The Ricochet Podcast - Raised Middle Finger

Episode Date: March 17, 2016

This week, we bring you two very different views of the current state of the Republican Party courtesy of two of the smartest observers we could find. First, former RNC chair and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour stops by to remind us to be adults and remember that Donald Trump will be a better president than Hillary Clinton. But later, the great Charles Murray (read his incredible essay “Trump’s... Source

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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. I'm James Lallex, and I'm not here. I'm in Vegas.

But I bet that Rob Long and Peter Robinson are standing by, and I wager they'd be happy to talk to Charles Murray and Haley Barber. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Hello and welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. This is number 296. 296. That's a lot of podcasts. And we're coming up to Podcast 300. Probably should do something special for that. I don't know. I am Rob Long. I'm one of the co-founders of Ricochet.com. Along with me here from Palo Alto, California,

is Peter Robinson. Hello, Peter. How are you? Hello, Rob. Rob, where are you today? I am in Maryland at my parents' house. Maryland. I'm in the great state of Maryland.

You've turned into an electron. Your presence is never more than probabilistic. Exactly. I've not yet been proved, although people insist that I exist. But speaking of existing, we should tell you that we are brought to you by The Great Courses. If you're listening to this podcast, you should be thanking them. The Great Courses get unlimited access to the entire Great Courses Plus library, completely free for one month. Go to thegreatcoursesplus.com. That's not thegreatcourses.com.

It's thegreatcoursesplus.com, all one word, slash ricochet, and find out how to get your free month. We are also brought to you by what now feels like the Library of alexandra the most exandria the most important place in the world hillsdale college the hillsdale college constitution 101 course because all of our listeners include including me uh owe it to themselves to learn about and study the constitution after all we can't have free enterprise without the free um so hillsdale college is sponsoring us we're very happy and of course harry shave Overpaying for drugstore razor blades is a bad habit, and you should leave it behind. Make the smart switch to Harry's. Use the coupon code RICOSHAY when you do, and you get a great discount. Harry's has been a sponsor for a long time.

We're really grateful to them. Very grateful. And we are grateful to you. If you are a member of Ricochet, you are helping bring this podcast to people. You are a sponsor as well. Listen, if you're not a member of Ricochet, You are helping bring this podcast to people. You are a sponsor as well. Listen, if you're not a member of Ricochet, now is the time. Look, people say, oh, I've been meaning to do it, been meaning to do it. I just keep forgetting. You have to do it. If you really like this podcast, you listen to it, and you're not a member, please go to Ricochet.

Get a free month anyway. It's a completely, completely risk-free offer. You'll like what's happening there. There's lots of stuff going on in the country, to put it mildly. Is there? Yeah. And this is a – we are trying to find a civil place to work it all out. And I think you owe it to the Republic. If you're listening to this podcast and you are a fan of it, we also need your help because we want to keep doing it. And you can't keep doing it for nothing.

So please join Ricochet. And that's it, Peter. Anything else? James is off this week. James, I don't really know what James is doing. It's not the state fair, but he's got some kind of James Lilacs-y thing he's doing. I've just been told he's in Las Vegas. So that is a person I think it'd be fun to go to Las Vegas with James Lilacs.

I think he knows he would see a different kind of Vegas. You know, he would see it in all of its American glory. Peter. Now that Hunter Thompson is no longer around, James Lilyle surely is the best man with whom to tour Vegas. I agree. But also he knows the history of all that stuff, too. Absolutely. Peter, we have a packed show today. We have Haley Barber, Republican soothsayer and seer and knowledge all around smart person. And we also have Charles Murray. Charles Murray seems to be, for my money, the sociologist who is most up to the moment, meaning this moment ever. So we'll be talking to him.

But before we do, we lost Marco Rubio. We did. We're not having a debate next week. We're not. We have a Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, whose name is so fantastic. It's like out of an Edith Wharton novel. It's true, actually, isn't it? Merrick Garland.

I was trying to work out Merrick Merrick. There was a David Merrick who was a producer in Broadway, but that's the only time I've heard the name Merrick. Anyway, well, listen, so Marco Rubio, I shed a tear or two. Well, I didn't literally shed a tear or two because we'd all seen it coming for 10 days. But what do you think went wrong? Well, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, you know, I, I think part of what went wrong was that he had a glass jaw and it broke in New Hampshire. Correct. I think part of what happened was that he, um, he never, I think there was a smugness to his campaign, and I don't mean it in a mean way. I just feel like there was this attitude that, hey, you're all going to realize that I'm the one who should be up against Hillary Clinton.

And I just don't think that the primary campaign, especially this one, is designed for that kind of calculation yet anyway. I feel like there are people who would see him bits and pieces and say, oh, I like that guy, but never in the kind of moment or moment of impact that they needed. And a lot of that was because there were 97,000 people on stage. I kind of think it's a constellation of all those things it's just a bad year this is the year for anger and upset and and and i also feel like the finally he didn't and then i mean then there's a giant elephant in the room right which is the gang of eight which is his immigration position right which um it has been a massive massive miscalculation by right um the elected the Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. and poll numbers and not enough time just listening to America. And then I think ultimately I think he failed in the one thing he really needed to do, which was to connect his background, extremely working class, very poor background to the American dream in general. He did it when you heard him, but it wasn't like the – it wasn't the cornerstone of his campaign.

So anyway, that's my that's what I would say. Right. I, I, I feel that everything you're saying is right. I say I feel because, of course, I've only seen him speak a couple of times. I don't actually know Marco Rubio. I've never interviewed him. And the overall impression I get from reading the postmortems in which members of his campaign and other campaigns are quoted extensively, is that you're right about all of that and that the campaign made the mistake that very talented adolescents quite often make, which I'm sure you've seen it over and over again in Hollywood when writers audition for you. Actors, too, I'm sure.

The talent pool generally, thinking that you can slide by on talent alone, relying too heavily on his tremendous verbal skills, his wonderful biography, and just thinking, there's the product. I was especially struck by several quotations in one of the obits on the Rubio campaign that I read saying that the Cruz campaign in Iowa, there was really no good reason for Cruz to win Iowa and for Rubio

to come in a close third in Iowa. It's just that the Cruz campaign worked harder. They just put more time into it, organizing people and so forth, which reminds me of one of my favorite quotations of all time. This is late 80s, early 90s. A couple of Frenchmen attempted to be the first people in the world to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. And instead, they crash landed in Canada. And when the Frenchmen were interviewed afterwards about how they felt, one of the Frenchmen said, it is nothing. On the first attempt, one does not deserve to succeed. So take that, Marco.

Go, go, go, go work on it. Go work on it. He's still phenomenal. Yes, I think so. He's very young, very talented. I think it's true. And I think the country kind of needs to figure out what exactly it wants. I mean, it has two very, very different candidates, frontrunners.

