The Ricochet Podcast - No Spoilers

Episode Date: December 18, 2015

Hey, it’s our last show of the year and we go out with a jump to hyperspace as Rob has already seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens, much to James’ chagrin. We also discuss the debates, the upcoming primaries, some of our favorite member posts from 2015, and more. Thanks for a great year and Merry Christmas to everyone. We’ll see you in 2016. Music from this week’s episode: Christmas (Baby Please... Source

Just, uh, you, lilacs, me, and my spoilers. Honest to God. I'm serious. Alright, he's serious. That's what makes it so funny. Hello, everyone! Chewie, we're home. I'm not gonna get- I don't know what's gonna happen here.

I don't have any information on that. They don't understand what you're talking about. And that's gonna prove to be disastrous. 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. Henry Kissinger, Donald Trump, and Mitt Romney are not our guests.

It's just the three of us talking about what happened in 2015 and looking ahead to the next year. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Welcome to the Ricochet Podcast number 286. And it's brought to you by... Rob, if you say one word. One word. No, I won't say one word. Shut up. Shut up.

It's brought to you by the Christmas Virtues. One of the virtues is not spoiling things for people. But you can find all the other Christmas Virtues at a 50% discount with free shipping at the Templeton Press website. And one of those pieces is written by Rob. Let me tell you what it's all about and give you its funniest lines. No, I wouldn't do that. That'd be a spoiler. We're also brought to you by the great courses. The great courses are celebrating their 25th anniversary and they offer lecture

series and over 500 subjects, including history, science, art, music, literature, uh, you know, probably movies. Did you know a citizen cane ends with a Rosebud thing? I was a sled. Sorry, spoiler. It's available in DVDs, CDs, streaming, digital downloads or with the Great Courses apps. Now go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet for your limited introductory price. And we're brought to you by SaneBox. Is your

email box utterly out of control? Probably. So get it back in control with SaneBox. And we're of course brought to you by ricochet.com and here to tell you about that and nothing else is Rob Long. I don't even know by ricochet.com and uh here to tell you about that and nothing else wow is rob long i don't even know where to begin james because i wasn't planning to give any spoilers from the

story rob forget about ricochet how does the movie end taking off my headphones hold on be right back if you are listening to this podcast and you're a member of ricochet we thank you we are pleased to have you as a member along with us if you are listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, we thank you. We are pleased to have you as a member along with us. If you are listening to this podcast for free, I get it. I get it. You don't want to pay. Why should you pay? Why should anybody pay?

But we'd like to have you be a member of Ricochet for a couple reasons. One, because we need to keep doing these things, and it's a business, and we need to pay people, and nobody's getting rich, but we don't want anybody to go broke. The second thing is that Ricochet is the fastest-growing, most civil conversation among and between our members and contributors on the center right on the web, and it is a useful and worthwhile venture for you to support because we are the only place – and I really mean that – the only place on the web talking about the issues of the day, whether they're serious or not so serious, but we're doing it politely and we're trying to do it in a way that is edifying and fun and a place you come back to. When people join Ricochet, they stay members and they stay members because they like the community, they like the conversations and they like the civility. So join Ricochet, ricochet.com slash membership. Put in a thing, and you get a free month or two months. Rejoin member. I don't remember. I'll get to you soon. The whole point of it is let's actually have a real conversation without screaming at each other.

And I think it's working, but we'd be happier if it was working a little faster that's all okay done uh i did see um uh star wars last night and james lilacs is paranoid that i'm going to give away it's not paranoid it's it's it's a matter of civility and human decency and on one hand i've got peter robinson here who could not give a fig. True! Just egging on Rob because the idea somehow that something somebody's waited decades for, which is namely a good one of these movies, is just amusing

to him in this sort of fashion. So Rob, just go ahead and this juvenile thing tell us all about it. How does it end, you ask? I will give this part away, James. No, you won't give anything away. you will not give is it good a plot point it is simply this it is fantastic okay that that that that's it that's that's all that's all we need to know um it's got uh stop right there stop right there nobody

nobody needs to know anything before they go to see it oh give me a break it's a show business product we can't do that i mean look it's the biggest thing in the world james it's like it's going to open 150 million dollars this weekend the idea that there's you're not going to hear somebody say it's astonishing it's got fun in it it's got some nice surprises you feel like right those are those are those are adjectives Those are adjectives devoid of any possible plot point. You feel like you are... If you're

my age and you saw the first one when you were 11, you can never recapture that because you can never be 11 years old again. But there is something kind of fun about knowing that you're watching a really good movie rather than a really lousy movie which the last three were a really bad movie those those

those three movies that george lucas made uh you know in the in between years are just loathsome ghastly completely unforgivable pieces of drag thes. The third one ain't all that. It's all crap. All horrible. This one you feel like, oh, okay. Storyteller's back in charge. I quibble with some of the stuff and I was a little bit sleepy through some of it, which may have

been the fact that it was 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning when we got to the third act. It's gratifying. The weird thing is this, is that you see how old they are. Like Harrison Ford's an old man. He's an old man.

All right, stop right there. Don't tell me any more because I don't want to know about any other characters that come. I know that Harrison Ford is in it and Princess Leia, and we'll just leave it at that. Well, let me just say this about that. Harrison Ford's an old man, and he's got lines on his face,

and, you know, it's Harrison Ford. We've seen him in movies since Star Wars. And Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, she's had a little work done. A little work done. That's all I'll say. It's one of those things where

it might be more... It's a thing that actresses do, and I get it. I mean, I understand the vanity of it all, but, you know, Princess Leia is older, right? She's older now. And I wouldn't mind seeing lines on her face, right? I wouldn't mind seeing lines on her face. I wouldn't mind seeing the character who is – the way Harrison Ford does, the way Han Solo does, I wouldn't mind seeing that character look like they're the age they are. and I realize that's a tall order to issue to poor Carrie Fisher who had no idea they were going to do this movie and no idea she could play Princess Leia again

but it's that she made the decision not to look the age she is in real life in Beverly Hills or wherever she lives enough about the movie the scene, you saw it in Manhattan which theater, where were you? Uptown, in some theater on the Upper West Side off Broadway.

