The Ricochet Podcast - See Cruz

Episode Date: June 5, 2014

Is Bowe Bergdahl a deserter, a hero, or something in between? That’s the primary question on this week’s show, both for the hosts, and for our guest, Senator Ted Cruz. The Senator also weighs in on whether or not the Democrats have abandoned the Bill of Rights (read his WSJ Op-Ed piece here), why Harry Reid is the President’s best friend, and how to stop the EPA’s war on coal. Also... Source

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Well, I'm not a crook. I'll never tell a lie. But I am not a bully. I'm the king of the world! I'm the king of the world! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Rob Long. I'm James Lilacs, and you may ask yourself,

hmm, why exactly has the left decided to give up on the Bill of Rights? Good question. Let's ask Ted Cruz, and let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, this is the Ricochet Podcast, and we're proud to say it's brought to you by Audible.com. That's the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, fiction, nonfiction, periodicals. For a free audiobook, you know you want one. Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and sign up. We'll be having our own little picks a little later in the show, but first we have to have Rob to come by to rattle the tin cup and tell you why you ought to join this thang.

That's exactly right, the thang. Here's what I said last week, and I think it was effective in some ways. If you're listening to this podcast and you're a member of Ricochet, we thank you and we are pleased to have you as a member and we're happy to have you join us on the pages of Ricochet and here in the podcast. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a member of Ricochet, here's what you need to know. We don't need that many members of Ricochet to make this thing actually work financially. We have probably across all our podcasts, hundreds of thousands of listeners. We have considerably fewer members. If everyone listening to this podcast today,

especially because we've got a really great guest and we want to get right to him, is thankful enough and thinks this is important enough and interesting enough to sustain. Just become a member. There are three levels. You can become a fancy member, Reagan member, a Thatcher member, or a Calvin Coolidge member. You can become any member you like. But join the community here.

It's going to get more interesting and more impressive and more involving and more fun and a lot more influential as the time goes on. Spoken like a true conservative. Actually, Rob, gender may be fixed, but your identity at Ricochet is fluid. And if you want to change it, you can just spend some more money. What's the name of our latest Reagan member? I don't know. I do. The name of our latest Reagan member is Captain Spalding.

Oh, wait. Captain Spalding. Hooray for Captain Spalding. Oh, wait. Captain Spalding. Hooray for Captain Spalding. Hooray for Captain Spalding. I'll even stay forever, but I must be going. We'll get going on Groucho in a moment. But congratulations to Captain Spalding, our newest Reagan member. Captain Spalding, like all Reagan members, I don't know how well known this is because as usual, we've been doing our usual – our rather relaxed job of promoting. Captain Spalding will receive a book called How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, which is my memoir of what it was like to be a young speechwriter in the Reagan White House. Published a decade ago now, but it's still around, and I am willing to say still worth reading. I will sign it for Captain Spalding as I will sign it for you when you join Ricochet as a Reagan member.

Well, gentlemen, we know what we have to do now, and that's gin up some full outrage over the latest right-wing noise machine propaganda effort of Fox News. And that is we're here to vilify an honorable serviceman and pretty much trash his reputation, swift-boat him as best as we can because we hate the president we're very very fearful that this reflects well upon the obama oh i thought you were talking about the guys who didn't like him there's gonna be plenty of swift boating of them too by the way uh yes well there's no doubt great amounts of oppo research being done right this moment to to to tell us that these people are not to be trusted. I'll throw it open on the floor here. Peter, what do you think is going on? Your take, the whole Ben Gazi doll, you know, that guy. I was afraid at first that it might be a little bit of a right-wing pushback.

So I read up, I've Googled around, and I've read as much as I could statements by people who served in his unit. And as far as I can tell, every one of those statements is unanimous. He walked away. He was a deserter. And the unit, from that point forward until the end of its time in Afghanistan, was given new directions that involved trying to find Bergdahl. That wasn't their entire mission, but that became part of their mission. And they lost soldiers during the remainder of the mission.

So it is at least plausible. You can't say for certain what would have happened, what might have happened. But people died looking for that guy. That just, as best I can tell, those are the bare facts of the case. And Susan Rice, the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, went on the Sunday talk shows

and said that he served, this is quote, he served with honor and distinction. Close quote. Either she had no idea what she was talking about. And this isn't even a question of whether she was up on the latest intel. This is just reading the file on the case.

Or she was intentionally misleading the people. In either case, that Obama would present this as a great moment, that he would have the press in, a Rose Garden event, the parents there, that he would trot Susan Rice out to take credit for it. Hagel himself gave some remarks, the defense secretary Hagel. They all felt this was a wonderful thing, which I think proves that they really have no idea. They don't understand the underlying values of duty, honor, country, to quote General MacArthur's great speech at West Point, that animate the armed forces of the United States and that still animate a large portion of the ordinary American public. Look at the large portion of Democrats. Look, this thing is blowing up.

The weird thing about this is it's blowing up in such a bizarre and for them unpredictable way because I often have this problem when I argue with conservatives in that if you're in a bubble, in a media bubble, you tend to forget that the other side has ammunition too. And when I argue with people sometimes on Ricochet or just on our side, I often feel like, well, wait a minute. I often have to remind people that Obama won the election because they act as if he didn't really. And there's that kind of thing when we're sort of normal and you go about your day to day life and you're on Ricochet and you're talking and you're arguing with people who are sort of like-minded and that's normal. But I feel like that's happened in this administration,

that there are no people in that administration left who say, well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's going to be – what are we doing? I mean we traditionally call them grownups, but really they're people who have at least one foot outside of the bubble and recognize that every single thing you do is going to be scrutinized even by a lick, spittle, press. That's what's amazing about this guy. This guy is at, what, 40-something percent approval even with his lickspittle press. Imagine if we had an actual unbiased press in this country. I mean he'd be at 20 percent.

But that to me – it is one thing in economic policy I think to have this sort of – or tax policy or even Obamacare. I mean what I love is the Obamacare. He wants to release all the prisoners from Gitmo because he made that campaign promise to do so. The campaign promise that you can keep your healthcare plan if you like it. Forget about that. That's just for ordinary taxpaying Americans. But as far as his promise to sort of terrorists and incarcerated Gitmo, Those guys we're going to live up to. We live up to our obligations for. This administration is bananas.

It's bananas. Bananas. And every word you just said would have been perfectly valid this week even before the Bergdahl news broke. Do you remember? I mean this was I guess in Monday or Tuesday's newspaper. Again, it was before the Bergdahl had already come home. That was announced over the weekend.

But we began to find out what he was really like, what he was really up to. That was breaking midweek. But Monday, Tuesday, we got the news that the EPA had simply in effect legislated, and I use that word intentionally. They made law. It wasn't regulatory in nature. It was so fundamental that it was a lawmaking without Congress involved. They're going to, they announced that emissions from coal factories would have to be cut very drastically over a period of years, not years and years and years, but as I recall, just single

digit years or a decade, something in that nature. This is with Democrats fighting for their political lives in Louisiana and Arkansas and North Carolina in Senate races. There are three incumbents there. Those folks don't want to hear about coal emissions. Furthermore, there is a Democrat fighting against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, the coal state of coal states, who everyone agrees actually has a chance of defeating the man. There is a Democrat running for the Senate in West Virginia. If there's any state that's more coal than Kentucky, it's West Virginia. All of this based on deeply questionable global warming science, but even if you accept the global warming science, these people are simply acting on ideology without regard to their own people.