I'm making the assumption it's going to be Cruz or Trump, and they're two very different – we're going to have Haley Barber on. The minute we get him, I'm just going to break it. Two very different candidates, unlike the traditional different candidates that the Republicans usually have. I mean no matter who you're for, it's not establishment guy, next guy in line plus insurgent. I mean how do you feel about Ted Cruz? He is not an establishment guy. He's a definite disturber of the peace. And of course Trump is not an establishment guy either. I mean, there are two insurgents, you know, two insurgents running the

insurgent campaign in a party that at this point usually has trounced whatever the insurgent is and sort of figured out just they're going to get the next guy. So it's no wonder it's very weird. It's because it's very, very weird. Helping us sort all this out is Haley Barber. Thank God we have Haley Barber here to explain all this to us. He's the former Republican National Committee chairman, of course, former governor of Mississippi. We all know that. He's the co-founder of a Washington lobbying group, BGR. But he is more than that. He's been an observer and a participant and thoughtful leader in the Republican Party for a long time, and we are pleased to have him here. Welcome, Governor. Hello. Governor, Peter Robinson and Rob Long on the line. Thanks for joining us.

Hey, Peter. Thanks for having me. Good to talk to you. Hi, Rob. Hey. Hey, Governor. Haley, two kinds of questions. The second kind of question is who you think ought to be president. But the first type of question is, can you just take Rob and me through where on Earth this race now

stands? Are we right that it has not yet been decided that it could still be Ted Cruz or just maybe Howard Kasich? Donald Trump's not the front runner, but he doesn't have it wrapped up yet. Is that right or is that wrong? Well, I think that's right, but he is much more likely to be the nominee than anybody else. But he does not have the nomination wrapped up because in both parties,

the requirement to be the nominee is to give the votes of a majority of the delegates to the national convention. In our case, this time, 1,237. He's a long way away from that. He has won fewer than half the delegates so far, as well as he's performed. So he's got to win more than half the delegates going forward. And that's not a given, but I do think it's more likely that he will be the nominee than not. And if he is not the nominee, just to stick with a non-Trump scenario for a second,

what's the likeliest way that he will be stopped? A clean victory by Ted Cruz coming into the convention with enough delegates to win on the first round? Or is that just over? Is the best hope of stopping Trump for either Cruz or Kasich a contested convention at this point? Well, I think that it is unlikely that Cruz will get a majority and even more unlikely that Kasich will get a majority. However, the question is, can Trump get a majority? And we'll see. If nobody gets a majority, then it will be the first time since 76 that we go to convention,

the Republicans go to convention without knowing who the nominee is going to be. Ford and Reagan neither had a majority, went to Kansas City in 76. And Ford, but of course that was a two-man race, very different from what we're probably going to see here. And President Ford wrapped that up on the first round. Somebody went on the first? Yeah. I'm sorry. No. I'm sorry.

No, I'm sorry. I was just going to say, as I recall, in 76, Gerald Ford didn't wrap it up on the first round. It was only one round of balloting, and they had a nominee. That's correct. But he did not have a majority when we got to the convention. Right. Neither he nor Reagan had a majority because there were a number of uncommitted delegates.

In fact, the largest block of uncommitted delegates was 30 from Mississippi that had been sent to the state convention, I mean to the national convention by their state convention as uncommitted. But again, it was a two-man race. In this, the likelihood is it's a three-man race, and the question becomes, if Trump does not get a majority on the first, what starts happening after that? Because there are a lot of different rules, but the most who's elected and pledged to a candidate to one their primary or convention is only bound for one ballot. Right. So anything could happen if we go into that with nobody having a majority. Nearly anything could happen after the first ballot. Is that right? Or is it still very likely that after a little jostling, maybe two, three ballots, they're going to gravitate toward the man who arrived with the most delegates anyway?

Well, of course, having the mosteled expertise to serve businesses like yours. valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. Right. Both parties' rules are very clear about that. It takes a majority. I assume at some level, if a candidate gets close enough that the – that's my wife's cell phone going off. That's – yeah, not a bad kid, huh? Yeah, that's good.

At any rate, you know, would if somebody's close enough with other uncommitted delegates say he came so close, I'm going to go and vote for him on the 1st. There also is the issue, the rules of the party convention were changed in 2012. I was not a delegate. I was there, but I wasn't involved in the rules. And there seems to be some discussion about exactly what the rules mean. But I assume where we will go is that after the first ballot, based on state party rule,

most delegates will be able to vote for whomever they think would make the best candidate, has the best chance of getting elected and being the best president. Haley, one more here. I can hear Rob champing at the bit. But I'm going to indulge myself for one more. Last week, I was at Mrs. Reagan's funeral. And of course, a lot of our old friends were there. I talked to two people that I consider, with you, among the most astute, experienced political minds I've ever encountered in all my life. And one of those is former California Governor Pete Wilson, who served in the state assembly, mayor of San Diego, United States senator, and two-term governor of the state of California,

which is a big, complicated state. And Pete said, Donald Trump will get crushed by Hillary Clinton. He didn't say that. He said, I'm afraid Donald Trump will get crushed by Hillary Clinton. He didn't say that. He said, I'm afraid Donald Trump will get crushed by Hillary Clinton. And then I talked to Newt Gingrich and Newt said, you know, I think Donald Trump may be the only candidate we have who could crush Hillary Clinton. His reach is so broad. He's pulling people in. he may be able to just destroy her in the general. Now, when I get two really seasoned, astute political observers coming to opposite conclusions, I think to myself, I've got to find out what Haley says. So before we even come to the question of your view personally, what's your view analytically as a practitioner of the

art of American politics? Does Donald Trump stand a chance in the general? Look, Governor Wilson's position is certainly more bor position. In the polling, Trump is far and away the weakest Republican candidate. In fact, in recent polling, I haven't looked at it in a few days, but in recent polling, every other candidate, Rubio, Kasich, and Cruz, led Clinton nationally, and she led Trump by double digits, or at his best, 50 to 41. Trump's got enormous negatives, and his negatives are somewhat tied to demographics. Younger women, Latinos, young people generally. You start African-Americans, of course, are very, very loyal to Democrats generally, and

particularly to the Clintons. So he is very unpopular amongst the votes we have to get to win. Yes, he has brought home some working-class whites, maybe what would have been called Reagan Democrats, and in pretty good numbers. But remember, the number of votes cast in a primary is a fraction, well less than half in most states. Of all the votes that are needed to win that state in the general election.

And you can double the vote in the Republican primary and still have less than half than you're going to have to get on election day. So that's positive that we're getting bigger turnouts, but it's not dispositive. Got it. Two big problems people have with Donald Trump. Some people have with Donald Trump. One is they don't think he can win, and in fact, they worry, as Governor Wilson worries, that he'll get beat so bad it'll cost us the Senate and maybe even put the House in blood. The other one is, if he wins, they don't think they know what he's going to do.

Because his track record, to the degree you could call it a track record, the history of what he has said is all over the lot. It's certainly not solid conservatism like another former Democrat who got elected president, Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan had once been a Democrat, but he had been consistently conservative and repeatedly had said where he was on issues and consistently stayed there. A lot of people are worried, what would Trump actually do if he got elected? Hey, Governor, it's Rob Long. Can we just for a minute just get in a time machine and just assume somehow that Donald Trump got the 60 million plus votes required to win the general and he's going to be president of the United States. Are you going to have kind of a queasy feeling about that? I mean, what is Governor Haley

Barber, what's the first thing you do when you realize that we're going to have a Republican president, nominally Republican president, and we don't know what he believes, really, and we don't know what he's going to do except for build a wall. What advice would you give that new, completely untested, and de facto unprepared man for that office? Well, I think Speaker Gingrich is predicting, from what I hear you say he said, that by the time we get to the election, after the primaries are over and the convention and we get into the general election campaign, that Newt believes, it sounds to me like, that we'll have a whole lot better idea. idea that the campaign in the fall will be much more revealing about here's where Trump's headed on this, that, and the other. I do think, I assume, don't know, I assume, that he'll start bringing in some policy people, some people who understand government, have worked in government, who understand the nuances and the specifics of government policies and why they result as poorly as they have as Obama's policies have. Because the American people are mad and they're scared, and that's showing up in this primary voting, but they also have a good reason.

