't seem wonkery, who doesn't seem like a creature of the Beltway. And people may be remembering 2012, but I think there was a lot that he did in 2012 that was impressive and amusing. And I don't think he made a fool of himself in the

national stage. I just think that he had some rusty spots that he's probably shaken on by now. So are people then, are you saying, waiting for him to step up and then they'll pay attention to him? Or are they just shrugging their shoulders and saying, we'll get around to him if he makes noises towards moving? I think they're shrugging their shoulders. However, I think this is the best thing possible for Perry. He is comfortable right now. He's not in the spotlight. The best example of this is when I saw him at CPAC, all the other big politicians, Cruz, Ryan, all of them, they would stay backstage in the green room, go in and out from the loading dock, not really mingle with activists. Perry, he was like a 23-year-old college grad, mingling with all the students, hanging out at the booths, talking with everybody, sitting on the steps.

I mean, I've never seen anything like it. This is someone who has been humbled by his presidential campaign experience, is the least arrogant political presence at CPAC. It likes people, and that's arrogant political presence at CPAC. It likes people. And that's actually a rare thing in politics. He seems to like people. And that's going to be helpful if he wants to make a very quiet rise in Iowa, South Carolina, and elsewhere. You're right.

He likes people. And we like you. And we'll have you on again. And someday, if I'm ever in D.C., I would love to walk by a cafe and see you sitting with Michael Barone. It would be like Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker. We sat next to each other at dinner the other night. He's the best.

He is Obi-Wan, though. My gosh, the man knows the map like no one I've ever met. I know, but better that you're Luke than Anakin because we all know how that one turned out. Thanks, Bob. Thank you, man. My regards to the Washington Post. Yeah, Perry likes people, and. Thank you. My regards to the Washington Post. Yeah, Perry likes people. And that comes across.

And when Rob mentioned Jeb Bush, I just – I mean the only way possibly that he could get some national traction amongst people who don't care is if he – I was thinking maybe if he runs his name backwards and says, you know, I'm Bej Sub. Which looks like he'd get the Ukrainian vote. That's exactly what I mean. And if he does... It's also bad for the country in general. We shouldn't be

running Bushes and Clintons anymore. We should be moving forward. You know what? It just isn't going to happen. And you know what taught me that? Ricochet. Over the last six months, I've put up three – I like Jeb Bush a lot. And over the last – and a friend of mine – well, I'll tell you who it is. John Hoeven, who's now a senator from North Dakota.

But John was for almost 12 years governor of North Dakota. And John told me one time that if you ask the nation's governors who among them was most qualified to be president 49 out of 50 would have said jeb bush and it would have and the only person who might have had some doubts would have been jeb bush himself because he was so humble about it okay i put a post in favor of jeb bush on ricochet and i got creamed and you know what at some point in politics you just have to say it is what it is. If Ricochet, conservative, big-hearted, generous people, if our membership, half of our membership, which is roughly what it was, says, I don't care. We've just had enough. It's a big country. Some new last names, please.

I don't care how good he is. It's just – then it's done. At some point, you just have to say objectively that is the political fact. It ain't going to happen. That's what I believe. I think you're absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right. It's not a referendum on his intelligence, his leadership, his incredible record-running Florida, big state.

It's nothing at all. It's just that it's time I mean, I just think it's time for the American culture in general to break the habit of these sort of cultural elites. It is a bad habit. Let's move on. Speaking of bad habits, I have a habit

of interrupting James' segues. Did we do it again? Well, I just put the ball on. Yeah, we did it again. I don't even think we did it. Yeah, but I didn't know I was doing it. So now I will fall silent as James segues effortlessly into. Well, I can't because it was broken.

