The Ricochet Podcast - Rove and Limbaugh

Episode Date: March 25, 2016

Another week, another set of brand name guests to debate the issues of the day. This week, first up is Karl Rove who stops by the discuss his terrific new book, The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters. How is an election held a 120 years ago relevant today. “The Architect” spills the beans. Then, our old friend David Limbaugh (AKA El Rushbro) cruises by to educate... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Hello, everyone. We'll be right back. No flipping. 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. What it means is that the people don't want socialism. They want more conservatism. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex, and today we have David Limbaugh to talk about now, and Carl Rove to talk about 1896 and more. Let's have a podcast. There you go again. Welcome, everybody, to the Ricochet Podcast, number 297, just three away from 300, which would be, in Roman numerals, 3M.

That's trademark. We can't do that. We're brought to you by The Great Courses. You can get unlimited access to their entire library free for one month. Just go to thegreatcourses.com. I'm sorry, that's thegreatcoursesplus.com. That tells you how much extra stuff there is. Slash ricochet and find out. Brought to you also by Hillsdale College, the Constitution 101 course, because all of you listeners owe it to yourselves to learn about and study the Constitution. As they say, we can't have free markets, free enterprise, without freedom. And, of course, brought to you by Harry's Shave. Rubbing my hand across my cheek right now, freshly, freshly depiliated by Harry's.

Overpaying for drugstore razor blades is a bad habit, and yeah, I'll leave it behind. It's easy to break. Make the smart switch to Harry's and use the coupon code RICOSHET. And we're brought to you by Ricochet itself, of course. Its two founders, its pillars, its totems are here. And Peter is going to defer, as usual, to Rob's baser commercial instincts. Yes. So, Rob, elevator pitch.

You've got 30 seconds before the doors open and the producer walks out shaking his head. Pitch Ricochet. I'm the trump to Peter's cruise in this respect. I wallow. Listen, if you're listening to this podcast, I'll make it very clear. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, thank you. We are really thrilled to have you. I was exchanging some Twitter stuff yesterday with some Ricochet members,

and I know Peter's been chatting with Ricochet members. We love our Ricochet members, and we're grateful to you. If you're listening and you're not a member, and you're like, well, go to Ricochet.com and join, and here's why. That's a direct quote, by the way, that he just said. Yeah, exactly.

You probably have a meaning to do it, and you probably put it off. Now is the time. Here's what a Ricochet membership will mean if you join today. That you're supporting us, you're supporting these podcasts, you're supporting the team that brings these podcasts together and everything else together and the Ricochet site. You're supporting, you're

casting a vote for some tiny spark of smart and civil conversation on the web and unfortunately in the world at large. I don't care who you're going to vote for large if if i don't care who you're going to vote for i really literally do not care who you're going to vote for you cannot have looked at the past week and a half and not been sick to your stomach and if you were a little

sick to your stomach and a little embarrassed for the state of american political discourse um and you're like me of ricochet membership is an actual, practical, free market way you can say, you know what? I dissent from this cesspool. We do not run a swamp. We do not run an insult fest. We do not have trolls. We have honest, smart, witty, intelligent, and nice people. They get a little heated because it's politics, but basically nice people are in a club together, and we want you to join, so please do.

Ricochet.com, you get a free month. There's literally no risk to you, but there is a risk to the republic and the culture at large if you do not become a member of Ricochet. How's that? The producer, trailing clouds of cigar smoke, does not turn his back but turns to his assistant and says, put him on the calendar. So good, yeah. Yeah, put him on the calendar, yeah. I've heard actually worse pitch stories than that. Guy on the phone, phone rings,

and you're in the middle of a pitch, and the guy picks up the phone and goes, hello, yeah, yeah, and then turns to you and then silently does this kind of gesture like, keep going, keep going, while he's on the phone. I heard that. That's death is what that is. Yeah, that's death.

Yeah, that's right. Well, you should be lucky that Ricochet doesn't have the old – is there a performance of Noises Off going on somewhere here? I'm hearing – That must be Peter. All we need is a doctor. It's – perhaps we should do this in the old European English style where we just pick up Ricochet.

You can pick up Ricochet for nine or ten episodes, like they do in the shows over there. It's not a lifetime commitment, but once you're there, you'll realize that it will be, because it's a nice and civil place, as Peter said. There's no posting of Photoshop pictures of your wife compared to somebody else's. The only Photoshop pictures that are posted are of us.

And it's the only place, actually, where people can accuse me in a civil, gentle way of war crimes. I had a post this week about the proper response, whether or not the proper response to ISIS is indeed pretty lights. And it is interesting that even though we complain about the fact that, oh, look, the Eiffel Tower in the Brussels colors, that'll send a message. Even though we were surprised at that, the White House didn't do it, did they? They didn't do what? Light up the White House in the Belgian colors. No, no. They didn't even do that.

Yeah, well, he was at a baseball game. He was tangoing. Oh, tangoing, yeah, one of those. So the piece that I had was saying, you know, does it not strike you guys as odd in that supposedly we're having a war with these guys and we know where they are and they bomb us and our response is essentially nothing. They know there is no penalty to be paid for blowing up our airports. Peter, are you going to take that? No, go right ahead. Peter, are you don't think that we should respond. The response

to what's happening in Europe and what happened in Boston and what happened in San Bernardino isn't really bombing in the Middle East. It's greater, tighter and more efficient surveillance and investigation and unfortunately, really, it is a sort

of a law enforcement problem within the borders of these countries. They just – I mean the tick-tock of the past two weeks, three weeks in Belgium has been astonishing in its utter, utter incompetence. I mean you have the Turkish prime minister saying, this guy here, he's trouble. And somehow that never gets to the people on the ground. And that's why, I mean, I find, I mean, again, I'm not chilling for Ted Cruz, but I find what Ted Cruz said in New York to be exactly right. That the idea that this is going to be solved by American Marines or bombing, I mean, that's a separate issue. That's going to solve a separate problem. But the problem we have here is we're still going to have radical islamic terrorists operating in distributed cells across the world and if we don't have a robust law enforcement capability then you're you're you're sunk no i i think i think that massive

dumb ordinance is part of a robust package of responses but that's just me peter going well there i guess i divide it by think through, I divide it into two problems. One is the problem is ISIS, the actual caliphate, that's what they're calling it. They're calling it a state unto itself that they're constructing in Syria and Iraq. And this is very much on my mind because what was it 10 days ago now, I think the Blue Yeti is still cutting the show it hasn't gone up yet but i did a long interview in washington with retired general jack keen jack keen is one of the architects of the surge he understands the middle east he understands american politics and he understands the pentagon and it is very clear that jack keen is speaking not just for himself but for a a number of officers. They get together, they talk these things over, they think things through.