It is, to quote Rob Long, bananas. Well, yes, Peter, but what I'm taking away from you, of course, is that you believe that our soldiers should be left behind and that you don't care about the fate of the earth. Luckily for all of us, we have an administration that is willing to buck their own political party and go against the currents of popular opinion and do the right thing. You can't fundally transform an omelet without

giving eggs away to Nazis. I don't know where I'm going with that one. Point being that if you only have a couple of years left before you're out of power, you'd best get cracking. And if you're going to empty Guantanamo Bay because the very existence of it is a stain on the moral scutcheon of America,

then what better way to do it than to start shipping out the Taliban now like this and then at the end of it, and what better way to make sure that electricity prices are so high than to get your EPA regs in there now before anybody else can change them.

And if the ultimate goal on the way out the door is to say, now that Guantanamo is empty, we are giving back to the Castros that little sliver of Cuba as a gesture of goodwill to soften them up, well, then you'd best get cracking. If all of this stuff is predicated on the need to talk to our enemies, to talk to Iran, to talk to the Taliban or whatever moderate element we find in there, then the clock's running down. I'm with Rob. It's bananas because they're looking

for moderate people. They're looking for a moderate, reasonable world that simply doesn't exist. But it's even bananas on a political scale, a political calculation scale. That's what I find so strange is that there's it's crazy on the face of it. Even if – assuming you want the same things he wants, I would never give him this advice.

It's not necessary to make a bold and loud exchange for – let's be honest, kind of a low-value American prisoner. I agree with the humanitarian need to see if there's some way we can get him back, but there's a price for everything, and five psychopaths is not the price. I even agree with the idea that, okay, well,

maybe there's a reason to get one of those five psychopaths back in Qatar. I don't know. Maybe there is. Who knows? But there's got to be a way to do it that has a little bit more a little bit more sophistication to it these guys are supposed to be smart and instead it's amateur land now it's what i love that ricochet is that if you go to ricochet you can john you are a ricochet zone john you who knows a lot about this kind of thing um writes uh brilliantly about the the topic of was the berdahl deal legal? And Ricochet member Jason Rudert argues, and I think he does a pretty good job of presenting the other side, that Obama made the least bad choice. And I think that's kind of interesting to read both of those things together and interesting for Jason holding his own in the comments.

I think he's – right now, I'm not sure he's, he's anything more than a constituency of one, but I admire the fact he did it. And you can read Dave Carter also on Ricochet. Dave Carter, who of course had a 20 year career in the air force and understands the ethic of the armed forces of the United States. And Dave wrote a beautiful piece that appeared yesterday on the Bergdahl affair.

Again, simply looking at this from the point of view of the values of the armed forces, three really interesting, fascinating, important pieces. John Yoo, a constitutional lawyer. What the president did is very likely illegal. Jason Ruddart sticking up for Obama and Dave Carter saying, wait a minute, this is the way it looks to people in uniform. Great.

Great. All on Ricochet. Yeah, there's something else here, too. There's a cultural shift that has taken place in that you now, when you learn that the guy who's standing next to the president in the Rose Garden, this heartwarming ceremony, actually tweets out things like, God will avenge all of the innocent Afghan children. When you realize that, you're not surprised at all. As a matter of fact, you expect that nowadays.

You expect that is precisely the kind of guy who's going to be standing next to the president and that he will speak Arabic on – at the podium for the world because the very – I mean it's like in 1944, we're finding out that the father of some hero sent a telegram to Gervais saying Wotan will avenge all of the dead from dresden or something like that but you expect that nowadays you're actually surprised when somebody standing next to the president is is what's the word i'm looking for a patriot and someone any proud member of western civ but you know i you were surprised that he did that i guess i was surprised that people outside i mean i was surprised that they would put him in the rose garden in a rose garden ceremony but the problem is that they seem surprised by it too. It's like nobody in that administration does their homework. They're all the kids who kind of like glibly made their way.

There are no – this wonkish reputation that administration has is crazy. There are no wonks there. They do not do the reading. They are not smart. We could rewrite the script. We could do it right now in 30 seconds. In fact, let's go ahead and do it. When it comes to seeking fertility treatment, time can be of the essence.

At Beacon Care Fertility, we are proud to offer prompt access to affordable fertility care. With over 60,000 babies born across our fertility clinic network, we have both the science and the expertise to deliver. We offer convenient payment plans and are partnered with VHI and LEIA. Beacon Care Fertility, where science meets life. Susan Reister goes on the Sunday shows and she does not say he served with honor and distinction. She says this was a complicated case. But we decided that in the end, the principle that the United States does not leave people behind was more important than many other complicated considerations. And we did what we did to uphold the morale and honor of the armed forces of the United States. Everybody would have said, got it.

And the targets we released, we are monitoring those targets, the detainees. We are monitoring them, all that stuff. They are not good people. We are not happy that they were released. And we are not naive about it and we are – and believe me, this is part of a larger strategy to maintain the security of the United States. Exactly. Now, I would just – you and I would disagree and fulminate, but to me the problem is those guys, if they give it any thought at all, if they ever think to themselves that maybe they're wrong or maybe this is going to go south on them, they instantly – I can see it in the room. You can hear it.

They instantly say, well, those idiot Republicans. They're so stupid. They instantly devolve into these kind of internet political arguments, which you see on Twitter all the time, which are fine if you're a civilian and you're kind of going to get your burger and you want to spend a little lunch hour tweeting argument back and forth. But if you're in the White House, you're in the executive branch of the United States government. You're supposed to be smarter. Their inability to presume what the other side not only is going to use as a political argument, but what the other side actually thinks about this. They don't know what we actually think. When I see some tweets from Chris Hayes or I was watching Van Jones the other day on TV, he was talking about – Why are you doing that, James. Because somebody was playing a clip of what he said to illustrate a point, which was that the pushback from the left, the pushback from the Democrats was that the Republicans don't like servicemen,

only want to assist their needs. The Republicans are criticizing this guy for no reason whatsoever. That means that the person, Van Jones, Hayes, the rest of them making these points are either stupid or they're liars. They're either stupid because they don't know exactly what the other side thinks, or they do know

what they think, and they choose to twist it for part, which means that they're a liar. They can't possibly conceive that any decent person of moderate to slightly above average intellect could ever disagree with them on anything. And that to me is so – I get it if you're like a normal person. We all fall into that. James, you and I fall into that with our liberal – I know we do. That's OK because we're normal. That's not our job. But if you're in the administration, any administration, you've got to be more shrewd or listen i mean or competent shrewd shrewd may be too much to ask even for these people but simple competence there are 100 members of the united states senate yes 54 of them are on your

forget about the republicans there are 54 in other words to brief the democrats in the united states senate to warn them of what's going to take place, you can do that by going door to door. You're the president of the United States. You have a congressional liaison staff, Dianne Feinstein, who is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal but a patriot. And she chairs the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. And she came right out and said, wait a minute. We were not briefed. He did not tell us that this was going to take place.

Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, and by the way, keep your eyes on Joe Manchin because if after November the Senate is 50-50, Joe Manchin, particularly now, he could flip. He could become a Republican. He comes out of a briefing. He's captured on television. He is obviously angry. Quote, Senator Manchin of West Virginia, I think we can all agree we're not dealing with a war hero here. Close quote. That man did not receive a phone call.

Dianne Feinstein did not receive a phone call. It's unbelievable. Worse, Peter, when Dianne Feinstein was canvassed on this a couple years ago, the idea of taking these five and trading them for something, she was against it. So she's against both sides of this trade. She's against getting the guy back and she's against giving to those guys. She said when they did brief us – or when they did ask us about this, and this again goes back many months, opinion was unanimous.