As a matter of fact, you just interrupted me explaining how you interrupted my segue. I was placing the ball on the tee, turning around actually to the caddy to request the club, at which point a giant stork came in, picked up my caddy, and deposited it somewhere else on the other side of the golf course. Well, how's your lie at this point now that it's somewhere else? Oh, I'm having a great time. I'm having a wonderful time. That's my lie right there. Actually, no segue. Just going to grind all the gears

and tell you flat out that the podcast brought to you by Encounter Books. You know that and you also probably know that this week's feature title, this month's feature title, for heaven's sakes,

as far as we know, this year's feature title is Dancing with the Devil, The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regime by Michael Rubin. Could be more timely. Now, if you've been listening over the weeks,

you know what this is exactly about. I don't have to read the praises to you. You can read it along with me. We all know that the government, the State Department is currently constituted, looks at bad guys around the world and says, oh, we gotta talk. We really gotta talk. And that those governments, looking at a

supine State Department and administration that wants to talk, says, what are we gonna get out of these guys? Because we're going to roll them, but good. That's right. We reward bluster with opportunity. They stomp, they glare, they pound the table, and we say, what can we do to make them happier?

Where does this work exactly? It doesn't work anywhere. That's why Pyongyang, Tehran, Islamabad, all these guys have our number. And the process of holding talks, we think, is more important than results. And they know it. So if you want to study up on this or you've got something to say for your friends the next time you get together and they say, well, you know, at least we're talking to all these groups. We should talk to the Taliban.

We should talk to Boko Haram. Ha! You'll get this book for 15% off the list price if you go to EncounterBooks.com and use the coupon code RICOCHET at your checkout. And that's good for any other book as well. We have to thank Encounter Books for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Before today and in the weeks to come. And show your appreciation by going there.

And look at the rich, broad catalog that they have too. Because I get these pamphlets from Encounter telling me what they've come up with in the last 48 hours. And it's just astonishing the amount of stuff that they have. All right. Well, our next guest is Rick Wilson. He's one of the top political consultants in the Republican Party and one of our most popular contributors as well. You can follow him at Twitter at the Rick Wilson. That's one word, I believe.

Rick, we were just talking to Bob Costa. The general opinion among all conservatives of every stripe is that Jeb Bush is a mortal lock and he's the guy that we've got to have. Right? Well, as I noted when the Chris Christie brouhaha first emerged, that the conservative movement folks and the money folks were going to diverge very rapidly on their choices. And that's exactly what you see, is that Jeb is the comfortable guy who knows how to sit in the boardroom and not put his feet on the table.

They like that a lot. And they're very comfortable with his record as a governor. And they are flooding the zone because they move as a pack. They always move as a governor, and they are flooding the zone because they move as a pack. They always move as a pack. And right now, Jeb is the guy they're running toward. Is there any... However, the enthusiasm for Jeb at the grassroots is somewhere between... Somewhere less enthusiastic than me, than the money people.

Let's put it that way. Are they aware that giving Jeb Bush the air of inevitability will justify every single suspicion that the grassroots has about the people who are running supposedly their party? The problem

for the money guys is that they are so... It isn't just that they're hostile to the grassroots, and some of them are. Some of them are overtly hostile to conservative movement folks. But a lot of them just don't think about them. They literally are in this game that they play with one another where they want to be an influential money-plug person. It's a strange social dynamic. And, you know, I know these people. We raise money from them and with them and work with them all the time. And many of them are very smart guys. But there's a conceit there that's very often, I'm a billionaire.

I know what I'm doing. And, you know, I'm a private pilot. But if you put me behind the controls of an F-16, the chances are I'm going to end up in a smoking hole somewhere. Okay? And a lot of these guys believe that their faculty for making money translates into sort of a political judgment about who should run for president and how they're going to fit. And they tend to take some very shorthand sort of PowerPoint depth strategic decisions that aren't always

consonant with what's happening in the actual world of politics. Well, why are these guys conservatives or Republicans in the first place? What are their ideas? What do they want? Well, look, a lot of them emerge from sort of an entrepreneurial background, and I will divide them into two separate chunks. The guys who aren't on Wall Street and in the finance world essentially are entrepreneurial. A lot of them come from the energy sector, the contracting sector, regional banking. They're smart guys.

