The Ricochet Podcast - What You See is What You Gaetz

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

It was no great secret that a single match could put fire to the 2023 Republican coalition in the House. But that didn't make the incediary Tuesday any less remarkable. To discuss what it means for the party's near future and for conservativism more broadly, Rob, Peter and James are joined by the erudite Ben Domenech.And considering that the happiest news of the week is Biden's DHS being forced to waive federal laws to build a spot of border wall makes the hosts think about Rome once again. - Soundbite from the open is Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry's now-famous gavel slam.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Turn on the television and there's not a whole lot about boy saves dog as he swims in the lake, you know. It's about, you know, somebody pushed the dog in the lake. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs. Today we talk to Ben Domenick about what's going on in Washington. So let's have a little podcast. The yeas are 216. The nays are 210. The office of Speaker of the House is hereby declared vacant. Chair declares the House in recess, subject to the call of the chair. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 661.

I'm James Lilacs in Minneapolis, where it's a raw, harsh, sodden mess of a day, like chewing cold newspaper out there. It's just bad. Rob is in New York, which, of course, is enduring the golden age, the wonderful sunshine, the leaves, the chestnuts, as we described a couple of weeks ago. Not yet, okay. Peter is in California, which of course always is perfect. However, it has not been a perfect week in our great republic. Nevertheless, here we are. You guys were gone last week. I hope you went to good, fun places. How are you today? Peter Robinson Very well. I was in Hanover,

New Hampshire, seeing my... I can hardly believe I'm about to utter these words. My youngest child is now beginning her senior year in college at Dartmouth College. And we were there to, well, she's the fifth of five. All five went to the same place. So, we've been going there for a long, long time now. And my wife and I just resolved that in this last year of all of it, we'll visit her once each term. And then at the spring term, the visit will be for graduation, and that will be that. Five of them in college. I just have a vision of Peter just standing on a precipice, shoveling money endlessly for years into a vast pit. But, you know...

Well, you can shovel it online these days. It's much easier. Good for you. And I'm sure they'll all be remarkably productive and successful citizens because of it. Rob, you were elsewhere as well, and the audience is dying to know exactly what you were up to. I was in lovely Savannah, Georgia, which is a beautiful city, and I had a little meeting to attend for the Southern Foodways Alliance that took all my Friday. But I'll tell you, if I'm going to miss it, I'm glad I missed it because it was a beautiful weekend there. And Savannah is a beautiful, beautiful town. It is. And it's good to get out in America and realize the news is not just concentrated in Chicago, where we're hearing about the crime and the immigrants in New York,

where we're hearing about the crime and the immigrants in California, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are other things to go on. I like the complete and total and utter betrayal of the Democratic Party by Joe Biden and his latest decision to build a wall. Oh, the steaming, the rumpled stilt skinism, and the pain and the moaning that's going on now, which of course will abate after about six or seven hours. But heck, not only is it necessary all of a sudden to build a wall, they're issuing waivers that get rid of 26 constricting federal regulations, including the Endangered Species Act. So the same government that will keep rocket ships from going into space because they may

burn the eggshells of some creature a mile from the blast zone is saying, never mind this. And the Clean Air Act, you know, we'll have to, never mind that as well. We absolutely have to build a wall suspending laws to build a wall would seem to be the sort of thing that indicates a a mussolini like tyranny is imminently descending upon the country right oh there's the i know i just feel that that numbness again i've i've trotted through this with you before that, what was it? There was a TikTok meme or something where men think of the Roman Empire. We discussed this. Men think of the Roman Empire once or twice a day. And honestly, I have somewhere around here

in the office, I have Caesar's translation of Caesar's Gallic Wars. And I'm just thinking what it must have been like 2,000 years ago to be a Roman and first Sulla invades the city to reconquer Rome, reestablish Rome. He's doing it for Rome's sake, but he breaks a norm. I don't know that they call it. What would Latin be for norm? Something like that. And then Caesar crosses the Tiber, and then Caesar is assassinated, and you get wave after wave of shocks to an established system, to a way of doing things that for all its innumerable faults had produced something coherent and stable. And then, of course, it all tumbles into a horrifying civil war that lasts several decades. Tiber, yes, but Rubicon first. Rubicon first. And Sulla being a being a dictator it feels like that to me it feels as though norms are just going down one after the

other i mean sulla is a dictator there those who know more than i do um yes he was harsh he was bad prescriptions and the rest of it but he did give it up and there were dictators before him but yes you're right and there was nobody had invaded city itself. That was the thing that made Sulla different. Norms. Then there had been social war, so there was civil war before. But you're right. This is a period like Rome, the end of the Republic of High Legality. Do we have any listeners left?