We were all against it. Just unbelievable. Hey, I know we got a great guest coming up. But I suspect that I'd like to talk about the primaries a little bit. Maybe we can talk about it with our guest. And I would like to turn – before we do that, I'd like to turn the microphone over to James Lilacs to tell us all about our great sponsor, Audible.com. What the hell was that? What in God's name was that? I too am gobsmacked, James.

How can you ask an artist to paint if you deprive him of his canvas? Start your segue, James. Start to pretend he didn't say that. Yeah. canvas start your segue james start just pretend he didn't say that uh yeah uh no it's impossible whatsoever um but rob's right uh because without audible.com without sponsors a lot of people like them what would we do we would sit here and feel as though i don't know the enterprise didn't have the wind of somebody's trust behind it when When you get Amazon and Audible behind you saying, we want to be part of your product, we want to, I mean, that's a vote of confidence that the administration would love to have, shall we say. And you can help them too by going to audible.com, audiblepodcast.com slash

Ricochet, actually. And that is key because when you go there, that's when they know that you're coming from Ricochet. And all the little numbers towed up and they say, hmm, this is a going concern. So audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and you can find hundreds of thousands of things to read and you get a 30-day trial to start any book. Now, I was just sort of looking around for things that I'd never heard before, typing in random names, seeing if they're actually authors. Because it occurred to me, if there's anybody this week who's probably a little peeved at the news, it's John Walker Lind. If he just waited a little bit more, he would have traded the blind shake for him to get

him back. But as I was typing in John Walker, it turns out that there's actually a novelist named John Walker. And it actually turns out that he writes mystery novels, and it's a series. I can't vouch for them at all, except that people say they're four and a half, five-star books. I just love this Pracys. Life was simple for private detective Tom Stafford. Sure, being the keeper, the first, last, and only line of defense between gods and mortals, could make for interesting times, but a mundane existence in southwest Virginia kept things on the boring side of life. And then, of course, the gates of hell open and he's got to stop something. So he's a detective and he's a demon slayer.

And there's all kinds of books and they're all just innumerable. Once you dip into Audible's extraordinary, debtless Marianas trench of stuff, you never come out. And that's fine with you because you'll have all of these books you can sing from place to place to place via whisper sync and never lose track of what you're reading. So go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet and pick up your 30-day trial. Now, guys, you got some books yourself you'd like to note?

Summer book, Those Who Wish Me Dead. I cannot vouch for the rest of the book, but the first chapter has me hooked. I was just casting about the other day thinking to myself, summer's here. What's a good, quick novel? The first chapter, there's a kid swimming in a quarry and bad things start to happen. Those Who Wish Me Dead. I'm not sure I can even pronounce the author's last name, although I'm sure we'll all know him soon. Michael Corita, I believe is how it's pronounced. It's on Audible. And by the way, I interviewed Steve Wynn, the casino mogul in Las Vegas who turns out to be a fascinating man. And afterwards, we were chatting.

He has vision trouble. And he listens to all his books on tape and started talking about book after book after book to which he had listened. Another Audible user, Steve Wynn, of all people. They're in Las Vegas. While Rob is out on the floor throwing craps, Steve Wynn is in the gym listening to books. Well, that's great. We recommend that. And again, if you go to Audible,

you will find probably an entire genre of literature devoted to quarry trouble. Swim and hold trouble. I mean, it's endless what you can find. So go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Are you tired of me saying it? I'm never going to shut up because we love them to be our sponsors,

and you should go there and get your stuff. You know, the idea of a casino mogul being poor of vision is a horrifying concept. I know Mr. Wynn has excellent taste, but imagine somebody who has very gaudy and poor taste and walking around and saying, you know, the colors aren't bright enough. It's not saturated enough. There's not enough gold here.

It's too dim. I haven't been to Vegas in years, and you guys just, however, I imagine you came back, broke, exhausted, and full of all sorts of debauchery. Tell me a little bit more about Mr. Wynn because he is an interesting fellow. You know, so my – you're right, of course. There is color everywhere. There's music.

You walk in and as you check in, there's a kind of atrium filled with palm trees and sculpture, all of which is entirely made out of flowers. There's a merry-go-round in which every horse – I mean horse-sized horses, life-sized horses. So it is – everything is over the top. But you know what? It's fun. It's fun. It's just a kind of Disneyland for grownups. Particularly, I don't gamble because I don't know what I'm doing. But I can tell you that the Blue Yeti, there was a happy gambler and an unhappy gambler

in our crowd because the Blue Yeti lost a hundred bucks at the craps table in two throws of the dice and Rob Long played on and on and on. And at the end of it all, he was down what? What were you down? Not much. But I made more, you know, what you want to do is you want to make a lot of money on your own role, right? You want to have some skin in the game as they say. That's I think actually where it comes from, skin in the game. So that's kind of fun. That's the only game I play there because it's the only game with any odds that are useful to the player. And also, it's fun.

I mean you're there. It's kind of – it's a community thing. It's got some theater to it. You feel like you're part of a big team. Everybody's playing together. Standing next to Rob Long at the craps table. I've never played craps. I didn't understand the game.

But it's wonderful because if you stand next to a Yale English major during craps, you get this, Peter, watch this. It's the pageantry of the game. Look at the combination of colors. Sense the excitement. It's just – You high-five the guy – the roller, right? Exactly. Exactly.

It's like crit lit at the craps table. We're waiting to be joined by our guest. But while we – before we do – because I know he's got some things he wants to talk about. We have some things we want to ask about. And the thing about Senator Cruz is that he speaks in complete and full sentences. So he's a real talker. So a very eloquent guy. So we may not get to all this stuff this week.

And so while I got you, Peter. Yes. Tuesday night, primary night across the country, a couple of interesting things happened. In California, two interesting things happened. One is the guy I thought wasn't going to win the GOP was not going to go ahead to run in November against the GOP – against Jerry Brown. One, Neil Kashkari. Who is like – By the way, I agreed with you.

I agreed with you. I thought Tim Donnelly would win, right? Yeah. But Kashkari won and that may be a good thing for the Republican Party in California, which needs a slightly bluer Republican to win back that state. And then the most bizarre thing happened in the 33rd district here where I live – or I mean – yeah, where I live. Henry Waxman, who was the reigning congressman for 675 years, retired and it was a kind of wide-open race. And Marianne Williamson, the kind of crackpot new agey Democrat, she ran. Matt Miller, who's kind of a moderate-ish liberal Clintonian who's a friend of mine who does a show on KCRW like me, he came in fourth. Elan Carr, the Republican, in a very tight race at the top, seemed to be on top.

So it's one of those runoff kind of elections. So there'll be a runoff in November. The top two finishers, and this is the new California primary system, the top two finishers, regardless of their party, advance to the final. So one of them is a Republican. That's crazy. That's astounding.

I'm a little bit frightened that one of them is a Republican because there were so many Democratic candidates. What was it? There were 16 names on that? The rest are Democrats, right. So it doesn't look good, but it doesn't look bad. No, but between now and November, we can dream. Exactly right.

No, it's a promising – it's at least a story for the next two weeks of how did a Republican – how did a Republican galvanize that many Republican votes in the 33rd? That's a strange thing. And then of course we had the Mississippi – I don't know. We call it Mississippi runoff, Mississippi tie. Senator Thad Cochran running against – I forget his first name, McDaniel. And that was super tight. It came down to fewer than 2,000 votes out of what, 300,000 or so cast. Each man came – as I recall, Senator Cochran got 48.9, 48 point some high digit.

