The Ricochet Podcast - Iowa

Episode Date: January 28, 2016

This week, we settle all family business (so the saying goes) as after 18 months of jabbering about the election, voters in Iowa are actually going to the polls. To get the best insight into this long awaited event, we go to two experts actually at Ground Zero, aka Des Moines. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York weighs in on the race and National Review editor Rich Lowry describes the aftermath... Source

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I always liked it. I'm not going to get, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's going to prove to be disastrous. And what it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. Our guests today, Byron York from the wilds of Iowa and Rich Lowry from National Review. Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. and they offer a lecture series in over 500 subjects including history, science, art, music, and so much more. It's available in DVDs, CDs, streaming, digital downloads, or with the Great Courses app.

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Well, tell them who's going to be there so they're not – It's me and John Penoritz and Jonah Goldberg and a whole host of NR types will be there. We're going to have sort of panel discussion. We're going to watch the debate together, which is a lot of fun, and kind of American politics on both the Democrat and Republican side for those days. It's really kind of an amazing thing. with an open door, former President Bill Clinton sitting in a van, huddled in a huddle with then-Senator Hillary Clinton, his wife. And he was giving her – and she was kind of listening to him, and he was just talking to her and laying down the law. It was a pretty amazing sight. So you never know what you'll see. Come to New Hampshire.

Join Ricochet, and we'd love to see you there. Indeed. Well, there's more of that to come throughout the year, of course, because we are in the middle of a big, long, grueling, grinding process to select the next president. Peter, welcome into the podcast here. We know you've been smiling as you listen to Rob describe the hell he's going to go through that you do not have to. But I want to ask you this. There's a story in the Star Tribune today about how the local Scandinavian community here is angry that Ted Cruz has been blocking the administration's ambassadorships to Norway and Sweden, which I had no idea was going on. But apparently it is. test the Iran deal and also to try to name a street in DC for a Chinese dissident, which the administration believes would be counterproductive to its diplomacy. I want to ask you, when it comes to these things, do you believe that Ted Cruz has long

ago conflated principle with ambition and that the two are virtually inseparable in his mind so much that he doesn't even notice the latter. I confess that I haven't read the Star Tribune this morning. The short answer is no, no, not quite. Ted Cruz made a decision the first day he reached the Senate and maybe the first day after he was elected, which would have been before he reached the Senate, that he was going to be an outsider, that he was going to be appealing. Look, there are fundamentally two different ways a politician can be effective in Washington. One is to play the inside the beltway game. I saw this close up long ago. That was the method that Vice President George H.W. Bush used. He saw the job of being vice president as holding meetings, lobbying Congress, working the town.

And Ronald Reagan, who would always place a phone call to a member of Congress if you wanted him to do so but would never just pick up the phone and schmooze for the sake of schmoozing, viewed it the other way around. The way he was president was by going to the country, giving speeches. If he rearranged the political landscape outside Washington, Washington would rearrange itself accordingly sooner or later. Ted Cruz plays the outside game. I don't think there's anything unprincipled about it in and of itself at all, frankly. He decided earlier than most of us that the establishment needed to be whacked. He went to Washington to break furniture and he's been breaking furniture ever since. If as a constituent of his in Texas, you want a senator who does deals and gets legislation

passed and you need senators like that, Ted Cruz is not your man. But if like apparently a lot of his constituents back in Texas and a lot of the people to whom he's appealing now on the campaign trail, you want someone who places himself in stark opposition to Washington, Ted Cruz is your man. requires both kinds and there's nothing unprincipled in and of itself for Ted Cruz to have positioned himself as an outsider and taken a baseball bat to the establishment. How's that? That's impressive. And there's gotta be 34 things in there that Rob would like to expand upon. No,

I, look, I, I, I, you know, I, I think Ted Cruz gets sort of a weird,

bad rap. Um, cause everybody goes, oh, he's so ambitious. He's such an ambitious – he always wanted to be president. They all are kind of nuts. I mean you have to be – there's got to be something wrong with you if this is a job you really want, and they've all been planning for it for a million years. So the idea – I mean I think probably the one person – the one person on the dais who has not actually been planning for this for a long time is Jeb Bush up and then just took it back up, but you can't do that. Presidential ambitions have to be a burning flame really from very early on. So I don't think that's true. Look, if more senators and more republicans had behaved like Ted Cruz, they wouldn't have this sort of Trumpian revolt on their hands. So I'm not sure we could blame Ted Cruz for that or say that he's misplayed it.

I think he's – look, he could easily win Iowa, which is a surprise. I don't think – I mean as someone said to me the other day, like I don't think there are many people who are not already Republican who are saying – who are not already devoted Republican voters who are saying, hey, that Ted Cruz really makes me want to vote Republican, which may be a problem in general, but I don't think it's a problem in the primary. It strikes me as completely fair to say, as George Shultz said the other day when I did a taping with him, I taped a episode of Uncommon Knowledge with him on Monday, a George Shultz at 95 episode. He's just celebrated his 95th birthday. And believe me, he's still there, still all with us.

And he said he attacks Ted Cruz because he said he has never demonstrated a governing impulse. That's true. It's a just criticism. But that's quite different from saying Ted Cruz is unprincipled. Yeah. I also feel like that wasn't the job. Right. That's not the job of a popular senator from Texas with an extremely liberal president.