Only those who are making notes to correct us. Exactly. That's the problem with the Roman Empire is that actually. But let me ask you this, Rob. We're seeing a time where it seems as if all the laws are being rewritten and the norms are being tossed out and the rest of it. If you go back 60, 70, 100, 150 years in American history, do you think that we're just sort of gliding over the fact that for a very long time we have been tweaking norms and ignoring standards and laws and the rest of it? And it's just only because our settled history seems so settled that it seems worse to us now. I'm trying to make Peter feel better.

I agree with that. I genuinely agree with that. I mean, look, things are terrible and we can complain about them, but I'm a conservative, so that's what I do. You know, I think a lot of the norm business about the wall, I mean, what staggers me about Biden building the wall is what took him so long. Americans want it. He has an opportunity if he's going to run against Bill Clinton. I mean, run against Donald Trump. I don't know why I made that bizarre mental aphasia. But if he is going to be on the dais debating Donald Trump, he has a very, very good shot at saying, I built more walls of wall than you did. And it just surprises me that it took a White House operation, which is usually filled with political masterminds,

no matter what side they're on, it took them this long to realize that the border is in a crisis and Americans want action. And what's surprising to me is that it was the Democrats, it was a far-left Democrat, who figured that out. And if I were a Republican, instead of sort of cavilling at the edges and complaining about it i'd be saying a what took you so long and b i'd be saying okay let's watch what happens to us what if this is a good political gambit for him what if appealing to the great center of americans that want the border mess fixed is a smart move instead of uh uh intra fratricide or ridiculous um you know uh moves in the house

what if this is what if this looks presidential to a man if the republican party can somehow screw up so much that joe biden looks presidential and looks like he's showing some kind of leadership on an issue that americans care about they don't deserve to be a party you'll be tough you'll be seen as tough dog kicking joe a real man i mean you could complain about all the norms and this and the environmental rules but we're in favor of that we're in favor of that my reading on this is a little darker or a little more cynical imagine that more, my being more cynical than Rob. They do a very simple calculus in the White House, in the Democratic Party.

Are the progressives more important to us today, or are the centrists, such as they remain in the Democratic Party, more important to us today? And from the moment he took his oath of office until yesterday, the progressives were running the show. It was where the energy was. It was where their money was. It was where all the candidates who might threaten Democrats in the House and the Senate in primaries, that was all the whole political show in the Democratic Party. And as Biden's approval ratings begin to sink and sink and sink with the American people, it finally reaches a point in which they say, well, now wait a moment. Progressives, you've had an extremely good run. Let us put up a few.

People will still be able to get in around the wall. We promise you that. But let us at least do something symbolic that looks as though we're paying attention to the centrists. To me me it's nothing more than a than the result of a calculation for a quite simple calculation i agree with that too but i think it's probably it took them a long time to figure this out and it just shows this this obsession i'm here's my general theory i know what it took was donald trump beating joe biden in a in a raft of recent polls that's what it took in my judgment and and joe biden's weakness

is his strength politically here because he could just turn to everybody and say you want to be ralph nader in 2000 um so but i would just say we know i've been here so i like to ask ben this question when he comes on um about about about sort of the the the there's a a political rule like a a shibboleth like a totem that people pray to it's like you hear it all the time when they say things like it's all about turnout it's all about turnout right right um and it's when they say it's all about the base you got to shore up your base and my contention is contrarian contentious in presidential politics you do not need to shore up your base that's not where you lose because because you need to you need you but there's 12 of the 12 13 of the country that that is completely winnable everybody else is not