Big Line? No, because it's all reserved seats. So John Podoritz, John had the two seats. And I think he sent me a text. I think after I had one glass of wine, maybe half a glass of wine. Right. When he invited me and it was just enough for me to say yes because it was super late, and I regretted it. I think he regretted it too when we were sort of –

And you're living downtown, so you had to get on a train late at night or – you being you, I'm sure you Ubered all the way up. Well, I Ubered all the way down. I didn't – I took the subway up. I took the subway at four in the morning. But it is – like you're there – first of all, there may have been – if there were two female humans in the audience, that would be astonishing. I didn't see two. I didn't see any. I'm just saying statistically there were probably two there somewhere. But they were certainly not apparent in the lobby.

There were – unfortunately, there were no – nobody was dressed up. Like I was expecting people to come. So this was a kind of – by invitation? No, no. I just thought I think John – I think he just went online and got the tickets as soon as they were – OK. All right. Now, Peter, are you still chewing your way through the Master and Commander novels?

No, unfortunately. Unfortunately, I finished them. I savored them. I made them last as long as I possibly could. Right. But I did get to the end of the last novel and I reckon I have to wait another couple of years before I go back to them. Would it bother you if somebody right now told you what it's about and how it ended? Everybody has one thing that they don't want spoiled.

And this is what I find fascinating, frankly. Well, but James, I mean, just to interject for a minute, we know how the Napoleonic Wars ended. Yes, that's true. Yes, that's true. But recurrence of characters, their fate halfway through, secondary characters. They're in the trailer. I haven't seen the trailers.

I didn't watch a second of them. That is a difficult bubble to live in. Oh, but so far, so good. They're on the one sheet. You walk

on Broadway, it's a giant picture. You walk in the city, there's a big picture of Harrison Ford and Princess Leia everywhere. I know they're in it because I read the stuff that was – when they were starting production an awful long time ago. I know the Millennium Falcon is in it. I know a few details. But here's the thing. When it came to – here, New Force Awakens trailer is out, two minutes of footage. Okay. Well, listen.

I know I'm going to see – there's never any question in my mind I'm going to see this movie. Do I want to see highlights edited and arranged in a small screen on my phone? Or do I want to get the full impact of everything that they've created in the screen? It's reverence and admiration for what they've done. We know that you are a man given to passions. Why should it be that one of your passions should have fixated on this movie? Because you think the series is that good? You can't.

We know that there are weak, very terrible movies in this. Why? Why this movie? And that's an interesting question. I advise everybody to go to my website where there's an embed of a, of a live chat that we did in our, at startribune.com yesterday.

We had three people on a very erudite fellow who runs a book club, a young man who himself came in Stormtrooper costume and was probably five years old when Episode 2 came out, and a bright and bubbly comedian who also runs a geek podcast who grew up with a single mom in Arizona watching old sci-fi and the Saturday afternoon shows. And each of them had their own different little perspective as to how they came to this and what it meant to them.

And everybody agreed that the 65% of it isn't that good if that, but there's something about the first one that came out that embedded itself so deep into people and in the culture. And the second managed to recapture a lot of that. And everybody's got the general feeling that this one gets it back. As Rob said. Okay. And so it's almost the three stages of life. You know, you have the first trilogy when you're a young person. The second awful one is the depressing trough of middle age.

And now as we move into our darseness, we have the final three on which we can go out on a high note. So it's generational. This is like you'd feel the same way about a beach boys concert, even though they're all in their seventies. If it played in Minneapolis, you'd go and you'd be thrilled about it because it would be a piece of your own youth. Is that it?

No, not with the beach. Okay. Then let me ask you and Rob a question. My boys to get themselves in the mood to see, because they're as excited about it as Mr. James Lilacs played episode, whatever it is, the one that came out in 1977, which is what episode four, it's the first in the series, but episode four, right?

Right. And I sat there and let me tell you, in my judgment, I could hardly believe because I certainly didn't remember it this way. I could hardly believe how bad most of the acting and most of the dialogue was. And at the end of the movie, I concluded that the entire film hung on

Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi. And 20 minutes into the movie, he finally makes his appearance and the movie finally comes to life. Finally, there's an actor who knows what to do with his eyes, who has a voice, who can play a scene and the music by James, by Williams. What's his first name?

John Williams. And almost everything else in the movie struck me as in the range of mediocre to really weak. Rob, James, am I wrong? I'll take that. You're wrong. OK. I mean mean you're not wrong because it's like your personal response and if you do see it now it seems dated i think and well the special effects seem dated the pacing is slow even the boys thought it was a little slow the dialogue is terrible i thought a little wooden i mean that's not not a strong suit of george lucas

but it was uh the first picture in a long long time that was fun and supposed to be fun and supposed to be light and supposed to be a throwback to the set set to saturday cereals to right to um swashbuckling came out in the 70s which was a grim decade including on the screen and it was heroic and it was yeah okay first time – not the first time, but the movie business was in a crisis for 15 years, from the 50s to really to the late 60s or early 70s in a giant crisis. Nobody was going to the movies, nobody. The box office was down, kind of almost the way it is now. Giant studios, Paramount at that point was one of the biggest studios around. It used to release 60 pictures a year. It was down to eight almost the way it is now uh giant studios paramount that point was one of the biggest studios around it used to release 60 pictures a year it was down to eight or nine or

ten um no one knew where the movie business was going to go and they had a culprit and the culprit was television and they said everybody's watching tv that's the problem um and and you could see you could see it in in lot of movies of the time. The Bob Hope movies are always talking about how you can't see this on TV. This is not on TV. This is real. That's when that started. That turned out to be not true.

The problem was that the exhibitors and the studios weren't working together. The exhibitors weren't building new theaters. All the theaters were still – the great old movie palaces downtown. The audience had moved in the post-war years, the 50s and 60s, to the suburbs. And they would sit at home and they'd say, I'd love to see that movie. Where's it playing? Oh, it's playing at the Statler downtown. That means you got to get in the car, you got to drive downtown to the scary city where I read bad stuff, where there's crime. I don't want to go there. I got to park my car I've got to go see this movie. You know what? Let's stay home and watch TV. TV didn't

really compete with movies. Movies, the screens were in unlikely and unattractive places for the viewer. When they started building multiplexes in the suburbs, when they started in other words, bringing the screen to the

audience right you saw box office take off and with that there was this appetite for event pictures that were heroic and reminded people of the movies that they grew up with at the time and that is what star wars was so it's a cultural thing it's also a business thing. It was a movie that didn't take itself too seriously. It was – That you got to do that. But a lot of it was the signal to the audience that they weren't wrong, that it wasn't a fluke, that there is something kind of magic about these stories. And that, I think, was – that's the big mission. People – I'm sure James, when he sees it it he and I will quibble about this or that

or disagree about this scene or that scene or this moment or that moment I'm sure there are lines that he'll think are horrible or that I loved or I think are horrible but I think we'll both agree that this is more than just the band is back together well Rob's absolutely right.