There are ways of taking on that caliphate that are very limited, that we can easily do. It is a question of will. As Jack Keane put it, the United States of America has more than 2 million people under arms. We're talking about 20 or 30,000 thugs in the Middle East. And unlike Al Qaeda, the caliphate has a return address. We know where they are. And he spent, we discussed it for 35 or 40 minutes. If the next president wants to go after the caliphate, there are ways of doing so. Professional military men and women know how to do it. That's item one. Europe is...

Lost. The word you're looking for is lost. Well, I mean, here we have... I'm kidding. I'm exaggerating, but not... I get the point. I get the point. We have the large fact in Europe, in my judgment, remains that Angela Merkel, the sitting still popular chancellor of the most populist, most powerful, most economically potent country in Europe, let in over a million migrants last year. There's been pushback. Her party has lost a couple of state local elections. With what result? With the result that they're still entering Germany at almost exactly the same rate. They're on pace for another million this year. Most of them are young and most of the young are men. And so the notion that they've only admitted a million, whereas the total population of Germany is 80 million, is not what's important. What's important is that they've admitted something like 20% of their own youngest cohort

already one in five, roughly, of the rising generation of Germans is people from Northern Africa, Syria. We don't know who. We don't know why. It's perfectly incredible. And instead of establishing her own, putting up up instead of making use of her own borders she's gone and cut a deal with turkey as if you can rely on turkey it's just so what i'm saying is you get if you're a young you're some 20 year old who was raised in germany or raised

in france and has now been to syria and received training you look at this and you say to yourself who has the momentum here that's the way young men think. Europe is not looking strong. And that is their problem, not Barack Obama's. And the problem is the Europeans, and so I think the progressives here, keep talking past each other. They keep talking past normalcy. If you assume, let's assume that the people crying Islamophobia are correct. And we're talking about a tiny number of people. It doesn't matter how many people, five people. Nine people took down the World Trade Center with a little bit of support. But let's be honest, it was mostly financial support from Saudis. You don't, I mean, if you destroy ISIS on the

ground in the Middle East, which is a good thing, and something that I think, you I think there are interested parties in the Middle East trying to do or need guidance from an American president to do, you still have a distributed kind of cell, a death cult spread out all over Europe and parts of the United States. And the only way to combat that, the only way to combat that is to treat it the way you would treat any other death cult, any other mafia. You radically, you infiltrate them, you surveil them, you bust them up, you watch them, you swarm them with FBI agents. You don't say, as in Brussels, they said, well, we have 72 law enforcement intelligence groups, and there's some papers here, and I think I find at the bottom of the stack, they'll have a picture of the guy and the brothers and a cable from turkey that said these two brothers are going to blow up an airport yeah we'll get to it you don't say that it's the most important thing to do and my fear about europe and i don't think james i don't think you're wrong my fear is that if they didn't wake up after paris and and Paris. Yes, that's right.

And now Brussels. What's it going to take? A dirty bomb at the Louvre might get their attention, but it will just lead to redoubled efforts to get Julian Lennon over to sing Imagine on a special white piano in Place de la Concorde. Well, my fear about a dirty bomb in the Louvre, James, is that it'll spur up an anti-Muslim backlash. I think so. That would be the problem. That's our real problem. And Rob, you're absolutely correct here. Just let me interject. Oh, sure. Of course. You're right. The mafia is a good example,

but unfortunately, the mafia is a good example like getting rid of the mafia in Sicily. When it's so rooted into the culture, and there's a culture of omerta that says you don't get along with the authorities, you don't tell them anything, you keep your mouth shut. When you translate Sicilian omerta culture into Brussels, it doesn't matter if you have 400 people or 600 or 500 in the country, or in Europe, that matter. It's the support network and the people who acquiesce and go

along with it. Those are the ones perhaps you can turn. Those are the ones perhaps that you have to, but when you have 10, 15% of the population that enables passively or actively, you have a bigger problem than just those cells. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. And also you have a law enforcement structure as you have in Belgium as we've been reading that says, for example, you can't go and arrest somebody extraordinary the amount of human rights that you have. When you start from scratch, listen to everybody, and come up with the largest, most gaseous document you possibly can as your statement of human rights. But I wish there was a document that existed, James, that was concise, that had time tested. I wish there was such a document, and I wish I could study such a document. But I guess I can't.

It's like watching a red carpet rolled out before me so expertly that the last inches of it just almost tap the door but don't. And then the door slid open. And Rob, of course, is talking about Hillsdale. Hillsdale is a wonderful educational institution that you don't have to go there to benefit from. The Constitution, of course, is what Rob means. Why do you need the European documented Declaration of Universal Human Rights, patterned after the U.S. Constitution, narrow and quite workable? But what's in it exactly?

Well, if you're like many Americans, you may not know the true importance of the Constitution, the rights and the liberties that it provides. And that's why Hillsdale has made their Constitution 101 course available to everyone online for free, because every one of these listeners, and that's you, owes it to yourself to learn and study the Constitution. As I said before, can't have free enterprise without freedom. Now, you can sign up for free today, and once you start the course, you'll receive a new lecture every week to watch on demand, along with readings, discussion boards, and more. Nearly a million people have taken the course and given it rave reviews. So, sign up for Constitution 101 for free.

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Bet within 48 hours of race. Main market excluding specials and place bets. Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18 plus gamblingcare.ie At hillsdale.edu slash ricochet. That's hillsdale.edu slash ricochet. Did I say hillsdale.edu slash ricochet? I believe that I did. And it's a school that, you know, you won't be able to see

you went there, but that you learned from it. And everybody remembers the schools that are important to them. Mine, for example, I went to school at a time when they were still naming public schools after American political figures. Ben Franklin was my middle school. By the time I got to high school, it was Fargo North, and there was no Mr. North, just because Fargo Central burnt down and they built North and South. But my first school was McKinley. And I remember being a kid saying, it's cool that we're named after a President McKinley.

Let's learn about President McKinley. What happened to him? That's a very appropriate litany for Good Friday. It sounded like the Apostle. Yeah. Wait, there was no Apostle Rob. That's the problem. You know what?

Let's just swap out. Let's modernize him. It sounds more him. He needs a rewrite. I've always thought that he needed a rewrite. St. Rob isn't going to work to anybody in the business, though. They know him too well. We were talking about President McKinley in the election of 1896, and you've just written a book, The Triumph of William McKinley, Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters.

So all these years later, why does it still matter? Well, political scientists have identified five critical realignment elections, presidential elections in which the politics of America was one way before the election and distinctly different for a durable period of time afterwards. The election of 1800 with Thomas Jefferson and the end of the Federalist era. 1828 with Andrew Jackson and the emergence of the modern political party. 1860, the emergence of the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln. 1932, FDR and the New Deal.