I don't – I mean that doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem to come from – I mean I'm not a Ted Cruz supporter really. I mean he's fine at this point. I'll take anybody. But it's not a fair thing to say he's and their presidencies to know how they got where they got and how they got what they got in office. This president is such an arrogant jerk. No one seems as interesting to him as he is, which is one of the reasons why I think he's stymied in his legislation. I really do. Well, let's ask a seasoned Washington insider like Byron York. You know, when you think about that guy, you may wonder, is he connected to the York peppermint fortune? No, but I do love those candies, especially after they've been in the fridge for a while.

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Harrys.com. Coupon code Ricochet. Well, it's a pleasure. Byron will be along in just a second, by the way. It's a pleasure to be talking about somebody other than Trump. But let's talk about Trump. So do you guys think that he's going to go all the way? I want Rob to go first on this one.

That's what people always say. I'm so tired of talking about Trump. Let's talk about Trump. I got this feeling he's going to go all the way. I just do. But what about the debate? Should we go to the Oval Office? What about the debate? The debate.

Rob? Well, look, I think it was smart for him not to do the debate. I don't think he needs to do the debate. He can only lose. His supporters are his supporters. Look, Trump's trouble right now is not going to be debates. It's not even going to be polls. It's going to be getting people – look, voting in a caucus is a pain in the neck. It's cold in Iowa. You've got to stand in line, and you don't know really where to go. It's all about – it's really a ground game. You have 10 people here, 50 people there. That's what he should be focusing on is getting people – it's smart for him to have a big event because

then he's got all those people there. He'd get their names and phone numbers and he can work the phones. He's got to get them to the caucuses. Speaking of phones and speaking of the caucuses, out in the hinterland is Byron York in Iowa on the ground. He's the chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Fox News contributor and author of The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Follow him on Twitter, guys, at Byron York.

Welcome. How's the weather? Well, first of all, we do not refer to it as the hinterlands. We refer to it as home here in Iowa. The weather's great, actually. I'm standing outside on a really sunny day without a coat. It's quite nice. Just talked to Trump's campaign manager and posted a brief item on it. I saw some people early this morning in the debate world, and they were basically saying, well, look, the door's still open. If Mr. Trump wants to come back, we can accommodate him until very shortly before debate time. And their reasoning is they didn't see this coming.

They never thought he would actually do it. So they thought, well, we got surprised once, but we could get surprised again. So we'll just keep the door open. And the Trump campaign just slammed the door shut. He said, Mr. Trump will be holding a rally tonight, 8 p.m. Central Time. In other words, exactly the same as the debate time for veterans. They picked a venue. It's a theater. It has 776 seats. They say they've gotten 4,000 RSVPs for it. They'll set up big screens outdoors. Temperature tonight predicted to be about 28, which is semi-balmy here for Des Moines. So it sounds like he's going to get a lot of people. Byron, Peter Robinson here.

And the first thing I want to do is tip my hat to a real reporter. I've been following you on Twitter. I've been looking at the stuff you've been, well, of course. Don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back. At Foot Solutions, we specialize in high-quality supportive footwear and use the latest scanning technology to custom make orthotics designed for your unique feet if you want to free your feet and joints from pain improve balance or correct alignment book a free foot assessment at foot solutions.ie

or pop in store today foot solutions the first step towards pain-free feet that's the twitter stuff links to the washington examiner you have been on the ground you're The first step towards pain-free feet. Among all of us who just jabber, it's wonderful that the country has a fine political reporter. Thank you. Now – Thank you, Peter. That's nice of you to say. Not at all. I mean every word of it, every word of it.

And now start jabbering. And now start jabbering. Yeah. So here's the question of questions in my judgment. watching 538, the Nate Silver's polling site. And even as polls, poll after poll shows Trump taking over in Iowa, Nate Silver is running some very complicated algorithm to try to correct for who will actually turn out at the caucuses. And yesterday for the first time, which meant that 538 showed Ted Cruz with a greater likelihood of winning in Iowa right up until yesterday. And now even Nate Silver's site says Trump has a 45% chance of winning, Cruz of 44%.

Does that feel right to you that it is absolutely neck and neck among the people who will actually turn out? Yeah. among the people who will actually turn out. Yeah, if we can be so crude as to talk about polls, if you look at the last Des Moines Register poll, which was in December, it had crews with a 10-point lead, and a lot of people thought, wow, the race is cruises to lose. Well, it did. It really, by the first of this month, it really tightened up quite a bit.

I think it's very, very close. We're going to have a final Des Moines Register poll over the weekend. Here's the thing. Cruise here in Iowa has an extremely good conventional turnout operation. They'll tell you they got 12,000 volunteers in the state. They got 1,800 precinct captains and co-captains, which covers about all, I think there's 1,700, 1,600 or 1,700 precincts around the county, around the state. They got that covered. They have something called Camp Cruise, which was they originally rented a college dormitory to house their so-called strike team volunteers who come up from Texas to work for Cruz.

Now they're up to three dormitories full of people now. So they've got this huge conventional turnout operation. And talk to the Trump people. These are not like a bunch of guys from New York who come here. These are Iowans, solid, respected political operatives here in Iowa, and they won't tell you what they're doing. You go to a campaign event and say, by the way, talk to people and say, has the Trump campaign ever gotten in touch with you? Have they called you, left something on your door, anything like that? Most of the time they say no. So Trump is deliberately fostering an air of mystery about his turnout operations.

