The Ricochet Podcast - The Band Wagon Departs

Episode Date: January 15, 2015

This week, Troy Senik sits in for Peter Robinson. and we’re joined by the WaPo’s epic political reporter Bob Costa (follow him on Twitter here). We chase down all the rumors on who’s running, who’s not, who’s shouldn’t be and who is. Also, some more chatter about Europe and the search for the perfect candidate. Music from this week’s episode: Tears of A Clown by Smokey Robinson & Source

activate program more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism well i'm not a crook i'll never tell a lie but i am not a bully mr gorbache, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long. Troy Seneca sitting in for Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs. And, well, is it too soon to talk about 216? Well, heck, if they're getting in already, we're going to talk about it with Bob Costa, best in the business.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. There you go again. Yes, welcome to this, the Ricochet Podcast, number 245. It's brought to you proudly by Harry's Shave. You know, the gift-giving season is coming up. That's right, Australia Day is just a couple of weeks away. And what to get for it? Well, get the guy in your life who's got everything. Razors.

Gift them some razors. How about a Harry's razor? That's right. Harry's Winter Winston or Winster Winter. Let me start this whole thing again. No, I'm kidding. Harry's Great Blades, $30, sleek chrome razor, three high-quality blades, and this amazing foaming shave gel.

It just makes me speechless and unable to pronounce words when I even think of how smooth a Harry's shave is. We'll tell you a little bit more about that and how you can use that coupon code RICOSHET at the checkout It just makes me speechless and unable to pronounce words when I even think of how smooth a hairy shave is. We'll tell you a little bit more about that and how you can use that coupon code RICOSHET at the checkout to get five bucks off your first order. Also brought to you by CultureRater.com, where pop culture matters. Check that site out, and we'll tell you more about that as later. Well, and why, for example, you want to keep up on issues like comics, movies, and shoes when the world is burning. The world is kind of burning around us, but here to put out the flames, by pouring their 40s out on the curb, my homies Troy Sinek and Rob Long. Hi, guys.

I'm just all stumble-tongued this morning for no particular reason. It's just bitterly cold here. It's January. It's the shank of the beginning of the middle portion of winter. I like to think that there are a couple seasons that I experience. I experience them only via lilacs, which is – I experience cold. I'm in New York a lot now, so I know how cold it is. I grew up Becky, so I'm not like –

but there's a point at which it's so cold that Lilacs doesn't think it's funny anymore. It's not charming. You can't even come up with a reference. You're just like, what you really want to do is just say what it really is using non-code of conduct

language. Yeah, when molecular action has ceased, you are – Yeah. But you're going to be so young. You're going to be younger than all of us because you don't age because it's so cold up there. I was in a traffic accident on Saturday and it was so cold. And this is, of course, where somebody with Tonight Show lineage would say –

How cold was it? That's right. I expected actually both of our vehicles to shatter on impact since they're made of plastic and leave us just with metal frames and two sheepish drivers looking like Flintstone characters. But it didn't happen. We just stood outside. All right, well, see, now I know it's not really very cold there because you're still making sort of, you know, clever

visually arresting kind of images. When that stops, I know it's really cold. That's actually a line from my next newspaper column. And now that I've vetted it with a professional television comedy writer,

it's time to go to Troy and say, Troy, thanks for sitting in for Peter today. We know it's cold where you are as well. You're fighting off a little bit of a cold.

And if you heard the news this last week, science now says your mother may have been right, that you actually do get colds when it's colder, so you should button up. You should put that scarf around you.

But you people in Tennessee who aren't equipped for these things, what do you do? What do you do when it gets this cold? Do you have proper clothes? Do you have the scarves? Do you have the mittens? Inform me. We have some of them, but the problem is I do not have the robustness of character that Rob is describing to himself because I did not grow up in this.

And part of the deal when you live in the south, even in the upper south like this, is that you're not going to have to deal with what we had. Last week, for instance, we had three or four nights where it was down about four degrees. That's cold. That's cold. That's cold. That's cold. And for a child of Orange County, California, as yours truly is, it seems like something

sprung from the id of Dante. So the thing that you do is you just sort of huddle inside and you can – like we don't have the hardiness of character that has been developed in Minnesota. So you come to a place like Nashville. Nashville is known. There's – one of the travel magazines has done this poll for years and years on the nicest city in America. And Nashville is consistently number one., has been for about a decade. Just people couldn't be friendlier until it drops beneath about 28. And then there are just sort of random citizens of the city out on street corners flipping you off as you drive by.

Something happens at that moment. That's the inflection point. The problem is, of course, is that heat – when you lose all your coal and your skin starts to mortify and you no longer have actual flesh that is capable of sustaining life, it's hard for you to get skin in the game. Right, Ron? Oh, wow. You know what? I don't deserve that. That was a great segue and I know I don't deserve it.

You are. Now listen, it's absolutely probably foolhardy at this point to talk about Ricochet and the benefits of being a member after we board the audience with Weather Talk. But if you're listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet, we are thrilled to have you and we are honored to be members along with you. If you are listening to this podcast and you are not a Ricochet member, I know I say all the time, go to Ricochet, sign up, join, join, join. OK. I'd love for you to do that. If you do that, you get to be part of our larger community. You get part of the wittiest, most civil, most interesting conversation on the web, on the member feed.

You can post your thoughts and comments. You can agree to stuff. You can disagree. You can just chime in when you want or you cannot chime in at all. But you can read what your fellow Ricochet members are thinking about on all matter of topics. And you can connect with like-minded conservatives and even centrists around the country, across the world. We have meetups everywhere. All the time there's a meetup coming up.

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with the liberals in your life. We all have them. It's nice to have a little cheat sheet. And it's just a lot of fun and it's a fun read. Everyone is reading The Daily Shot. Let me tell you something. We're getting more. John Podoritz yesterday on our podcast with Jonah Goldberg went off on how great it is.

Matt Continetti talks about how great it is at the Washington Free Beacon. I know people at the Weekly Standard love it. Everyone's reading this and I know people at Fox News are reading it because I've talked to them about it you read it too

and then you're in the know and you'll have a lot of fun just sign up for it, the daily shot just go to ricochet.com and sign up for it here's why I'm telling you to do that because I know that if you sign up for it and you check out ricochet.com and you say to yourself there's no way I'm going to be a member I'm not paying

I know that in a few weeks you'll be so addicted you'll pay. As every drug pusher knows, the first one is always free. Yeah? No, I'm in absolute agreement here. I was just thinking of something else. I thought you were shocked because, of of course I had just compared Ricochet to drugs. Yeah, there was a moment there where that felt like it was

James going, wait, that's what they were doing with the first one. That's how the hit works. Actually, I was thinking about what, when you mentioned how much you would pay, I'm not going to pay for that. I wonder how much Charlie charged for their cover for the story

this week, because this would have been the time to really make a pile off of it, wouldn't it? I think they printed a whole bunch. I think it's the third run. I mean, I know, I mean, I didn't want to, I mean, we had Claire on last week, and Claire, of course, is still posting, the other reason to go to Rick and Shayna Cobb, she's still posting these great

updates, color, background, a whole, I mean, actually, Claire's collected words, I don't know how many you think great updates, color, background, a whole – I mean actually Claire's collected words. I don't know how many you think they are. Troy, you're the editor of Record on the site. Lots of words. I mean if I were an entrepreneurial enterprising character, I would have Claire print out an Insta book because she really captured what's happened in Paris right at the day, minutes after the attack to weeks after the attack. But I didn't want to say something – Charlie Hebdo, it's not like – it's more like South Park than it was Jon Stewart. It was rude.