And McDaniel, the challenger, got 49 point something. Neither man broke the 50 percent mark, which means that under Mississippi rules, there must be a runoff election. That takes place I believe on June 24th. In any event, later this month and it is bad news for senator cochran of as i read the race the momentum now is on the side of the challenger the senator if the senator can't simply kind of win by an act of majesty because people defer to him because he's been in office thadran, it's hard to remember this. Thad Cochran, back four decades ago, was part of this group of young Turks in Mississippi who took on the calcified democratic establishment. And he was part, he was the kind of, he was the revolution. Haley Barber was part

of that. He served three terms in the United States House. That's six years. He has already served. He is now in his sixth term in the United States Senate. That means that it will be 42 years. He's now 76 years old. It seems to me that people in Mississippi just said, Senator, that's enough. That's enough. But he also signaled earlier that he wasn't going to run. He was going to retire. Exactly. I think when you do that to the voters, they're like, well, then you've kind of checked out. So they already made their choice. I mean, frankly, the smart thing for Senator Cochran you do that to the voters, they're like, well, then you've kind of checked out. So they already made their choice.

I mean frankly the smart thing for Senator Cochran to do is to drop out. I couldn't agree more. In fact, I was half expecting a gracious concession speech. I asked the people of Mississippi have spoken and I would ask them to vote. Let's just get this done and let's all close rank. But it was a bitter race, I think. It got nasty. Everybody can do math. Yeah, I think it got a little ugly.

But everybody can do math. Everybody's 76 now. 82 at the end of this? Yeah. It doesn't seem like it's going to. But on the other hand, the you don't want to read too much of the tea leaves, but the tea leaves seem to point

to a major national wave in November. People who do not usually give Republicans a second chance, a second look, are giving them a second look. And people – and Republicans themselves are enthusiastic about turning out and they are making really strategic choices about who's representing them and who's going to run in November for them. To me, that's good news. Let's look at California.

I hear from talk radio, which of course is a very imperfect sample, that a lot of people are angry that Kashgari got it because he's not red enough. I don't know. It's California. You're not going to get a guy who's going to please everybody.

You want somebody who's the most electable candidate. Exactly. Is there a chance, you guys, in California, that actually there could be enough people looking around and saying, hmm, Jerry Brown, the train, losing Toyota? Maybe. Maybe if nobody's watching. That's a very easy question and the answer is no.

The answer is no. Neil Kashkari is a Goldman Sachs guy. He has a ton of loot of his own. He put $2 million of his own into the campaign. He's a social moderate or liberal. He's a rob guy. But on finances and on the budget, he's as hardcore as he can be.

He is running as an act of, as he sees it, and I see it this way too, just as an act of service to the state of California to begin to shape the Republican Party, to show that the Republican Party is up and kicking, to rebuild it with the hope

perhaps of picking up a few seats in the Assembly and a few seats in the Senate. Democrats now hold two-thirds in each chamber, which makes those chambers veto-proof. Excuse me, that's the wrong way to put it. You need two-thirds of each chamber to raise taxes. And what has happened now is that the Republicans can't impose effectively a veto. You pick up a few seats in each chamber. You can reshape the politics of the state. The idea that he would win, no. Jerry Brown won more than 60 percent on Tuesday in the primary. Neil Kashkari came a very distant second. Correct, Rob?

There's no way for him to win, I don't think. But it is something – it does show – even Kashkari's win, even though he really wasn't the Tea. But it is something, it does show, even Cash Carries win, even though he really wasn't the Tea Party candidate in many ways, it does show that the Tea Party, as they brand, I'm just speaking sort of as a marketing hat, really helped the Republican Party in California, really helped the cause of even center-right politics in California, because they took away from it the Republican brand, and people coalesced around a few issues. And I think it reinvigorated people in the state who are basically free market conservatives who have been kind of – first of all, ignored by the national party for the past, I don't know, four cycles. But also completely ignored in Sacramento.

They had no power. I mean if you're a Republican in California, you may as well be a Whig. Nobody – you're useless. And there's something about the Tea Party movement and the Tea Party energy for the past I think four years that has really helped make the California Republican Party something – reanimated it maybe. And then we also – we have to give credit. I think – I want to hear what Rob has to say about this as well. James, too, if you have thoughts on this from Minnesota. But I have to say I felt queasy about the new primary system that's in place now, queasy.

In the old days, California was just like every other state where the Republicans had their primary and the Democrats had theirs. And then some civic-minded people got together and put an initiative on the ballot which passed, which said there will now – from now on, there will be one joint primary. People of all parties run in the primary together. And then the two top winners of whatever party, even if they're of the same party, go on to the final election on election day itself. And I was afraid that would undermine, frankly, the Republican position in this state. Now, in the 33rd district, Rob, a Republican is now in the lead. We feel fairly certain that that's largely because there were so many Democrats on the ballot that the Democratic vote got split. But between now and November, that Republican, even if Elon car loses, which I

suppose we'd have to say is if we were in Las Vegas, we wouldn't bet on a victory there. Let's put it that way. Between now and November for the first time in who knows how many years, I can't even remember when Henry Waxman was first, but for the first time in years, a republican gets to make the case for free markets and limited government in the 33rd district in Venice Beach and where does it – how far does – Pacific Palisades. It's Pacific Palisades. It's Bel Air. I think it's Beverly Hills. It's Brentwood. It's also parts of Wilshire Boulevard, Wilshire Corridor that are extremely Korean.

And I would want to see what those numbers are. The Asian population is reliably – not reliably, but it is sort of moderate Democrat. And so this is sort of retail politics. You have to go – I mean I didn't – I have to confess. I didn't pay attention to this guy at all. And he came out – I mean for me, he came out – I voted for him, but he came out of nowhere. I'd like to know what he did. And I suspect what he did was a lot of shoe leather.

Right. did was a lot of shoe leather right a lot of a lot of knocking on door a lot of meeting old people in assisted living a lot of a lot of community stuff a lot of a lot of shoe leather old-fashioned politics that district by the way has not seen in decades henry waxman was there for years um and so i think that's probably what you do that's that's that's probably and i think it's a really good pattern a really good template for every single Republican – every single ambitious Republican politician from the very top, from the White House all the way down to the 33rd District. Start walking around. Start knocking on doors. Start doing retail shoe leather politics.

Exactly. By the way, if our guest pops up, we will go to the guest instantly. And Blue Yeti can edit this out if he wants to who had been in the House of Representatives and then the Senate for Mississippi since the administration of Franklin Roosevelt. And Haley was running against him. And we got there and I got summoned. Before the speech, I got summoned down to the vice president's hotel room. And the vice president said, Peter, I just got a call. I got a phone call from John Cornelius Stennis. And then the vice president went into an imitation of John Cornelius Stennis. He said, George, it hurts me that you'd go into my state to campaign against

me, who's been so loyal to y'all and President Reagan. I've been voting with you, everything you want. I knew your daddy, George, when he was in the Senate. And I have to say, it hurts me that you'd go to my state and campaign against me. And the vice president said, Peter, tell me again why we're here. And I said, well, I've been briefed by the political people in the White House. There's no real chance that Haley Barber will win. But the Republican Party is building and someday John Cornelius Stennis will retire. So we're here to show the flag. The vice president said, we're showing the flag.

Yes, sir. As I understand it, that's really the purpose. So he marched down to the event, lots of cheers. I had built a speech that started with the glories of Ronald Reagan, talked about Haley Barber at length, and then concluded with the glories of Ronald Reagan, talked about Haley Barber at length, and then concluded with the great state of Mississippi. And George Bush talked about the glories of Ronald Reagan and the great state of Mississippi.

And with Haley Barber, God bless him, Haley then a young man standing right next to the vice president of the United States, the vice president finished his speech, God bless Ronald Reagan, God bless Mississippi, and God bless the United States of America. And then he did not mention the words Haley Barber. And then he turned and stepped down and walked off the podium before anybody could take a picture of him with Haley Barber. That was Mississippi in the old days. People forget. I'm in Mississippi pretty regularly and I'm going to be in New Orleans on the weekend for a meeting of the Southern Foodways Alliance.