winnable if you if you if you turn off your base personally and because you're a you're you're a a polarizing figure that's donald trump in the 2020 first debate where he really technically lost the election right then because he turned off republican men and women especially republican men in georgia and republican women in arizona he turned them off so you can't turn off your base but you can move policy past your base for the great center and that is how you stay in office well indeed for some reason we have this little totem little we're saying we say all this catechism and it isn't true well rob having shattered a catechism like the iconoclast that he is we're going to take this uh to another expert ben domenick

our guest editor-at-large the spectator world he's also a fox news contributor and writes the transom newsletter on substack welcome back ben hey uh so first off i i think uh shibboleth is a perfect term uh uh for that uh rob and thank you and uh thanks for joining us yeah no it's always a pleasure to be with you that's all i need you to say um so so but but it's interesting because if you think about it the way donald trump got to be president was by saying enough of the shibboleths that he needed to say at the time um you know most significantly the uh the installation of the judicial nominations list that was his shibboleth that was his way of saying and the problem is that now uh you know ann coulter makes the point over and over and over again and i think it's a very powerful one of her frustration seeing him post in all caps law and order uh during the summer of

love and her contrasting that that to what governorSantis was doing in Florida to keep rioters from rioting and to up the penalties for them doing it. So if all you have to do is say shibboleth these days, if all you have to do is the all caps, then we're in a really bad way as a country. You actually have to deliver on them. You have to do the thing. And, you know, in this case, it's just an interesting moment because I feel like, you know, you see that even in the case of what's happening with the Biden administration right now, where Joe Biden can answer the question and say walls don't work because that's what the progressives want to hear, even as its own administration is saying, yeah, we need to do a bunch of things to build more walls. Right, right, right. Hey, Ben, here's what I thought. I'm about to tell you what a fool I am. I thought after the last election, when Ron DeSantis was reelected in a major way and

Trump-supported candidates went down over and over and over again. Kerry Lake in Arizona, perhaps most notably. I thought, this is it. The worm has turned. The worm has turned. The spell is broken, to put it another way. Ron DeSantis, who is plenty articulate, but also effective, a man with a record, a remarkable record. This is the next Republican nominee. I couldn't have been more mistaken. What has happened here? What has happened here?

Well, I think a couple of things have happened. First off, I think that we have to appreciate that alone among the candidates, you know, with the occasional swatting away at Chris Christie or something like that, alone among the candidates, Ron DeSantis has borne the brunt of negative attacks from Donald Trump for months, months and months and months. He was not attacking Nikki Haley until just about, you know, 15 seconds ago, he was attacking Ron DeSantis. And I think that that bore out in terms of, you know, an incredible shift. Ron DeSantis went from being this heroic conservative governor doing the things that needed to be done, delivering on policy, serious etc and generally widely liked by yes yes multiple factions

of the republican party to being you know painted as you know oh this is just jeb bush 2.0 uh and that's what that just speaks to the i think the effectiveness of of trump's hold on people's mindsets but i want to connect it to sort of what we saw happen in the house uh this this week which is you saw this illuminating thing happen where everyone who was with the 210 republicans who didn't want to cross over and side uh with 208 democrats uh they became rhinos overnight you know it's now suddenly a rhino you know and and you know whatever whatever you're saying anything kind of defending any of these people oh you're just a rhino neocon what should you know welcome to the club and and the point that like, first off, that is ludicrous. And the person who was the most insulted by it.

And I was glad to see him get up and say this. My, my sister always jokes that I would be a lot more like him if I had paid attention to math. Thomas Massey from, from Kentucky, you know, stood up and said, you know, this is ludicrous. I, he was literally the guy who introduced the first motion to vacate john boehner back in 2015 right um so you know like don't question my cred guys you know i'm the most fiscally conservative he's a he's this eccentric you know sort of libertarianish uh guy and uh and brilliant went to mit he's an engineer he does random things like you know makes his chicken coop uh He motorized it and then made it run on a Bluetooth app that he wrote.