It is a rude magazine. Pascal Emmanuel Gobry, who is a very good writer in Paris. You can follow him on Twitter. We'll put the Twitter thing on the show notes. But he tweeted early on. He said, like, we always – in my family, we always hated it. We always hated Charlie Hebdo. We thought it was vulgar and trashy and anti-Catholic and we didn't like it.

He said, but today you realize how important it is to have that. So I don't know. important it is to have that. So, I don't know. I just wanted to say that. Well, explain to me the schizophrenic nature of a country that on one hand will celebrate Charlie and have huge rallies when they're firebombed and then turns around and finds Brigitte Bardot 12,000 euros or francs or pounds or however much it was for inciting

hate speech. Explain that to me. Well, yeah. But look, I think France is not that different from the United States in a lot of ways, in a lot of places. It is extremely secular. It's extremely anti-religious

as a republic. Can you imagine a million people and world leaders gathering if Al Goldstein's Screw magazine had been firebombed by Christian separatists in 1982. Well, it helps that nobody quite gets the jokes. Yeah.

That's a very good point. But I think that's – I mean I think that's a closer analogy than Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. I mean it is a closer analogy to what Charlie Hebdo really is, which is kind of these rude cartoons that are poking fun at the cultural aristocrats. So in a way, I mean we don't have that here because we don't have that kind of ossified leadership in our culture. Yes, we don't have the situation as they do in France where you have essentially one class that comes out of the same institutions, goes and fills all of the government jobs backwards and forwards on both sides regardless of political party. No, we don't have that at all.

We don't have that. We don't have Harvard, Yale and – No, no. We don't. And we don't have dynastic things that go from one generation to the next. Sure. Wives and brothers and sons and presidents. No.

We're a free country, James. So this week's announcement that Mitt Romney will also be running again and Jeb Bush will be up against him as well, leads us to say that there's something about politics we might want to talk about because, you know, all the blowing up of the world can wait for a week until something blows up again. And that's why we've got to have Robert Costan. Of course, he's the

national political reporter for the Washington Post. You can follow him on Twitter, at CostanReports. Bob, welcome back. Welcome back. Mitt, what is Mitt thinking exactly? I think he's restless ever since 2012. He's spent – I think back to Nixon in 66. I mean, read Pat Buchanan's book.

Nixon did everything for the party in 66, really laid a foundation for him in 68 after all the losses in 60 and 62. I'm not saying Romney's like Nixon, but it's the same model he seems to be adopting. Hey, Bob, it's Rob Long. Thanks for joining us. So is Mitt surprised, do you think, or is he going to be surprised? I mean, on the one hand, right around up until 2014, everybody's talking about how much they love Mitt. Mitt, you know, he polls better than Obama now. Half the Obama voters wish they voted for Mitt. He travels around the country. He gets a lot of Republicans elected, and they all say the same thing to him.

Man, I wish you'd won, or I'm for you, or please run. And now he's announced basically that he's going to run, essentially. Is he going to get surprised that a lot of that was just people being nice? Or do you think he's really got a base there? I think he believes he has a base. I think for Romney, there's – he's always been an awkward candidate.

He is not a perfect retail politician, but I think sometimes he's almost underestimated as a politician. I mean this is a guy who is pretty tough in the sense that he made it through a Republican primary. Politically, I think he has thick skin. He's run multiple times. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, so all right. So now – I mean I know it's all – I feel a caveat, right? Let's just stipulate it that everyone on this podcast right now is kind of being an idiot talking about this race that's in the future, right? That things change. So like everybody is now excused from saying something that obviously may change because events change. But it seems like now it's coalescing between Romney and Jeb, two older figures we already know from the past, people who have really not been in office for years.

If you're Scott Walker or you're any of the other guys running your Ted Cruz, I mean aren't you going to go – aren't those the first two you're going to go after? I think so. I spoke to some allies of Walker and Cruz and Huckabee and Ben Carson and Rand Paul yesterday. And I got the sense that on one hand they believe they're going to go right at Romney and Bush. They think this provides a ripe target. You saw Rand Paul yesterday in New Hampshire take on Romney, say it's a definition of insanity, all this. But at the same time, I think there is a private concern among a lot of the other conservative contenders that this is going to suck a lot of the money out of the race early, and that's going to be a problem. Well, I had a conversation with a prominent Republican activist in November who told me hands down, no – there's no question about it. It's going to cost $1 billion to put a person in the White House in 2016, and the only Republican candidate who can raise $1 billion is Jeb Bush. Is that true?

Well, not with Romney in the race. Romney raised $1 billion last time. Well, he's got $1 billion. That's so much change for Romney, right? Yeah, but that's why Huckabee left Fox. I mean speaking of Huckabee people, Huckabee raised a few million dollars in 2008, surged at the N1 Iowa. But he knows now he has to get in early. He has to have a super PAC. Huckabee people and a lot of other campaigns, they estimate you're going to need 50 million to 100 million just to make it through the early part of the Republican primary. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, you're probably going to need 150 million to win the nomination that you're going to need a billion to run in the general election.

So money matters. Some people say it's an unfortunate trend, but it does. So let me just break it down if we can just into larger sort of character groups. Jeb Romney, that feels like establishment conservatives. Yeah, maybe add Christie into there. OK, so put Christie in there. And those are the superstars. They're going to raise a lot of money.

And then you have the sort of the more emerging candidates. You have my personal favorite, Scott Walker, who I think is fantastic, who I want to be president. You have other people like that. And then you have what I'd say are the – more the values conservatives, the social conservatives. You have Huckabee and Santorum. Santorum is already locked up apparently according to The Daily Shot, Foster Freeze. I reported that yesterday. That was my scoop. Oh, thank you. OK, then according to Bob Costa and The Daily Shot, reporting – repeating Bob Costa's scoop.

But I think that was – that wasn't unexpected, was it? No, that's not unexpected at all. But I think the way we're seeing this emerge – and as you say, Rob, it can change tomorrow. It's two tracks. I mean it's going to be Christie, Romney, Bush, the conservative contenders, and I think the opportunity here is really good for Walker because when he won in 2010, he won the recall in 2012, then wins in 2014. He built a national financial network that is as impressive as Romney's or Bush's. He has those same donor connections in Wall Street, in Denver, in California. I think he could be the – someone is going to have to find a way to balance the conservative fervor with the money guys on the center right. And then maybe he's Walker.

So maybe I'm spinning my fan. I'm asking you to tell me what I want to hear. But one of the things – look, I'm a fan. I like Mitt Romney, and I like Jeb Bush a lot. I feel like Mitt Romney, it's over. He tried and I don't think you should run again. And I feel like Jeb Bush, as much as I like him, I kind of – I feel like that's not – it's like bad for the country in a way. To have this dynasty, this brother and the son of two presidents that next in line just feels wrong to me even though I like him a lot.