And people forget that Republicans in Mississippi until the 70s were the independent renegades. They were the ones who were trying to change the state for the better, and it was sort of the ossified Democrats who needed to be purged of their sort of old cracker racist kind of mentality. Hold on. It was the Republicans who were the ones who sort of were the reform-minded ones in Mississippi and not the Democrats. People forget that. Did you say the Southern Foodways Alliance? I did. I said that very much. Yeah, that's right. One of my many hobbies, James. What exactly is this thing in Mississippi you're going to, though? It's based in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss. Haley Barber, alma mater. Actually, everybody in Mississippi is alma mater, frankly. And it's an organization for preservation and documentation of Southern foodways. Kind of cool. So I did not misunderstand what you said.

No, you heard exactly right. Interesting. Hmm. You know, there's no such organization up here attempting to make sure that the generations of the future understand and comprehend the glories of Ludafisk and other sorts of boiled cod soaked in chlorine and bleach and the rest of it. And I wonder why that might be. Well, that's a famous dish, that's a famous dish. It's a famous... Have you ever tried it? In the way that Himmler was

a famous politician, yes. Have I ever tried it? Yes. It's not one of those. When all you really have in your culture is water around you and then stony fields, you come up with stuff like this. That's why the South, verdant and lush, and fecund that it is, has

so many more interesting things to eat. You know, but going back to California for a second, and that's a great Mississippi anecdote, Peter. I just wish that California culture itself could be more amenable to what you said there, that somebody's going to be able to make the case for the free market. Gosh, that's just

great. That's just dandy. In California, it goes again to what I was saying about finding this guy standing next to the president, that we find ourselves in this transformed world in which we thought were basic American concepts are all of a sudden new ideas outside the fringe that have to be reintroduced for a new generation. You go to Seattle, which just instituted that uh 157 000 an hour minimum wage right and when you have the conversations with people about why this might have a deleterious economic effect you get crossed eyes and they say this you're speaking last century's language we actually have a socialist in charge of seattle a socialist who is saying that our economic theories are going to accomplish what what what your free market capitalism never could and we've got that here in minnesota as well i've talked to small business people about what the effect of the minimum wage is going to be and they're trying to

hire kids for the summer and they got hardware stores where they bring in neighborhood kids and if they got to pay them more everybody's pay goes up and it happens to be one of those summers where they blocked off the street for street repair so their business goes down 70 80 percent but but the attitude there is like the attitude of the administration toward the military complaining about the the prisoner swap suck it up and salute you get the feeling that that's sort of the better class talking down to the rest of us. Suck it up and salute. Yeah. Or just even just this banana sort of – I mean, I'm not – this is not my term of the day. But this kind of strange off-topic issue – and here's how it works. I've kind of – I'm not participating in it.

I have a – we have a city council member who kind of runs the – supervises this area and a lot of other areas in LA. And we had a problem with a big puddle on the street that wasn't draining properly. And we had a problem with a neighbor of mine who wanted to rebuild his house and some other neighbors were saying, no, no, no. It's historic because I don't know why. So we had to engage our council member. member, and in engaging him and trying to get him to crack the whip with various things, which I did, he said, listen, you guys only talk to me when you're angry about something and it's too late. Why don't we have a meeting? And we'll sit down, we'll talk, and you tell me everything, even the long horizon things.

Which is a good political move, right? Shoe-leather politics. So I said yes. But now we're meeting with him. Meanwhile, he is talking about how he wants an LA minimum wage of $15 an hour. He's a crackpot socialist like everybody else. But I still have to engage in this guy because he's going to help me in the neighborhood. And that's how it works. They get you. They run a giant bureaucracy, and then after that, you're kind of – when I finally get him in a room and we're talking, I'm not going to mention the minimum wage because that's really not right now my issue.

My issue is the trash and the homeless people and really basic stuff. And I think it helps these guys that they have the finger over the – they have control over this giant city bureaucracy, which allows them to leverage us to have to listen to them talking about things they don't think about like the minimum wage. It's like the Cuban bloc party ideology enforcer. Every bloc has to make sure – except they actually get something done. But no, I know, I know, I know. And what I love, for example, here in Minnesota, we have that working in the most contrary example. And I know a lot of people sit up and say, wait a minute, he's talking about local politics in Minnesota? Let me pay keen attention to this.

What it works is people are actually taking the city at their word and saying, you know what? We do need more people here, and that means denser housing. That means we've got to put in some structures where lots of people can live. And everybody's for that until it happens to their neighborhood. And then everybody screams. And all of the people who are just as staunch an urbanist as you possibly can imagine are now crying and weeping and keeping these projects from increasing the density in their neighborhoods because, God forbid, it might bring people to them. And so they're using their little levers to march off to the city council. And everybody who hates sprawl, that's all they do.

They always hate sprawl. It's terrible. The minute you say, well, okay, well, we should build some high-rises here and make more people live here. Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Not my neighborhood. The character of my neighborhood is different. It's always the same with the progressives.

Well, it gets even better. The ACLU just sued the city council here. This is what my column is about in the paper tomorrow. I found this astonishing. We're getting the all-star game, the baseball all-star game, right? Apparently, Major League Baseball requires, oh, sort of a kind of two-week window around that thing where nothing else is going on downtown. So it doesn't interfere with the focus of the event. It doesn't provide opportunities for ambush marketing, as they say.

And the city council said, well, yes, but of course. We'll yank permits. We'll deny permits to anybody who wants to do anything. Is two weeks enough? You want a month? You want the summer? We'll give you the whole – I mean it's just astonishing. And so the ACLU gets up and files a lawsuit on behalf of some people who had said, excuse me, but it's the 80th anniversary of a famous trucker strike where the cops shot two guys.

We were planning on having a little commemoration down there. And they said, sorry. It's within – Oh, you're kidding me. It says the liberal – the absolutely most liberal city council you can say said, well, sorry, but Major League Baseball wants this little fortnight of its own for the game. No. And so the ACLU sued and the city said, oh, all right, Okay. We'll just make it nine days in which nobody else can do anything else downtown.

You can have your little thing. Is that okay? And the ACLU said, all right, we'll drop the suit, which I find fascinating that the ACLU itself isn't screaming and saying, what do you mean that you can't have anything within a day of the all-star league game?

That's preposterous. But apparently on, on this point, the liberal ACU and the liberal city council agree that it's okay to just sort of cut off free speech for a seven to nine day period because, heck, we got a very important baseball game coming in.

Stunning. Stunning. Absolutely. Absolutely stunning. The next thing that's going to come when we have the final four, because we want to bid for the final four as well in our brand new gorgeous stadium. The next thing I think is going to happen is they're going to come when we have the Final Four, because we want to bid for the Final Four as well in our brand new, gorgeous stadium. The next thing I think is going to happen is they're going to try to quarter the coaching staff in people's houses, which will not

violate the Third Amendment, mind you, because they won't actually be troops. You know, Peter, while we're waiting for our guest... Ixnay on the Estgate. It may not happen. You're going to have to edit that thing out. Right. Or put him in, yeah.

Or drop him in, make it seem like it's – you might have to do a cold intro, James. This is the 10th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's death. And the D-Day anniversary, his words are D-Day, the D-Day commemoration, is coming up. It's the 14th. Am I nine days from now, ten days from now? June 6th. June 6th.