The Obama presidency is a failed presidency. His policies have been bad policies that have produced bad results, and that's why 65 percent of Americans think the country's going in the wrong direction, and that number's been over 60 percent for years, for three years at least. And, you know, that isn't all Republicans because less than 40 percent of all the people in the United States identify themselves as Republicans. And 65 percent say we're going the wrong direction. Right. So Trump, I assume, or whoever our nominee is, will run.

Here's what I would do compared to what Obama's done. And what Obama's done has been a failure. And here's why my policy would have better results. You know, I'm an old Reagan guy like Peter. You know, this would be a third term for Barack Obama. And here's a guy that can't run on this morning again in America for his reelection. His reelection was all about what was wrong with Romney, not what he had done right. Americans don't want a third term for Obama in the name of Hillary Clinton, and hopefully Trump's campaign will grow into that.

But you know, he's been running for nine months, and we still don't know much about him. And when asked about foreign policy yesterday, this is March 15th or 16th, he said, well, who are you talking to about foreign policy? Well, me. I'm talking to me know. I got a really sick, sad, scary feeling in the pit of my stomach that – two things. One is the guy who – if you don't know what the guy believes, I'm not sure he's going to suddenly – I mean all due respect to Speaker Gingrich, I'm not sure he's going to suddenly change his stripes. People have been saying that for nine months. And the second thing is if you're – I honestly believe this. If you go to Washington and you are not a conservative, an outright conservative, you become a liberal just by the glacial pressures, gravitational force of big government.

I mean is that a fair thing to say? Well, you're certainly right about Washington makes you – all the forces in Washington, with few exceptions, drive people to the left. Peter may remember once President Reagan, when I was political director of the White House, joked that one of the reasons that I had good judgment is I still lived in Yazoo City, Mississippi. I went home every other weekend, didn't read the Washington Post every day like everybody else. But all the forces in Washington are certainly left and far more left than when Peter and I were in the White House 30 years ago. And as I said at the very beginning, Rob, you've put your finger on the second of the two big concerns of traditional Republicans and conservatives, that they don't know what Trump really believes and what he's going to do. And for some people, that is a bigger concern than whether or not he can win the election in November against Hillary Clinton.

I agree. And you just mentioned a really curious group of people, traditional Republicans. Traditionally, we were just talking about this before you hopped on, but traditionally Republican primaries go kind of like this. You got the next guy in line, the guy who most people feel has earned it or we know him a little bit

or he's come from somewhere, he's got some bona fides or basically he's the front runner. And then around this time of the cycle, you've got that guy running strong and you've got an insurgent running against him. And the insurgent's exciting and usually farther to the right. And we like the insurgent, but we know the insurgent's doomed. And then really the story goes, well, now it's time for the conservative establishment front runner to make peace with the insurgent, but we know the insurgent's doomed. And then really the story goes, well, now it's time for the conservative establishment frontrunner to make peace with the insurgent and show that he's an insurgent too kind of.

And then they march to the convention and that's that. That's how the Republican Party has traditionally, or at least past cycles that I can remember, chosen its next guy. What has happened to the Republican Party? Has it changed? Is this a blip? Should we get used to this? Where are we? I think there are three things that explain the difference. A is there was no frontrunner when we started. Instead, there was a very large field, very large field, in which some people tried to say Jim Bush was a front runner, but anybody paying attention knew with the amount of Bush fatigue that there was that he was not really a front runner. So, A, you are right.

Normally, we have a front runner and a small field, and somebody comes out of that small field to be the challenger to the frontrunner, and the frontrunner loses at least one primary, maybe more than one, but comes back and wins, and wins going away. The second thing is that the news media's treatment of the Republican Party is far different today, and I'm not talking about the liberal media elite being critical of the Republican Party. I'm talking about the conservative outlets being so critical of the Republican Party. You know, the Fox News, the blogs like Breitbart, the pseudo-think tanks like Heritage Foundation, which has become a political action committee. You can go on down the list, all of talk radio for three or four years. They have been harshly

criticizing the Republican leadership by saying, well, we elected y'all and y'all are not stopping Obama. You didn't repeal Obamacare without ever saying to their listeners, readers, viewers, take 60 votes to do anything in the Senate. When John Boehner was Speaker, they sent over 300 bills that the House passed to the Senate, and Harry Reid, when he was the majority leader, just simply ignored them, didn't take them up. John Boehner couldn't do anything about that. All he could do was keep passing good legislation, send it over there. Finally, we take control of the Senate, but we've got 54 senators. Harry Reid last year said publicly he was not going to let the Democrats,

are not going to let one single appropriations bill come to the floor for a vote because the Democrats, because the Republicans weren't spending as much money as the Democrats thought they ought to in our appropriations bills. The Democrats stayed in line. We couldn't get 60 votes. That's why we ended up having a reconciliation. But the conservative, quote, Republican media has been an enormously harsh critic of the Republican leadership, who has become known as the establishment. I learned, Peter, the establishment is anybody you don't like. But that has played a major, major role in this too. And then finally, the American people are so mad at Washington, not just Republicans, but particularly Republicans. Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network

providing free support and advice to SMEs with global ambition. With over 450 partner organizations worldwide, we bring together unparalleled expertise to serve businesses like yours. We can help you discover partners in new markets, advance your digitisation and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources.

Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. That they, I don't want of a sudden have given up on Washington because that's not strong enough. They're furious at Washington and they want to send Washington the bird.

And they think Donald Trump is the perfect example of a gigantic middle finger. Got it. All right, Haley, Peter here. Last question for you.

Here's the way I went into this. I'm pretty sure Rob went into it this way, too. And I think you probably did, too. Look, we've got a we've got a there are a bunch of candidates here. I could live with pretty much all of them. I love Jeb Bush. I love Marco Rubio. I love Ted Cruz, rough as his edges may be, much as he may have broken furniture in Washington. And you know what? I'm just going to let the primaries unfold. And any one of these candidates would be so much better than Hillary Clinton that I will support whoever the party process produces. But I wasn't thinking that Donald Trump was a serious candidate back then. And now, as you well know, we have very crystallized, serious body of thought. Bill Kristol, the editors of National Review, Pete Wehner over at Commentary, a lot of people are saying, sorry, I cannot vote for Donald Trump, even if he is the nominee of my party.

Bill Kristol's been talking about running, finding some independent Republican to run. Even he's been writing about, I think this was tongue in cheek, but maybe only half tongue in cheek. He's been put up a blog post asking people to suggest names for a new party. So what's Haley Barber's view? Given that, as you've said, Donald Trump, it's not done, but he's more likely than anybody else to become the GOP nominee. The correct thing in Haley Barber's thinking to do is what? Stick with the nominee of the grand old party or just say, sorry, we need to crash and burn and rebuild. Well, I can tell you the idea of a third party is the Democrats' fondest dream. A third party on the conservative side guarantees the election of liberal Democrats and will probably result in even more liberal Democratic candidates.