They came up from middle-class families. They went to state schools. A lot of the Wall Street money guys want something very straightforward. he has where he can point and say, oh, the economy is doing great right there. They love that. These are guys who are very empowered by that. It's a rent-seeking behavior. And so they're not particularly's in the sense that they believe that government isn't always the solution, but they want government to tweak their part of the market so that they can continue to prosper. So there's a big divergence between the two sets. All right. We've done one of your fellow Floridians, Jeb Bush. Marco Rubio, is he running for the vice presidency? What's he up to?

Look, I think Marco in the vice presidency? What's he up to? Look, I think Marco in the last few weeks has demonstrated two things. One is that he's got a very wide portfolio of political and policy interests beyond what he sort of got in a little bit of heat with this last year on immigration. He has talked about foreign policy from Venezuela to the Ukraine, to Egypt, and to Israel in the last couple of months, in a broader sort of traditional Republican foreign policy strength area. Not necessarily picking up the neocon banner, as some characterize it, but that he's interested in those matters. He's talked about a lot of things on the economic front, including some of these things where we kind of got away from the promotion of prosperity and that great Reagan message of middle-class prosperity

during the Bush years, honestly, where we just basically spent money. He's tried to get back a little bit to that message. He's demonstrated a lot of bona fides in the last couple of weeks and months where this is a well-rounded guy. And those of us who know Marco know that he's a well-rounded guy. And, you know, essentially he is – and he's laid out an interesting marker where he said, if I do run for president, if I do choose to do this, you know, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not looking for a fallback. I'm not looking to keep my Senate seat. If I do it, I'm going to do this, you know, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not looking for a fallback. I'm not looking to keep my Senate seat. If I do it, I'm going to go full throttle.

And I think he's definitely gotten a second look from a lot of conservatives who had kind of gotten riled up during the immigration debate. Rick, hold on. I know you're nervous about it. Rick, I know Marco Rubio is a friend of yours and a fellow Floridian. So let me just take a good heart shot at it and see how you handle this. How can conservative Republicans trust a man who permitted himself to get rolled by Chuck Schumer? Well, it is a question of judgment. If you're going to get rolled, get rolled by the best. The fact that Marco pulled the plug and that is largely responsible for saying, hey, I'm not going to play this game anymore. Because look, Schumer went to Marco and other Republicans and said, this is a transactional question. I am going to make a deal.

We are going to do something that makes sense to everybody. Everybody's going to push away from the table with a win. Well, with Barack Obama and Harry Reid are in the room, nobody on our side is going to get a win. And, you know, that is something I think that Rubio has recognized, that the culture around the Schumer deal-making thing is not transactional, it's ideological, and it's poisonous. And so you're not going to see a guy who's touched the hot stove there do the same thing again. Now look, we all recognize that the immigration thing is the worst possible calling card for the next year, and nobody's going to touch it again for a long, long time. I mean, everybody came away from that with a snag on their face.

You know, the Rubio guys recognize that this is something in D.C. where you can't deal in good faith with Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid. You just can't. They are just not legitimate people to sit down and make a deal with. Should we talk about immigration? Yeah. Should we try to fix the H-1B system and enforcement and all these other things? Absolutely. Did they learn a hard lesson on it?

You know, get whacked upside the head with a frying pan, you're going to realize it for a long time. So, you know, I will I will tell you that, that many people have fallen victim to Schumer's blandishments. And, and, and, and he is a guy who plays a very long, hard game. And, you know, it happened. I don't think, I don't think Marco Rubio regrets taking on trying to build an immigration bill that made sense, but I think that a lot of people regret trusting Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid that they could do something that was meaningful that wouldn't have turned into veto bait for a president willing to demagogue his own mother if he has to. Well, that certainly describes Chuck Schumer. Hey, speaking of demagogue, Rick, it's Rob Long. I'm actually in Europe right now. I was on the plane, and yesterday the story broke. Can we just get dirty, down and dirty for a minute, speaking of dirty politics? What's up with Karl Rove questioning whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has brain damage?