But we do know the polls are what they are. He seems to be coming up even more lately as maybe a five or six point lead over Cruz in the real politics average of polls. I will say the conventional wisdom will be shaped Saturday afternoon, about 6 o'clock Eastern time, by the Des Moines Register poll. That will be kind of a gospel until there's actual votes to count. But I think the bottom line is it really is a fight between this powerful conventional operation, the Cruz campaign, and a powerful unconventional operation, the Trump campaign. And so my last question, I know Rob is eager to come in here as well.

My last question is this. I'm eager to speak to Rob, too. Oh, everybody always is. I never get that. Don't encourage him. Don't encourage him. You just laid it out beautifully. In round numbers, as I recall, there are about 600,000 Republicans in Iowa. Last time registered

Republicans, last time around, four years ago, 120,000 of them caucused. So you've got this ground operation, Ted Cruz's ground operation. He's got 1,700 precincts covered. Donald Trump, who knows? He's not saying. How on earth, even the mighty Nate Silver, how on earth can pollsters begin to correct for the difference between somebody who says, I'm a Cruz supporter and they've been to three caucuses in a row, so they will go on the one hand. And on the other, a Trump supporter who says, I'm for Trump, but this will be the first time I've ever been to three caucuses in a row, so they will go on the one hand, and on the other, a Trump supporter who says, I'm for Trump, but this will be the first time I've ever been to a caucus. How on earth do they begin to correct for that? Well, it's hard, and I have to tell you, there's also some overlap.

Here on the ground in Iowa, I have really noticed most overlap is between Trump and Cruz. You talk to people, they say, you know, who do you support? They'll say Trump. Say, well, you know, anybody else you like, they'll say Cruz. And vice versa. Who do you support? Cruz. Anybody else you like?

Trump. There's, I think, more kind of crossover between those two campaigns, which makes it more difficult because those are people who still might actually be on the fence between the two of them. So, look, it's extremely difficult to predict. But I do think that a lot of the conventional wisdom we heard a while back, which was that, yeah, people will tell pollsters that they support Trump, but, you know, they're not going to show up on a cold January, February evening to come out to caucus. You know, we've seen enough scenes where people waited in line in the cold to see Donald Trump.

Shortly after I arrived here, I went to a Trump rally in Clear Lake, Iowa, temperature zero at the beginning. And let me see, it was negative two, minus two when the event was over. And it was dark and windy. And people had waited in line an hour outside because of the Secret Service. They all have to go through security. So, you know, you've got to think, if they'll do that, they're going to go through security. So you've got to think. If they'll do that, they're going to come to caucus. Hey, Byron, it's Rob Long in New York. How are you?

I'm glad to know that you're keeping an eye on things in Iowa. Here's my question. Iowa traditionally, or at least the past couple cycles, has been the place where the religious right, religious conservatives, get to vote. They don't really have another shot at it until South Carolina, and by then the field is winnowed. This is where their candidate gets to win, Huckabee, Centaur, and people like that. Have you talked to any voters who are self-described religious conservatives? How do they square that with their Trump support? Very easily. That seems like a cognitive –

Talk to a lot of them. Really? Okay. No, it's not a big problem. First of all, just the numbers. In the last caucuses, 57 percent of caucus goers describe themselves as born-again evangelical Christians. In New Hampshire, by the way, it's 22%. So you're right, it's a big deal here. Of that 57%, Rick Santorum won them with 32% of the vote. But you know who was second? Ron Paul. And tied for third were Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, all of which is a way to say that the evangelical vote is not monolithic. It's not the same everywhere. And if you go to Ted Cruz's events, his appeals to evangelicals are just really overt.

First of all, he travels around a lot with a couple of evangelical leaders in the state, Bob Vander Plaats and others. And second of all, he makes one of the most religious speeches I've ever heard. I mean, he quotes scripture. He exhorts people to awaken the body of Christ so that we might pull this country back from the abyss. And that's some heavy stuff. Yeah, there it is. Now, the Trump campaign, and I've literally done this, gone to a Trump event in the same area shortly after hearing Cruz say just that. And Trump does this long speech, and there's no mention of religion or anything. And the Trump campaign's logic, and I think it's probably correct in this case, is, well, you know, evangelicals want jobs.

They want to destroy ISIS, and they want to secure the border. And so each one of them does a kind of a calculation, and if you talk to an evangelical voter and the first thing they list is, you know, I want a candidate who will protect Christians, they're probably going to be for Cruz, but just as many of them are going to want to seal the border or they're going to want to get a plant up and operating again or they're going to want to defeat Islamic terrorism. And they might just as easily be for Trump. Right. So if we can just flash forward a bit to just assume whatever happens in the next four years happens, isn't this a watershed event for Republican presidential candidates to discover that you could be a popular and even winning, I mean, Trump wins some primary – a winning Republican candidate and be kind of – I mean no disrespect to the man, but sort of a libertine.