And to me, that feels like the problem with Jeb's candidacy is that even people like me who like him hesitate for a whole lot of other reasons to vote for him. And that's why I feel like the Scott Walker candidacy is sort of interesting because he can kind of come from the Midwest. He comes from out of the establishment. The guy didn't even go to college. He's a hardworking guy. He's from out of the establishment. The guy didn't even go to college. He's a hardworking guy. He's the son of a preacher. It feels to me like if I were coming up with a robot Republican candidate, a governor who has strong actual conservative winds under his belt, has been tested and scarred, and

still has the right profile, I'd pick Scott Walker. Tell me I'm wrong. I covered Walker for two weeks in Wisconsin back in October and November, and he is good. He is a political talent. Some people say, oh, he's like Tim Pawlenty. He doesn't have much charisma. But as you say, he's the son of a Baptist preacher. He's been part of his childhood in Iowa.

He has a preacher's cadence in a sense, and I think he could do well in Iowa. The thing for Scott Walker, though, is he's going to have to show he can raise the money. It's also – this is going to be such a crowded field. So let's say Huckabee and Santorum, they do well in Iowa. You're still going to have to go into New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida if Jeb wins it. One other thing about Jeb Bush is that when I talk to the financiers, they're very confident. They think they can raise $100 million for his super PAC and campaign. But there are some private reservations because this guy has not been on a ballot since 2002.

He has not even been on the campaign trail yet. He's been doing all these meetings at private equity firms. We still haven't seen him in Des Moines with a camera shoved in his face and 500 reporters tweeting about it. And he always talks about wanting to run joyfully. Well, let's see it. Yeah. Does anybody really run in New Hampshire and Iowa and those first three states joyfully? That's kind of nuts. The process has gotten tough.

I mean, just covering the midterms in 2012, it is an intense media scrutiny. I mean, that's why I love that Romney interview with Mark Leibovich from a few months ago where Romney told Leibovich, why don't you have your recorder on? Put it on. And Romney's whole point was in that interview, everything is recorded now. Everything is going to be on YouTube. Just acknowledge it. So all right. One last question.

If you – last time around, we complained there were too many candidates, and they were just kind of useless, right? They weren't going to win. They weren't really – they didn't have stature or gravity. Only one guy on the stage really had that kind of gravity. This time, I hear people complaining, too many candidates are too good. Some of those good guys should drop out. Can you ever satisfy a Republican primary voter? Is that even a possible thing to do? Probably not.

You see the party though, Reince Priebus. They're out in San Diego today. They're trying to compress the process, move the convention up, lower the number of debates. But I think that actually could backfire on the Republicans because if you have a crowded field, this idea of trying to get it done early, some people may be going to want to see it drag out. Right, right. Bob, Troy Sinek here. One of the things that's interesting listening to you and Rob discuss that field, and this is kind of indicative of what we're seeing in the media too. We talked a good bit about Jeb. We talked a good bit about Mitt. And then Chris Christie was sort of an afterthought, and it seems like that's the way that the coverage is trending right now too.

But we've got here a two-term governor in a large blue state, a guy who's got a big – it seems like a bigger national media presence than anybody else who hasn't already previously been a national media figure. And it seems like a lot of people have just kind of written him off for the last year or so since the Bridgegate thing happened. Are we underestimating Chris Christie's potency? I think so. I think so much of this early process, you're right, it's probably too obsessed with who's raising the bundlers and the finance guys. But Christie had a tough 2014, but he comes back at the end of 2014, raises $90 million to the Republican Governors Association, gets a lot of goodwill. He's been going to all these inaugurations over the past month. He's going to be in Maryland next week with Larry Hogan. He has a blue state model. He's an anti-abortion governor. He's going to make a case in Iowa, from what I hear, that he's been able to be conservative in a blue state and really not get away from his social values.

That's how he thinks he's a different kind of candidate than a Giuliani was in 2008. And Christie also is a political talent. I covered him in 2009 for National Review, heavily on the ground when he ran against Corzine. covered him in 2013, put him on a debate stage against Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney. He could overwhelm with liveliness, and that's going to connect I think with some voters. Who's the guy or the woman that we're not watching right now that we should? It seems like there's always somebody, right? Like Huckabee sort of came out of nowhere in 2008. There were some figures in 2012. Nobody knew who Herman Cain was a year before. Who should we be watching that we're not right now? Well, I think definitely keep an eye on Ben Carson, the Maryland neurosurgeon. Every time I go to Iowa, all I see is enthusiasm for him among activists who don't have party roles but are

really plugged into politics. I think John Bolton may run as kind of a protest candidate as a hawk against the Rand Paul non-interventionists. Carly Fiorina, she's doing a lot of meetings. We'll see what happens there. But I think it's going to be a lot of other smaller candidates we haven't even thought about. Lindsey Graham is thinking about running. It's kind of a same – just like bolton as a hawk candidate um mike pence though he's out there in indiana right now kind of watching this all play out and he's a scott walker type figure thinks he can get all three stools in the party and really uh be a consensus candidate he knows he doesn't need to rush and rick perry look he had a horrible run in 2012 but i've he's one of the he's done more in terms of due diligence meetings really building up an infrastructure in iowa new hampshire that i've seen with almost any other candidate he's out there and bobby jindal he's not the most charismatic fellow but he's doing a

lot of groundwork too so it's going to be big i know he is about can i ask one question just one more person i just want to get to Susanna Martinez, governor of New Mexico. She's got – I mean why is she not on lists? Is there stuff we don't – is there an issue there we're not aware of? Well, she's on everyone's vice presidential list, but she's not on the presidential list. I mean I've covered Governor Martinez. She's a savvy politician. You know her whole story. But she is just not going to run for president. It's just not – she is very close, interestingly, with Christie. The one person Christie had at his victory party in 2013 was Susanna Martinez. But I think if Jeb Bush is the nominee, she's probably not going to be the VP, but we'll see. We'll see. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I know that you spend most of your time with the folks on our side of the aisle, Bob, but I'm just curious. Is there – if you're in the sort of crypto Hillary Clinton campaign right now, is there anybody, anybody on the Democratic side that makes them nervous? Yes. I mean I just spent a lot of time a couple weeks ago with Senator Webb from Virginia, former Senator Webb. And the Hillary people know they can out-raise everyone, out-organize. What they really worry is someone striking a chord and causing a problem for them like Bernie Sanders up in Vermont could be a problem in New Hampshire. Just arguing the party needs to move to the left. Jim Webb, the kind of guy that – he could be almost like a Rick Santorum was to Romney in 2012. Don't need a lot of money. Go around in a van, but get a lot of media attention and eventually start to pick up speed. But the real fear, of course, and I know you guys have discussed this, is looming out there like this moon hovering over Hillary land.

It's Elizabeth Warren, and they think she may say no now, and she may say no in two months, but they think she's in her 60s. The Democrats are in the Senate minority. Warren is probably not really eager to be in a minority group in the Senate doing little. And eventually, she could easily be drafted and jump in. Well, to quote Star Wars, of course, that's not a moon. That's a raging socialist. The right would love to see Warren be the nominate in nation. Are there people in cooler heads in the left as well who realize that this probably isn't the time for the country to follow one heavy statist with somebody who regards the statism of the previous occupant as insufficient to the task? I mean, is that really where they want to go? Oh, yes. I mean, you talk to Democrats on Capitol Hill, James. They think that this whole issue of the rising gap between the rich and the poor,

they think the Democrats didn't do enough in 2014 with the minimum wage. They want to do even more when it comes to progressive economic policies in 2016. Elizabeth Warren has $7 million, right? Six, $7 million. How did she make that money? And why hasn't she given it away yet? I mean this is something that I want you to investigate. She's a part owner of a casino I think.