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I will now have to go see this myself. Go, James. You also have to put it in context. It's not just that the theaters moved to where people were and people responded and they gave them something that they wanted. It was such a contrast to every science fiction dystopian miserable movie that we've been fed for the last few years right everybody always died at the end of the movie it wasn't going to see robert blake in electro gliding blue and he gets shot in the sternum at the end of it you go see this movie about these heroes and they end up dead in a boat circling around so everybody

charlton heston dragged out in every one of his dystopian movies, dead or ranting. And along comes this. And it was a pastiche of every single heroic swashbuckling thing you can imagine, thrown together with music that itself was a brilliant pastiche of all the classical and movie themes. And something new came out of it. And it also had a 70s touch that people loved. And that was this vague, amorphous, wonderful, animistic, pagan thing called the force, which was so non-denominational that the Unitarians were saying, man, that's hardcore. It suffused everything, right? It had no creed. It had no doctrine. It was just a good thing that people could manipulate. Such a 70s idea. But the problem is, of course, if the force is the great motivating binding force of the universe, does the force have morals?

Or is it just a thing that people use to channel to show their own moral strengths? Well, of course, if you want to talk about virtue as being a moral strength, you know where to go to read about that. Templeton Press. Holy moly. Three of them. Well, he told me to queue up the spot, so I'm just getting to it here. There are but three books, but there are so many virtues. And will there be a fourth,

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the Ricochet podcast. Well enough of Star Wars, let's get to the debate that was fun, that was revelatory, or was it not? Was this the start of the real slanging match between Cruz and Rubio? Is this proof that Trump is unassailable? Peter, you've been indulging us during our little Star Wars movie talk here.

Why don't you tell us what you thought of the debate? Proof that I don't have a very firm grip on what people seem to want out of candidates. I thought Rubio did better for himself, did more for himself than did any other candidate. I also thought Rubio was in at least a couple of respects surprising, surprisingly good in both respects. And yet the polls the next day and the day after showed Trump, Cruz, and Rubio third. So apparently people disagree with me. Rubio astonished me in a couple of ways. One, in my judgment, what one of the things people wonder about or worry about with Marco Rubio is that although he and Ted Cruz are less than six months apart in age, Marco Rubio looks young. He looks soft by comparison with Ted Cruz. And when those two wrangled, Marco Rubio looks young. He looks soft by comparison with Ted Cruz.

And when those two wrangled, Marco Rubio held his ground, held it – seemed actually just as angry and a little bit more verbally acute, faster even than Ted Cruz. I thought he did Ted Cruz real damage on the – Cruz's vote to – the whole issue is complicated as Chris Christie immediately pointed out. The point is Rubio, I thought, mixed it up with Ted Cruz and did Ted Cruz some damage and I wasn't expecting him to be that strong. The second bit was something that the two of you would appreciate. I'm not sure how many other people would appreciate it including our listeners. So I'll go fast. Donald Trump got asked a question about the nuclear triad. Within 15 seconds of his fumbling answer, it became clear that Donald Trump doesn't even know what the nuclear triad is.

The question then got bounced to Rubio and Rubio did something that reminded me immediately of Reagan. Rubio said in effect, my audience is not Wolf Blitzer. My audience is through that camera sitting at home in a Barca lounger. And my audience doesn't have any more idea what the nuclear triad is than Donald Trump has. So before he gave his answer about America's nuclear posture, he explained the triad. We have nuclear weapons on submarines, leg one, on land, leg two, and in bombers that are constantly in the air, leg three. Not a big deal, except for that really gifted politician's sense of when the audience is with him and when it isn't. And when it isn't, he's going to go out and get them

and bring them along with him. I thought that was just remarkably deft, the best touch, the best feel of any of the candidates up there. That's what I thought. So for me, it was just fascinating to watch Rubio work, I guess because there were surprises. Ted Cruz is Ted Cruz, smart and tough and a little bit slippery on a couple of issues. Did Rubio damage on immigration? Donald Trump, I still don't quite get it, but he was himself, which means that in the next, the polls next morning, he'd gained a couple of points. What did you boys make of it? I think it's just diffuse so you're looking for this one moment that one candidate has prepared and it all seems kind of unreal and

canned and so the character the the the candidate who's the least canned which is true is trump um it's just the most interesting right you can't take your eyes off him because he's really he's really there um and i and so so i'm not – I just – I kind of found the whole thing – it kind of gave me anxious queasies in my stomach because nothing – it was clear from the first minute that nothing was going to get resolved here. And I really kind of feel like – and I was actually thinking about this the day after. Like how would I do it at this point? How would I change these debates? And I think what I would do is I'd have them all sitting on a sofa like the Tonight Show in the back. Would you really? Yeah, I'd have them all sitting there in the back kind of in the dark and they could have like a club soda or something. And then I would really – I would pick matchups of three people and bring three people to

the front and ask them a question and then two people and then three more people. I trust I have fewer people on screen because that's how – right now it's like a beauty pageant and I don't – it's not answering the question. I mean at this point right now, I should be able to say who i really like and i can't you can't you can't even if i don't want i mean i i mean i think at this point i as much as i sort of enjoy the donald trump of it all i i i really don't think he's he's certainly not consistent enough. He's definitely not conservative enough. And I know – if I know anything about American politics, I know that he will go down as probably in the greatest landslide the Democratic Party has ever enjoyed. He's going to make Gold to exactly the thing that people who support Donald Trump think he's going to save them from.