And what's interesting is the other critical realignment election, 1896, we spend more time talking about the guy who lost the election, William Jennings Bryan, and the guy who follows McKinley in office, Theodore Roosevelt, then we do the actual architect, the author of the great realignment of 1896, which ends a broken period of American politics in which no party had dominance and ushers in through his election and subsequent administration, a 36 year period in which the Republicans dominate the political landscape. And, you know, it carries lessons for a political party that wants to take a broken

political system and create a durable governing coalition that changes that politics. Carl, Peter Robinson here. You're exactly right in my judgment that somehow or other, 1896, William McKinley, late 19th century American politics is a kind of black hole even in the knowledge of's a pleasure to read, but B, those of us who know you and consider ourselves writers ourselves are forced to hate you. It's just unfair, unfair. Don't hate me. Hate my editor, man. Hate my editor.

I mean, it comes naturally to you. It requires the editor to make it good for me. It's a wonderful book, and I have to say, page after page, Topeka and McKinley himself, what I what one forgets, particularly in this election cycle, when presidential candidates were genuinely, deeply honorable and admirable figures who were using their political skills for ends in which they deeply believed and that to which they had dedicated their lives but i have to say again and again the period i thought i know nothing about this period so one question i'm going to get right back to mckinley but

the sort of the the president question is why why do you think this is a kind of unknown era in American history? Well, I think it's unknown because the historians who, you know, history is written by the generation that follows. And the generation that followed the Gilded Age were progressive historians who found a lot more to appreciate in people like William Jennings Bryan for ideological reasons than people like William McKinley. And you're right, we lose side of it. But it is a remarkable era. And the scary thing is, is that there are so many parallels to the day. A broken political system for 20 years, 24 years, there literally is a broken political system. Nobody during that period gets a 50%

of the vote. We have two presidents elected with a minority in the popular vote. They lose the popular vote but win the electoral college. We have political gridlock. It is not simply two parties who have different governing views. It is also imbued with the remnants of the Civil War. These people hate each other because they fought each other in a war that killed 600,000 Americans. We have a rapidly changing economy with innovations and disruptions that are causing working people to be concerned about whether there's a future

for them. And we have a changing demography. The country is rapidly transforming. It had been comfortably white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but now the new migrants coming to America starting in the 1870s came from unusual places. They were coming from England. They were not coming from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Germany. They were coming from Ukraine and the Bohemians and the Spanish and the Greeks and the Italians and the Poles and the Belarus. And I mean, this was just causing an enormous concern. You know, was America going to remain America? Carl, you write that McKinley did something that was very unusual for the day. He took on the party bosses. What was a boss at the end of the 19th century?

How did McKinley take them on? And it's probably very important if anybody thinks they know anything about William McKinley, it's that they think they know, as I thought I knew, that Mark Hanna, his political boss, was really, his political boss was actually running McKinley when indeed it was the other way around. So talk about the bosses and the true relationship between McKinley and mark hanna yeah well the bosses i mean there were republican and democratic machines and the republican machines were in the big states and they were literally they were they were political machines funded by patronage and by um you know adroit use of the legislative majorities in the state capitals and And they were led, they called themselves the Combine, and they were led by former Senator Thomas Collier Platt of New York, who was called the easy boss. And he was assisted by probably one of the greatest American tacticians and strategists,

Senator Matthew S. Quay of Pennsylvania, who dominates the Keystone State Republicans. And then one of my particular favorites, the blonde boss, William J. Larimer, a 34-year-old congressman in Chicago, Illinois, who literally is the undisputed boss of the Cook County Republican machine with over 10,000 patronage jobs at his disposal. And the bosses were used to a certain thing. People would run for president. They would not campaign actively.

They would, quote, leave their fate in the hands of friends. And those friends would go around and sort of line up with delegates they could. And they'd show up at the convention and nobody would have a majority. And then they would wheel and deal. And promises would be made about cabinet posts and patronage with the combine men because they controlled their delegations. They had New York, the biggest delegation, Pennsylvania, the second biggest, Illinois was the fourth biggest, Ohio was the third,

and there was no boss really in Ohio. It was too fractious to allow it to be dominated by any one individual. And their friends and allies, particularly in the South, which had a quarter of the delegates to the convention, half allies, particularly in the South, which had a quarter of the delegates to the convention, half the number needed for the nomination, and very few elected Republican officials.

Everybody in the South was desperate for support in the form of a patronage job, to be a port collector, an internal revenue inspector, or a postmaster. And so the combine men would show up at the convention, and because they knew how to make these things happen, they dominated the situation. And they, in essence, pragmatic people. They dictated, you know, weren't driven much by issues, but they wanted to win, and they wanted to be remembered when they were won. So McKinley comes on the scene and decides in July of 1895, Hannah travels to New York, meets with a bunch of the Eastern bosses, and they say, look, it will be for McKinley if we can. And McKinley says, I want to go to the White House on mortgage.

I'm not willing to cut that deal. Instead, I want to run the first modern primary campaign. Our object will be to enter the convention with an absolute majority of the delegates pledged to me, not through boodle and patronage and promises and money, but by recognizing that I care deeply about the future of the country, that I have a vision to make the country prosperous and make our party strong, and that they feel bound to me by personal ties and connections that we will establish in the coming months.

And he does so. Now, he does so not simply because of Mark Hanna. Hanna, you know, Hanna is thought of as sort of this political mastermind. But in reality, particularly in the general election, he makes everything he wants to do is generally turns out to be the wrong thing to do. And it is McKinley who says, let's do these smart things instead. I mean, that's always the case with the consultant class, right? That's what they always say. He's not a consultant.

He's a very successful business guy. Think of him as Don Evans, close friend of George W. Bush, or Terry McCullough, close friend of Bill Clinton. But the real mastermind is McKinley himself, and one of McKinley's great strengths is he has a keen eye for talent, and he actually picks a 30-year-old kid, a kid who turns 31 before the general election, to run his campaign at the Chicago headquarters. And the kid is a masterful political organizer and goes on to great things in the future. But when McKinley first meets him two years before in 1894, he's a 28-year-old frontier lawyer in Lincoln, Nebraska named Charles G. Dawes. Charles. So, Carl, it's Rob Long in New York.