Was that just kind of an off-the-cuff remark? Is there some diabolical strategy there? As a political sort of strategist and probably practicer of those dark arts, could you just kind of unpack that for us, please? Well, I'm not saying that Rove's statement has any validity to the rumors of her violent rages. I mean, I wouldn't comment on that, obviously. in terms of what Roe said the other night on Fox. And this is something that Hillary's people are past masters of. They recognize that rumors will be pushed around quite vigorously, and their pushback against Roe is hilariously ironic, given the Clintons' propensity over the years for dishing out stuff that makes what Roe said look like a love tap.

I mean, they get the joke. Everybody gets the joke. He was tweaking them. And the Clintons have been. If you go back to Bill Clinton running for president, where, you know, these guys have been notoriously closed mouth about their medical records and notoriously unwilling to be candid about things that are going on with their health. And so what Roe did there was make a point that Hillary's going to have to face the same kind of questions that the Democrats were shoving out. Look, there were Democrats who were saying, we wonder if John McCain is mentally

all there from the years of torture. Can we trust this man? Are there things we don't know about John McCain's mental state? And, you know, these are the same group of people, you know, maybe a slight generation before us, who were constantly saying, we've got a man in Ronald Reagan whose senility prevents him from being able to make good judgments about his finger being on the button. These are people that play this game, and when it gets played back at them, they get pissy. Too bad. The way it goes. It's a big boy sport. But do you think it's – was it just a salvo?

Was it a preview of coming attractions? I mean, look, she did have that fall. She was at the hospital for three days, although I do love that he misspokenly said 30 at one point. I mean, is this – how complete was this, or is this just kind of an off-the-cuff head fake? I mean, should we get – should we all, those of us who are political junkies and love this kind of thing, should we fasten our seatbelts for a bumpy night? I wouldn't over-interpret, I wouldn't over-interpret Carl's statement as some vast, long-term strategic plan. I wouldn't over-parse what he said. And I, like I said, I think the left is fluffing themselves into a frenzy over this thing. Um,

because you know, it, it, it, it is something that they don't want to talk about anything to anything that isn't on agenda about Hillary breaking the glass ceiling. Any other statement or comment is obviously racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic, whatever it is that you that you have thrown at you that day. They're going to throw it at you. So I – Okay, so can I ask you to switch –

Sure. I was going to ask you to switch a hat for a minute. Just assume, you know, just for a minute you wake up and you're wearing different clothes, and you've got to give advice to Democrats facing what will probably be a very, very unpleasant midterm election day. But it may not be as bad as everybody says, right? It could be sort of like a replay of 1998 when everybody expected there to be this fast-sweeping tidal wave of Republican support after Monica Lewinsky and all sorts of things, and it kind of didn't happen. So if you're on the Democratic side, what steps would you be taking right now to mitigate November's coming, looming unpleasantness? If I were the Democrats, I would look for one race that I can try to turn into the exemplar of how they turn things around, how they saved it and how Obama. Remember, the crushing blow of Obamacare, they've done everything they can to defer that until after 2014.

OK, so after Election Day, I keep pushing these deadlines back and all these all these mandates back because they recognize that the political poison is still dripping into the IV on Obamacare. They're looking for one person, one candidate. They're going to try to say, we saved, hypothetically, Mary Landrieu or Kay Hagan. Let's use Kay Hagan. We saved Kay Hagan, and she was fully for Obamacare. And here's the example ever forward, comrades, because they know that the legacy item of Obama is one thing. And if it's Obamacare with one thing they can bluster or win for, and you have Greg Sargent and all the cheering section for Obamacare saying, see, see, it's not poison for everybody, then it has an impact on the 2016 presidential race. It has an impact on down the line congressional and Senate contests. And it lets them have a single thing to cling to, a single piece of flossing to cling to in an otherwise fairly tough environment. But I mean, I'm pretty bullish right now. And I think we're going to pick up two or three seats in the House. I think we're going to get the majority. We have so far failed them in picking any crazy people. We talked earlier with Bob Costa, Rick, and he would agree that there have been no – there's – the Tea Party,