It doesn't matter. His unelectability doesn't matter. Yeah, right. But so that's kind of – I mean I kind of like Marco Rubio. I kind of like – but I don't know. I really don't know. And I kind of feel like at this point, these debates aren't helping. And I'm just speaking that as a voter. They're just not helping. Well, do you think the voters are actually paying attention to it? I mean when we get into the weeds about the debate, the difference in the immigration policy between Cruz and Rubio, that seems to be close knife fighting. I'm not sure whether or not the intricacies of the differences matter to the people who don't start paying attention until three, four weeks before. But you're right about condemning us to Hillary. I mean, I was driving around the other day saying, you know, Rubio's really positioning himself well for 2016. It was the most depressing thought I'd had in an awful long time.

But there's nothing that, I mean, we know there's nothing Trump can say that will alienate the people who are his staunchest supporters because they take an attack on him as an attack on them. The response to the nuclear triad question was the most fascinating thing to me for a couple of reasons. You guys, did you note that particular exchange? I did just now, James, yes. Oh, you did. I'm sorry. I had a work-related phone call. No, no, no. But go, but go, but go, but go but go but go but go but it's it's just he had weeks to to be able to be up to

speed on something that that isn't exactly it may be nuclear in related but it's not nuclear physics to understand hugh hewitt had asked that question an awful long time ago and he shined it off and now when he brings it up again the habit habit habit habit habit nuclear it's the devastation it's a powerful thing okay thanks right got it but you know i was reading the tweets afterwards and one of the tweets from people who are staunchly pro-trump i said maybe we don't care about the bleeping nuclear triad right okay all right then. Ignorance is strength apparently. But you know what? In a way, I sort of understand that, but it doesn't make it easier for me to accept. How do you – because there was a certain – there's a certain anachronistic quality to the phrase nuclear triad.

There's a certain anachronistic sort of Cold War kind of Reagan-era vibe to it that seems irrelevant. I mean really however many nuclear bombs we have on however many submarines or in the – and bombers flying in the air or the ICBMs, that is not even remotely addressable to the threats that we face today and the threats that most Americans are concerned about. We are not going to use a nuclear weapon from a sub on ISIS. We're just not going to do it. We're not going to use a theater nuclear weapon on the border of Mexico because we fear terrorists coming in. We're not going to do it. So there's something about that question that, I mean, while I think it's crazy that Trump doesn't know that a man his age who lived through the Cold War, who was at least passingly interested in the peace that came from the Cold War and the peace that Ronald Reagan kind of brought to us, that he's not even interested in it. He doesn't even know anything about it. That's kind of shocking. But I still can see – I mean if you – for your immediate concerns, the discussion of the nuclear triad feels like homework.

Can I ask a question for the two of you? When do you think – hold on. Back up. I heard Mitt Romney here at the Hoover Institution in a couple of long sessions where people were peppering him with questions. My colleagues at the Hoover Institution were peppering him with questions. And what struck me was that he could illustrate his answers with examples from the administration of Dwight Eisenhower and then he had to go to Bill Clinton. And I finally realized that Mitt Romney had simply missed everything in between. He was a kid at the dinner table. He heard his dad as governor of Michigan talk about Dwight Eisenhower. But then Mitt Romney went off to Harvard Business School and had a career in business. And he really checked out of politics, just checked out of it until the early 1990s.

When do you think Donald Trump started paying attention? I mean, in his, I'm not trying to suggest he doesn't know, but he, he had his business. When has he, when did he check into politics? Do you think? I don't know. I mean, look in the art of a deal, which is what, 80 something. He talks about domestic politics. He talks about domestic politics he talks about popularity politics

but i i guess what i'm saying is that i i would i find that um it may be a strength of his he doesn't even feel a temptation to talk about the old days because he wasn't he doesn't know them i find that disturbing to hear about mit romney yeah i found it a little because myself because if you want to be president united states you have to understand Yeah, I found it a little weird myself. I mean I guess that's what I – I mean I hate to sound like a scold, but what offends me so much about this president we have now is his utter ignorance of the limits and the abilities of presidential power. He's so ignorant of it. He is not – the man never read a book. He never read a book about how presidents get what they want. Imagine Barack Obama having read and actually digested the Robert Caro series on LBJ. The guy would be unstoppable. He would have been – he'd be 60 percent popularity, this guy now. This lack of interest or respect for the presidents who came before him, even once you disagree with, and the challenges that they faced and the crises that they faced just seems to me to be – it makes me nervous. I would be nervous about a conservative president saying I've got nothing to learn from LBJ.

I've got nothing to learn from Jimmy Carter because then you're an idiot. Donald Trump has nothing to learn from anybody, and if he doesn't know something, then A, it doesn't bear bear study or B, he'll just hire really smart people who will tell him things and he'll be really smart. You can make the point, as Rob did, that perhaps there is an archaic element to the nuclear triad Rubio, you had a perfect example of somebody who relies on celebrity and bluster and somebody who actually has studied the issue. And what I fear is that when people look at Rubio, they say, oh, look at Mr. Smarty Pants. Look at the guy who's always got his hand up saying, I know, I know. I hate those people. It's idiocracy.

So question, which, this just strikes me as an interesting test for us to apply to the candidates. Which of those candidates knows the most American history, particularly presidential history? I think it's Rubio and Cruz and Carly. They've read and talked to people and thought about it. Does that strike you as right? Yeah, not in that order. I would say that order. I think Cruz, for sure. What about Chris Christie?

I don't know. No, he doesn't strike me as a guy who's well steeped in all the intricacies of the halls of power in the past. And Carly, again, I don't know. She spent a lot of time in the business world as did Trump, but she seems to have come out of it with a sharper mind. So that's the interesting thing is why Carly gets out there and gives a great performance every time and she's 1 percent.

Right, right. Is there just simply not enough oxygen for these people? Well, I don't know. I have a – here's the theory I'm operating on. And here's my historical background for it. There is no voter in the history of democracy or republics more strategic and bloodless and calculating than the Republican primary voter, right? They continually make incredibly practical

or in their minds practical decisions about whom to support. So you have evangelicals who can be convinced that a formerly pro-choice, once-divorced president, former governor of California Ronald Reagan is actually a good choice for evangelicals or that they believe George H.W. Bush that when he says he's – I'm a social conservative. And you find that a lot with free market conservatives or the libertarian side. They can convince themselves, well, this guy is not perfect, but I believe him. They make these adjustments in the primary. Now, for better or worse, they do that. And I think that of the polls that show true Republican primary voters supporting Cruz or Trump or a candidate that's a little bit more outspoken, a little bit more way out, as it were, a lot of that is strategic voting.