That doesn't sound like such a bad system. You know, I mean, looking at as we're facing this July convention or August convention, you know, part of me, maybe I'm a rhino establishment, you know, GOP, whatever they call me, I am definitely that, right? But I hear that story and I think, better, let's do that. What's wrong with that? Well, look, the idea that you get it at convention and cut deals is not necessarily bad. But no longer do we have the principal currency that those boss politicians used, and that currency was literally patronage and the promise of a seat in the cabinet. So now it's more going to be around ideas and

what is in the best interest of the party. And yeah, that's not a bad thing. And look, we're going to be there unless we do something really radical. For 160 years, the Republican Party has required that a majority is necessary in order to nominate somebody for office. Six times we have nominated, and five times those people have gone on to win the general election. People who entered the convention, they were not leaving when they entered the convention. And we've nominated the vast majority of Republican presidents. Up to 1952, most of the Republican presidents were nominated at convention where they arrived without a majority of the delegates in their camp. McKinley is the first Republican to win

the nomination in an open race for the presidency, a non-incumbent, on the first ballot since Ulysses S. Grant, who's the only other guy before him, to do so. In other words, if the history of the GOP itself teaches us anything, it teaches us this fear not an open convention this July. Is that right? Yes. It will place a special burden on the winner. The winner will have to unite the party. The one thing that this whole process used to do was it used to require people to be cognizant of the different elements of the Republican coalition and to take the rough edges off by their personal activity and by the things they said and did in

the campaign. They could no longer, you know, they couldn't simply say, well, you know, I won, in the immortal words of Barack Obama, and ignore everybody else. They forced them to pay attention to the other elements of the party. Well, let's take a look at who might win. Then Scott Walker has come out and said, you know, it's going to be an open convention. It's probably going to be somebody who's not currently running. And he didn't say who he might have in mind. But do you think that's a likely outcome? Well, that could be an outcome. But interestingly enough, I mean, it depends on what you mean by

not running. Because the only time that we've picked somebody who was not a candidate at the time of the, you know, who didn't participate in the nomination process was in 1880. James A. Garfield, a young congressman from Ohio, ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee, Civil War hero, brilliant mind. He places in nomination John Sherman, the Treasury Secretary, the former senior senator from Ohio. And the frontrunner is Ulysses S. Grant, who has laid out for four years, served two terms, laid out for four years, trying to make a comeback.

For 34 ballots, he has between 303 and 313 delegates. But he has to get to 500 for the nomination. He can't move out of this very narrow range. And so on the 34th ballot, some people said, well, let's, you know, vote for Garfield. He seems like a really bright young coming star. And starting gave a heck of a speech nominating Sherman. And he stands up and says, nobody has a right to vote for me without my permission. I say, forget you. And two ballots later,

he's the nominee of the Republican party. So that, that, that's unusual, but, but, but Scott, maybe Governor Walker may be right. I mean, the convention may turn to somebody who is among the 17 people who sought the nomination. Carl, Peter here. Rob has a question and he's going to ask it, but I just, I'm indulging myself because this is what I really want to do.

Let me read to you a couple of sentences from your book on William McKinley and then ask you to comment. This is a longish quotation, but I love it. This is Carl Rove. The bigger, stronger electoral coalition that McKinley built for his party endured for nearly four decades. The Republican Party was no longer a shrinking and beleaguered political organization composed largely of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Instead, it was a frothy, diverse coalition of owners and workers, longtime Americans and new citizens, lifetime Republicans and fresh converts drawn together by common beliefs and allegiances.

Close quote. That is not just a description of the Republican Party as we open the 20th century. That is a description of what people such as Karl Rove have dedicated their lives to trying to build as we enter the 21st century. Why is it so hard to put that back together again? And who can do it today? Well, it's harder to do because the nature of our society and our politics and our media have changed. One of my Wall Street Journal colleagues wrote a piece, Gordon Krovitz, a couple of weeks ago that reminded me of this brilliant book by Daniel Boorstin, which is one of my favorites,

the image, the growth of the pseudo-events in American politics. And our politics is difficult to create that kind of consensus. It requires a strong, effective leader with a compelling message that resonates in the hearts and the minds of millions of Americans. And we've come close to that. Ronald Reagan came close to that. And yet the forces that pull apart at our political system are powerful.

And maybe we'll continue in this kind of disequilibrium where both parties are butted up right against each other and nobody gets a permanent advantage and the politics is fractious and the government is divided. And good things can come from that, but I don't think politics can last forever in that. and somebody is going to gain the advantage. And my hope is that it's conservatives who offer that optimistic vision that can grab the hearts and souls of Americans. Well, I do too, and this is Rob again, Carl.

I got two questions. One is more of a personal question. Well, actually, the other one is personal too, but you got to answer them both. Does it bug you? That's what you say, Long. That's what you say, Long. Yeah, that's right. No, I thought of my – I was wondering why you didn't push back.

I was kind of like at a little kind of a brain moment there where I thought, my god. I'm still kicking it back with your audacity. This is not the Karl Rove that I know. All right, so since we're – since we stipulated you've got to answer it. What's the – you have been in Republican politics, the nuts and bolts of it, for a long time. You were in the college Republicans. You've seen a lot of races. You've worked hard.

You put a lot of like great – you've helped get a lot of great politicians elected. After 9-11, I can't think of another president that we could have had that would have been better than George W. Bush. So I'm a big fan. Does it bug you now that that is a liability in some places that you're – oh, the establishment. Oh, Karl Rove and his establishment. Is there an establishment part of it, and does it bug you? Yeah, no, it doesn't bug me. It amuses me because most of the time – I love these people.

Most of these people are saying, well, by God, we need to upend the establishment. They're basically people who work for groups in Washington, D.C., and they live inside the Beltway. I live in Texas. They live inside the Beltway, and their salaries are dependent upon fundraising appeals. They say we're the only true Republicans in the crowd. And, um, you know,

we're, we're the people who are, who are really trying to build the party. In reality, they're trying to blow the party up so that they can somehow recreate it. And, uh, you know,

maybe, maybe that'll happen. But, uh, I just think a lot of this is a phony rhetoric designed to, you know, to drive the, to drive the narrow interest of these little fundraising apparatuses. I saw the other day that one of these groups had bought itself a new headquarters in Washington that included a wine cellar. I mean, you know, these people sitting at $50 and $100 are probably sitting there saying, what are we doing if they knew about that kind of stuff? And another one, this woman lectured about how we need to remove the establishment with all its comfortable consultants.

And I looked at the finance reports of her group, and it raises like $12 million and spends nearly 90% of it on the cost of fundraising, pays for a generous salary, and put exactly $140,000 into political campaigns. And I'm thinking, thanks for lecturing me about trying to elect Republicans. Right. Okay. So we stipulate, right? You care about the party. I nominally care about the party. The party seems to be having a nervous breakdown. I don't know how else to put it. We go to the convention. Just say it's Trump versus Hillary, and I'll start. I've got to be honest with you. I am going to have – it's going to be awfully hard for me to vote for that smirking pig, and by that I mean Trump. It's really going to be hard. I probably won't be able to do it.