the Republican Party has not – the primaries have not turned out such that anybody is going to be able to say, ha, look at that. The Republicans are throwing away control of the Senate by nominating nut cases. No nut cases. In fact, Ben Sasse in Nebraska who won his primary is a tremendously attractive candidate. So let me just ask you very quickly, time being tight here, Rob has to go off and sample Dutch brandy over there in Amsterdam. So let me just ask you a couple of races here. Kay Hagen in North Carolina, can we take her? I think we can take her. I think Tillis was just the right choice in this race. He is a guy that's very hard to turn him into the foaming right-wing demagogue. He's got a lot of ties to the state. He's got a long record in the state. People know the guy. Late-breaking race, or do you expect him to build a lead early and hold it?

I expect that to go fairly far into the weeds. I know there's a lot of money to the outside that will be spent there in the last two months. Landrieu, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana. Landrieu is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. She has supported Barack Obama. She voted for Obamacare. But Louisiana is a traditionally Democratic state, and that family has deep ties to the political structure. Can we take her out? If her name was Mary Smith, she'd be behind by 25 points right now. She is the handmaiden of an incredibly unpopular agenda in a state where Barack Obama is incredibly unpopular. And it was traditionally Democrat before Katrina. The loss of about 500,000 African-American voters has really fundamentally altered the political landscape there. I think Landers whistled past the graveyard right now. If Cassidy runs the solid campaign, we expect him to run. Okay. Arkansas. I confess that I thought Congressman Tom Cotton, who grew up on a ranch

farm in Arkansas, then went off to Harvard College, Harvard Law School, did not one but two tours of duty in Iraq as a member of the United States Army, went back home to Arkansas when he could have gone to Wall Street, back home to Arkansas, and is now in his third term in the House of Representatives. I thought he would crush David Pryor, the current Democratic senator from Arkansas. But Tom, that's looking like a toss up. Toss up. How come? That's the Democrats' bright spot in the system right now.

I suspect, however, that we're going to get back to the mean on where voter behavior is in Arkansas, which is trending red. And I do think Pryor has a lot more weight to be put on him in this campaign. By weight, you mean money? By weight, I mean – We need to throw some more firepower at this guy. Cotton needs to step up the contrast. And I think as much as he needs to stay on Obamacare, he needs to widen the critique of Pryor as a guy who's not really terribly effective for a state because he is a reflexive vote for Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

Okay. Last question from me, and I guess we have to let you go pretty soon, but last question for me for sure. Mitch McConnell, minority leader in the United States Senate, he has to his credit, and what I consider an immense achievement, which is that during Barack Obama's first term, he held the Senate together, so that Obamacare had to get through the Senate without a single Republican vote. He held his caucus together. He's a remarkable parliamentarian. Everyone agrees on that. And yet, and he has skated past his primary. It looks as though the primary challenge to him is fading. But in the general election, that's looking like a very close race. How come? Because conservatives right now have a place to run to, and that's Bevin. And that is going to be over

soon, and they're going to have to make a choice. Do you want, as much as you don't love Mitch McConnell, do you want Speaker, Majority Leader Harry Reid, or do you want Majority Leader Mitch McConnell? Do you want a Democrat in charge of the U.S. Senate when Barack Obama's two Supreme Court nominees come up in 2014, or 2015 and 16, is that what you want? If that's your choice, then you're willing to set your ass on fire just to spite people. Yeah, that's one thing. But I think Republicans will come back at the end of the day. I know that my conservative friends will get very angry for me saying this, but Mitch McConnell is a much more crafty politician, and there's a role in this world for people who can carry a knife in