I think that Republican primary voters are sending a very, very strong message. It's not just they don't want comprehensive immigration reform. It's that they want a wall, and that's the message they're sending. The few who do – but the rest of them, I think these polls are skewed. I think you're going to see something very, very strange in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and Florida in March. You do. Strange meaning what? Go ahead.

Donald Trump is not going to get anywhere near that support. He's not going to get – I predict with almost certainty. If I'm wrong, then I don't know anything. But I don't think he's going to come in second in Iowa. I don't think he – I just don't think that's going to come in second in Iowa. I don't think – I just don't think that's going to work, and I think we're going to be right here the way we have been for the past few election cycles saying how could the polls have gotten it so wrong? And this one is obvious because Republican primary voters are predictable in at least one or two ways, and one of them is that they are practical and they are canny and they send messages, but they come home. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm not even – I'm not saying that that's a – I'm not really making a judgment on it.

I just believe ultimately that to vote in a party primary, especially a Republican Party primary, you are a certain kind of person and that person has up until very, very recently not gone haywire. The other flaw, if it is a flaw, I agree with you, Rob. The format – but my own thinking of the format was, look, let's just be realistic here. This is a three-man race and they are all men at this stage. It just feels to me as Chris Christie, all right, fine. You could have had him on the stage, the three men being Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. That seems to be very much the way it's shaping up. Now, of course, so if you did a 10% cutoff, you'd also have included Dr. Carson who's dropping quickly, but is still above 10%. That would have been an improvement.

Maybe you want to include Chris Christie to give him one last chance. And maybe – but maybe Jeb Bush. My own feeling is between now and February, we are now within weeks of Iowa. Jeb Bush – I just don't see any way for Chris Christie or Jeb Bush to – well, for Christie to surge or for Jeb Bush to recover. I don't care what ads his PAC spends $100 million on. I don't think there's time now. It's a three-man race, right? Well, Christie is big in New Hampshire.

But whether or not he could parlay a good showing there to elsewhere, he doesn't have – it's hard for him to scale up because he doesn't have the operations elsewhere. And Jeff Christie has endorsements in New Hampshire, but I don't think the polls, well, what is he? Second or third? Maybe.

All right. Yes. Grant. Yes. Yes. He's in New Hampshire. Right. So he's doing better there,

but Jeb, right. I mean, there's not, there's no money that Jeb Bush can spend that will convince anybody about anything. It just simply isn't. And it,

in one, you hate for Jeb Bush to be the example because he strikes you as a fundamentally decent guy who's, who was a good governor, glad to have him on the party, but you're almost happy that he's proving two things. One, the inevitability of the establishment candidate BS and two money. Money changes everything. All you got to do is spend all that money and people sheep-like rise with little sparkles in their eyes, hands out front like somnambulant walkers and go to pull the levers because money was spent and they saw an ad. There's nothing you can do. A hundred million dollars will not move the needle.

So tell me again about the corrosive influence of money in politics. Rob, you're the fancy New England prep school guy. Tell us what happened to your – to Jeb Bush. What went wrong? By the way, do you buy the premise that it's unresuscitatable at this point, that campaign? Well, I don't buy any premise right now. I don't I don't

I don't see how I don't see where the CPR is coming from. Look, I, you know, we have yet to see how the voters are going to vote. And I think that the big litmus test is going to be New Hampshire. More than ever, New Hampshire is the most important state in the Republican primary.

It didn't – I mean the last cycle, people were saying, well, New Hampshire is just one of a one, two, and three in New Hampshire, especially if it's a tight cluster at the top, those are going to – they're the ones who have a shot and everyone else is dead because everyone – this is gigantic anticipation for a vote, an actual vote, not a caucus, an actual vote. And I think that's going to be the case. I think with Jeb – look, I think the problem with Jeb – I mean Jeb Bush is – and I'll say I admired his work as a governor. I think he was a great governor of Florida, a very successful governor of Florida. I think he's a genuine conservative, a real conservative. Whether you agree with his immigration policies or even Common Core or not, this guy is a real conservative and did more to advance specific conservative causes in his state than a lot of governors in a lot of states, a lot of so-called conservative governors in conservative states. That said, he's not run statewide in 12 years and he feels like a figure from yesterday yes and the structural problem with jeb

bush is insurmountable i don't think it's um trump or rubio or the field or the money or any i think it's a structural problem in the dna of that candidacy which is that even if you love Jeb Bush and he's – you can think of no better president. You still – it still feels weird with this dynasty. It still feels strange that we have a president and a son of a president and a brother of the president and the son of the other president like we're bolivia all of a sudden you know uh and i and i think that that's a structural dna problem that you can't you just can't get past and the idea was that this is a guy who can raise a lot of money and i remember talking to a very very prominent uh um uh social conservative um republican, probably the most prominent one, not that long ago. And he was telling me, no, no, no, you don't understand. In order to run and win these days, you've got to raise $1 billion.

And there's only one candidate who can raise $1 billion, and that's Jeb Bush. And I just – I find that – i don't think that first of all i i i think you're right you probably need to raise a billion dollars but i don't think he's the only one i think there's a lot of there are a lot of people a lot of rich people a lot of like not so rich people who are desperate to change the direction of the country and i think if you put a credible and attractive republican candidate at the top of the ticket the raising a billion dollars is gonna be the easiest thing he does right right and so this is weird i just think the structural it's you know the i guess the rule is if you're thinking about running for president run don't wait don't wait for the time because i

think jeb's time was before and he didn't do do it, and he should have done it. And I think Chris Christie's time was before, and he didn't do it, and he should have done it. And late nights, we all have our own what-if scenarios. But Jonah Goldberg told me a couple weeks ago what his favorite what-if scenario was. It was a what-if in 1996 Colin Powell had decided to run against Clinton. And he won. That means that he's beginning his second term on September 11th. And what a different world we'd live in. Now, it may be less safe, who knows, but it'd be a very different world.