I've seen what happens with Ross Perot. I've seen how invariably these candidates siphon off votes from the Republicans. I am one of the guys like our old friend Ed Rogers from the White House. Ed used to say life is a series of choices. And if the choice is Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. I'm going to vote for the nominee of our party because I don't think that if you answer Rob's questions, I don't think any of the policy positions would be as bad and certainly none would be worse than Hillary Clinton. I'm not going to vote for four more years of Obama's policies and presidency, which is what electing Hillary Clinton would be. And the only person who's got any chance to beat Hillary Clinton is whoever the Republicans nominate. Donald Trump's not my cup of tea,

but if it comes down in November to have a choice between Hillary Clinton and whomever our party nominates, I'm going to vote for whoever our party nominates, even if it's somebody that I don't agree with on much. And I will just close by saying this. I've been chairman of this party. I am not one who believes I can substitute my judgment for the judgment of millions of Republican voters. The day of the smoke-filled room of the elders and the wise men picking the nominee has been gone, Peter, since before you and I were born. Right. And it needs to stay gone.

If you don't trust the people and recognize, you know, they're going to be wrong sometime. But in this case, their bad decision is going to be one I'd rather have than the Democrats candidate Hillary Clinton. Got it. Got it. Wow. Governor Barber, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you, especially for those last words there. I mean, I am a confused person, and they are certainly clarifying to me in a lot of ways.

So, appreciate it, and I hope to hear you again. You know, I'm sure it's going to get boring from now on out. Nothing much interesting is going to happen. But if something interesting does happen by some kind of rare event, I hope you'll join us again and help us figure it all out.

I'd love to. Great to talk to you. I appreciate what you all do. And would you please answer your wife's phone now? Yeah. I turned mine off. I forgot to turn hers off. Thank you, Governor. Thanks, Governor.

Thank you so much. Take care. Hey, so, Peter, I feel like the uh two minutes of that was very clarifying very i mean it was all clarifying but the last two minutes especially kind of helped me kind of sort it all out i couldn't i'm not sure i'm there yet but it was compelling and even i thought really quite moving there's haley's and this party to which he's dedicated so much of his career, so much of his life is a mess. It's about to nominate somebody that you just you just don't. But it's still better.

You still stick with that for the good of the country that we just heard a grown up. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm not. I'm sure I'm there yet. But but but I'm glad to hear him say it because I see the logic there. Speaking of logic, you and I are not grown-ups yet. I agree with you there. I am not going to even bother doing a segue, the kind of segue that James Lilex does, also because we're packed here. And I want to make sure we get to Charles Murray. We have luckily and have been happily and we're proud to have been sponsored in part by the great courses um and

you know we've talked a lot about the great courses uh over the year over the years and months they've been um sponsoring us and we are very excited about their new great courses plus video learning service so instead of just trying to pick one course you now have unlimited access to a huge library of the great courses lecture series series, and so many fascinating subjects in science, history, cooking, politics. They go up and down. I mean they're all around. I mean they do stuff that's sort of deep and super intellectual and stuff that's really, really practical. And you can now watch full courses start to finish or just pick specific lectures, and that's something we're giving you as a listener to the Ricochet podcast.

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So I just want to just kick this off by saying, are we watching the revenge of Fishtown? That's a pretty good way of putting it. Yeah, Fishtown has a lot to be angry about. In this case, by Fishtown, I'm referring to that aspect of the white working class that's still trying to play by the rules. They're holding on to jobs. If they're guys, they're taking care of their wives and children and so forth. They have a lot to complain about because over the last 20 or 30 years, they've gotten it from both sides of the ideological spectrum among the ruling elite. They haven't gotten much more money as the economy's gotten richer.

They've seen manufacturing jobs disappear. They've seen immigrants competing unfairly, illegal immigrants competing unfairly with them for the low wages. And this is in many ways the most irritating. They have been the subject of systematic disrespect by the ruling class. Charles, Peter Robinson here. What do you mean by that? That's a new thought on me.

Peter, among those who are highly educated and live on the left and right coasts in the big cities. What do they call in between? Fly over country, isn't it? Fly over land? Fly over country, yeah. Fly over country. Got it, got it. Okay, you go to your next dinner party, and your next dinner party, Peter,

probably will have people of a fairly conservative cast in mind, is the greater number of them. But make a reference reference sort of not emphasizing it to rednecks and see if you get any negative pushback on that. Now, there is no other ethnic group that you can slur without getting negative pushback from any dinner party, but you can still call people rednecks, that kind of thing. Right, right, right. Charles, you will have seen by now, of course, because everybody's seen it, Kevin Williamson's piece in the current issue of National Review in which Kevin says, wait just a minute. All of this business about the angry white working class, nothing happened to them. There hasn't been a war declared. There hasn't been a plague

that's broken out. People in the white working class have of their own free will engaged in really pathological behavior. They have all the pathologies that you detail in coming apart, the breakdown in the family, the dropping out of the workforce among males, particularly among males, and on and on and on. And Kevin Williamson says, he began this theme with a brilliant piece, I thought a cover story on Appalachia. What would that have been four or five months ago in which he pointed out there's this, when we think of the war on poverty, we'd find our minds drawn to African-Americans in the inner city, that there's poverty among rural whites as well. And he visited Appalachia and talked about the drug abuse, the people immured in a welfare

culture, waiting for the next check, waiting for food stamps. And in his view is, wait a minute, maybe they don't have quite so much right to be angry. They've just behaved badly for three decades now. How do you answer that? Kevin is calling attention to the other half of Fishtown. The theme of coming apart was that you'd seen a deterioration of what I call the founding virtues in the white working class. And you have. But that doesn't mean everybody in the white working class is that way. So I thought Kevin's description of the lower part of Fishtown was exactly right, that you have a lot of people

who are behaving in ways where, of course, they're going to be unemployable. Of course, they're going to have the kinds of problems that they have. But you have a bunch of other people in Fishtown who are still trying to hold things together. So both of those groups exist. I'll just add one more statement to that. Yep, yep. I agree that people need to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. It's also okay for people like me, social scientists, to call attention to the ways in which a lot of the bad actors in Fishtown are responding to a lot of reasons that they should be demoralized. And chief among these, it seems to me, is, look, in 1960, you were a working class guy making a working class salary, had a wife and children, putting a roof over their heads. You had authentic respect in the society. Right, right. You had it from your neighbors. You were one of the good guys. And the

guy who wasn't holding down a job, who wasn't taking care of his kids with a bum, or lots worse than that. And he was seen by that by his neighbors. But it wasn't just the neighbors. It was part of the classic way of classic aspects of American culture. Take your business international. Enterprise Europe Network is the world's largest network culture. and gain valuable insights into EU funding opportunities. Take advantage of free expert advice and innovation resources. Visit een-ireland.com and take your business global today. If you were working hard and pulling your own weight, you were as good as anybody in the country. And people who had a lot of money went out of their way

to think of themselves and present themselves as regular folks to the rest of the population. That's right. Charles, Rob Long is champing at the bit. He wants to get in some more questions here, but I have one more, if I may. This is a little bit of a dirty trick to Rob because this is an open-ended question, but you take it anywhere you want. Anywhere you want. We'll make Rob wait if necessary.