She's allowed to own a casino. Hey, Bob, I just want – are Democrats worried about men? They don't get that many men. They have a problem with male votes. The gender gap for the Democrats is a lot more dangerous for them, I think. And there's only one guy out there, Jim Webb. There's no other guys out there, except, of course, my dark horse prediction is that if you're the governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, you're thinking to yourself, hey, a moderate Democrat governor does pretty well in the Democratic Party. Is that – am I – I mean I know I'm crazy, but am I stupid crazy?

No, you're not stupid crazy. I think a lot of Democrats we're not even thinking about right now. I think you nailed it with Hickenlooper. They're saying, hey, I may not win the nomination, but there's such an ample opportunity here to become a national Democrat and to become a real figure in the party by challenging Hillary. And people discounted President Obama in 2006 and 2007, and now he's a two-term president. Hillary Clinton is beatable, and I think a lot of Democrats are going to start moving toward that, and I think the Clinton people recognize that she's not just going to coast

to this nomination as much as that's how it's sometimes characterized in the press. So what's she doing now? Is she just hanging out? If you're Hillary Clinton, what are you doing? You wake up in the morning, get a cup of coffee. What's your work product for that day? Is it to reach out to guys in Iowa, New Hampshire? Is it to assemble your team? Is it to rehire John Podesta, which she did? What's your day-to-day? What do you think? She's recruiting staff. I mean she has Podesta, as you know, who just left the White House. She got President Obama's top pollster, Joel Benenson, to be her strategist. Jim Margolis, another Obama guy, to come in as her media advisor, kind of run her ads. So she's getting a lot of the – she's not getting a lot of the minor league players right now in presidential politics. She's not building a farm team. She's hiring the Yankees in a sense, all the big people from Obama's campaigns to come on board.

The real question, of course, is whether or not Joe Biden is looking in the mirror as he shaves in the morning and says, that's the most presidential thing I'm going to see all day. But I don't know. I don't know. I got to tell you this. And again, Bob, this is something you in Washington might know whether or not Joe is a razor man, an electric razor man, whether or not he has somebody personally pluck out the hairs of the tweezer himself. You just don't know. Hey, I got a Biden story for you. So real quick, I mean, I go to to see American Sniper this week in D.C., and I'm sitting in the theater, and there's two seats marked reserved. And I said, okay. And then there's some guys walking around in suits, and I pay no attention. I'm on a date. And the movie is about to start, and Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden sit down, five seats down in my row.

Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. And so they're watching American Sniper. And the whole movie, I want to kind of look to my left, look to my left, but I know that's kind of – you don't want to be that guy. No, really? Wow. That kind of – it wasn't fake. I mean he was moved. I mean that – Democrats, I think Biden, he brings a different kind of persona if he runs. He has a certain human quality for all his complications. For some reason, I mean maybe I have to see the picture so I know. That story scares me.

But I don't think there's any reaction that Joe Biden can have to a movie that wouldn't scare me. I always wonder why exactly we refer to his wife as Dr. Biden. She has a doctorate. She has a doctorate. OK. But it's like having to say the prophet Mohammed. I mean everybody who has a doctorate, you call them a doctor. I would like to see American Sniper to find out exactly who I would go about hiring, taking out the people who step on my attempts to get to a commercial, as Bob just did.

If someone gets an education doctor, wouldn't you rather just say Dr. So-and-so rather than Joe Biden, comma, ed.d or something, whatever it is? Yeah, that's a good point. Ed.d. Yes, Rob, go ahead. Educational doctor. Troy, you want to get in here and keep me from doing the commercial? James, I have some stubble.

I'm a little bit – I got a 5 o'clock shadow. What do I do? Yeah, I do too. What do you do with something like that? Oh, boy. Thanks, guys. That was the most pathetic way of getting me into this, but I appreciate the work. What you do, of course, is you remove the stubble.

Now, you know that if you've got anything that's close to dullness on your razor, what you're going to have is you're going to rip the thing out. It's going to have a big – you have one of those red things you got for a day. It's going to be ingrown, and your face is going to go through the trauma that it's already going through with winter and the trauma of bad blades. Well, you'll never have a bad blade from Harry's, and that's why your stubble, which you helped me to mention, Rob, to get us into the commercial after about six minutes of circling it like a lone asteroid.

I know. Radio's hard. But you want Harry's razors. Now, here's the thing. I mentioned before the Winter Winston. I couldn't pronounce it. I had to take several runs at it, and that's because just thinking about it is one of those things that almost makes you all a quiver because it's not just a great razor to shave your face with. It's a great looking razor. It's a beautiful, sleek chrome razor with three high quality blades. You know, those ones that, you know,

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I'm drenched in sweat from having to get into that one. So I'm just going to stand back here and let you guys get back to the race. But I did mention Biden. We were talking about Biden. Is anybody else besides us and perhaps the ushers who had to clear up the watered-up Kleenexes talking about Joe Biden. And not really. I mean, all the Obama people, you think if Biden was serious, they'd at least give their

own vice president a shot. But he's not making any moves. I think Biden's kind of in a position of Elizabeth Warren. He has to really see, does Hillary fumble? Is there really a groundswell against her? Then maybe you start to consider something. But right now, the money, the apparatus of the whole Democratic Party, and who knows how that's going to all play out, but it's certainly moving toward the secretary, former secretary of state. Bob, first of all, I'm sorry that you had to hear us fight like that during the pitch segment.

Second of all, the one name that we have not mentioned at all so far is Ted Cruz. What are the prospects there? So I had a fascinating dinner last night with some Romney allies, people, donors, and they said the person they fear most is Ted Cruz. Really? Yeah, it was really – I was surprised by that, but they said here – the way they described it was they think they can beat Bush. Bush is going to have some trouble beyond the fundraising stuff. Can he really compete in this era of politics, etc.? They think once it gets down to whoever – they think Cruz, because of his intellect, because he speaks to the heart of the party right now, he's – they call him a hot politician, not in terms of looks, but in terms of being white hot right now, he's really where the conservatives are in the party. They think that's going to really give him momentum, and it's going to make him a major threat to get the nomination. Do Ted Cruz and Rand Paul compete for the same base of voters?