It would be a different world. So it matters. Run when you can. Run. So, boys, here's the – Boston Herald has the latest poll on New Hampshire, Trump 26, Rubio and Cruz tied at 12, Christie at 11, Jeb at 10 points. So Jeb is within two within one point of Christian with a two of Rubio and Cruz. That's the only poll I've seen in which Jeb Bush is in double digits anywhere, everybody else in single digits. Trump's lead is still astonishing.

So – I'm sorry. Go ahead. Republicans, Republican primary voters identified Republicans in – New Hampshire is in the primary. So it could be – Now you're making me click through the link and – But it matters. It really does matter. No, no.

It does matter. It does matter it does matter the kind of thing that we got hooked up we got we got uh tripped up on um uh in in in 2012 and i this is what what trashed the the democrats in 2014 and 2010 when they didn't they didn't pay attention they were looking at those big cnn polls and they't looking at likely voters. I'm trying to get to that poll too, as well here. And I'm on that page. And, and,

and, and of course, likely Republican voters, likely Republican primary voters. That's the way the Herald, uh, phrases it itself. So they're applying some filter there.

I would love to get to this thing, but unfortunately I'm looking at this box right now that tells me I can't go until I have to tell them whether or not I would like to sign up for all of their wonderful daily briefings and add to the clogging tsunami of crap that comes to my email box. So no, I'm not going to go to your page and I'm not going to reward you. But there's a solution to that. There is indeed. And the solution would be our favorite sponsor among all of our favorite sponsors, of course, the one that handles your email for you.

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and they're sitting there in your box and they're clogging it up and you can't get to the other stuff because there's this other stuff and we've all had that point thousands of messages in your email box and no time to sift through the conversations that are worth having does this sound like your email box because of course it does because you have emails. And if that's the case, then the cure for emails aggravations is SaneBox. It does the sifting for you. It diverts the trivial stuff into a separate folder. So all that's left are the emails that matter. I don't know how they do it. I mean, I've been training it. Yes. But I love the fact that when I go to my email box, all the stuff from work is there. And all of the things that aren't are automagically, to use that old word, put off into Sane Later, where I can handle them tonight, tomorrow, the weekend.

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And that's the deepest discount you'll find anywhere. Again, it's S-A-N-E-B-O-X slash Ricochet. SaneBox. Get your email back under control, back in your hands. Live life the way it was meant to be. So I haven't gotten any email funding raisers yet. For some reason, I'm not on their radar. I haven't signed up to the right places that pester me every single day with their beseeching commentary.

Beseeching is the word that comes to mind whenever I see Ted Cruz speak. And I want you guys to tell me whether or not you think his persona is something that up against Hillary Clinton, the American people will respond to because she is, is grating. And when she laughs, it's like Phyllis Diller. I actually,

well, I find Ted Cruz to be interesting on paper and I listen to what he says and I nod my head. I actually find his persona to be remarkably off-putting and I can't exactly tell you why. It may be that preacherly beseeching face that he makes. It lends me – it makes me disinclined to trust him perhaps. In that matchup, who do you think comes out? Go, Rob. I don't know. I mean I really don't know.

I mean look, Cruz is a tough campaigner. So it won't just be a matchup. There will be some artillery softening up of the enemy before they meet on the battlefield. I mean, I suspect the Ted Cruz the sort of structural DNA of the Ted Cruz campaign is that even people who like him

don't like that persona. And that the rap on him has always been he's a little too smooth, right? He's a little too smooth right he's a little too it all seems too canned and he doesn't really believe it yeah uh he does believe it i'm convinced of that but yeah my worry about him all along i mean the bill buckley rule you take the rightward most viable candidate and ted cruz is pretty far to the right i love that about

him the question was viability, but it looks, look, there are two ways. I agree with Rob that we're likely to be in for some surprises. I'm not completely certain. I agree that this is likely to be a long fight. There are two ways this could end pretty fast. One way we've known all along, and that is that Donald Trump simply takes Iowa where according to some polls, he's still in the lead. And then he takes New Hampshire, where according to all polls, he's in the lead. According to the most recent polls I've seen, he's in the lead by double digits. Right.

And he just rolls it up from there. That is by no means impossible. It doesn't feel right to my gut. I agree with Rob that Republican voters send messages and then they tend to come home. But the other way it could all get wrapped up pretty quickly is Ted Cruz. In the last four days now, there have been three polls that show Ted Cruz in the lead in Iowa. If he wins in Iowa and comes in second in New Hampshire, he will win in South Carolina. He may have – he'll do all right in Florida and then Super Tuesday in March where he's already invested very heavily in southern states.

So what I'm saying is if Cruz wins in Iowa, this could end with a certain – that could be the surprise. He could start wrapping things up pretty quickly. Yeah, I think that's probably true. I mean – or we get what we all kind of deep down think is going to happen, which is going to be Cruz versus Rubio. Yeah. By the way, the point I'm trying to make is those are the only two ways I can see that it could end quickly. I don't see that Rubio has an opportunity for a quick knockout here. He's got to do – he's finished second or third in Iowa, second or third in New Hampshire, do very well in South Carolina.

Then he needs to win Florida. Let's put it this way. If Rubio doesn't win Florida, I don't see how he gets the nomination. No, I don't. But I think that would be true no matter what the calculus is. Correct. Correct. You got to win your statewide.

But if Cruz wins in Iowa, things could move pretty fast. Gentlemen, the interesting thing is if you look at what people searched for in 2015, it wasn't, does Ted Cruz mean it? Is Marco Rubio thirsty? Is Hillary Clinton, you know, suffered traumatic brain injury when she, no, here are the main search terms that came to us in a little survey. Paris under attack is at the top of the list. Interesting. More so than Star Wars. We won't talk about that because we did. Water on Mars.

Rugby World Cup. There's your first sports story. Volkswagen emissions scandal. Imagine that. They cheated, the Germans. Migrant crisis. Cecil the Lion. Heaven help us.