What about you? Well, I don't know, but I do know this. First of all, lots of weird things could happen. You know, I don't agree with him on most issues. I find his character despicable. At the end of the day, you know, we're going to have to see how he conducts himself. And does he convince us by October that we ought to vote for him? Every candidate has to do that, whether they like it or not. He can't simply say, oh, Republicans unite behind the party unity. Because, look, this guy was for John Kerry in 2004.

This guy, his largest contributions in 2006 were to elect Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House. When she was elected, he took a New York tabloid the next morning and scribbled her a note of congratulations on it. And she was so proud of it, she framed it and hung it in her office. He gave four checks to Hillary Clinton for her 2008 presidential campaign. He recently let it slip that he probably didn't vote for Mitt Romney against Barack Obama in 2012. He's got an exceptionally high bar to jump over to convince people, you know what,

if I'm the Republican nominee, you're obligated as a Republican to support me because that's not been his attitude. Let's be honest. That's not going to happen. If he's the nominee, we're looking at how many states? What kind of a landslide is it going to be? Is it going to be McGovern, Dukakis, Goldwater? I don't know. And the old rules could be tossed out. He's running better in Florida

than I would have thought of. I think they think of him as a hometown boy. He could disassemble part of the Democratic Blue Collar Coalition. But look, there have now been, and I may be off by one or two, I think there have now been 51 national polls matching him against Hillary Clinton since he entered the race in July of last year. Out of those 51, he has led in five, trailed her in two, actually tied her in two, and trailed her in 44. Now, in politics, we call that a pattern. obama and put the country on a on a conservative track then they've been nominated donald trump because the odds are that he's gonna he's gonna be awfully hard for him to change uh that that year's worth nearly a year's worth of polling and put it in a different direction well as i got one last question just just really so is it time for me to freak out and if it's not time

for me to freak out will you please come back and tell us and tell me that it's time for me to freak out? And if it's not time for me to freak out, will you please come back and tell us and tell me that it's time for me to freak out? Long, you have been freaking out as long as I've known you. Every time I open up a new issue of National Review, I've been freaking out, and I enjoy it. Thank you for entertaining me, Long. But yeah, look, I'm in despair. But you know what? Just before, it's always darkest, they say, before the dawn. And I'm hoping to show up in Cleveland and covering it for Fox and the Wall Street Journal and see you long on the floor leading the forces of right and right.

Okay. I'll have one of those big hats on. I don't know what state I'll be from, but it'll be a big hat. There's a quote for the day. It's always darkest before the Donald. Thank you for joining us here. And remember, everybody, the book is The Triumph of William McKinley, Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters. Thanks.

Thank you, Carl. Thanks, Carl. Polls, polls, polls, polls, polls. Donald himself would say the only poll that matters is the one in which the hot girl is dancing. But I pity the people who stopped listening to the podcast. That's a good one. It's always darkest before the Donald and the only pole that matters

is the one around which... I mean, that's two strokes of total genius. About 35 seconds. It's amazing what you can come up with in your mind. It's amazing what you can come up with when you're muted waiting for Rob to shut up. Well, wait a minute. I said one last question.

We've heard that before. I know. We just – I do pity the people who said, oh, Rove, man, establishment. Oh, man, I don't want to listen to the guy who brought us all that defeat and McCain and the rest of it. You know, Rove, how does he sleep at night? Well, I'll tell you how he sleeps at night. He sleeps very, very well. And you know why?

Because he has himself, I'm sure. Five stars. Five stars for that segue. I'm sure he's got a really great bed. He must. He's a smart guy. Anyway, The Great Courses. It's from Hillsdale.

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Well, that was interesting. You know the man loves his subject, and it's fascinating to go back to these, especially to realize these are not the darkest times the republic has ever faced. They just look like it. They just smell like it. But when it comes to corruption – And they walk like it. And they walk like it.

It was bare-knuckled brawling in the past. There's much that we have better. You wonder what their culture would have been like, though, if they'd had the social media that we have. Their papers swung pretty hard. But I'm not sure they would have gone after wives. Do you think so? Well, I mean it got really rough i mean there was there was all sorts of stuff was uh which one mama where's my pa gone to the white house oh that's right that was grover cleveland exactly cleveland the illegitimate kid you go he's a little child they went after um

mary todd l Lincoln pretty hard. But we remember that line, right? It stands out, which suggests perhaps that that was the most egregious example. We don't do that here. We shouldn't and oughtn't go after relatives. They ought to be off target. For example, a lot of people have been criticizing Rush Limbaugh, saying that he gave Trump way too much fuel in the beginning of it. It would be wrong for us to ask for David Limbaugh to account for that, for heaven's sakes. That would just be wrong. David, defend yourself. No, no, no, that's not fair. We love him. David's the author of the New York Times bestselling book,

Jesus on Trial, A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel, which is getting great reviews from people who love it and people who are not necessarily even of the faith find it a sharp and incisive work. And you like to call me the L Rush Bro and welcome him back here to the Ricochet Podcast. Hello. Thank you. How are you? Oh, we're just all sparky today. Why do you think?

You guys are a bunch of center right squishes. Every last one of you. Hey, not just Rob. Not just Rob. Peter's a center-right squish. What? James, you guys are... Just kidding.

Just kidding. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, David, this is Rob here. I am a center-right squish. But I, you know, the right part of me

is for things like free trade and small government and a free market economy in healthcare. Gosh, you're a good guy. Trump must hate you. Yeah, yeah. So that's my question. What are we going to do? Well, I used to think suicide was immoral, but now I've been.

No, no, David, you are not allowed to come on here and spread despair. You are only allowed to come in here and tell us how we're going to get out of this mess. Well, I'm at least happily suicidal. I'll do it in good cheer. I shouldn't joke about that. OK, I'm kidding. But, you know, I really have come to conclude, and this is not at all pertinent to your question, but my answers never are pertinent to any questions. I think the Trump phenomenon might have more to do with protectionism than immigration. I know that's a provocative thing to say, but we've now got class warfare on the right. Who would have ever thought we would see so many people on the right or alt-right, whatever you want to call them, behaving like Obama used to accuse us falsely of behaving in the Tea Party?

Now we're actually seeing this stuff manifest itself. And I always denied there was any semblance of ugliness from the right. And I'm very troubled by that. Hey, okay, so Dave, Peter here. Yes, how are you? We'll get to why Ted Cruz should prevail, on which you've been eloquent on Twitter. But before that, tell us why it's worth listening to you talk about Ted Cruz.