the dark and take care of business. Mitch McConnell is one of those guys. He has done this to Bevin because Bevin and a lot of folks in the movement underestimated just what a vicious knife fighter Mitch McConnell is. I think Alison Grimes is also underestimating that. When Republicans, when the primary is passed, I think the party will unify. They will recognize that this is a guy that they don't have to love, but they have to respect. And he's going to bring, he's going to bring the same kind of vicious, um, you know, ability to tear somebody apart to Grimes. And then when he's in the majority again, you know, this is not a guy who's going to

like suddenly carry water for Barack Obama. No, right. That's an insane thought. And it's frankly incredibly disingenuous of a lot of people to make that argument that he's somehow some sort of fellow traveler of the George Soros-Barack Obama left. It's insane. And like I said, people like Devin. I get it. He didn't put the campaign together he needed to put together to beat Mitch McConnell. That's the bottom line.

And if he had, great, I'd be vocally and loudly supporting the guy. But right now, Mitch McConnell is on track to win this primary. There's not a lot of folks that are going to go in there right now and mount a rescue mission in six days that's going to turn this race around. And when Republicans have one guy to get behind, I think they're going to get behind him. And the important thing is, you know, we need every seat. There should not be a lift for us to win this seat in the general. When we get unified, we can win the seat again in the general. Well, of course, it's easy to knife someone in the dark when your opponent's ass is on fire.

And that's the image I'm going to dark when your opponent's ass is on fire. And that's the image I'm going to take away from our session. As well you should. Thank you, Rick. That sounds like a writing prompt that I'm going to use someday. That's part of politics right there. We'll see you on Twitter. It is indeed.

And we'll see you at Ricochet.com. Thanks for being with us in the podcast today. Thanks so much, Rick. Talk to you soon. You know, I've been hearing a lot from Tom Cotton because he's a regular guest on the Hugh Hewitt Show. And it's not just about Obamacare. He's good on military matters. He's really good on military matters and is pretty schooled on what has been done to our armed forces over the last few years, what our capabilities are, what our readiness is, and how we need to pump more money into that. Now, one might say, however, that we really don't need to have the military that we had in the Reagan days because, as Barack Obama pointed out, it's a different world. Russia is no longer our number one geopolitical foe.

We've got ships. We don't need all those nuclear missiles. We have something else in our arsenal, really, that no other generation has had before, and that's the power of a fully operational hashtag, that apparently we can achieve whatever we want to do by putting words together without spaces and prefacing them with a hash mark. Now, the first lady this week tweeted out a picture of herself looking very, very – using the expression that she has when she catches her husband smoking a cigarette, I think, in the garage. A really glum look holding up a piece of paper, which you never do on the Internet. Never, ever hold up a piece of paper on the Internet, ever,

because people will erase the words that you have and put in words that they want. But she used the hashtag BringBackOurGirls, this expression of utter and complete inability to do anything, to influence, to move, to anything, to influence, to move, to act, to struggle, to win, simply by stating this purpose, this point, revealed that really the hashtag diplomacy that they spoke of, and of course the State Department was guilty of this too, we stand with Ukraine, that they actually seem to believe that the equivalent of slapping a free to bet bumper sticker on your car is sufficient to accomplish what they want. It is merely sufficient to preen promiscuously not to do anything.

Guys, what do you think? Well, yeah. I mean, look, that's always been the case look it's always been the case with this social media stuff and the people who invent it and the people who use it they always play to self-importance you know i know people in the tech business who have come up with some interesting way of parsing text or video we're changing the world man and everybody who you who updates their Facebook status thinks that they're a celebrity now or that they're trending or whatever it is. But yeah,

this is part and parcel of what this foreign policy of the Obama administration, which is to talk a lot and to make them, you know, this is the hashtag presidency for better or for worse. And the problem with all of this is that, you know, go ahead. This is the hashtag presidency for better or for worse. The problem with all of this is that – go ahead. No, I'm just – I'm agreeing with both of you. But Rob makes a very important point, which everybody – sure, Michelle Obama holds up a hashtag. She has a glowering face in the picture, bring back our girls. The difficulty with that is that it's – I mean in the first place, it's a little silly.