I think back to 1979 and the country, the mess the country was in, Ronald Reagan is elected and things begin to improve really quite quickly. And now we're in another mess, but there is a difference. I fear, I put this to you to see what you do with it. I fear that although the economy could turn around once again quite quickly, that is to say lower tax rates, roll back regulations, do something with Obamacare, there are specific bad policies that are standing in the way of economic growth and they could be identified and they could be removed. And the economy, I suspect, would recover quite quickly. But putting back together the American family after six decades, well, five decades at least, of divorce culture, putting back together respect for the fabric of society that's ripped and frayed that you so brilliantly described in

Coming Apart, how does that get stitched back together? You know, Peter, in my last couple of books, I have said that the American project, as we originally conceived of it, is dead. Not dying, it's dead. By the American project, I mean the idea that people can be left free to live their lives as they see fit with the government standing aside and providing a peaceful setting, and that's it. So that's dead. I'm afraid that a lot of the aspects of the civic culture you just described in the lower third of the population are also unrecoverable, except by an extraordinary change. And so I will not mince words.

I think that we are going to be a rich, powerful, class-structured nation, like rich, powerful, class-structured nations throughout history, which is a fundamental betrayal of what the United States was meant to be. I will just add, before letting Rob in here, the same caveat that I put in Coming Apart and some of my other writings, we have seen religious great awakenings in this country that have changed the culture on a dime, and also secular ones such as the civil rights movement. It is not inconceivable that we could have a secular great awakening which could really change things fast, but if you ask me do I see any signs of that right now, the answer is no. Okay, Rob. Is that true?

Well, that's depressing. Rob to get us out on a laugh. I don't know how that's going to work here now. I feel like I've been – I just want to tell you two stories and hear your response. One is kind of a little bit of a different – kind of takes a different direction. But I was at a fancy dinner – not a fancy dinner party. It was a lovely dinner party with old friends of mine. We all went to Yale together.

It was in Brooklyn. All right? So I don't have to explain the setting except to say that the table – around the table were mostly political conservatives, people to the right of me, which is not that hard, but it wasn't your classic lefty, food co-op-y, Brooklyn-y type. And we're all talking about this disaster, and a lot of us are talking about your book. Some of them went out to buy it in paperback, so I put some sales there, just so you're welcome for that. And I said that I thought the problem in America wasn't

the economy, really. I mean, certainly in the past eight years, I mean, let's be honest, I mean, the economy is not that terrible. We've had worse recessions. We've had more unemployment. We've had higher inflation. We've been in a worse place in terms of the metrics of our society. But I said the worst thing was that if you look around the room, look around that table, you look around Brooklyn, you look around any kind of fancy place, what you see is, and I think the people who aren't in the in crowd understand is that there's a complete lack of social mobility in this country, that if you're born in a certain class, you are stuck there unless you somehow pull yourself out and get the proper credentials to move out, and those credentials are getting harder and harder to get. And they kind of looked at me like I was crazy or I had said something rude.

Was that a fair thing for me to say? Do you agree with that or am I sort of missing the point? It's a little bit more complicated, and I will use my own example. Whereas my kids went to a public school, a high school in a town called Brunswick, Maryland, which is a railroad town, working class town. And one of the things that really startled me there was the degree to which some really, really smart kids in that school, that very good schools would have given a free ride to, never even considered applying to those schools. And part of the reason of that is illustrated by my daughter's experience. My daughter applied to and was accepted by Middlebury up in Vermont, a fancy schmancy, highly ranked small liberal arts college.

And she said the reaction of several of her friends when she told them that was, oh, are your parents moving to Vermont? And the idea being the only reason you wouldn't go to Frostburg State or one of the other schools close by is because her parents were moving because it was not within their horizon of possibilities. And this is sad because, in fact, I have to amend what I just said a minute ago. They could have gotten into really good colleges because these are authentically smart kids. But could they have gotten into Harvard, Yale, Princeton? The answer is probably no, because they're white working class.

And there is a very limited number of slots left for white working class after you've had the whites with the super-duper scores and you've had the legacy kids and the rest of it. So two statements here as I'm trying to think my way through this on my feet. One is there is a genuine problem that can be solved by better publicity, opening up to kids with talent. Here's how you go about it. Here's how you get those credentials. Here's how you move up into the new upper class. That's part of it.

And another part of it is that the deck is stacked against them at the most elite institutions. You know, I heard a friend of mine told me that he took over a business, big business, and he's running a whole division of a big, big deal. And the outgoing guy who hired him, who's moving upstairs, said to him, listen, there's one guy here. Make sure you get him sitting very close to you because he knows all about data and how to turn the data around, how to show the data. And he can make you what they call a dashboard for any metric you want to look at the snapshot of the business at that moment. He's really the most valuable employee there is.

And so my friend said, well, that's great. What is he, like executive vice president or something? No, no, no, no. He's just – he went to DeVry. So he's topped out. And is that a problem or is that something that, well, that's always happened and we just have to get used to it? Yeah, I'm of two minds about that. One is I think it's probably more exceptional than typical that my experience still is that when you have a really talented new employee, that person gets noticed. That's typical. And my thought has always been that having a Harvard degree or a Yale degree or Stanford,

yeah, that does get you into certain kinds of job interviews you aren't going to get into otherwise with Goldman Sachs-only interviews at a few schools. Yeah, there are opportunities that you get because of that. But once you are in the job, my experience has been that nobody says three years into it, this guy really isn't very good. But he did go to Harvard. That's right. I think that that advantage goes away. However, however, I'm scared that the episode you described may be more typical than I like to think.

We tend to slot people these days. Well, let me ask you that. Just to broaden it up, then I know I'll give it back to Peter because for once I'm shutting Peter out. I've been in the television business my whole life. That's my only career I know is television. I write TV shows. And when I started, the idea was to get 30 million people because there were about 100 million people watching TVs at any given 100 million TV sets on in America at any given time. And what you wanted was you wanted a 30 share, 32 share with

about a third of them. That was a whopping number. And that's what you wanted. And in order to do that, you had to be sort of broadly appealing. You had to kind of like get 30 million people to watch your show. So 30 million people on every on any given Thursday at nine were watching my show. Cheers. Now. People are completely frank about it. Like, well, I don't know. There are 30 million people to watch the Super Bowl, maybe. But if I get two million people, that's fine, and I can pick the two million I want. And so if you are probably feeling disenfranchised in terms of economics, you are also disenfranchised in terms of the culture.

No one in my business is saying to themselves, how do I get those viewers? What show could I put on to get them? We just don't care. They do not count. On a purely economic level, there's nobody asking for that audience. And that has got to be a deeply alienating thing. If you're my age or even younger, and you remember a world in which everyone watched one of the four same TV shows, now you just, you could open the New York Times, you could open a national magazine, and they're talking about a television show you've never seen.