And then the last on the list was the blue and white dress. And no, this is not about Monica Lewinsky. I remember that one. Not on the list apparently is imminent disaster due to climate change. And yet we've been told it's our greatest threat by no less

a scientist than Bernie Sanders. And of course, the president has proclaimed this deal is going to start us on the right path. In our newspaper's editorial page, to judge from it, the Republicans are intent on making sure that most of the island nations in the world are submerged and that Miami itself is lost to the sea and Manhattan has to reconfigure life so there are sky bridges in the fourth floor because the water will go up that high. Yet most people don't seem to give a fig about this. The disconnect between the president's posturing on this and the public caring about it,

how do you explain that? Is it because he's just lecturing – he's speaking on behalf of the future which he knows will judge him so well because of his bravery in this act? Or is he just completely unplugged from what people really care about? The latter. That's an easy choice, the latter. in which he was reviewing some statistics showing that people – this is the Charles Murray theme from Falling Apart – that people are marrying partners of similar educational backgrounds more and more.

So Walter Russell Mead took that statistic and said, look, what's happening here is we have an American elite. The irony, of course, is that it's a direct result of the emphasis over the last half century on meritocracy. And we have an elite which is using the levers of meritocracy, fancy schooling above all, to separate itself from the rest of the American republic. more and more floating off in its own planet, insulated, unaware of reality that concerns other Americans. And all I can believe is that the newspaper, the daily newspaper on that planet is the New York Times. They all love Barack Obama. And they really think, I mean, how else can you possibly explain that 800 miles away from Paris, people are being beheaded.

In Paris itself, mere weeks before, over 100 people were gunned down by terrorists and all the leaders of the world gather in Paris and address the greatest threat we face, climate change. I mean it is fantasy. They have all detached themselves from reality. It's just astounding. That's the only way that I can understand it in my own mind, that we now have an elite, this fancy school elite of which Barack Obama is the leading voice that just cannot, does not understand reality. I think that's absolutely true.

I would say two things about that. One, just the specific case here. What's amazing about this is that I believe it reflects the sort of general intelligentsia idea about the world and about globalism and all those sort of you know late 20th century early 21st century issues that that we heard very briefly and then never heard again uh on you know september 14th or 15 2001 which was hey you're gonna have to get used to a certain amount of low-level terrorism right oh i see yes yes this is a very important point. Yes, yes, yes. The message that I think was digested, what I believe made George W. Bush and the Bush

administration's anti-terrorism activities so offensive to the intelligentsia was that he was trying to eradicate something that he could not eradicate that in fact is just going to be part of the given now it'll be part of the given of people who live in san bernardino and part of the given maybe if you're working at canada fitzgerald or the world trade center it will not be part of the given you know if you're a protected class i suppose is the theory but um that that was that's that that's that's the idea. which are the fancy schools. I was a French major. I went to Harvard. I went to Yale. And now I can be – and then I went to law school which is essentially a finishing school for those schools. And now I can be in the halls of power. I can't build anything.

I'm not an engineer. I can't engineer anything. I'm not a technocrat in any sense of the word. And I think that – the rise of that class for whom the idea of crusades against climate change or talk fests in Davos or hashtag diplomacy is incredibly attractive because that's all they know how to do. I think you're right and I think there's something more to it as well and that is the baked into the cake misanthropy of progressivism. If you look at ISIS, well, of course they're going to misbehave their people and people are awful and that's – it's sort of pointless and obvious to talk about internecine squabbles. That's a given. What we really have to concentrate on is the general, awful, sinful nature of mankind's existence, specifically the West, because what have we done?

Well, we made the Indian in the PSA cry as he regarded the garbage we strew from our cars. We have polluted the earth. We have paved the rainforest. We are bad. This earth is not a tool that we can use to achieve prosperity for the greatest number of people. It is a pristine organism that must be returned to its original state. And that sort of desire for – they're constantly torn by their desire to go back to Eden and forward to utopia. And they believe that both can be simultaneously apprehended, I guess. But what I always get from these people is that we are awful. The civilization that we have built is a thing of shame

and we have to keep the developing countries from repeating our mistake. And that's what I love is that the end result of progressive thought these days is a sort of imperialistic benevolent regard toward the developing world that they at best stay where they are and not attempt to to have what we have it if they could invade them again and colonize africa to keep them from building coal plants i think that they would uh so yeah it's that their their own impot as Rob noted, and their inability to do actual things combined with this wonderful civilization that they've been given and their sense that it actually is some sort of original sin for which we must constantly atone. Yeah, I mean – but yeah, of course, it's the narcissism. It has to do with me. It can only do with me. And you see that even in our responses to Syria that, well, it has to all be about me. Whereas in fact you have a dozen actors there all fighting their own specific, very strange, very idiosyncratic war. And I guess the problem in general for American society, if you're talking about it, is that they're – that the people at the top – we're all grown men.

We know that no matter how you shape or form or try to create an egalitarian society, there's always going to be a top and there's always going to be a bottom. And there's always going to be a top layer, and that top layer is going to get entrenched over time. But what surprises me and I think disturbs me is that the people at the top have a moral obligation not to reach down, not to do any of that stuff magazine used to say and Malcolm Forbes used to say that the best thing about the Forbes 400 list every year was that a third of the names were new. Exactly. Meaning a third of those people disappeared from the list and a whole third new people were there. And that is the goal of an efficient economy and a growing society is that rich people, they risk that capital. They are encouraged and in fact celebrated for their risk and they are – it's a little bit unpatriotic, not really, but not quite dignified to husband and carefully tend your riches and not risk them.

You're supposed to – you're born at the top. You got to roll the dice, right? If you go to a fancy school, you know you'll be OK. Do something crazy. Don't become a lawyer. Don't become a banker. Don't play it safe. Playing it safe is the job of the rising lower middle class, rising working class. Their kids are supposed to be doctors and lawyers and bankers. They're supposed to play it safe. That's fine. But if you're born at the top, you're supposed to risk it. And that was what American society – Right, and that ossified class system you just described is more of the UK, which is why they don't have the dynamism that we do. But there's a lot of actual bedrock UK conservatism that you can find in our traditions here in America. As a matter of fact, that's one of the Great Courses' most popular series, the conservative tradition.

It's an unbiased look at conservatism in both the U.S. and the U.K., and it's presented by award-winning professor Patrick N. Allitt. Now, of course, you know what I'm doing here. It's the great courses spot brought to you so you can be edified by all the things they have to teach you. This course in particular is a look at how early English conservatives actually influenced more recent generations of American politicians, including President Reagan. The lectures are warm, engaging, and deeply insightful, and you can have them on all sorts of platforms, DVDs to watch, digital streaming, downloads, and from the Great Courses app. And if you're not interested in that, there's always something else.