It just seems to me to trivialize an important issue. Apparently, I'm wrong about that though because there have been – all over the internet, people have been saying, no, no, no. It shows – fine. Suppose it does show solidarity. Give Michelle Obama the – put the best construction on it that you can. It still takes place in the context of her husband's administration and her husband drew red lines in Syria, the Syrians crossed them, and he did nothing. He has now cut a deal with Iran, which Iran is already

starting to flout, and he is going to do nothing. So when Michelle Obama puts up a hashtag that says bring back our girls, the implicit question is, oh yeah? Or what? Or what? Or what?

I mean, suppose you could enter a time machine and put Twitter back in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan increases the United States Navy from 300 ships to 600. He increases defense funding dramatically. He launches the strategic defense initiative. The United States is on the move. If Nancy Reagan put up a hashtag that said bring back our girls, the implicit message would be or we're coming after you. There's just – it just – it goes – when it's Michelle Obama, it goes kerklunk because of her husband, because of the lack of seriousness behind it. Solidarity. Yeah, but that's also the problem with it.

I mean I don't think it's necessarily unique to the Obamas. I think it actually – this is the Obama attitude here is the sort of the natural end point or midpoint, I hope end point, but I fear midpoint to this kind of dissent where the most important thing you can do is spread awareness, you know, where we're all advocates and consultants and advocates and we advocate and we bumper stick ourselves, but nobody actually does anything. And I think that's part of the problem. Of course, bring back our girls is a hashtag

that is supposed to persuade a terrorist organization and a terrorist leader in Africa, in civil war-torn Africa, to return human chattel that he has captured and is currently probably abusing, torturing or using as a – it's a very best-case scenario using as a bargaining chip. The idea that he's going to be persuaded – sorry, go ahead. No, no. Just yesterday afternoon as it happens, I happened to be at a little reception where George Shultz spoke.

George Shultz, former secretary of state, he's now in his early 90s and he is still a force. People were asking questions about negotiating and how you should handle Ukraine. And George Shultz said, let me tell you about one of my early meetings with Ronald Reagan when I first became Secretary of State. I told the president about what it had been like to undergo basic training in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. George Shultz was a Marine. And he said, the Master Sergeant gave us our weapons. And he said, get to know that rifle. That is going to be your best friend. And remember this, don't ever point that weapon at anyone unless you're willing to pull

the trigger. And George Shultz said, I said to the president, no empty threats. We can agree on that. And Ronald Reagan said, we agree completely. And of course, the Obama administration is one empty threat after another. It looks who had a piece, somebody had a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Elliot Cohn, who just said that this hashtagging – they look like children. They look unserious. And I have to say when I saw 92, 93-year-old George Shultz yesterday, it just felt – yes, there was a time when grownups were in charge. Unserious or worse? Unserious.

I mean grownups are naive. I guess I understand that as a continuum. They're naive. They're not grownups. But I suspect it's actually worse. I suspect that the reason that the hashtag has nothing to do with those girls in Africa. The hashtag is there to appeal to a certain subsection of the American voter who likes this sort of thing and digs it and thinks that Michelle Obama's cool and that it's cool to be, to have a hashtag and it's cool to like become a, a part, not even part-time, part-time implies that you're going to spend more than five minutes of your day, but a 30 seconds a day to spend that time adding a hashtag to your retweets to your 200 followers. I suspect that it's not at all something that's naive. I think it's the lowest form of cynicism. They do not care about those girls. They simply don't care. In the same way, all right, this is a crazy analogy, and I'm jet-lagged, so stop me, but In the same way, all right, this is a crazy analogy, and I'm jet lagged, so stop me. But in the same way, they don't care. They don't care about those Americans in Benghazi. They just