That seems to always be assumed in a lot of the media coverage. I wonder if you think that's right. I think they have some overlapping, but Rand Paul is trying to do a different thing. He's coming out with a book later this year called Taking a Stand. Boring title like all of them, but it's really going to be about reaching out to younger voters, bipartisan message, that kind of thing. Rand Paul is trying to cast himself as a general

election figure who could build a Republican Party electorate. He just hired a guy named Chip Anglinder who ran Bruce Rauner's campaign in Illinois. Kind of an unorthodox pick to run his campaign. But he thinks because Rauner was able to win in a blue state in Illinois and still get a lot of conservative activists on his side, that's the kind of campaign Rand Paul is looking to run. Where Cruz is more in the spirit of Reagan really going back to being proud of being a Republican, not running away from the party, not running away from conservatism. Hey, Bob, before we move off presidential races, I have one question. On the member feed, Karen Adams, one of our members, asked a question about – touching about the idea of the background of people and kind of the dirt you get into and their past and when you have a bunch of candidates like this i mean so probably a little less crucial this cycle because a lot of these guys running have been through some bruising

battles of them already i mean it's hard to believe there's stuff about chris christie and mitt romney we haven't already heard but is there something um are there how much oppo is going on right now how dirty do you think it's going to be? Is there a sense – I mean Karen Adams' point is that maybe we should stop doing that and we should just be looking – remember we need a change in leadership. Is that – do you get that sense from Republican primary voters or are we in for kind of a Donnybrook? The oppo is already starting. I mean it's going to be – this is – for the Republican nomination, this is one of the most open fields, open races we've seen in years, and so many more people are going to get in. And just look at the way that Bush and Romney worlds are colliding this week. I mean they are throwing punches. It is already messy. I mean beyond the Klan versus Klan dynamic, This is open warfare. But is it weird for Mitt Romney? I mean Mitt Romney collected all this. He vetted a bunch of VP candidates last time around. So he's already got the goods on some of these guys, right? I mean it doesn't seem fair. Well, politics isn't fair. Oh, damn. I forgot. I mean, yeah, he has – now Romney, his people assure everyone that they will not use those files.

All right, yeah. We will not use these files that are right here on the coffee table. Wow. Do you buy that or do you think – so you think it's going to be Donnybrook? Who do you think is the most vulnerable right now? On the Republican side? Yeah, for that kind of stuff? So you think it's going to be Donnybrook. Who do you think is the most vulnerable right now? On the Republican side? Yeah, for that kind of stuff? The most vulnerable is Christie in the sense that he's already been hobbled, so how many more stories can he take of significance? I think Rubio is hurt not so much by Oppo. He has some going back to 2010, his time in the statehouse. But Rubio, he just seems to get boxed out of this. If Christie gets in as well, where's the space for Rubio?

But I think Jeb Bush, there's a lot of stuff with his business dealings that the press is very interested in. The press doesn't know much about his personal life. His family has had some different issues in the past. Guys like Mitch Daniels last time, they decided not to run because they knew all this would come up. I think Bush is going to – Romney's much more vetted by the press bush presents a new opportunity for a lot of searching a new opportunity for every single cliche about republicans to be played again can't wait for that and one of the people who will be pushing that narrative i'm sure is our good friend bill maher who you know golf clap for what he's been saying about the threat of radical

islam but he's still bill maher uh You were on the show, weren't you? What was that like? It was, I had a lot of fun. I mean, the reason I really had a great time was Bernie Sanders was on the show. So Bernie Sanders and I hit it off in the green room or whatever. And so the next morning, it was tapes on a Friday. We had breakfast together at the hotel hotel right near Rodeo Drive. I didn't mind that trip.

So Bernie Sanders comes in. He's gone on a walk, and I said, well, what was your walk like down Rodeo Drive? And this is the self-proclaimed socialist. He goes, you wouldn't believe it. He's like, there's no price tags on anything. He's like, this is what's wrong with America. And then I said – the thing about Senator Sanders is he's the son of Holocaust survivors from Poland. He grew up in New York City. He's in his 70s. He knows it's going to be very much of a long-shot campaign. If I said to him, his parents are both deceased, what would your parents think about – you think about running for president.

You went to New York. You became a senator, but now you're looking to White House. He goes, I know exactly what my mother would say. Keep the job you have. It's a good job. Hey, OK. So one last question, Bob. Moving off the presidents or maybe building from that, we're talking about who's going to run for president.

And we're talking about all the different candidates and what they're going to be running on. And that's about a year and a half away really or at least a year away before it gets really – starts getting ugly. In between now and then, there's a Republican Congress and a Republican Senate. Are they going to do anything? Are they going to set the agenda or is it really going to be, well, let's just kind of check our watches and keep our seats warm and let the guys at the top of a party duke it out? How active is this Congress going to be and how satisfied are the true activist, reformist, conservatives going to be with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner? They're out in Hershey, Pennsylvania today having their retreat, all the senators on the Republican side and all the House members.

And they're trying to have kind of a kumbaya, come up with some kind of agenda together. But it's going to be difficult. The House GOP is frustrated already. They – 25 of them went against Boehner in the speaker election, and they think the Senate is going to move too slow. They don't think the Senate is going to come up with anything hard-edged like they would like to see. And so there are already tensions there, and there are tensions especially on immigration. I mean the House wants to really go after the president on his executive actions in the Senate. A lot of them are kind of shrugging their shoulders at that kind of effort.

So you're not hopeful or you are hopeful? In the Senate, a lot of them are kind of shrugging their shoulders at that kind of effort. So you're not hopeful or you are hopeful? Well, I think the infighting is going to be real, and I think we're seeing it spill out a little bit. And I just think they're going to do some trade deals maybe with the White House. They'll try to get some energy bills like Keystone through. They'll do some tweaks to Obamacare like the medical device tax. But in terms of doing something sweeping like tax reform, Paul Ryan will try, whether it's something on entitlements, unlikely. I'm just not sure yet they have settled on what is the Congress going to contribute to the 2016 conversation rather than just a new temperament or something like that. Right. Is that fun to cover? I mean are you – where do you spend most of your time? Who do you cover the most?

I split between Congress and national campaigns. I love covering Congress. A lot of people just kind of don't – I think Congress is one of the last great places to cover politics because you can still go up to a lawmaker in the hallway and kind of pin them on a question, get them on the record. I mean one of the worst things now about campaigns is that you have to go through five levels of people sometimes to get any kind of response. In Congress, at least you can still go up to a senator and have a real conversation and get some information. So last question. If you're going to cover a national campaign, who's would you – just assuming of all the people running right now for president, who's would you like to cover?

Not because you think he's going to win necessarily because he's going to be the most fun. Great question. For me, definitely in 2012, it was Herman Cain. I had so much fun covering that campaign. I got to know him pretty well. In 2016, I think Peter King of New York, just in terms of most fun, he's always willing to have a barb or a quote on anything. He's gregarious. He's trying to run Remy as a real outsider, hawk, kind of anti-Ted Cruz, anti-Rand Paul.

I think Rand Paul is fun too. I mean he has kind of a low-key manner on the trail, but he's very much all about accessibility with the press, with people, and I like that about him. Who takes the best care of the press? The best care of the press? Christie's people are very aware of reporters and always – A lot of donuts. Exactly. They're pretty good. I think Romney's people, it's like going to a corporate event.

I mean they know what they're doing. Right. Yeah. Well, listen. I'm jealous. You kind of have a – following a campaign around seems like a dream job. Not that I want to do it, but I like to think that it's a dream job. My favorite place is the New Hampshire Seacoast.

That's the best part of the campaign trail. That's a pretty area. That's right. That's right. Well, we hope to speak to you again as the campaign heats up next year and the Donnybrook ensues. But just one favor, Bob.

Next time you show up in the podcast, could you be a little prepared? You know, because it's just... The way you're winging it here and not coming up with anything, it's like... I'll try, man. I'm I'm still learning, all right? Give me a break.

You'll find him in the Washington Post where he's a delight to read and an incredibly prolific, smart guy. And, well, like I say, we'll have you on again when we get down to 26 and it's Biden versus Mitch McConnell. All right. Thanks a lot. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Bob.