You know what? I've been listening to you trying to figure out how to respond, because my first reaction was, come on, there are still lots of TV shows that had a lot of appeal to, let's say, the working class crowd. You know, Two Broke Girls and I don't know. I'm not familiar enough with enough shows to rattle off a lot of names of them. That was my first reaction, that there's no problem of having a huge variety of content. Plus, I will say parenthetically, TV is so much incredibly better now than it was. Yeah, I have to agree to that. Yes. Just the quality. However, as you were saying that, I was saying to myself,

yeah, but one of the top rated shows last year was The Big Bang Theory. And I haven't watched much of The Big Bang Theory, but when I have seen it, it's not lowest common denominator. It's not heading for 30 million, even though it's very, very popular. It is weird. I was agreeing with you to some extent. However, you know the real killer on this dialogue is how little I know about current popular TV series. Well, you already know. You know the most popular one in America, so that's good.

May I come in now, Rob? Yeah. I've lowered the intellectual tone, so now Charles Murray and I are talking about the Big Bang Theory. But I agree with you yeah charles if you will if you would if i may draw you back to big thing stuff here uh oh let's take it right back to politics trump he is the we just had an interview we just talked to hayley barber charles and hayley barber said that there's a large segment of American of the American public that wants to give the middle finger to Washington. And they think Donald Trump, I'm this is if this isn't a

quotation, it's a pretty close paraphrase of Haley. And they think Donald Trump is the perfect raised middle finger. So let's let's just posit that Donald Trump is the carrier of this message to Washington. He is the recipient of the anger, much of it justified, as you have argued, of the, I hate to put, of the white, of Fishtown. I don't want to use the term working class because that suggests the class stratification that I'm hoping isn't permanent. I don't know how else we talk about it, though. In any event, so Trump's the man. He seems to be that group's man. I heard Trump just the other day say something that struck me as pretty sensible. After Super Tuesday, he was ranting about this, that, and the other.

But he also said, we'll make our country rich again. We'll make our country rich again. We'll make our country rich again. We'll make our country great again. And there's applause, applause, applause. And he said, and we need the rich to make the great. I'm sorry to tell you. And I thought to myself, you know, he does at some level understand the importance of economic growth. So what do we make of Donald Trump? How much does he really understand? How much is he a genuine tribune of the people? And what good can he do? Well, Peter, it is very hard for me to respond to anything about Donald Trump without first saying I think he is a despicable human being.

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I have nothing to do with policy. The way he has lived his life, whether you are talking about the way he's treated his wives, whether you talk about the way he treats underlings, whether you talk about the way he treats the people that he gets to work for him you've heard about the 80 rule with donald trump the 80 rule is he pays his contractors 80 up front and then after the work is done they try to collect the other 20 the answer is oh your work was shoddy and uh when they continue to pursue this there is a very cool calculated statement by trump's lawyer saying you, we will not settle. So therefore, you are going to have to spend far more than the 20 percent to recover it.

We suggest you just let this go. And who puts you on the preferred list for contractors in the next job? That's that's a routine way of acting with Donald Trump. I could go on and on and on, whether you're talking about his personal life or his business life. He's despicable. And so apart from anything else, I agree with Jonah Goldberg on this. Jonah Goldberg says that he's always identified conservatism with not just policy, but with the importance of character. I agree with that. Absolutely.

I think for the Republican Party to have Donald Trump as its nominee is a betrayal of everything conservatism should stand for. So you see, Peter, I'm not a good guy to ask whether in one phrase, Donald Trump says, and you need the rich to make us rich again. I don't really think that's a very important point. And I don't think it reveals that he sat home and thought about this a long time. So should I have I made myself clear? Listen, so let me put then to you, this will be my last question. I'll give it back to Rob. My last question. Let me put to you the same question Rob and I put to Haley Barber about 20 minutes ago. Haley was being as judicious and purely analytical as he could be in describing Donald Trump in the current

state of the Republican race. And he said, it's not done, that Donald Trump is the nominee. But at this point, any analyst would have to say it's more likely than not that he will be the Republican nominee. So Rob and I said, well, what about it? Which camp are you in? You'll take the GOP nominee or you'll break. You'll join Bill Kristol and the editors of National Review and say, rather start another party. I'd rather back an independent Republican candidate. I'd rather crash and burn this time around and then begin rebuilding. And Haley provided as impassioned a reply as I have ever heard from Haley Barber saying, for the good of the country,

he said, life is a series of choices. And if the choice is Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, and four more years and maybe eight more years of what we've seen under Barack Obama, I will vote for Donald Trump. Charles, how do you answer the question? I would give just as impassioned a statement that you shouldn't do that. But I've been trying to come up with something that I can say to people like Haley that will move them off their position. And I guess the best thing I can say is this, look, if Hillary Clinton is elected, and by the way, I don't think she'll be nearly as bad as Obama, certainly not in foreign policy and probably not domestic policy, but put aside that.

If Hillary Clinton is elected, the Democrats own her mistakes. If God forbid, Donald Trump should become president of the United States, the Republican Party owns his mistakes. And do you know what? There is every reason to believe from everything we know about Donald Trump's prior experiences and successes and failures that he will make horrific mistakes, probably impeachable mistakes. The Republican Party will own them. The idea that if you elect Donald Trump, you are in any way saving the Republican Party is delusory. And it ascribes to Donald Trump an expectation of functionality in the present United States

that is the ultimate triumph of hope over experience once again I hope I had no I I'm just I'm looking around my room here looking for the drink I just I think need, I think I need a stiff drink. Um, well, look, uh, what can I say? Thank you. First of all, we know, we know we had to let you go, but thank you for coming on and Claire, it was, you didn't hear the whole podcast, but it was a really nice counterpoint to what we talked to, to talk with Haley Barber about. Um, and you've only made me more confused. So I guess I'll thank you for that. Also, I think everyone should go and read the book Coming Apart. If you question what's happening,

that's the book to read. And it really does sort of provide a very, very, very thorough snapshot and sobering look at American class society, which I think is what we're talking about. Charles Murray, thank you for joining us. Charles, thank you. Talk to you again soon, I hope. It's not going to get any more boring, so you're going to have to come on and explain the rest of it to us, too.

Great. So, Peter. Yes, Rob. We now have two differing views here. Yes, Rob. We now have two. Rob, Rob, who has told me for all this quarter century of our friendship, there is no moment, no moment, no speech, no moment that cannot be ended on a laugh. Rob is true. I, I, I don't know yet. I'm well, of course, I'm, you know, I'm overcome with my host duties. I would be able to do it if I had James here. Actually, here's the call to action here is I think you've got to read Charles' book. If you haven't read it, go get it.

Kindle it today. It sounds very pompous to call a book important, so I do try to avoid that. But Coming Apart really is important. It says so much about the current state of America so concisely. Yeah. He's also a really, really beautiful writer. So it's great prose. But I also would say that what I like about it is that it's really outside of politics because the politics is really the passing carnival show. But he's talking about bigger things that would be true if it was Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush or Joe Biden versus Marco Rubio. That doesn't matter. He's talking about bigger things, and I think those bigger things are always here. Speaking of bigger things,

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I mean, I keep ping-ponging back and forth because my natural inclination is that Charles Murray's correct under no circumstances, never. And then my other thought, well, you know, Haley Barber's been around a long time. He knows some stuff. He knows the party and

the strengths and weaknesses of it. Maybe Haley'sber's been around a long time. He knows some stuff. You know, he knows the party and the strengths and weaknesses of it. Maybe Haley's right. I don't, I really don't know. I thank God I don't have to decide now, but I don't know. I will probably take the coward's way out on election day in November. If Donald Trump is losing. Break your foot or something. Exactly.