don't care. The most important thing is to have a hashtag, to have a groundswell where I get the support they need from their little subsection of acolytes. That's the most important thing. Everything else is completely, completely expendable. I wouldn't call it childish so much as I would call it an example of the protracted adolescence that college provides people. Barack Obama has a college mindset. He's a college teacher. He's steeped in the culture. This is an example of that. There is no real world outside of the college itself, which is this strange constructed environment in which things like solidarity actually matter, in which things like raising consciousness is actually something

that adults are supposed to do with their lives. So what you have when you want to express solidarity and you want consciousness to be raised is you have the appropriate act. You have a rally. You occupy an office. You issue some demands. And perhaps the faculty administration will accede to your demands and you will get what you want, which is a new department of bearded lady studies to be added to the metallurgical Institute to redress a historical grievance that hasn't existed. And so now that you have that, you, you've had, now that you have had that, you've had an accomplishment. So if you, if you hashtag out this and it's retweeted and it gets traction, that is the equivalent of the administration exceeding to your demands.

Nothing has changed. Nothing has been built. Nothing has been created. But a little shift in the politics of this hermetically sealed world in which you live has come to pass. And that's all that there is. This is like a government that believes actually the world is college and doesn't understand that there are Huns gathering outside the ivy walls who are more than willing to storm in, burn everything, take all the women, and run out with the gold. It's astonishing.

There, Rob, you were going to say? Yeah, but I don't know, James. I don't really think that they are naive. I think naive is – I think that would be a step up. I mean, if you're naive, there's a certain – you could certainly – you could admire people who are naive. I think they're cynical. I think it's a cynical thing. I think it's like, oh, this is something we can talk about now so that we look good. I agree.

It's creepy and self-serving. I mean, those girls could be, you know. We can both agree. These are cynical people catering to a naive audience. How about that? Oh, I like that. Yes, I like that. Make it unanimous.

But what's amazing is that everybody thinks that everybody thinks that you can do something without really – I was going to say without lifting a finger, but just by lifting a finger and pressing tweet. It's amazing to me that we actually believe or people have been convinced that that's going to be an effective use of your time and your energy. It certainly doesn't anywhere else in your life. There's something more to this. Even the phrase, the way it's phrased, bring back our girls is a rather sort of neutral statement, right? It's either asking Boko Haram to bring them back or asking the government to go to go get them and bring them back. There's no blame there. There's just just we want this thing to happen.

There's no suggestion of the agency required to bring it about as opposed to holding up a hashtag saying go get our girls as opposed to demanding something like that. But as you will find every single time you go into the comments section of anybody who is discussing this, the minute you start to point out, you know, there's a reason that these guys are doing what they're doing. And there's an ideological reason for it and there's an ideological reason tied to a particular theology. You are flamed instantaneously and then it becomes the equivalent of the old anti-anti-communist debates of the 1980s, because you've just become one of those guys. And they can't... But you deserve that, James, for going into those comment sections in the first place. You can't argue with those people. No. All right. Well, uh, we are out of time. We have got to, to run.

Rob is going to be back next week to tell us, I suppose all the wonderful things that he learned in Budapest and, uh, regale us with tales of John and his lovely bride, Melissa, who we hope to see again on the national review cruise. Always fun. Always a great note of wonderful civility between the two of them.

And, we would like to thank Mike rap coach for, uh, I hope I pronounced that correctly for giving us the member post of the week, returning to support for the death penalty. And if we had time, we'd get around to that. And it's a pity because I think within – if we had, say, three additional minutes, we could probably settle the idea and the concept of the death penalty right here and then move on to euthanasia, which we could wrap up in 90 seconds. But alas, run we must. This podcast was brought to you as ever by Encounter Books.

Go there, enter that coupon code RICOSHAY to get your 15% off. And it's not like you don't get something in return. You get a great book. There are so many. Thanks for listening, everybody. Thanks, Rob. Thanks, Peter. Thanks to our guests.

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