It's too bad, actually, that the Colbert report is going off the air. It would have been fun to see Bob on that show. But, of course, maybe he'll be on the show when Stephen Colbert does his new nighttime thing that I couldn't care less about. But if you're interested in the slightest bit, and it does really matter who is on late-night television in a strange way because that's how things filter into the culture to people who are up late, presumably don't have to get up and go to work in the morning. Well, if you want a little opinion about television, acculturator.com is where you might want to go because there, pop culture matters. Just look at their television page today. They're talking about Downton Abbey, which everybody loves, and the question of premarital sex, which has apparently come up

in this show where the aristocrats are about 40 years behind the times. You'll find a piece about where are television's good dads. All those guys who've been complaining for years and justly so that men on television are portrayed as idiots might want to read this. And if you don't like that, there's tech, sports, music, fashion, culture, comics. That's right, comics. And if you sniff and stick up your nose at comics, just remember that movies like Guardians of the Galaxy made a couple billion dollars. It's a big cultural force, as is Acculturated.com. If you love Ricochet, you'll love the perspective you find there.

Go there, give them some clicks, and thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, here we are talking about an election that's not going to happen for another year and a half, two years. And what have we forgotten? What's over? Charlie Hebdo appears to be over. we are talking about an election that's not going to happen for another year and a half, two years. And what have we forgotten? What's over? Charlie Hebdo appears to be over. The Black Lives Matter, the Ferguson thing appears to be over. Cuba appears to be over.

Barack Obama not going to the Paris rally. All of these things just that were, that was just, uh, causing us to become inflamed with a righteous indignation, uh, are over. So, uh, what's, what's next? I'm not sure those are over.

These things kind of like go. Do you think, do you think I was just putting that out there as a rhetorical question? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean,

I think this, um, this administration likes to wish things away, but they always come back. I mean look, what happens in France is going to be different. The French have a different temperament. When something like this happens in the United States, there's an investigation and there's this and there's that. And we Americans, we like to get to the bottom of stuff and we like to be transparent.

The French don't like that. So I suspect what will happen in France will be a series of very, very sort of unpublicized raids and a crackdown in general on – one of those guys traveled down to Yemen and back on his brother's passport. There's probably a lot more of that, a lot more crackdown there. But it won't be public. I mean no one's – in this country, we find out who was the person who let this happen and then we have an investigation and then there's congressmen and they're on tv and that doesn't happen in france but um but i suspect it will happen behind closed doors for in this country i think uh what we see is the president always trying desperately to change the subject right from whatever's happening because whatever's happening is bad he's trying to change the subject. So whenever they come back,

he's in Baltimore right now, the president, and the Democrats are having their retreat today, and he's there, he's going to speak to them, and whatever they're talking about is probably a list of things we can mention to change the subject. But I'm not sure it works.

Maybe it'll work for Charlie Hebdo, and maybe it'll work for Ferguson, I suspect, but I'm not sure it works. Maybe it will work for Charlie Hebdo and maybe it will work for Ferguson, I suspect. But I'm not sure it will work in general. Well, Troy, let me ask you this. Now that the economy is doing fine and great and the Great Recession is over and we're just churning out jobs by the billions, doesn't this mean that the Democrats are in a better position come 2016 because now all of a sudden we've got good times are here again, so let's spend money on stuff. Let's give away college. All these wonderful list items that they had in their back pocket

waiting for things to get better. Happy times are here again. Doesn't this mean that the Republicans are going to have a harder shot saying the government is a drain on the economy and we need somebody with a more free market opinion. What do you think? I don't think so.

I don't think to a great extent. There might be – Nobody has agreed with anything I have said all day today. I'm going to go get a cup of coffee. Well, they're giving away – it's a free community college now. I saw this morning that I think paid sick leave is next on the – I mean it's all – this is when you know that – It's not just paid sick leave.

The government is going to pay somebody to come to your house and cough in your face. Yeah, make sure you get it right. But this is always when you know that the Democratic Party is in its nadir is when it starts basically rolling out a policy agenda that makes it look like an HR department. It's all sort of these kind of small-bore like cost-covering things. And to Rob's point, they've been pushing this to the exclusion of even acknowledging outside events. It was kind of weird last week that the president had I think three events scheduled around the country. One of them was here in Tennessee. There was one in Arizona. I don't remember where the third one was.

But they just went on with everything the way that they had planned after the attacks in Paris and clearly – I mean as a speechwriter, you kind of see the tells for this. They just tacked on a paragraph at the start of these speeches very quickly and then just kind of moved into what they were doing the whole time. So they just – they paid it just enough attention. They just sort of nodded at it enough to make it look like it wasn't outright malpractice or at least I guess that was the calculation. You sort of lose that benefit when you don't send anybody to Paris. As far as it affecting the outcome or affecting the dynamic I guess more accurately in 2016, I don't think so and the reason why is because I don't think that this is – I don't think this is an unambiguous turnaround in the economy.

I mean we still see all kinds of slack in the labor market and it basically comes down to the fact that the people whose economic concerns are most acute don't seem to be feeling much of a difference. I think to the extent that you want to use something like that, something like the economic upturn to your advantage, there has to be a plausible theory of the case that connects point A to B and I think people look at this and whatever improvement we may have, I don't think counteracts the last six years and the feeling that everything that was done on the economic front accomplished nothing and also the one big upside, the most tangible part of this economic improvement

that people actually see day to day is the change in oil prices, which happened despite the administration and not because of them. So I think it's because we changed the market by drilling. And it's something the Republicans were saying in 2012. It's something the Republicans were saying in 2008. Drill here, drill now. Pay less at the tank. Drill, baby, drill. That's what Sarah Palin said.

And I feel like that people can easily make that connection and so it's harder for the Obama types to like – in Obama world to take credit. But I also feel like there are two other things that are happening. You know, 11, 12, 13 percent of Americans who really don't – 14 sometimes percent – who really don't care about the party, whatever party they're in, aren't really in a party, kind of don't really care about politics. We call them low information voters sometimes and sometimes they are. But really what they are is sort of low loyalty voters and they have subconsciously I believe already fired this president. They've already fired him in their head. They fired him when they voted in the midterms and they're just – they just wanted to shut up and to be the president and preside and not do anything. He's in a make-work job as far as they're concerned and just sit there. Like those teachers in New York City, right? You can't fire them.

So you send them to the rubber room. And I think that in a whole psyche of the American voter, they have sent Barack Obama to the rubber room. And I feel like – I think he knows it and I think it's trouble for him. The second thing I would say about it is that – I'm not sure that the upturn in the economy, which is a genuine upturn and I believe that 2015 is going to probably be a year of real growth. I think the problem for all politicians now is I don't think the American people buy it anymore that this means that this one-time down cycle is now an up cycle and happy times are here again. It's just been too many years, not just 10 or 8 or 12 but 20, 25, 30 years of stagnant wages and a real problem for the middle class, working class and sort of lower middle class where they just simply can't – they simply look at the system that seems stacked against them and there's no politician trying to change that in a meaningful way that isn't socialist, right?

Well, that's what I mean. When you talk about the 14, 15 low information voters or liberals, these are people who themselves might say this Hillary lady, I don't know, this Elizabeth Warren lady, she makes a great point. Yeah. No, I think you're right. This Bernie Sanders guy might be a little out there. But it will be because on the Republican side, it's a career politician and a millionaire and an investment banker and the son, brother of a dynasty. It looks to them if you don't care about the party. By the way, the people who need to – who elect the president of the United States are people who do not care about the party. That's right.