That's Thomas Massey for you. But the point is that he cut a deal with Kevin McCarthy back at the beginning to be able to be on the rules committee alongside Chip Roy, alongside, you know, basically having three seats there that would be determinative in terms of the legislation that made it to the floor. And that was a big thing for fiscal conservatives, a big win for them. And so the idea that suddenly he's just this rhino neocon, this it's just absurd. And it's the meaningless nature of those terms when, uh, people within Trump's orbit have realized that they can just by sort of screaming that as loudly as

possible, change, I think, the way that politicians perceive each other and perhaps some media figures perceive them. I don't think that actually translates to the wider world, but I do think that when it comes to, you know, the way that kind of lying about DeSantis, you know, talking about his record in ways that are simply inaccurate, you know, has turned him into this idea of a moderate squish is absolutely absurd. And then the last thing is, I think that the,

the biggest thing that elevated Ron DeSantis was obviously his response to COVID. Right. And right in the absence of that pressure, I think it's harder for him. People, the things that he did in the past don't have as much presence of mind. Now, I think that's a mistake because I think that if Ron DeSantis gets in there, I don't think he'll make the mistakes that Donald Trump made, which were passive. Right. And that there will be some

actual consequences for it. but that's a harder argument to make without the pressure of that negative hangover but we have to have to note that one of the objections that people have about the way we had the covet response was that fauci was a villain that the vaccine was a bad thing for you and that the lockdown should have been lifted and so you look at trump who didn't fire f Fauci and gave him a medal and proudly touts his role behind the vaccine and the rest of it. The ability to do that sort of intellectual ideological flip-flop is remarkable, is it not? I mean, it's almost like the screens pop on, you see Big Brother, Oceania is now at war with this guy's and you start putting the things down a little fiery memory hole. It's really quite

remarkable. Yeah, it is remarkable. And i think that unfortunately uh and this is something that we're not seeing because he's not participating in debates i really do think that trump has escaped so many very obvious questions about the choices that he made uh and you know you can you could talk till you're blue in the face about how, you know, well, I hired these people and they didn't do a good job, which is always his, you know, approach to saying everything, you know, at the end of the day, he's, he's going to eventually, I think, have denounced every member of his cabinet as being a traitor failure. And, and the thing is, well, you know, sometimes it's probably true that they didn't do a good

job, but of course you hired them. And so, you know, so who's really to blame there. And you didn't fire the people you should have fired. Look for a guy who made his career based on firing people on TV. Uh, he didn't, uh, fire James Comey on day one, which I thought that he should have done. Uh, and he did not fire Fauci or anyone senior in the wrong side of the approach to COVID, especially those who wanted to go into the lockdown method, which I think he should have done as well. I 100% agree with you. And to me, that's among the many things I didn't like about Donald Trump. I think he's unfit post-election, but especially unfit during covet and we

have two at least two governors who were manifestly fit one is running one is not um okay so i don't want to i know who's the other question rob just brian camp yeah right okay brian camp in georgia so um i know peter wants to get in talk a little bit about the house before we do um isn't it possible all right this is my spinning this into sort of good news, to the general chaos of the parties. The Republican Party is clearly hostage to Donald Trump, to a person. And as evidence, Exhibit A is the conversation we just had. It really, for Trump supporters, it doesn't matter that he failed on COVID.

It doesn't matter that he didn't build a wall. It doesn't matter that he admits that he was lying the whole time saying he was going to build it. Mexico is going to pay for it. None of that matters. If you're pro Trump, you're a Republican. If you're not Trump, you're a rhino squish. So that's a Trump problem. You know, if Trump's hit by a bus tomorrow, God forbid, you know, we want everyone to, you know know i don't wish anybody ill um problem gone i mean is anybody doubt that if um trump had decided you know on the on the council of my doctors well you know there is there i just want to remind you there is a a man with the same

name followed by junior yeah but i mean it's like yes and there was also a frank sinatra junior but i think that we recognize that there's a difference between those two parties but the democrats on the other hand are hostage to a whole constellation of crackpot far left very unpopular almost checkmating views that i mean until yesterday when i read that that joe biden was building a wall or going to or talking about building a wall even um i thought there how do you how do you jettison you can't a bus can't hit your position on parents rights on the trans movement on the migrant issue on you know tax it on all the government spending on all the things that on, you know, tax it, on all the government spending, on all the things that Americans, you know, in the great big center are like, eh, not so crazy about that.