If Donald Trump is losing anyway, I'll probably vote for a third party candidate. But I mean, I just I just find myself inclining toward Haley's view. Well, we'll we'll be talking about this for the next some months, probably. Well, actually, that's giving short him to pull together to deny Trump the number of delegates and then to win at the convention, to go into the convention strong. So let's not, that's what I'm hoping for. I have to say, though, that on balance, if the choice is what we know about Hillary Clinton, you see, the difference between me and Charles, I think, is that where Charles has a very, very dark view of Donald Trump, he actually has a fairly accepting view of Hillary

Clinton. Did you notice that? He said, I don't think Hillary Clinton will be nearly as bad as Barack Obama. I'm not sure I agree with that. I'm not sure I agree with that. And so I find Haley, let's put it this way. If you put a gun to my head and said today, as this podcast ends, who are you with Haley or Charles? I'd inclined toward the Haley view that you got it. The best thing to do is to vote against Hillary Clinton. If that means voting for Donald Trump, so be it. I think there'll be a lot of pent up animosity from the press towards whoever takes office. I mean, they've been kept cordoned off and been lied to so much. They've been unable through their own sort of progressive, you know, white progressive

guilt to actually report the news of what goes on in this current administration. The minute that barrier is lifted, who knows? Maybe they'll – maybe whoever takes that job is walking into a firing squad. Well, that's the way it should be. But you mean to say that you think the press will turn on Hillary Clinton after she takes the oath of office? I believe that they're going to – I don't think she's going to get a free ride. I think she's going to – it's going to be tough. Look, I think she's going to win because free ride. I think she's going to – it's going to be tough.

Look, I think she's going to win because I do believe just the basic polls that suggest – I'm not a gingertian. I don't think it's going to be big. I think it's going to be – I think it's going to be a major landslide for the Democrats if Trump is the nominee just the way – look at the polls now. Right. And looking at his negatives now. It's really hard to turn around. I mean this is a guy that people already have made up their minds about, and he's been in the public eye for years. So I think it will probably be a landslide. But I don't know.

I don't think it will be – I don't think she's going to have a free ride. I don't – I mean I could be wrong, but maybe I just – but speaking of free rides that are good, boy, god, I'm just lousy with these segues. Harry's.com, Harry's Shave, this is another one of our sponsors, and they've been a sponsor for a long time. And I use the product and we all use the product and John Podoritz uses the product on the Glob podcast. He's always talking about it. It was started by two guys passionate about creating a better shaving experience um and to me the thing they saw i mean yeah the shave the razor's great the stuff the cream the lotions all that stuff's great but to me the greatest thing about it is you don't have to go stand at cbs like like some kind of like a like a like

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i have yes but they're good but i'll stop there all right uh so wait so wait let me let me go back okay uh it's their start harry starter shave set is 15 it includes a blade, three blades, your choice of Harry's shave cream or foam gel. And as an added bonus, you can get $5 off your first purchase with the code RICOSHET. So you use the code, you get an entire month's worth of shaving for just $10. RICOSHET, you should use that code. Shipping's free. That's the second most important thing. How cheap is $10?

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Should we just switch gears a little bit before – I know we're running long, but OK. Can we just switch gears for a little bit? From the member feed. Today, I think it was yesterday. When the new lines are drawn, don't abandon the social conservatives by spicy food hiccups. I like that. That's a nice screen name, spicy food hiccups. I know exactly what that sounds like. A little quote.

In the Republicans' attempt to build a majority, I could see a coalition forming between libertarians and conservatives who are willing to drop social issues in favor of wooing the fiscally conservative but socially liberal crowd. Me, in other words. I hope I'm not just saying this because I am a social conservative, but I think dropping social issues would be a huge mistake. I can't believe you went to that because you dropped the social issues before I met you. Yeah, and that's sad. entirely for spicy food hiccups. Here is the practical problem. The practical problem is

that we social conservatives need to make common cause with libertarians on issue after issue after issue where we do stand together because we need to get stuff done. And that's the way politics works. You make common cause with as many people as you can to get votes. Doing that without surrendering your belief in the social issues is hard. And all I can say is that the model here for me, as with so many other things as Ronald Reagan, where he made it very clear and really did live it, that he was welcoming to the libertarians, but he himself still believed. And whenever he could make a step in the direction of reinforcing social values, he would do so. Well, now you – Reagan stories, but I can remember sitting in the Oval Office. I had written a speech in which the president was going to provide a paragraph

against abortion. And the chief of staff, the then chief of staff, Jim Baker, stopped the conversation to talk the president out of it. And Ronald Reagan just sat there and smiled as Jim Baker talked, as Jim Baker grew more and more tense and even a little with the president of the United States. And Ronald Reagan just smiled and said, well, no, Jim, this is just one of those things I have to do. Full stop. So I'm with spicy food hiccups. It's tricky, but it can be done. And in my judgment, it must be done. So so I'm still working on my little mission in life is to work on Rob Long.

Yeah, I've been at it for years. I know you have much success there. So I'm still working. My little mission in life is to work on Rob Long. Yeah. I've been at it for years. I know. You have much success there. But I would say this. I mean, and I'm sympathetic to that argument. I would just say the other side of it, if you're just a real politics side, the practical side, if you're looking at especially the way the Republican Party is voting today, you know, what are these social – people don't seem that – they don't seem that exercise, the frontrunner and probable nominee of the party is somebody whose record on social issues is either dismal or antagonistic. Yeah, with one exception.

So how powerful is it? Yeah, well, I've been all over the boards on that. I've changed my mind. I've thought it through. I've decided that my had said those words would be the overwhelming frontrunner and a kind of a grassroots champion of the non-establishment Republicans. You'd look to me like I had three heads. Well, except that that was the position of Ronald Reagan. Well, but Ronald Reagan – The position of George H.W. Bush. Right, right. They both said they were both pro-choice at one point. Reagan in a very limited way.

He signed – but still, still. They changed their minds. But they were emphatically pro-life. They were both emphatically pro-life. Yes. And Trump is not. Our turn-of-the-front runners are not. I'd rather not talk about it.

Yeah, I grant you that. I grant you that. I mean it does seem to me like the problem with social issue conservatives is that they have lost the rank and file. Gee, I don't know. Well, OK, you and I can go. We could spend another. We should wait. We'll have to wait and see what happens to Ted Cruz.

But look at the Republican field. Out of 17 candidates with which we started, how many of those 17 were pro-life? And the answer is 17. All 17. You would have thought that if there's a pro-choice constituency in the Republican Party, at least one in 17 beginning candidates would have been pro-choice. Zero. Now, they're working politicians. Maybe 17 out of 17 are doing it because they feel they have to pay lip service to the issue. Although I don't think that's the case with Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. As best I can tell, all three of them are utterly sincere about it.

Chris Christie is pro-life in New Jersey, where that is a losing position. He's paid a political price for that in votes, at least to some extent. In any event, all is not lost for those of us who believe in the social issues if the Republican Party is such that 17 out of 17 presidential candidates are pro-life, I think. Okay. Okay. One more from the member feed from Vita K. What Republicans should have said but won't about Obama's SCOTUS nomination, Merrick Garland. This is what he suggests they say that they won't. We cannot and will not confirm any justice to the Supreme Court whose vote would imperil important constitutional rights,

such as the right to bear arms and the right to freely practice and exercise religion. And then he adds, but instead they will probably just stick with the original line that makes them look like a bunch of yammering, out-of-touch politicians. I agree with that. I agree with the original line that makes them look like a bunch of yammering, out-of-touch politicians. I agree with that. I agree with every word of that. I think that's beautifully put. By the way, I also hand – I give – this will call thunder down upon me. I know. Thunder and lightning.