That's who makes the choice. everybody in a party swallows hard and votes uh or they don't but they don't stay away in any meaningful number we now know we even even the romney number is that those are independent independence but kind of makes them seem a little less apathetic but the people who do not care about the party, they elect a president. And what I think they want to hear is something that has a little populism of Elizabeth Warren, not the solutions but the concerns, and a lot of Ronald Reagan. And I'm not sure that they're getting that yet. They may get that but I'm not sure. To me, that would be the recipe for the next president is how do I say I'm not one of the elites. I'm going to fight for the lower middle class working class.

I'm going to do it in a way that's consistent with my conservative economic values, and I'm going to restore American greatness. I agree with that. The one thing I think that is hopeful about that group in the middle is that after the Bush years – because you're talking about people with sort of low levels of ideological commitment. So I don't have a lot of philosophical priors here. After the Bush years, there was a plausible case to be made to those people, one which I think they accepted, that all the dysfunctions of government stemmed from dysfunctions of George W. Bush, that it was – the government was so badly mismanaged and that George W. Bush didn't know what he was doing.

And six years after them, eight years by the time we get to the election, that has been disproved. It may very well have had a lot to do with the deficiencies of George W. Bush but Barack Obama didn't fix any of that and you saw just as many manifestations of it in just as many horrifying ways. I think there is a – some of the polling seems to indicate this. There is a growing sense among those people that any sort of assumption of trust and assumption of good faith in government is misbegotten.

That doesn't mean they're all Barry Goldwater. But it does mean that I think they're – the disposition, the place where they start when they think about what government does has moved instantly in our direction and I think that helps you in 2016. I think you're right. I think you're right. Unless it just means – Go ahead. Sorry. Unless it just means that they want a more efficient and capable redistributor of other people's products. Well, this is always the problem, right?

I mean they want dramatically lower taxes and dramatically higher spending. That could be – But look. What do most people agree on right i mean in the center right in the or the great even this is a great center of america they they they agree that we shouldn't have you know the price supports for agricultural products but most people aren't farmers um they agree on a whole host of government cutbacks but they don't feel that they don't feel the the effect of government in their lives.

When they get a social security check, they do, which is why social security remains popular and Medicare remains popular. But Obamacare seemed like – I think for a lot of people, the reason why it's still unpopular, it seemed like an intrusion into their world that – into everyone's world where you were sort of forced to confront this leviathan inside your life, inside your computer, and you didn't want to and you were happy with what you had. I mean 80% of all Americans said they were happy with their healthcare. It was an enormous number. I mean if you polled it, it would not indicate that that system should be changed. It indicated that the people who are uninsured should be insured. That's it. And so I kind of feel like Obamacare was a great example for are experiencing that is working for them like Social Security or Medicare, that's harder.

That's a lot more uphill. You can get away with all kinds of malfeasance in government if it's operating on the basis of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. But the problem is when you get into the areas that intersect most directly with people's daily lives – I mean I think for your average probably non-ideological voter, the two best arguments for voting republican is what's happened to their healthcare over the last three or four years and depending on their neighborhood, the quality of their public schools because those are two things that you can't get away from and those are two things where the the liberal philosophy that animates those institutions

has been proven an utter failure and there's no good argument to make on the other side there just isn't other than you can say it's it's an implementation problem but they've been saying you know it's like communism it's been an implementation problem for 150 years right right at a certain point you've exhausted that argument. Right. That's true. Right. But in some cities, for example, like the one in which I live, our newspaper is doing a series of stories about credit card abuse amongst the administrators. What a big surprise. What a stunning surprise when credit cards are given to these people in the school system and they actually may use them for a nice restaurant or this, that, or the other. So there's – but it doesn't mean that anybody in Minnesota will continue to do anything other than to vote for people who believe in public education and do everything to stymie the opposition to it.

Nothing will change. There will still be an entrenched bureaucratic administrative culture and there will still be studies that say that there's a disparate impact which will be traced to economics, which will be blamed at the feet of historical prejudice, et cetera. There is an entrenched mentality, at least in the cities. And so, I mean, give up in the cities, forget about them as far as getting them back. But what I find out, I mean, everything that you're saying is true. But what I'm wondering exactly is in the absence of complete economic collapse and a threat from abroad, how likely it is that people are actually smart. That's not the word I want to use. Have actually been paying enough attention over the last eight years

to realize how the American experiment has been diminished and whittled away incrementally as well as – I mean, yes, we have to concentrate on Obamacare. It's a great object lesson. But there are so many little things around the margin, so many ways in which government just inexorably consumes freedom and pushes the private realm out. I mean when you say, Rob, and you're absolutely right. We need somebody who is Reagan-esque, who's able to make those statements. Part of the problem it seemed with Romney the last time around was when he was speaking of the freedom to start a business.

A lot of people were looking around and saying, I don't want to start a business. Right. That's right. But I believe that's part of the problem, right? Part of the problem isn't – for us was that we were – he was running as the venture capitalist in chief, right? We're going to start a bunch of entrepreneurial startups and he's correct in many ways. The startup environment in America generally drives job growth and job creation.

That's what – small, middle businesses do that. And if you stop creating small businesses and you stop using capital to start businesses, even businesses that fail eventually, you have an employment and a stagnant economy, which we kind of have. And we do have a startup problem in this country. I guess what I would say is that the person who represents that as a future that can be changed and a future – not that we all want everyone to be an entrepreneur but that we want an economy that grows and that we have risk-taking, which is what Reagan did I think is – under the umbrella of restoring America's greatness, the greatness we had in science and technology in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the greatness we had in winning the Cold War, the greatness we had in being a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world. That person probably will be speaking to people who want something to believe in. I mean – Well, Troy, let me ask you – that's a good point.

And Troy, let me ask you this then. When you talk about, for example, unleashing the American worker and you start making anti-union remarks as a Scott Walker would do and even if he didn't, that's precisely what he would be tarred with, that he wanted to destroy the middle class because of unions. Right. How is that going to – I mean it may look great to us inside of our little ideological world here, but there are a lot of people who are going to look at this and rear back in horror and see a man who's trying to drive people back into wage slavery.

I mean is that how we're just not seeing – Wow, that's good oppo by the way. I think they might. I think most of those people, however, are in the media. I mean I think that – I think that we get – Well, just the media. No, but I think there's a disconnect between the media and the people who consume the media where that's concerned. I really do. I think the – and I love Scott Walker, but I think that we make the mistake sometimes of thinking that Scott Walker is – Scott Walker got ahead of every other politician in America on this issue. He did not get ahead of the public.

The public has already been here where unions are concerned for a long time. And Walker has always – one of Walker's gifts – I've seen him speak in person once. He has a remarkable capacity to sort of pull aside all of the ideological rhetoric that might go into speeches like this and just focus on results and how it actually helps people, how it helps working people. He's not going to do anything with private sector unions. Even with the public sector unions, they're very smart in Wisconsin about excluding law enforcement and fire, which you've got to do. First of all, you want to focus on the most venal examples of it anyway. But that sort of focus on how it actually changes the day-to-day life of a working person is essential and I think will be very helpful for him because Rob is right. We have a living, breathing socialist in the – running the biggest city in the country, New York City, who is sitting in his office right now trying to figure out a way to curtail the power of public sector unions. In his case case the police. That's kind of a win.