I mean in many ways has not – there are no soft-focus campaign commercials available for Donald Trump about his hardscrabble upbringing. Well, look, I want to see. I want to see the next candidate who thinks he can do Trump-like stuff and get away with it. I do not think it's possible. I mean, I think Trump is completely unique. His persona is unique. The way he reacts is unique. And I agree with a lot of people now who have finally been reading

The Art of the Deal, in which he kind of lays out how he operates. This man is a unique phenomenon in American politics right now. It's not as if somebody else could come along and imitate it and pull it off. So my guess is that most Republican, and for that matter, Democratic politicians would not even try to do something like this because you've got to be Trump to do it. Byron, in the battle of the bilious billionaires, there's the insertion of Bloomberg into this mix all of a sudden. And George F. Will, I think in his most recent column, said that would be preferable. How does he factor in and who does he take away from? You know, I have to tell you, and you can all add your collective expertise to this,

in all the reporting I've done, I have never, even once, detected a groundswell of support for Michael Bloomberg, a longing for Michael Bloomberg to run for president. And it's just not there. The only reason these stories happen is that he's so rich he could just do it on his own if he wanted to, and that he does appeal to some portion of the no-labels crowd that feels that the current parties are just not offering very good candidates. But, you know, he can do it, and, you know, he can buy all the advertising in the world and buy all the staff in the world and all the consultants in the world.

I just don't see it happening. Well, thank you so much for your report in Iowa. And if you're in Clear Lake, again, take a bus or an Uber out of town, not a small plane. I'm just saying. Just history. Good idea. By the way, Trump's event was at the Ballroom where Buddy Holly played his last concert.

Yes, and he was en route to Fargo, North Dakota, as a matter of fact, to play in my hometown well across the river in Moorhead when he went down. All right, I'll tell you one little story because this is a podcast. I can just talk, right? Yeah. Last time I was covering some campaign, I was in Clear Lake,

and I end up at the airport at Clear Lake, and I actually asked the men to take me out to the side of it a few miles away of the crash. And one of them, I said, this shows you how really, really smart I am. I said, uh, you know, it's interesting. Why don't you guys just,

instead of this being like the clear Lake municipal airport, why don't you call it the buddy Holly municipal airport? And he said, yeah, I just don't think it'd be a great idea to name an airport after a plane crash. I thought about it. You know,

I think you're right about that. I take it back. Hey, Byron, I think you're right about that. I take it back. Hey, Byron, before you go, do you want to call it? No, I don't. If you had to bet today. Sorry. All right. In that case, I have one last question for you and then run.

Do you feel affection for either of these men? Anyplace outside Iowa where we're not seeing the ads. Me, personally? No, no. I mean, do you encounter genuine affection, warmth? These two men are the most – to read the New York Times, they're the most reviled men in the Republican Party. Are Iowans warming to – First of all, a lot of Republican voters, the ones who support Cruz, they like him.

I mean, they find him a likable presence at their events. All the people in Washington who know him and hate him, that's just not happening here. The people who go to his events, they like him, they like his presentation. He spends a long time talking to them afterwards. There was some press account, I can't remember, a woman walks up and she says, oh, you know, it's so great to meet you. And she says, my husband, unfortunately, he's in a wheelchair and he got stuck back there and he can't come see you. And Cruz just made a beeline to go talk to the guy. And so that hate

Cruz stuff is not working. The other thing about Trump is there's an enormous admiration for him, even among people who are not going to vote for him, for just breaking down the barriers of what they see as political correctness. Got it. They like the fact that Trump can say all sorts of stuff, that if they said it, they'd be called to the Human Resources Office. But Trump can say it and get away with it, and they admire that. Got it. they'd be called to the human relations office, human resources office. And, but Trump can say it and get away with it.

And they admire that. Got it. Thanks Byron. Stay warm. We'll talk to you down the road. Enjoy it gentlemen. Thanks Byron. Thanks.

You know, there's a situation here in St. Paul and between Cruz's blocking of the ambassadorships, angering the local community and something that happened in the school system in St. Paul. And don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back at foot solutions. We specialize in high quality supportive footwear and use the latest scanning

technology to custom make orthotics designed for your unique feet. If you want to free your feet and joints from pain, improve balance or correct alignment, book a free foot assessment at foot solutions.olutions.ie or pop in store today. Foot Solutions, the first step towards pain-free feet. I'm just going hyper-local here, but forgive me. One of the schools in St. Paul has decided not to celebrate Valentine's Day anymore because the school's composition does not observe it as a religious holiday,

not that any of us do, but because it's mostly – I believe it's Hmong or Pacific Islander. They're just not going to do Valentine's Day. And there have been the usual laments about how PC we've gotten, which is, you know, from the wellspring from which Trump draws. But it seems to me that rather than saying it's not their culture, it ought to be the case of the schools to say this is the American culture here. Learn about it. Participate.

This is who we are. I mean, it's either that or just give them a great courses and let them figure it out on their own. And I think the schools are a better way to get those values across. Wonderful. Yes. Sorry. So when I mentioned the great courses, it them figure it out on their own. And I think the schools are a better way to get those values across. Wonderful. Yes. Sorry. Go ahead.

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to send it to the dark edges of the penumbra of civilization, never to come again. It's really a time when you can see who's chosen sides early. And we're lucky enough to have Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, syndicated columnist and co-host of KCRW's Left, Right and Center, to tell us how his week's been going. Rich, welcome to the podcast. Hey. Thanks for having me.