How can he prevail? You have to convince us that it isn worth listening to you talk about Ted Cruz. How can he prevail? You have to convince us that it isn't over yet. Okay. That's job one for Mr. David Limbaugh right now. Go. Yes. Right now, in the remaining primaries, Ted Cruz and his team feel that he has a legitimate path,

a very difficult path now to get 1237, but not impossible, because while he needs an unbelievably high percent of the delegates, he doesn't need to win that kind of majority vote percentage. So you could win maybe 55 percent of the votes and still get a disproportionate number of delegates. So it's not out of the realm of possibility, especially if the narrative changes and Trump keeps stepping in it and he finally becomes accountable, finally becomes accountable. So what we're hoping for, and believe me, when I say we, I mean we in this case. I'm not going to speak for James or Rob. I think Rob has yet to make up his mind. Actually, when I finish talking to you, your job is to convince Rob. And if you can do that, you've clinched Ted Cruz's nomination. We'll win them over before

this podcast is done. So the narrative we want is that Ted Cruz goes to Cleveland in July within about 150 or 200 delegates of Donald True's point one of two and point two of two, we also want the polls to show Ted gaining on Donald or to put it in a more pertinent way, Donald beginning to fade at last. So you get to Cleveland where Ted is close to Cruz, close to Cruz, meaning within a couple of hundred. and it looks as though the Republican Party is shifting over to Ted Cruz most of Trump's delegates he got earlier in the race rather than later that's what we'd like to construct if we could right yeah you you just stole that was going to be the second part of my answer but you said it more eloquently than I could so I'm

just a prop I am just a prop a far-right prop, albeit not a center right prop. Now, listen, you're exactly right. The more likely scenario is, or the second most likely scenario is we could get a plurality ahead of Trump, and he doesn't have 1237 and we don't either. But then the other one is what you said. We've got to get pretty close because if it's overwhelming and they take it from Trump at the convention, there will be hell to pay. But I would submit to you that even if we're within 150 or 200 and the delegates do some swapping, there's nothing illegal about it. It's always happened. It's happened with Lincoln and all that and Eisenhower. If Trump doesn't get it, the entitled Trumpkins

will revolt. And I'm talking serious revolt. I wouldn't be surprised if they took to the streets. Now, I don't mean to be dramatic here, but there's some angst here, and these guys feel like they have a monopoly on the angst, which I believe they've hijacked from legitimate conservatism. Conservatives are the ones who fought this all along. Now they've rode along in with their populist demagoguery and stolen it from us. So you buy the argument that Jonah Goldberg published in the L.A. Times earlier this week and that Ross Dowd that published in the New York Times yesterday, which is it doesn't matter whether he wins or loses.

The Republican Party has already been broken into. It's over. We lose. You buy that? No, that's a bit fatalistic, but I think Joan is on to something. I mean, I think there's some serious – I really believe that the Trump people are acting entitled. They act like this is their time, and if they don't win, they'll go outside of the system to revolt. Now, what that means, I don't know, but they scare me. They really scare me in terms of what – see, they may have 37 percent.

Very intense support. Unbelievable. Way more intense, way deeper than it is wide. And if they don't get their way, I'm not. By the way, I'm not saying that then that we then can't win if Cruz is. I'm not so sure some of them aren't Democrats anyway. I don't think you persuade. Now it's time for you to persuade Rob Long. Well, I rob you persuade you. I just want to ask a question about that, because that's a really, really important point. Rob Long, why Rob should support – And he's got a podcast, and we put a special podcast for us where he's a smart guy. He supports Trump, and we talked for 45 minutes about it. But I think – and even he admits there's a large group of Trump supporters that seem to be behaving, seem to have taken a page and be animated by the culture of victimhood and the politics of victimhood, if you just simply swap out what

David Limbaugh said and take out Trump supporters and put in Black Lives Matter or put in campus radicals, it's all the same, right? We make a lot of noise and people cave. The Republican Party is the president of the University of Missouriouri and the trump supporters are those kids in the quad demanding sometimes crazy things i mean isn't this a problem for the country as a whole that we now have that's how we that's how we get our way we shout people down and stamp our feet i mean that's that's not the way conservatives are supposed to behave. Right, David? That's exactly right. And I will be quick to say, endorse what you just said. There are a lot of smart people that are supporting Trump. And a lot of my friends, one of the people that very smart friend of mine from my law school class is behind Trump. But I see a commonality

among them. And I think it's not authoritarianism, as someone speculated on American Thinker or somewhere else. It's actually the opposite. It's rebelliousness. You look at iconoclastic people, cynical. There's something about the commonality with these people. Now, I agree with them saying we need to take the gloves off. We need to fight fire with fire. That's what we've been saying the whole time. But what I reject is that you have to adopt evil or evil tactics to combat evil. You can combat evil and still keep your principles.

We don't need to burn the house down in order to repair what's wrong with the house, especially when we've got a great – But just to follow up. Yeah. Just to follow up. Before we get to you trying to convince me to love Ted Cruz, before we follow up for a minute, before we go there, don't you think, though – I mean I'm trying to say this in the nicest possible way. There is a racial element or an ethnic pride element, I should say, to a lot of the Trump support. There is that quality to it that it's, hey, where – the kind of people go, where's White History Month? Why don't they teach white studies in school?

And the subtext is – not the subtext, actually. The text is something like, hey, America in 2016 is a system of spoils, and there's a spoils system, and I get mine from the government, and you get yours from the government. And, hey, where's mine from the government? And that's kind of what it feels like for a lot of the Trump supporters. It's like, hey, everyone else has got their nose in the trough. Why not me? Where's mine? And that to me is fundamentally opposite what even rhino squishes like me believe is the future of the country.

I want the country to be less like that. I don't want it to be distributing boons and special favors fairly across the spectrum. I don't want it to be doing that at all. And that seems to me to be a fundamental disconnect. It's one of the reasons why ideologically I can't support Trump. The other reason, of course, is that I think he's a despicable person. So that's that. Explain to me why I'm supposed to like Ted Cruz even though – Wait a minute. I can't let that – what you just said go. Okay, so the racial element. I used to defend the Trumpsters against this charge that it was any at all based in race. In fact, I've resented, I've affirmatively resented the Wall Street Journal editorial page demeaning and slandering those of us who are border hawks as nativists.