Well, the thing about the Romney argument in 2012 is that it was essentially right. It was rhetorically incomplete, which is you have to be able to appeal to people who also signed the back of a check in addition to people who signed the front, and Romney's campaign sounded a lot of times like it was only directed towards people like him. And for all the fun that we have as expense sometimes, somebody like Rick Santorum actually did a very good job of doing the opposite and sort of relating to people who don't necessarily want to start a company. They want to work for a wage. They want to have a normal sort of nine-to-five existence and there's nothing wrong with that. So Romney ran a terrific campaign for secretary of commerce. But you need somebody who can cast a broader net than that.

This is not new. It would not be new for the Republican Party. No. One of the standard bearer conservatives in the Republican Party for a long time who ran to the right of President George H.W. Bush was Pat Buchanan. And Pat Buchanan was an economic populist. He was not a free market conservative at all. I mean he ran as an economic populist. He was probably closer, not to Elizabeth Warren, but closer to a big government conservative in a lot of ways, government plans and programs and things and tariffs.

That is not part of the Republican playbook but I can't imagine a future maybe not in this cycle or the next cycle when those things are not really asked and asked loudly by a population that hasn't really seen the gains they're supposed to see in this productivity revolution of the last 30 years, in this trade revolution of the last 30 years, in the globalization revolution of the last 30 years. They have yet to really feel that the world is a better place because of all those things. You ummed there. So I'm going to leap in and go for the throat here and say the thing that always makes you furious

and that's this, when you say that the media I think Troy said that the media will portray Scott Walker like this we can't poo poo well we can't, we can't dismiss the effect of the media on the people who A, aren't paying attention and or B

are not exactly intellectually disposed to look at the world the same way that we do and who get their cultural cues from the vast puelating many tentacled beast that is the media and if it's made apparent to them in two three quick strokes that scott walker is simon legree and that uh the cool thing to do is to have the proper opinion of him. Once it's cool to know that he's a union busting, make the families shiver outside. So what we have to do – It's a challenge, but it's not a – It's a challenge, but I think the challenge is in the party finding somebody who has the public persona that is dynamic enough to vault over this and amuse people.

Now, I know this sounds like the worst kind of politics. We got to find somebody that people like with a twinkle in his eye who's funny. But the fact of the matter is – That's what we did. That's Reagan. That's exactly right. And that's – when people say we have to find a Reagan, they're not necessarily saying we have to find somebody with his policies, although I wouldn't mind that. It's the ability to vault over the media and connect with the American people on a level that makes them feel good about themselves for voting for this guy, which is what Barack Obama got.

Which, by the way, is a good idea anyway because we should be electing a president of either party who is bigger than the tiny little lick spill reporters who cover him that that's that should be normal but let me give you one little factoid which i think is interesting the the american media just as one issue the american media is about i don't know 80 percent against keystone xl pipeline i mean 80 maybe is that that fair? Maybe 70, whatever. The American people are for it by a margin of almost 20 – almost 30 percent in favor of it as opposed to against it. Overwhelming national support for Keystone XL. Overwhelming national disapproval in the media for Keystone XL. So it is possible for the people to see through the nonsense. It's possible for them to be practical and understand logic.

But you're right. It takes somebody to present that. But I'm not – that I'm not as worried about. of the old world to a nation that – and a large working class that no longer believes it because they have yet to see the gains. And we're going to have to talk to them or we're going to have to explain why they're not seeing the gains or we have to change our attitude or something because when people feel like the entire system is rigged against them. That it really doesn't matter whether you vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Barack Obama or Mitt Romney or John Boehner or Ted Cruz, that all those people come from some elite Ivy League media bubble. Then we're in trouble because that's when people – because remember, everybody is broke, but they all have one thing in common.

They all have a vote. And when a ruling class stops listening to real concerns and dismisses them as like, wow, those are just the little people, we're in trouble. I agree. The media may be against Keystone and the people may be for it but I would like to point out that we don't have Keystone yet. We might. But overwhelming popular support don't have Keystone yet. We might. But overwhelming popular support didn't seem to help it. Now let me exit with one question. I'll throw it to Troy first.

How much do you think this is going to be a national security election where people are refocused on the crazy threat? The crazy threat of the guys who want to do crazy things to us? Not much one. I mean they rarely are unless you have something that's immediately proximate. I mean I say this knowing full well that it's idle for us to talk about this now. I mean nobody thought – everybody thought the 2008 election was going to be about Iraq. And Iraq ended up being pretty much wrapped up before that. It ended up being about the economy. So we don't know, but I think the odds are better than not that it's not going to be foreign policy driven. It's probably, James, in large measure going to come down to a lot of the factors that you were talking about, about somebody who can make an emotional connection with the American people, which I think logically dictates, fellas, somebody who cries at the end of American Snowden.

Didn't it feel a little when he said that like it could have been any movie? If he was in End of the Woods, he would have been crying at the end of Into the Woods. In the interview, he would have been crying. Yeah, he's – yeah, it really freaked me out. But I think everything Joe Biden does freaks me out. I will answer your question this way. I think Troy is right. In general, national security is really rarely in the top five.

People sometimes say it is later, but don't really it's pocketbook pocketbook pocketbook however since we're talking about keystone excel um we'll spin a little science fiction movie scenario a thriller movie scenario to you if you are sitting around and you are al-qaeda or isis and your money is drying up right because they get the money from the oil and they get it from cutter and saudi arabia the money is – there's less money there now because oil is $40 a barrel. $40 a barrel of oil is less remunerative to worldwide terrorism than $100 a barrel of oil. What you need to do is you need to get the price of oil up. So how do you do that?

Well, you're already in the Gulf. You're already in the Arabian Peninsula. You already know how to buy explosives. You blow up some oil wells there. So if they did that, if they tried to destroy the oil-producing – I'm just making this up, right? But they could. Then the idea of oil and oil production and domestic oil production and domestic energy production becomes an issue of national security, becomes an issue of, OK, what kind of country are we? In that case, I think you can – maybe you could impinge on the national conversation, the national political conversation.

But that's the only way it would, which I find implausible. But I thought it was kind of a cool thriller movie. That's an interesting scenario. So the terrorists go around the Middle East blowing up as many oil wells as possible. The price of oil goes to $135 a barrel. And they're sitting around the table saying, well, we have done it, my friends. We have jacked up the price of oil again and the money will soon flow. And then somebody points out, that's true except that all the oil wells that we blew up belonged to the people who used to give us money.

And then there's just sort of hard, confused looks around the table. Well, but everybody – look. OPEC was trying to decide to cut production anyway and they couldn't do it. They couldn't get the agreement. So this is one way to enforce that agreement. I mean look. They have plenty of oil. They just sell it for more.

Indeed. Well, we'll see what it is. Right now it's $1.97 here in cold Minnesota to wrap everything up, and I hope it's going to be $1.95 tomorrow. For my family, of course, it's even better business because we have a gas station out in North Dakota. When the prices are low, people walk inside for aspirin, jerky, cigarettes, and milk. And believe me, hand over fist, even though North Dakota is slowing down a little bit, it's still the promised land out there. It's still the frontier. You want a job?

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