Hey, Rich. It's pretty nice here in the outer darkness here. Can I just jump in here? Can I just jump in? It's Rob Long in New York. I've been writing for National Review for, I don't know, over 20 years. I would have liked to have gotten a phone call from you before you published this piece about Trump to offer a dissent. Because, you know, as a political humorist,

I can't think of a better candidate right now. I mean, this guy is going to be my meal ticket. I could write for another 20 years for your magazine and not have any worries. And I would have liked a little – just a little bit of – it would have been nice to have a courtesy, a little box. And in dissent, the little caricature of me saying, hey, listen, the guy's a great copy. It would be completely hilarious. There's no doubt about it. Him as a nominee would be hilarious, and him as president would be even more hilarious. But they're higher national considerations, Rob.

I guess they are, which I've never understood. Anyway, so can I ask you, how many subscriptions did you lose? Everyone said, cancel my subscription. How many did you lose? Yeah, I haven't gotten the count from Jack Fowler, our publisher. The impression I have just on, loosely on Twitter is, I doubt

many of the people who are tweeting in all caps, cancel my subscription, are actually subscribers. We were inundated with donations that we didn't solicit, because that's obviously not what this is about. But we got, I think, about $50,000, which for a small cash-strapped opinion magazine, which we've been for 60 years, is quite an outpouring of funds. So people and our readers understand that this is what we're about and are supposed to do, and Trump supporters are completely outraged and want to cancel the subscriptions they don't have.

Maybe they should subscribe and then cancel them. That would be good. Exactly. When I looked at the cover, there are a lot of people on that cover who are not NR contributors. There are a lot of people on that cover who are probably not even necessarily NR readers or believers. Pretty wide spectrum of center-right folks. How did you assemble that team? Well, we started it near the end of December, and we wanted to gather people who have credibility throughout the movement who aren't necessarily the guys you would expect. We all know George Will and Charles Krauthammer hate Donald Trump, but we wanted

to go for people like Brent Bozell and Dana Loesch and Katie Pavlik. You know, people have a lot of credibility on the right who aren't necessarily, you know, the quote-unquote opinion elite the way that the others, the George Will and Charles Krauthammer's are. And then we just wanted to round it out and balance it. So we have the libertarian David Boas. We have a high official with the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore. We have Bill Kristol, a neocon.

We have Andy McCarthy, an anti-neocon. We have, uh, Andy McCarthy, an anti neocon. And we have, you know, an old Reagan hand like Ed Meese. We have the 27 year old, like Katie, uh, Pavlich.

So we just sort of tried to round it out and, and balance it and keep it within, you know, we could have gotten probably 50 people if we wanted them, but it is something we're actually publishing in the magazine. So there's, there's limited space. So we had to keep it around.

Right. Right. Okay. Rich, Peter Robinson here. How do you handle, as I guess you're going to have to handle for the coming weeks, we'll see what happens in Iowa, but how do you handle the basic problem that you had to put out this issue because Republicans support Trump? It's a democracy.

The underlying premise is that the people usually figure things out. And yet the problem here is the people aren't figuring things out. You know, they're half a step away from the impulse to find a new electorate, right? How do you handle that? What's going on? Donald Trump is fooling all of the people all of the time, and even Abe Lincoln said that cannot happen. How do you handle that problem?

Well, I mean, first of all, it's our role just to put down, plant the flag, and maybe it gets shot down. Maybe it's shot down beginning Monday night here in Iowa. And within three weeks, Trump's in a commanding lead. But that doesn't change the truth about his suitability to be commander in chief and the fact that he's not a conservative. So this was in part based on putting down a marker. And then it's just National Review has often been in opposition,

not just in terms of the country's politics at large, but in terms of the Republican Party's politics. And not that either of these guys were as potent in their ways as Donald Trump, but we opposed Bob Dole in 1996. He won. We opposed John McCain in 2008. He won. And there have been years, like 1992, when we haven't really had a candidate. You know, we obviously weren't Bill Clinton people.

We weren't Ross Perot people. And we had been hell on George H.W. Bush. So this may shape up as one of those years and kind of the struggle to define and defend conservatism will go on. And how do you, marvelous, and you may find yourself, depending on how things go, you may find yourselves going back to the Nixon era issues when N.R. had a very tricky relationship with the administration, with them sometimes, against them a lot. So how do you explain Trump's appeal? How is he able to fool people, so to speak? Well, a tricky relationship would be a very understated way of putting it. I expect to be supported accidentally on purpose, you know, very early in the Trump administration. Well, I think his appeal is very easy to understand.

He communicates strength, you know, even when he's completely contradictory or even when he obviously doesn't know what he's talking about, he does it with complete self-confidence, and that's just extremely compelling as a communicator. He's anti-PC. You know, it says things that people think need saying, even if they don't entirely agree with every word of it or actually want it to happen. They just like the fact that someone is saying it. I don't think the issue of immigration should be underestimated. It's the issue where elites on both sides are most out of touch with public opinion,

and deporting 11 million people sounds outrageous on a lot of quarters, but you actually look at the polling, you know, and there's pretty good plurality for that position in the country. And, you know, he's also just a great leader and completely uh... compelling uh... uh... media personality and and it's not just a few from dominated coverage

if you've served dominated the cover secondarily as well if you've gone constantly but then all the other public and it's when they actually get to maritime and appear on tb what are they asked about wrapped about donald trump so it's like nothing I have ever seen. I was complaining to a friend, you know, months ago, it's like he's getting coverage as if he's already a major party nominee. And then my friend pointed out, no, it's not, because when you're the nominee, there's another nominee who gets, you know, almost equal coverage with you.