I find that lazy thinking, and it's actually immoral, and it's wrong for them to accuse us of wanting to preserve our sovereignty because we're motivated. I agree. accuse us of wanting to preserve our sovereignty because we're motivated but i agree but it's but it is nevertheless interesting to see all the uh the white genocide people uh with the trump things supporting trump there there's that he is attracting that element but what i think it is there are those those slot those jerks that that are that way but in their defense there is not in their defense not in the white genocide defense but in defense of some of the trump people i think it's more an america first thing and not a race racism or ethnicity based thing it's uh we've been dumped

on it's a we're sick of racism from the other side we're sick of being shamed by people who are exploiting race and we we need to be heard from too whether it's whites or whether it's middle class people we all wait we don't have a voice anymore and we're sick of it and we're not going to take it you know that's right that's all true but how but how long can those people wink at the people they know are are bad i mean if you wanted to destroy the reputation of the republican party quite quickly you would have an old white guy in a ponytail punch out sucker punch a black protester and have another guy coming out of a Trump rally said go back to Auschwitz. Yes, James, they're not just winking at it. They're cheering him on. Not not the white genocide people. They're cheering on Trump in his misbehavior. That's what really troubles me. It's not just he could shoot people on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. He could do anything and they'll defend him. If it turns out that some

of these rumors are true about Ted Cruz, which I completely don't believe, then I can't stay with him. They will stay with him no matter what because, by gosh, it's their right to be angry and they're going to take it all the way to the bank. They don't care what happens. It takes an SOB to fight this SOBism we've been dealing with. And that's contrary to everything I've been taught all my life, and I'm not going to abandon it. David, okay, fine, don't abandon it.

But do you realize what's just happened over the last five or six or seven minutes? You, of all people, are doing just what the media is doing. You ended up talking about Trump. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's just it's a perfect example of exactly what's happening in the media. He's irresistible. I don't mean he's attractively irresistible. He's just irresistible as an object to talk about, to put on television.

But let's we've got to overcome that. Convince Rob. Truly, I do want to hear you make the positive case for Ted Cruz, because I know, because I read you on Twitter, I know you believe it deeply. Got to talk about it. Convince Rob. That's your test case. Okay, Rob. I think what ails the country is that we've abandoned America's founding ideals and founding ideas in the Constitution because the Constitution is what institutionally preserves the scheme of limitations on government. And abandoning it in so many ways, whether it's executive usurpations or judicial activism, has caused an erosion of our liberties, which depends on the proper maintenance, the constitutional maintenance of restraints on government. Ted Cruz is uniquely situated, he's uniquely qualified to address those very problems.

I think he would even be better, apart from the personal charisma and wonderful personality of Ronald Reagan, I think Ted Cruz might even be designed for this specifically because he has such intimate knowledge of the regulatory process, administrative law. He knows all about the Constitution. I think he knows how to precisely go in, and he has the determination. He's one guy who has shown that he will do what he says he's going to do. You can talk about other aspects. Well, he exaggerates, or he doesn't have charisma, or he's not likable, but he's always done what he says he's going to do,

and what he says he's going to do is roll back the regulatory state and the tax system and spending and revert to constitutional form. I believe he'll do it, and he can do it, because if he's elected on a clear articulation of a conservative message, he will then have a mandate. It's a big difference, a chief executive acting with the wind at his back with a mandate than a sole senator trying to fight an active popular president. So it's not a proper argument to say, well, he can't do anything, nobody likes him.

If he wins with that kind of mandate, it'll be the clearest mandate we've had in years because he's not going to deviate from his conservative message. And Donald Trump, his solutions are demagogic populism. He has no core ideology. We don't have any idea what he's going to do. He would probably have to do something about the wall because he kept talking about it. But he's even vacillated on his immigration issues. So I think Ted Cruz, in a nutshell, and I've written columns on this,

he's a quintessential conservative, a guy who really believes that conservatism is the proper prescription for what ails us. If he gets elected, he will do it. You have to accept the premise that conservatism is a valid remedy for what ails us. But I don't see how you can deny it. Across the board, Donald Trump won't even address entitlements, which are guaranteed to bankrupt us within 20 years. And he demagogues it as bad as liberals do. Just that issue alone.

I agree, David. I agree. is that if you live in a society where Clodius has just granted the grain dole free to every Roman citizen, does that necessarily mean that the population then starts to turn its eyes to Cato, demanding that we get back to the founding principles of the Republic? Have we been taken down so long from this road that the idea of a constitutional conviction itself is proof of somebody who's out of step with the times and the needs of the country? That's what I worry about. You know, it's a valid question, and what I think, though's what I worry about. You know, it's a valid question.

And what I think, though, is that if you have a guy that's really passionately presenting these ideas in an optimistic way, which is what would happen if you get the nomination and get out of this mud that we're in now and these distractions and present the ideas that a rising tide lifts all boats, that you don't have to be a punitive protectionist in order to create jobs, including manufacturing jobs, that you get the government off our backs and you unleash the power of the private sector and things really happen in an exciting way. You don't have to address it from a viewpoint of constitutionalism, and I don't want to do that. I'm just doing that here to you, to us pseudo-intellectuals here so we can talk about it here.

But the truth is no. You talk about the policies and how they will affect change, positive change. rob again i mean here's my here's my concern okay um uh you know yeah i'm i'm i'm all for cruz because he's he's not trump and i find trump loathsome and unacceptable um but i still go into if we go and we go to the convention and cruz has done really well in the last couple weeks you know last eight weeks and he gets close to that 80 number or 70 number and they're neck and neck or they're really close or they're within shooting distance at the convention, and Cruz walks out with a nomination. He's going to have trouble with women. He's going to have trouble with young people. He's going to have trouble with moderates and independents who didn't turn out for Mitt Romney. He's going to have to get 63, 64 million votes. I'm not hopeful that he's going to win. But again, and your argument has not been that he's going to win. It's been that he's a principled conservative. I didn't know that that was the area that you were

Yeah, well, that's what I – I changed the terms, David. I changed the terms. Do you notice that? But look, I mean I agree with you about a principled constitutional conservative. I love all that stuff. I'm not sure that Ted Cruz is the vessel, but I think that I'm not that unusual in these political circles to think, well, he wasn't my candidate to start, but he's my candidate now. I'm not sure that's the best way to go to a general, but what else do we got? Yeah, we'll take what we can get. But I don't think that he's unelectable, especially against Hillary. I've never, I've seen, conservatism has never even been tested in the general election since Reagan.

We don't really present it like we believe it. Bush apologized for it from the jump, talking about compassionate conservative. We're always apologizing because we're not as compassionate when, in fact, our policies are more compassionate because they help the most people. And the idea that we can't garner a majority of the people I think is wrong. The liberals never moderate. They never dilute their message. We know for a fact if we continue to dilute our message, we won't win. We've at least tried that, and it fails. With Romney and McCain, you've got to at least give us a chance to try to present our ideas unadulterated.

And I'm telling you, these are positive ideas. They always work. So give the American people some hope. I don't think that everybody in the dependency cycle wants to be there. I think they want hope. If they're not so far in that they're addicted, I think they want a way out. And I think we conservatives represent using the government to some extent as a safety net, but more of a trampoline than a hammock, as Ted Cruz says.