It's June 6th. Okay, so it's two days from now. It's tomorrow. Monday, tomorrow. How relevant do you think World War II is? I mean, it's hard. I was just going to say it's like – I used to – when I was a kid and I lived in Holland when I was eight and then we moved there in 73, I think. I had no idea because I was only eight that 73 was actually really, really soon after the war.

That every grown-up I knew, I mean, even every 20-something-year-old I knew had a vivid memory of occupied Holland, had a vivid memory of U.S. troops, had a vivid memory of bombs and assassinations and executions. I lived in Eindhoven, a little town, but it was an industrial town, electrical town, that the company Phillips was based there.

So it was an extremely valuable target. The place was leveled by allied and Axis bombs. And when the Nazis took over and invaded and occupied it, that was one of the places where they really cracked the whip. So our – we had family friends who were older who remember watching mass execution outside the Phillips factory. It was less than 20 years before. And even Reagan's speech, which was 80… No, no, 80… 84, right?

40th anniversary. That's exactly correct. Yes, it was. Even that was only 40 years. So now we're 30 years after that. 70 years now. Is it still the echoes? Is it an echoey thing? Is it a historical thing? Is it a misty memory thing? You're touching it. This is, this is, this is, as you know, I'm working on the, on endlessly on this cold war book. Right. But,

uh, to me, that is the, that is one of the great problems. Actually, let's ask our guests about that. Absolutely. We're happy to have in the Ricochet podcast, Ted Cruz, Senator of the great state of Texas. And we welcome you. You're talking to Peter and Rob out in LA land. And I'm from the Midwest where the values are strong and still certainly American. Welcome to the podcast, sir. Gentlemen, it's great to be with you. Senator Cruz, Peter Robinson here. I want to get to the piece that you wrote that appeared in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week in just a moment. But first, I'd like to ask a question.

We've been talking about the question of historical memory. You, as a very young man, really as a boy, memorized the Constitution of the United States. You've steeped yourself in American history all your life. Now you have two little kids of your own. How do, and here we are talking about all three of us on this podcast can remember President Reagan's speech marking the 40th anniversary of the Normandy invasion in 1984. Now we're about, we're coming up on the 70th. How do we impart to each generation historical memory? Well, Peter, that's a fantastic question. And it is obviously the challenge of any civilization to inculcate the values and unmoored from the constitutional principles, from it's been driven also by a... We have not adequately taught young people, made the case to the next generations as to what the principles are this country was built on.

And I think the answer is a combination of multiple things. It's a question of education, particularly for young people. It's a question of journalism. It's a question of the media. It's a question of entertainment. It's a question of political leaders going and explaining basic free market principles, the reality that with big government, what we have right now, the people who are hurt the most are those who are struggling.

They're young people. They're Hispanics. They're African Americans. They're single moms. We've got to explain that. We've got to explain that the free enterprise system in America has been the greatest engine for prosperity and opportunity the world's ever seen. And we also have to make the case for our constitutional liberties that are so under assault right now to explain why our First Amendment liberties are so critical,

why our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is so critical. As President Reagan famously said, freedom is not something that's passed down in the bloodstream. Every generation has to stand up and fight for it, or one day we will be forced to answer to our children or our children's children, what was it like when America was free? That's what our collective responsibility is, is not to have to answer that question. Hey, Senator, this is Rob Long from Los Angeles. Thank you for joining us. Glad to have question. Bergdahl-Guantanamo switch. If they're not crossing the line, they are bending the line with these EPA regulations, sort of extra-legislative moves. As somebody who not only is a constitutional

scholar, but actually loves the Constitution, what can you do? I mean I feel like – I speak for a lot of people on this – who are listening to this audio on demand, a lot of Ricochet members. Like what on earth can you do short of this nuclear option of impeachment, which it seems to me more and more is what they want, right, just to cast it entirely in partisan terms? Well, Rob, you raise a terrific question. And one of the most disturbing aspects of the last five years has been the continual pattern of lawlessness, of open contempt for rule of law. And we've never seen a president before

who, if he disagrees with a federal law, simply says he won't enforce it, he will ignore it, he will defy it, or he will unilaterally change it and decree the law is different than what actually was passed by Congress. And your question of what can we do, well, one of the things that I've tried to do is really shine a light on the lawlessness and stand up for rule of law in the Constitution. So I am the ranking member on the Constitution subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And in that capacity, we have put out four separate reports on the lawlessness of the Obama administration, on their pattern of defying and ignoring the law.

There's no better example of that than Obamacare. Obamacare has been the embodiment of lawlessness, and over and over again, the president has just defied the law. So, for example, the law says that the employer mandate kicks in January 1, 2014. The president decided to cut a favor for his buddies in big business, so he unilaterally granted a one-year waiver. And he did that through a blog posting by an assistant treasury secretary on July 2nd, two days before the July 4th holiday. And there's nothing in the law that gives the president the power to do that, but he just unilaterally says big business gets an exemption. He did the same thing for Congress. Members of

Congress are supposed to be covered by Obamacare. Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats didn't want to be bound by Obamacare, so the president just unilaterally and illegally granted an exemption. And most strikingly, when over 6 million Americans lost their health insurance because of Obamacare, despite the president's repeated promise, if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep your health insurance plan. The president didn't do what 43 presidents who preceded him would have done. He didn't go to the Congress and say, listen, this law we passed is a disaster. It's hurting millions of Americans. We need to do something to fix this. Instead, he held a press

conference where he instructed private insurance companies, go and violate the law. I am telling you, go and issue plans that the text of the law makes illegal. And in over 200 years of our nation's history, we have no precedent. We have never had a president tell private companies, private citizens, go and violate the law on presidential whim. And this is something that should trouble everyone, not just Republicans, but Democrats and independents and libertarians. If you have a president who can pick and choose which laws to follow and which laws to ignore, then you no longer have a president. Right. But what's your – so what can you do?

I mean you're a senator. I mean to me it's astonishing that even Democratic senators, especially more sort of old-line establishment ones who were there before Obama and are going to be there after Obama it's astonishing to me that even the Democrat the Democrat senators aren't are first of all some of them are getting upset but but they're not pulling any levers they're not demanding any justice here and that's why I'm sort of frustrated as a voter because I don't know what you do well on the senate side one of the most astonishing things is there have been no no democrats zero willing to stand up to the president's lawlessness and abuse of power and and and that is unprecedented in our nation's history we have had executives who have abused their power in the past but historically the congress has pressed back and even members of their own

party have pressed back. In this Senate, in Harry Reid's Senate, the Senate Democrats follow Harry Reid like lemmings, and they will not break with the president. That is fundamentally dangerous. So your question of what can we do? There are a number of things. One is simply shining a light. It's why I've endeavored to put out reports, to talk about it, to focus on it, to explain to the American people the consequence of lawlessness and to try to motivate people to action. A second thing Congress can do is provide oversight. In the Senate, that's not happening because Harry Reid won't let it happen. In the House, we've seen some degree of oversight. There ought to be much more. I was very glad to see, for example, the House convene a select committee on Benghazi. I've been calling for that for over a year. There ought to be a second select committee on the IRS abuses of power targeting citizens for their political views.

Right. You know, I forgot that. I forgot all about that. There have been too many abuses. I can't keep them straight, but you're right. It is staggering. By the way, the administration has a standard pattern on every scandal. When it breaks, they say they're outraged, they're angry, it's terrible. Then they stonewall for a number of months, and then they say this is old news, nothing to see here. And they do that over and over. That's what they do on Ghazi, on the IRS. I mean, that is their standard operating procedure.