And Trump is just completely dominant in a way we've never seen before. Hey, Rich, it's Rob again. So Trump's response to that is, well, they should be doing better. They should be saying things that are more interesting and more compelling and connecting with voters better. And then the people who, you know, when you sit after the second or third drink, you're talking about Trump, you got to say, hey, listen, whose fault is this? It's the boring establishment or the arrogant establishment or one of those phrases. Do you buy that? I mean that is partly true, don't you think?

I mean Trump is saying interesting stuff, and he is taking bold stands. The deporting 11 million people is a little crazy, but there is something about that action, the action man that works, right? Well, he's a great – although it pains me to say – he's a great gut-level politician. You look at the Muslim travel ban. He comes out with that statement. Every single Republican candidate denounces him, some more than others. You know, Cruz was the softest on him because that's when their faux friendship was still in full flower. And, you know, the polls come out on it, and a majority or at least a pretty good plurality of Republicans agree with that position.

So this is the ultimate wedge issue when you've pushed everyone else onto the other side opposing you, and you're the only one who's the voice for what's majority of plurality sentiment in the Republican Party. You cannot buy that kind of political scope. You could sit 100 political consultants in a room for a week to try to come up with that, and they wouldn't. Right. But that's what I mean. That was intuitive for him. That was intuitive.

He didn't focus group that. He doesn't seem canned. He's not canned. I mean there is something about the authenticity of it, which makes the argument that he's not authentic or he's lying or he's cheating or he's changing his views or whatever he is, it makes those arguments seem hollow. Every time someone says, well, Donald Trump's just trying to hoodwink you, it's like, well, I don't know. He doesn't seem to have a focus group. That would be the first way to hoodwink me is to get a focus group to tell him what to say. Yep. No, there's no doubt about it. And that's another element of his

heel is he's free from the consultant and the donor class. And Republicans are, at least a good segment of the party, are an open revolt against those people and against the leadership of their own party. And one question people have asked in the last several months is, why is this moment so different than, say, 1999, when you had a two-term Democrat coming to the end of his presidency, and we had compassionate conservatism, and there wasn't kind of this roiling populist revolt. And I think two big differences are that Bill Clinton actually accommodated Republicans, where Barack Obama doubled down and governed by fiat the last several years, inflaming Republicans.

And two, in 99, there was a sense that the Republican Congress had overreached and Newt Gingrich had been too erratic and had gone way too far. And now there's a sense that the Republican Congress has underreached. And I think Trump is a reflection of both of those dynamics. Isn't it also – I have one last one. Isn't it also chickens coming home to roost partly? The difference between that era and this era is that that era was economic growth. There was growth and unemployment was 4.5%.

It was stay the the course if anything uh the surprise in in in 92 was that uh that um um well there was a slight recession but it's sort of out there so we had a wartime president so that kind of helped don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back at foot solutions we specialize in high quality supportive footwear and use the latest scanning technology to custom-make orthotics designed for your unique feet. If you want to free your feet and joints from pain, improve balance, or correct alignment, book a free foot assessment at footsolutions.ie or pop in store today. Foot Solutions, the first step towards pain-free feet.

I guess my larger issue here is if you look at median household income from 75 to today, it's been static. Whereas worker productivity has almost tripled. And so there is that argument that the Trump voters have that they've been had, right? They've been tricked, whether they vote for Gingrich, whether they vote for part of the Gingrich Revolution or the Tea Party or the midterms in 10 and 14. It hasn't made any demonstrable effect on their well-being, and they don't see any presidential candidate arguing for them. I mean it does feel like there's a market opportunity for Trump for the past two years that it just took a Trump to notice it. Yeah, no, I think there's a lot to that. I would be careful about those figures on household income. Scott Winship of the Manhattan institute writes about this in in detail and if you want to know the kind of the problems and the more complicated picture with those

numbers go go and read his long stuff but there's wrong i prefer to stay in i prefer to stay in ignorance if you don't mind yeah um ron brownstein had a tweet the other day it's like this captures our political moment i'm going to get the figures wrong, but it's something like, the question was, do you think you'll be better off than your parents? And like black was, you know, 50 something percent, Latino 60 something percent, and whites, I don't know whether it's all whites or just whites working class was like 15 percent. So, you know, that's really extraordinary. And Trump has tapped into it and kind of just represents that anger. I don't think he has an agenda for it in the least. In fact, you look at his economic policy and his tax plan.

It's pretty good. He has a Bush tax plan, which is the typical Republican economic policy and doesn't reflect the particular needs of these kind of voters at all. But it doesn't matter because he represents what they're feeling. Rich, Peter here one more time. A month ago, even three weeks ago, the question, does Donald Trump actually have a path to the presidency, was still a pretty interesting question. Where does he have to win? What does he have?