And I like that metaphor. Well, once again, we've tried to get some interesting radio out of Dave Limbaugh, but he's Mr. Low Energy again. Sad. So we're going to have to let you go. And next time, a couple cups of coffee, okay? You guys are just off balance

because I accused the rock-ribbed conservative Peter of being a squid. Oh, I know. That was rough. You came in swinging. There you go. That was rough. You came in swinging. There you go. That was Trumpian psyops right there. You come in, you startle. Yeah, okay.

Well, thank you guys for allowing me to rant. You know, can't help it. That was a good rant. By the way, I apologize. I know all Trump people aren't this way, and they're sick of it. I'm just saying it's a false choice. You guys don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I just wanted to get one cliche in before I finish. You don't. No, you're right. You're right. I think that's, that's, uh, you're

absolutely right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. You guys have a good summer. Have a good autumn. Sign my yearbook. Never say the same. Talk to you way before then. Did anybody actually, anybody ever, did anybody ever throw out the baby with the bathwater? I mean, you really got to be not paying attention. I washed a few babies in my time, and sometimes there were these little small plastic containers, and I just don't ever remember picking up the entire thing, feeling the weight of the water and the child, and heaving it out the window thinking, was that the right thing to do or was it an intermediary step that I should have thought of? There always is an intermediary. Yes?

Trump supporters eschew, if that's how I pronounce it, philosophical issues, so please cut that out. They don't talk... They want results, damn it! We just want to fix this! We're businessmen, we want to... Just shut up! Well, David, sometimes... David, sometimes

it is possible to fix these paradigms from within. For example, if you want a better shave, that doesn't mean that you go to some place and have all your whiskers plucked out one by one so they never grow back. No, you find a better, cheaper, more effective way to get a good shave, and that's what Harry's is all about. Poor David. He set it up. Now he's got to stick around for the whole thing. That was good. Go ahead yeah but it's true and and david i don't know if you've heard the story about harry's have you no harry's like well it's like this harry's.com was started by a couple of guys who were passionate about creating a better shaving experience because all of us who've ever

scraped the razor blade across their face end up with nicks and cuts and bleeding you get out the styptic pencil and you think who, who were the styps? Were they like the Copts and Christian sect in Egypt? I don't know. So you don't want to bleed. You don't want to paint a lot. You want a good shave, and that's why Harry's.com exists, to deliver a superior shave to you.

Now, they bought a whole blade factory in Germany and crafting some of the world's highest quality blades. For all I know, they were used in dueling in the Bismarck years, but they're great blades now for shaving your face, and by cutting out the middle end, they can do you a favor. No drugstore brands. Prices. Ship the blades right to your house at factory-directed prices, and the starter kit's just $15.

That includes, what does it include, Dave? You know? No, you don't. Okay, well, I'm here to tell you. Includes the razor, three blades, and your choice, your choice, David Limbaugh or anybody else, of Harry's Shave Cream or Foaming Shave Gel. Each has a wonderful scent, and they have great emollient effect on your skin.

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That's H-A-R-R-Y-S.com coupon code RICOSHET. Check out for $5 off and start shaving smarter today. David, we release you. Thank you, sir. Happy Friday, David. Happy Easter, David. You too, you guys. Thank you.

Take care. Speaking of when you mentioned Easter, this is a bit of trivia. Or I don't know. Trivia is the wrong word. Peter, you know what today is? Good Friday, March 25th. It's March 25th. It's March 25th, and I don't know what you Catholics celebrate, but March 25th in the Episcopal tradition, you usually celebrate the Annunciation. Really?

Yeah, so now it's the Annunciation. So now it's a very rare thing when the Annunciation and the Passion happen on the same day. And John Donne wrote a wonderful poem about it, Upon the Annunciation of Passion Falling Upon One Day, I think is what it's called. Just thought I'd throw in a little – I feel like I'm carrying the faith-based initiative here of the Ricochet podcast. You astound me, Rob. I just thought I'd let you know. I don't think this is going to happen again for 80 years or 90 years or something. Wow.

Okay, we'll have to put a link to that on Ricochet. John Dunn is magnificent. Yeah, yeah, pretty good. Pretty good stuff. Well, I want to leave you with this, guys, before we head out here. Here's a quote that I found interesting because it's a reminder that while we tear ourselves up over our candidates that untrammeled and unstopped on the left rolls on intellectual developments like this. President Barack Obama at a town hall event in Buenos Aires. He said, so often in the past there's been a sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist.

And especially in America, that's been a big debate, right? Oh, you know, you're a capitalist Yankee dog. And, oh, you know, you're some crazy communist, you know, that's going to take away everyone's property. And, I mean, those are interesting intellectual arguments. But I think for your generation, you should be practical and choose from what works. Interesting, interesting intellectual arguments. Yeah. I'm a little out of breath because I had to run downstairs to get the dog out,

and I have a cold, but interesting intellect. Yeah, I was going to say that you're a little winded for the acid I knew you wanted to put into that. I would only counter that ridiculous can't. Can't, that's what you call it, right? Can't, right? Yes, yes, yes, of course. I would counter that by recommending to people who are members of Ricochet or not that they join and go to read Cal Girl, put a post called Not an Existential Threat, which was – it spawned a very interesting conversation about whether ISIS is an – what an existential threat really means. President Obama says, hey, it's not an existential threat. And Cal Girl said, well, yeah, well, tell that to the dead people in Brussels and Paris and San Bernardino.

The conversation is really good. And Hercules Rockefeller, another interesting conversation called assimilation and integration about Muslims in the UK and Muslims in the US. Both of these conversations are about topics that always end up getting incendiary and often turn nasty when they're done in a forum that is not like Ricochet and not based on civility. So, again, if you are sickened by the national discourse as I am, vote no, dissent from it by voting yes and becoming a Ricochet member. There you have it. The recipe for happiness in 2016, no matter how things turn out.

A community to which you can turn. There are others, of course, as well, which is why we wish Good Friday to everyone. We thank you for listening to this, the Ricochet Podcast. Our guests, Karl Rove and 2DavidLimbaugh. Rob, Peter, good weekend to you. We'll see you next week. It's fun to be back.

We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 2.0. Next week. next week next week baby let's cruise away from here don't be confused the way

is clear and if you want it you got it forever this is not a one night stand baby so let the music take

your mind just release and you will find You're gonna fly away Glad you're going my way I love it

when we're cruising together The music is played for love Cruising is made for love. Cruisin' is made for love. I'm lovin' when we're cruisin' together. Baby, tonight belongs to us. Everything's right Do what you must

And inch by inch we get closer and closer To every little part of each other Ooh baby part of each other ooh baby let the music take your mind just release and you will find you're gonna fly away pleasure going my way

I love it when we're cruising together. Music is played for love. Cruising is made for love. I love it when we're cruising together. Cruise with me, baby. Ricochet. Join the conversation. Oh, baby.