That's my ricochet. But I still give Mitch McConnell, Leader McConnell, senator from Kentucky, a lot of credit for within hours of the death of Justice Scalia coming out and announcing that the Republican Senate would not consider a nominee until after the presidential election. He didn't put it as well as V. The K puts it here. And I agree it would have been even better if he'd put it this way. Nevertheless, that he's held the Republicans together on this, I find very impressive. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Hey, so you mentioned one thing that happened at Nancy Reagan's funeral. Anything else happen that was, I mean, besides the fact it's sad? You weren't there, of course. So I did the next best thing. I sat with Yakov Smirnoff. Do you remember Yakov Smirnoff? Oh, yeah.

What a country. What a country. In Russia, the party finds you, right? That's him? Yakov Smirnoff was at the Nancy Reagan funeral? He sat between me and my wife. He's a wonderful man. Wait a minute.

So what row were you in? I got to say, these don't sound like the, no offense, but they don't sound like front row center, if you know what I mean. I wasn't front row center. What was the – we were about six rows back. So they had – so it was very – it was moving at a couple of levels. One was just the sense – this was the country at its best in the sense that it was a genuinely nonpartisan event. There were representatives present of first families going back six decades. Susan Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower's only grandchild, only direct descendant, Susan Eisenhower was present.

Tricia Nixon was present. Steve Ford was present. Caroline Kennedy, both of Lyndon Baines Johnson's daughters were present. Caroline Kennedy, I learned afterwards, she's ambassador to Japan right now. And she had just she'd been in Washington. She had just landed in Japan when she learned that Mrs. Reagan died. And she had to rearrange her schedule to fly right back to this country. A long flight, as you know. Even these days, that's a long flight. But she told the person – I spoke to the person who broke this news to her, and she said, you know, Nancy Reagan meant a lot to us. I will be there. So the sense of American history, first fan, Rosalind Carter. Rosalind Carter, who is late in her age now. Rosalind Carter was there.

The former president, the man I still think of as President Bush, George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, simply too old and too unwell to make the trip. But President George W. Bush and Laura Bush were present. And so this sense of this pageant, the continuity of American history was right there. And for your information, since I know you're a showbiz, they're the people who sat in the first three rows. Well, you know, I mean, I was going to say when you and I had lunch with Nancy Reagan years ago,

that's what we talked about. Show business. Show business. Oh, I still, I was thinking a lot about that lunch because remember how she she would she would she would talk about people. She was she was so she was already quite old at that point. And she was she had reached the stage at which she had lost the sense of what her world was and that our world didn't quite overlap with hers. So you remember she was talking about people. She would refer to people by their first names. And you and I had to exchange glances to figure out where we were in the conversation. And we were in the presence of a woman who, when she said Spence, meant Spencer Tracy.

And was doing so totally unselfconsciously. And when she said Frank, she meant Frank Sinatra. And she wasn't name-dropping. She was talking about someone she'd known for half a century. Yeah, it's like he was in the room. Yeah, it was amazing. And I remember when she told me, Spencer trading his house,

Spence, you know, every now and then he'd have to come and sleep on her sofa, but she didn't live with her mother on Holloway. And she kind of looked sad. She said, you know, he liked to drink. And she did that thing that you've seen Nancy Reagan do that's kind of like raise your eyebrows and like you disapprove, but you're not going to go too far with it. You're just going to make sure everybody's clear that this is not how you – you wish it had been otherwise. And he liked to drink.

It was great. It was like – I don't think we talked about politics at all. I don't think she cared at that point. She really was talking about the world as it was or the world that she knew in Hollywood. Hold – stop there because that to me, that's absolutely basic. She was formidable in the White House. And like a lot of staffers, I was a little scared of her. I just wanted to stay away from Mrs. Reagan. No good could come of attracting her attention as I learned when I got dragged into writing speeches for her for a couple of months before I figured out how to talk my way out of her. I just wanted to stay away from Mrs. Reagan. No good could come of attracting her attention. As I learned when I got dragged into writing speeches for her for a couple

of months before I figured out how to talk my way out of it. But you said you, you put, you just said something I think central. She saw the world as it was. She was a complete, total and utter realist. And she, she, she was willing. She was, we talk about the president, Ronald Reagan, as constantly reaching out and embracing people. And that's one thing when you think the best of everyone as he did, she was the same way. She was constantly reaching out and embracing people on behalf, on behalf of her husband. And she did it knowing what stinkers most human beings are or are capable of being. She held a lot together for many, many years,

looking at reality, seeing reality as it was and still holding a lot together. It was an impressive life. It certainly was. It certainly was. It must have been an amazing funeral right there on the hilltop there. It was an impressive life. It certainly was. It certainly was. It must have been an amazing funeral right there on the hilltop there. It was. I don't know.

Peter, what do you think? We've gone on for an hour and a half. Shouldn't we put these people out of their misery? I just got a message from our producer, Blue Yeti, wrote in all caps, RAPID! Running out of disc space. I'm not listening anymore. RAPID. Go ahead. Let's RAPID. I don't know. I think we delivered value. I think it was incredible, but it certainly delivered value to me. Haley Barber, Charles Murray together.

Really, really fascinating. Couldn't agree more. Listen, if you're listening to this and you enjoyed it and you're not a member of Ricochet, please go to ricochet.com and join. I do. I think we really did deliver value. I think this is podcast certainly earned. If you've listening to us, it earned your 30 day free trial at ricochet.com. Just go to ricochet.com and do it. We also want to thank the great courses, Harry Shave and of course, Hillsdale College for sponsoring this podcast and helping us keep the lights on. Although not enough, we still need you to join as members. And also you can visit the Ricochet store. Lots of great Ricochet swag in the Ricochet store. I think we should probably wrap it. Peter, what do you think? I think so Rob, next week?

Next week When the world ends Collect your things You're coming with me When the world ends You Tuckle up yourself With me

Watch it as the stars disappear to nothing The day the world is over Oh, we'll be lying in bed I'll rock you like a baby When the cities fall We will rise as the buildings crumble Float there and wash it all. Miss the burning, we'll be churning.

You know love will be our wings. The passion rises up from the ashes. When the world ends, when the world ends, you're gonna come with me. We're gonna be crazy Like a river bends We're gonna float through The crisscross of the mountains Watch them fade to nothing When the world ends

You know That's what's happening Now I'm gonna be there with you somehow Oh I'm gonna tie you up like a baby In a carriage Ricochet!

Join the conversation. If you want me so, you just last spread To the world, the love you got is surely all the love I won't ever need I'm gonna take you by my side And love you tall Till the world ends Oh

But don't you worry about a thing No Cause I got you here with me Don't you worry about it It's just you and me Floating through the empty, empty Just you and me Oh, the graces

Oh, grace When the world ends we'll be burning one. Ah, when the world ends, we'll be sweet making love. Oh, you know when the world ends, I'm going to take you aside and say, let's watch it fade away