Now the question is flipped. So let me put it to you. Does anybody have a path to blocking Donald Trump? If he's to be stopped, how in the first two, three, four primaries will it happen? Well, it has to begin in Iowa. But I think as we're talking at this moment, you have to favor Trump in Iowa. I mean, that's what all the polls are telling us, although there are a lot of known unknowns because we don't know what the turnout is. And all the polling indicates that Trump's dominant among the new voters, that you're not sure you're going to get there. Cruz is doing really well among the traditional voters who are used to caucusing.

But beating Trump here in Iowa – So is it as simple as that if Trump wins in Iowa, it's over? Then it just becomes very difficult. and unexpectedly balances off Iowa, and Trump does more poorly there than anyone expects because New Hampshire just sort of taps the brakes, you know, the way they did with Obama and Hillary in 2008. You would expect Trump to win New Hampshire, then he's two for two.

That basically doesn't happen in Republican nomination battles. And then you're down to South Carolina with an attempt to keep him from going three for three. I think it's a potential. It'll be a long fight, even if he goes three for three, because I just don't see the party completely folding to him. And there'll still be some attempt to consolidate support against him. But there's no doubt that it's very easy to see a Trump runaway train. Rich, a lot of us here in Minnesota where we had experience with the Jesse Ventura phenomenon. You had a lot of people voting for him who hadn't voted for anybody before because it was fun and he was cool and it was their guy. Let's say that we go to a brokered convention because Trump can't get the necessary number of delegates in the administration.

The establishment somehow bestows upon America a candidate who is not Trump. Are his people then going to vote for a Republican if it's not Donald Trump? I think that's just kind of a nightmare scenario. If Trump is ahead in delegates going into the convention and the nomination is split. And, you know, it's just Hillary has to be licking her chops over that scenario. Or maybe Bernie is.

Yes, I think President Sanders is the natural result of nearly every game scenario that... And National Review will be there to write about it. Rich Lowry, thank you very much. Thanks for the against Trump issue. And we'll see you on the boat.

Come with me. All right. You know, like Rob, I too wish that I wrote my next National Review column about the Trump thing. Because like Rob, I was not part of that special edition. As a matter of fact, when I heard about it, I did go back and say, did I miss an email from those guys about it asking me to write? And there wasn't anything there. But of course, I don't miss any emails because SaneBox puts everything where I want it to be. Now, you know exactly how your email can get, oh, bollock stop. You know, you've got somebody who reaches out to you, shares a few thoughts, and you write back. And before you know

it, you know, you've got a good conversation going. You may have a new fan, a new friend, a new colleague, but you also have hundreds of emails that are added to the other hundreds of emails and you've got no time really to sift out the conversations that are worth having to look for that one from the boss saying, hey, you want to write for this special issue. If that sounds like your inbox, it doesn't sound like mine. Well, that's because I've got SaneBox and you need to get it too. SaneBox does the sifting for you, diverts the trivial stuff into a separate folder so all that's left are the emails that matter.

And I've been training it for a while and I tweak it now and then and it's marvelous. The stuff I need is at the top and the stuff I don't need is in my SaneLater box. And it's got little features like one click unsubscribe and you can snooze your non-urgent emails. You can even see who you wrote to who didn't write back to you, the

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Well, gentlemen, before we go, one of the things from the member feed that – it's been a great member feed this last week. I just got to say there's been so much fun stuff there bubbling up to the top of the main page as well. But Ion wrote that all candidates who are not named Cruz or Rubio, it is time to fall on your swords. I believe that was before Jeb surged to 18 percent in that New Hampshire poll. Yeah, I mean a lot of people are saying that. I think that's going to happen naturally after New Hampshire. So there's always that culling. It's a little early now. The most amazing thing about it is that we can run different scenarios that end up with President Hillary, President Sanders, President Biden, President Trump, President Cruz, and

probably President Rubio. There's probably an argument or a way of getting not too much mental yoga to those outcomes. Well, that's true. But we have – I mean in the back of my mind, I find this growing little bloom like ink in water that the Trump thing is a done deal and that it's – and that – previously I thought there's no way that he could win the nomination. Now, of course, I think that he can. And previously I thought there was no way that he could beat Hillary and now I'm starting to think differently on that as well. Rob, what do you think? Do you think it's ridiculous to assume that we could have a President Trump?

And if so, let me ask you this. Do you think then that we would see the moderating Donald Trump as president who ditches the bombastic routine in favor of a statesmanship like – Probably not. I mean he's too old to change. But I actually – of all the scenarios I just listed, I think the least likely is President Trump. If he's going against Hillary Clinton, I think that would probably be a gigantic, gigantic loss for Republicans. Landslide loss, Goldwater style but bigger. They are vicious campaigners.

They're going to campaign very, very tough. He's extremely thin-skinned. He can't handle any criticism, and when he is poked and prodded, he ends up saying crazy things. And his negatives are enormously high. He will capture the vote he's going to capture, but he's not going to capture anybody more. I mean, Hillary Clinton will be president. That's the best way to ensure Hillary Clinton presidency, in my view, is to nominate Donald Trump. All right, mark that, write it down, transcribe it, engrave it in the granite blocks.