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for a limited time, as we like to say. So don't wait. Order a course or two today. For this offer, go to thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. That's thegreatcourses.com slash ricochet. Well, we've got so much to talk about, but we should probably wrap it up here.

We should say one thing. We should shout out the various member feed posts because if you're a member of Ricochet, you get access to the fun stuff, the stuff behind in the other room that can be more bumptious and interesting and fist-swinging sometimes than the main page things.

There's the politically incorrect thread, which is exactly what it is. I think it's up to 40,000 comments right now. It periodically breaks the entire site. The King Prawn gave us Toward a Sex-Free Society. And if that makes you think of Orwell in 1984 and the Anti-Sex League

and how it's manifested itself today on college campuses, give it a read. That's only 805 comments. And yes, once you get hooked on these things, you read them to the end. Doc J, before he vanished into the gloaming, gave us, well, the powers that be did Simon in and talked about banination. And banination is one of those things that occurs in any community. How do they handle it exactly? Well, you'd find out there. St. Augustine said, I was insulted on the Huffington Post. One man's story. Kate Braystrap gave us the right to abortion. As you can imagine, I think that was a contentious and interesting set of incandescent remarks. And well, there's one from E. Thompson, which according to this list is just really? And I guarantee you, you go there and you're going to find yourself clicking and clicking and clicking.

Now, this says nothing, of course, about the main page posts, which include Claire, who's been mixing it up with people in a way that you'll never find an editor of any one of these things get into the comments, into the trenches and talk to people. You just don't get that. And so I always look forward to what Claire has to say. And I always look forward to her thoughts on the future, even though from her perspective in Paris, sometimes it can be a little bit downhearted, disheartening. Well, I'll ask you those guys this then as we close,

uh, 2016. It's, it's a fool's errand, I suppose, but I'll ask you, what's the big story going to be? I didn't know we had sound effects.

Next week's big story. That's one from the old days. Next week, next year. Next year? I don't know. Well, I mean, obviously we're entering the accelerated, amplified presidential cycle. I think 2016 is going to be – I think the latter half of 2015 has been a lot of stuff is going to come out and she's not going to be able to control the story. Britain will vote to leave the European Union.

That will be the second biggest story. The biggest story, of course, will be the presidential race in this country. Hillary will not win. But Britain will – but we'll get to that one. But Britain will vote to leave the European Union and that will be good news, not bad news. Although all of the people we've been talking – all the polite opinion thinks it would be a catastrophe. No, no, no. It will be the beginning of a revival for Britain.

I agree. It would be nice if it happened and it would be a revival. I have no idea what to predict. Obviously, the presidential election is going to be it. The other things you can say to be safe, there's going to be a terrorist attack somewhere. But I have the feeling that there will be. The San Bernardino was small compared to what can be done. And like I say, I live here in Minnesota where we've now got $400,000 in Justice Department money that's going to be doled out to various nonprofits to prevent radicalization. $400,000. Is that so? They had a meeting yesterday or a couple of days ago and all the local nonprofits eager for a piece of the pie showed up and described what they would do. And one of the leaders of the Somali community whose first name is – and I'm not kidding you – Wookiee, W-O-O-K-I-E. Don't give it right now.

Spoiler. Don't do it. I know. Sorry. Was saying that there's a problem because there's – first of all, the Somali community often feels as though it's been targeted by the FBI. There's great distrust toward the law enforcement community. So how that plays out here or elsewhere, whatever part of the country and what effect that will have in the presidential election. Why flap our lips about it now when we can talk about it when it happens, if it happens? money-making opportunity there and creating a fake radical islamic group taking the money

oh uh and then showing great success at diminishing its radicalization and taking more money to eradicate it and if if if we do that yeah many cities as you can you can be if we do find indeed that they're the Somali community has leaders who have decided to do exactly that, fake something, get the government money, solve it, then we know that all of our worries about assimilation are nonsense. Exactly right.

They were quick studies after all. Folks, we're off next week because it's Christmas, and we wish everybody the most joyous possible Christmas in this interesting, difficult, fascinating year. And we'll be here in 2016 to ride the whole thing with you. That depends, of course, on you going to Ricochet. And if you're not a member, taking advantage of the various coupon codes in order to become one.

Because without a Ricochet, there's no Ricochet podcast. And without a Ricochet, there's no safe, sane space to go come the election season to talk with people of a similar mind who themselves can be troublesome like good friends can. We also would like to thank our sponsors, The Christmas Virtues. That's Templeton Press. You've got a great deal there. The Great Courses and SaneBox.com. And, of course, visit the Ricochet store. Lots of great Ricochet-branded swag there.

And maybe if you're nice, I can get to your house by Christmas. Hey, thank you for listening this year. And we'll see you all in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Special message to Matt S. in New York City. I met you last week. You told me how much you loved Ricochet. And you sheepishly admitted you're not a member. Change that, Matt S.

You know who you are and you know where you are. Change it, baby. Merry Christmas, boys. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. No, Merry Christmas. Oh, you. know who you are and you know where you are change it baby merry christmas boys happy holidays not merry christmas oh you luke dies at the end until next year he dies at the end wait Thank you. The church bells are down Oh, I'm ringing a song For the happy sound Baby, please come home

They're singing textiles But it's not like Christmas at all I remember when you were here. And all the fun we had last year. Christmas. Pretty lights on the tree. Christmas. I'm watching them shine.

Christmas. You should be here with me. Christmas. Baby, please come home. Christmas. with me. Maybe he's gonna hold. Ricochet. Join the conversation. They're singing deck the halls.

But it's not like Christmas at all Cause I remember when you were here And all the fun we had back then If there was a way I'd hold back this tear But it's still the same Please, please, please Please, please, please

Baby, please come home Baby, please come home Baby, please come home Baby, please come home Baby, please come home Baby, please come home And you know, other people can have their holidays. But Christmas is Christmas. I want to see Merry Christmas.

Remember the expression Merry Christmas? You don't see it anymore. You're going to see it if I get elected. I can tell you right now. I can tell you right now.