And I will mention, by the way, number one, shining light, number two, oversight through hearings. Number three, if you had a Congress that was willing to act, the most significant power that Congress has is the power of the purse. And Congress, under Article I of the Constitution, has more power than the president, but only if it acts. Now, we should be using the power of the purse to cut off agencies that are engaged in lawlessness. The problem right now is if Harry Reid controls the Senate as he does, he will not allow any of that to come to a vote. He has an absolute stranglehold on what gets voted on or not. And as a result, we have a do-nothing Senate.

Harry Reid is Barack Obama's most important protector because he prevents any meaningful congressional restraint on Obama's lawlessness and abuse of power. Senator Peter Robinson, again, you wrote a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Democratic assault on the first amendment. We've been talking about lawlessness in the White House. This piece is about disregard for the Constitution of the United States in the Senate. Quote, 41 Democrats have signed, I'm quoting you, 41 Democrats have signed on to co-sponsor New Mexico Senator Tom Udall's proposed amendment to give Congress plenary power to regulate political

speech. Close quote. We're all laymen. Our listeners have ordinary lives. We're not following the play-by-play in the Senate. Just what on earth, fill us in on what this amendment is all about and how it can be that 41 Democrats have signed on. Right. No, it is breathtaking. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. Democrats in the Senate have pledged this year to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to repeal the First Amendment. And Peter, I am not making that up. I am not exaggerating that. The proposed amendment that they have filed gives Congress unlimited authority to regulate the political

speech of individual citizens. And the effect of that amendment, if it were adopted, would be the free speech protections of the first amendment would be effectively repealed. Congress would have the authority, for example, to ban the NRA from distributing voter guides. Congress would have the authority to prohibit Planned Parenthood or National Right to Life from running ads about their views on abortion. Congress would have the authority to prevent labor unions

from organizing their members to come vote because that's deemed an in-kind contribution and this amendment allows Congress to regulate or prohibit those. Congress would have the ability to ban movies and books discussing political candidates. Congress would have the power to regulate or even criminalize bloggers who criticize politicians. I mean, Congress would have the power, quite literally, if a little old lady takes a yard sign and erects the yard sign in her front yard,

Congress would have the power under the Democrats' proposed amendment to prohibit her from putting a yard sign in her own front yard. Senator, you write that for a constitutional amendment to be ratified, of course, it has to win two-thirds of the vote in both houses of Congress, then go on, three-fourths of state legislatures have to approve it. You write, and again, I'm quoting you, there's no chance that Senator Udall's amendment will clear either hurdle, close quote. Still, so what's going on here is that the Democrats are using this.

This is a kind of political theater. It has to be the case that they're trying to energize or at least appease the left in the Democratic Party. But in the old days, it used to be the First Amendment was sacrosanct to liberals. So isn't it the case that this shows something has changed? Liberals aren't the same liberals they used to be in the days of Teddy Kennedy, outrageous as he was in many ways. You quote him in 1997, Senator Kennedy batted back an effort like this and said, we've never amended the Bill of Rights and it's now is no time to start.

There's no Ted Kennedy anymore. What is going on with liberalism in this country? Peter, you are exactly right. This week, we had a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on this proposed amendment, and we had some very heated exchanges where I impassionately asked the very same question you just asked. Where are the liberals? When did the Democrats decide to abandon the Bill of Rights? There was a time when liberals were the most vigorous defenders of the First Amendment, and yet 42 Democrats had put their name on a constitutional amendment to repeal the free speech provisions of the First Amendment.

Listen, any senator who puts his name on that should be embarrassed to face their constituents. I don't know how a senator answers his or her constituent who says, why did you co-sponsor an effort to take away my constitutional right to speak out. I mean, it is... Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has strayed so far from its principles that it's just about power. It's about brute force. Right, right. And it ties into the IRS scandal.

It ties into all of these scandals of abuse of power. And we've lost the basic principles of liberty that used to be shared principles. They used to be bipartisan. If we had a vote on preserving the First Amendment, that should be a 100-0 vote, that the First Amendment is our foundational liberty that makes the American Democratic Republic possible. And we've got now 42 Democrats saying, no, we disagree with the First Amendment, and we want to repeal that part of the Bill of Rights and take away our citizens' free speech. It's something that really is astonishing and heartbreaking. Well, principles can be abandoned, of course, if they get in the way of your shining objective. And let's get to that. One last question for you, Senator Cruz. We know you're busy. I'm James Lylex here in Minnesota. Next door is North Dakota, which, like Texas, understands

exactly what an energy economy can do for the people. And when America looks to Texas, looks to North Dakota, they see prosperity and they see freedom more than they see in areas of urban blight that have been run by Democrats for decades. But yet you have an administration which through the EPA is trying to do the opposite to other industries in order to reach almost unattainable levels of atmospheric purity without law, just simply decreeing that it's so. Do you think that this is something that we can turn around or are we doomed for the next few years to watch the EPA strangle industries which otherwise could provide jobs? It used to be the Democrats liked coal mining jobs. Now these people might as well be working for the dark Satan himself. You are exactly right. President Obama and the Democratic

Party have declared war on the coal industry, on coal miners. There is no industry that the Democrats despise more than coal. It actually, comparatively, the second industry they despise is oil and gas, but coal has a unique degree of animosity from Democrats right now. These EPA rules that have come out are designed to permanently kill the coal industry in this country. And, you know, one of the things that is striking is that President Obama and Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton have made a decision that they care more about the checks from California environmental billionaires than they do about the jobs of millions of union members throughout the heartland. I mean, they've made a basic choice, and they've said that there's one California billionaire, a gentleman named Tom Steyer, who's publicly pledged $100 million to help the Democrats hold on to the Senate. cap-and-trade extreme national energy tax policies that will destroy the coal industry. And what the Democrats have said is we care about that billionaire's check more than we do

about the jobs of millions of hardworking union members who want to keep working, who want to build a pipeline, who want to work in factories, who want to work in coal mines, who want to work a good, honest job. And the Democrats, this latest proposal, which is lawless, completely contrary to law, is estimated to cost up to 2.8 million jobs. And we need to be fighting every day for economic growth and opportunity. We have the lowest labor force participation in this country since 1978, and it is because the Obama administration has waged a war on jobs

and the middle class and working men and women. And I'll tell you, I think Republicans are and should be the party of every union member, every working man and woman in this country. The Democrats are trying and are succeeding in killing the jobs for hardworking Americans, and we need to get back to free market principles that produce economic freedom and that produce opportunity to achieve the American dream. Senator Peter here once again. You used that term lawless just, again, just a moment ago.

You know American history. How, I don't mean this, maybe this is a provocative, maybe this is a leading question, I'm not sure. Who's more lawless, President Obama or President Richard Nixon? It's not even close. It is a provocative question. I'll give one example. Richard Nixon tried to use the IRS to target his political enemies. Now, he failed. The IRS employees refused to do so. And when Nixon did so, he was rightly condemned in a bipartisan matter. Republicans and Democrats condemned that abuse of power.

And ultimately, he was driven from office. In contrast, Barack Obama not only tried but succeeded in that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups, Tea Party groups, pro-Israel groups, and pro-life groups. And in response, not only did the president express outrage, but then the IRS proposed codifying that same practice, targeting and making permanent the targeting of conservative groups. You know, there is a liberal law professor named Jonathan Turley who is not a Republican, who is not a conservative. He voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Professor Turley testified before the House of Representatives and said,

President Obama has become the embodiment of the imperial presidency. Barack Obama is the president Richard Nixon always wished he could be. And the difference, when Nixon abused his power, members of his own party stood up against him and said, this is wrong. When Barack Obama abuses his power, Democrats remain silent. A few months ago, I remember sitting on the floor of the House of Representatives during the State of the Union, when President Obama said, if Congress doesn't act, I will. And just about every Democratic member of Congress stood to their feet and cheered the president usurping the authority of the democratically elected Congress and saying he was going to act contrary to law and impose his policy. The law be damned.