Peter, I'm back. I'm back online now. The Internet is dead, but I'm on the phone. And I heard just enough of Rob to disagree with him completely. How's that? Not that the impulse is always there anyway. But it just doesn't seem clear to me. It's not clear to me either way. But I've seen enough polls showing that Donald Trump has surprising support among African-Americans and surprising support among Hispanics to think that the whole, the calculus Rob just laid out is the calculus I would have given you. It feels right, but the polls suggest it may not be right and so it just is my own view is another entry in the very big file folder entitled who knows what's going on this time well i buy that except that i except that i um i have seen no polls suggesting that a head-to-head match against Hillary Clinton with her traditional Democratic base, that's credible, that suggests a Donald Trump win. There were – in that case, you missed a couple of polls in the last 10 days. There were a couple of credible head-to-head polls that showed Trump winning, defeating Hillary Clinton by two to three points. Cruz was up over her by four or five points, and Marco was up by about seven points.

But Trump beat her in a couple of head-to-head polls. I posted on this on Ricochet, so they're around somewhere. I could go find them. A couple have existed. Those polls may exist now. I would call those polls sheer total fantasy when it comes down to November. Possibly, but don't you think he's going to peel off a lot of – not the young idealistic Democrats who right now are faces shining for the glory and promise that is Bernie Sanders. But working class, what they used to call the Reagan Democrats. Can't you see them going large for Donald Trump over something frumpy with that laugh? Yeah, maybe, maybe. But again, the rule of American politics stays the same no matter what stories we tell each other about Romney or McCain. Independents matter.

The independents really do matter and they are not going to go for Trump. He may get some Reagan Democrats back but he's not going to – that's not enough to win an election. I mean it just isn't. If you say – Peter, for some reason, is carrying on an independent conversation with me. Yeah, right. Well, independents, yes, but those independents – I mean, are we to assume then they're monolithically Democrat? If so, they're not independent? No, no, they're in the middle, and they could be persuaded by a very, very smart politician named Barack Obama that they're moderate.

They could be persuaded by Bill Clinton that he's a third new wave Democrat. They could be persuaded by George W. Bush that there's such a thing as compassionate conservatism. These are the people who decide elections. We like to tell ourselves – conservatives tell ourselves after Romney's disaster, well, it's because the base didn't show up, but that's simply not true. It's a lie that we told ourselves so we could feel better, so we could feel like we're actually winning when we're losing. So it still is a matter of appealing to to the moderates that that does matter in America. I agree. But you make the moderate sound like they're all people with PhDs who are coolly sifting through the evidence and making.

No, no, no. I just mean that they are. No, I just mean that they are. They are persuaded by someone who is more moderate than someone who is not. And there's one thing you can say about Donald Trump is he's not moderate. He's incendiary and he's going to double down on deporting 11 million people. So you could cut the spot right now if you're Hillary Clinton. People putting people on trains and buses. Right, but he's also in favor of a more expansive government role in health care. He's in favor of taxing the rich. All of these wonderful, I mean, there's all of these positions that the Republicans ought

to hate that he can pump up, get the moderates, and the base will still... No, then he loses the base. Then the base is going to stay home because he's like, well, why am I voting for a single payer? Even Hillary Clinton's probably not for a single payer. All Hillary Clinton has to do now is say, well, you know, I would amend Obamacare here and there and here, but I don't think single payer is the way to go.

Now suddenly she's more conservative than Donald Trump. All she has to say is carpet bombing Syria is not really going to work. It's sort of a foolish idea. It sounds good, but it's stupid. This and that and the other will keep your children safe. I don't want to put your kids – I don't want to fight in any Middle Eastern wars. Now she's more modern than he is. It's not that hard. You could cut a spot right now showing Hispanic and Latin American families getting herded onto buses and onto trains.

That's how it's going to have to happen. He says he's going to deport 11 million people. Just show that. And then a lot of people in the middle say, well, yeah, I want to build a wall. I want border security, but I don't want that. And then he's done, right? Because then he's going to say, well, I won't really do that. And then, well, all the people who are voting for him because he's going to do it are going to say, well, wait, what? I mean it's not – I have no hopes for a successful Donald Trump general election campaign. Now, I could be wrong, but I just don't have it.

Peter, any last thoughts before we head out here? Have we lost Peter? We lost Peter. Peter's an internet casualty. Peter is staring over his steepled fingers, contemplating a dark future in which Donald Trump takes the podium to thank America. And Peter has to write the inaugural speech. Mr. Trump, put up this wall. Can't wait.

I just dust out the old chestnuts. Listen, folks, it's going to be a long haul to Iowa, to New Hampshire, to South Carolina, to the nomination of the years beyond. And the place you're going to want to talk about this, of course, is Ricochet. Why not go there and sign up now? Rob, what are those coupon codes again for people who want to come back and start? Ricochet.com member and join or rejoin if you are just joining for free 30 days. Rejoin if you are – were a member. You let it lapse.

You want to rejoin. Get 60 free days. And listen, if you're a Coolidge member, think about becoming a Thatcher level or a Reagan level. We need you. And once you're part of the Ricochet family and you go in the member feed and start your own little bum shoes conversation or just add to something that's already there, you'll see why people come again and again and again throughout the day. It's not a place that you just dip into once or twice a week. It will become your second home on the internet. And also we'd like to thank, besides the people who have

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And then you tell them, be an evangelist. All right, we'll see you in the comments. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Peter. Thank you to our guests. And then you tell them, being an evangelist. All right, we'll see you in the comments. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Peter. Thank you to our guests. And next week, gentlemen. Next week, fellas. Next week.

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