That's dangerous. Senator, James said a moment ago, he asked the last question. I'm going to ask the last question. I can't resist. But at the same time, I know your operation well. I can just picture your staff jumping up and down somewhere in that room next to you saying, Senator, you've got a meeting. So this really will be the last set of questions. How are the Senate races looking? And that long profile of you that appeared in the Wall Street Journal about a month ago described a couple of tense scenes between you and your fellow senators. Is Ted Cruz having fun or is this just a job? But first, how are the Senate races looking for November? And then the fun in your life, if you have any, and then we'll really let you go. Well, happy to answer both, Peter.

In terms of the Senate races in 2014, I'm very optimistic. I think Republicans are poised for historic victories in 2014. I think we are likely to retake the U.S. Senate and to retire Harry Reid as majority leader. And the principal reason for that is Obamacare. Obamacare is such a disaster that it is an albatross around the necks of Democrats. Democratic senators are running terrified from Obamacare because it's at 37% approval ratings. When you have a law that has cost millions of Americans their job and their health care and is imposing real hardship on their families,

that has political consequences. So I'm very optimistic about the election in 2014, and I will note I'm also very optimistic about the election in 2016. I think Americans are realizing the path we're on is not working, and we've got to change directions. Now, your second question about whether I'm having fun, I am absolutely having fun. Look, one, I'll just say on a personal level, my wife Heidi and I, we're blessed. We've got two little girls, Caroline and Catherine, who are six and three,

and who are full of life and fun and are rascals in every regard. And it's impossible not to have fun when you have a family and two little girls who love you. But every bit as much, serving in the Senate right now, I'll tell you, Peter, there is not a day that I don't jump out of bed because our nation is facing a crisis. The stakes have never been higher. There is an urgency to the challenges facing this country right now that I've never seen. It is now or never. And I jump out of bed every day because I have the incredible privilege

to have the opportunity to hopefully play some positive role in turning this country around, in pulling our nation back from this fiscal and economic cliff that we are barreling towards. And that is, it is such an extraordinary privilege to represent 26 million Texans, and it's such an extraordinary privilege to have the chance to be in the arena and to be fighting for the country that we love,

to be fighting for your kids and my kids, and for making sure that all of our kids and grandkids have even more freedom and opportunity than we've been blessed with rather than less freedom and opportunity, which is where we are headed if we do not change course. So I am absolutely having fun, and I am humbled and amazed by the privilege to serve, as Esther said, at a time such as this.

Well, we're glad you're having fun, and since you have daughters who are three and six, we're glad you're getting some sleep, too. Now, if you want to work in some references in your Senate speeches to Dora the Explorer and My Little Pony, I think some people will be mystified. But those of us with daughters will understand. And I would note green eggs and ham has somehow worked its way. Well, yes, exactly. And you could possibly use hop on pop as a metaphor for the political struggles we're having today as well. There's no end to the rhetoric we could get out of this. Senator Cruz, thank you very much for appearing with us on the Ricochet podcast. Have a great day and we hope to speak to you down the road. I look forward to it. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thanks, Senator. Thank you. So we're going to ask Rob to wrap it. Rob? Oh, that's right. I don't know. We're going to have to edit this out. There was that big thump where his head hit the table and he passed out. Was he trying to break the world record for holding your breath? Was that it? You are a terrible man. You know he had a meeting, a big-time Hollywood meeting he had to attend,

and now here you are wreaking vengeance on him for stepping on your segue. I think it's more fun if the audience just sort of sees him with his head on his desk, drool, puddle, beneath a slack tongue and the rest of it. That might be construed to be some sort of revenge. Yes, I guess it would be. Well, there you go, folks. Ted Cruz on the podcast and we're glad that he finally made it and we're glad that he spent so much time with us. I mean, it's not often, really, you get a senator who enjoys sitting back and spieling out the positions. But these things matter. And if you look at the Wall Street Journal piece about the First Amendment, it is astonishing, Peter.

And you asked exactly the right question. Ted Kennedy used to be the guy who said, we've never, ever amended the Bill of Rights, and this is no time to start. Apparently, it is a time to start apparently it is because all of these principles can go out the door when all of a sudden well kevin williamson uh the great writer for national review you may have seen the piece that he did on on transsexuals which uh which shall we say was a little bit more restrained than doc jay's essay on the same atchet. Two ways of phrasing perhaps the same point, both equally readable and enjoyable. But Williamson was tweeting a lot of the blowback that he got from people.

It goes without saying that, of course, he was transphobic, phobia being now the suffix for anything with which you disagree. But the number of people who were calling for his work to be, that there was hate speech and it should be banned, is just astonishing. Freedom of speech means nothing to some people because freedom of speech means the freedom to say things that are hurtful to them, to their feelings or wrong to be said or dangerous

to the earth. And I have no doubt whatsoever that once you start saying, well, you citizens United big corporation can't do that. Got to keep them from doing that. At the end of it, at the end of it is arresting the blogger who has posted something which is regarded as hate speech against Gaia because he's talking about variations in the climate models. Because it's not about freedom to these people. It's not about freedom. It's about the desired outcome of a particular way of ordering society.

That's what matters. They've never been closer to it. outcome of a particular way of ordering society. That's what matters. You know, and they've, they've never been close. They've never been closer to it and seemingly never been. So what's the word I'm looking for? It's, it's, it's,

it's like, it's right around the corner for them. And they're, they're willing to claw apart anything that stands in the way to get around the corner because whatever they claw apart and destroy to get her to get to that place around the corner, it doesn't matter because around the corner, everything is great. You don't need all that stuff.

I mean that's why my national review column next issue is about this salon piece, which was saying, yeah, is it time to rethink the week? And you just – you get so weary of the people who wake every day and look around and decide exactly what form of societal ordering that's served us well for millennia. Why don't we shred today just for the fun of, gosh, being disruptive people? And the line that I had to take out, I'm convinced that 27% of everybody under 40 is involved not in making anything but starting conversations. That's just it. And now it's time to end this one. By the way, this long conversation to which you've been listening has been brought to you proudly by Audible.com. And you know what to do.

Go to AudiblePodcast.com slash Ricochet what to do. Go to audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet, audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet, and you will get your free 30-day trial and a free audio book that you can listen to absolutely anywhere. We thank Yeti as ever for his yeoman work on getting this thing together and up. We thank Rob

Long for that. We thank my dog for not barking. And Peter, thanks of course for your great cheer and bequent pithy remarks and your recollections. I believe we were somewhere in the middle of an anecdote, weren't we, before we had to leave? I think,

what was, oh, the Normandy. Normandy, we were talking about Normandy. Normandy will wait. Normandy will wait. Let's talk about Normandy next week. By the way, James, I know this show has already lasted quite some time, but I want you to know that in Las Vegas, Rob did fly over for the afternoon so we could have a chance to chat. It's been ages since we've seen each other. Right. And we were kicking around names for this show.

We felt a little bit unsatisfied with the Ricochet flagship podcast. So, you know, he and I decided the irony here will not escape you, that maybe we should talk to James about simply calling it the Ricochet Hour. The Ricochet Hour, rechristened as of 72 hours ago, has now lasted 82 minutes. James, lovely to talk to you. See you next

week, pal. Thanks, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet.com 2.0. Bye. Oh, man, rhythm is in my shoes It's no use a-sittin' and a-singin' the blues So be my guest, you got nothin' to lose Won't you let me take you on a sea cruise? Hoo-wee, hoo-wee, baby Hoo-wee, hoo-wee, baby

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