All the Republicans have to do is get rid of this terrible, incompetent attention hog. Democrats seem to have a much, much more uphill battle here. I'll say it a slightly different way, and I'm not sure I agree entirely with the analysis that if he gets hit by a bus, or really if he just loses another election or something, that this is a problem that goes away immediately for Republicans. I think there's...

And that's a longer conversation. But what I will say to you is, the's and that's a longer conversation. But what I will say to you is the interesting thing that the Democrats have as a problem is that they have a very hollowed out kind of Gen X leadership class of all these people who turned out to be massive failures when they tried to go statewide. Right. That includes Beto O'Rourke. It includes Tim Ryan. It includes, you know, a lot of people, frankly, who had been kind of seen as the next leadership class in the party who have disappointed. I would include Kamala Harris in that number. You know, it's just they haven't lived up to the potential that was dreaming of them. I was listening to this conversation with James Carville the other day and Bill Maher, and Carville was saying,

the Democratic Party has more talent than I think it's ever had in my lifetime. And Maher is just sort of skeptical, saying, where? What are you talking about? And he says, Gina Raimondo. And it's like, that's no, that's not, you know, I do think that, you know, some people like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear, you know, in and a couple of others who were, you know, in that in that class, you know, could emerge or have a lot of potential. potential but what is going to happen to the democratic party is that the diane feinstein generation of of politician is going to disappear they're all going to uh you know experience they are they are going to be wiped out you promise us that in the next decade yes no i promise you peter nobody lives forever but the but the point is just that, like, in their absence, I think that their crazy comes out. Pelosi clamped down on the squad very quickly and made clear the limits of their potential. And you even saw that, by the way, right before the last midterm, there was that letter that

came from the Congressional Progressive Caucus that was sort of an anti-war letter to the White House about, you know, you need to go and negotiate with Moscow. They pulled it within 24 hours. came from the Congressional Progressive Caucus that was sort of an anti-war letter to the White House about, you know, you need to go and negotiate with Moscow. They pulled it within 24 hours and said, well, you know, we didn't mean to send that because they got so much heat from the top of their party. But that heat can only be brought by these people who have those connections with the donor class, have been around forever, and they have a decrepit leadership class that is very old and that is, think you know going to be exiting the stage coming years and that's going to embolden not just the aocs of the world but the people to her left

who do exist i have this most depressing the most depressing thing you just said is that there's no gen x strength on the democratic bench referring to gen x as the elder statesman yes i consider that a personal attack but you're kind of right it's like there's a certain point in your life where you look around you where all the grown-ups you're like oh damn that's supposed to be me people still well just the flip side of that rob is that people still say things to me like well we need to appeal to these millennials and it's like well i'm a millennial yeah i'm old i'm a whole life policies at this point yeah could i ask a great big whopper of a question i'm not even sure you guys it's such a big airy question that you guys may not

even like it but i'm curious to see what you do with it, Ben. And I have your father-in-law in mind here. I think back to when Rob was a young man. I've read about those days. Yeah. It contrasts the impeachment hearings, contrasts all kinds of things, the impeachment hearings of Richard Nixon with the impeachment hearings of Clinton, twice Trump, now Biden, there was a certain gravitas in the impeachment committee in the House. Peter Rodino, who in some ways was just a hack politician, he was nothing special from New Jersey, but he'd served in the Second World War. Those people, they understood the

stakes when politics goes wrong. In the press, Walter Cronkite landed on Normandy in a glider. He was part of the second wave going in. Eric Severide had covered the Second World War. There is something about the current figures. Is this just the perpetual problem of trying to run a democracy? You get jokers after 25 or 30 years of prosperity? John McCain is gone. And he was the last who really in his person conveyed a sense of gravity and conveyed a sense of the importance of what this country stood for and what can happen when things go wrong. Is that, are we, how do you, what do you make of that? Well, I think that we've had now, you know, in sequence, you know, three of the last four presidents all born, you know, had legitimate excuses or, you know, in the case of Bush, you know, went, you know, a path that a lot of other people took.

One thing that I think is really lost in the leadership class that we have here, not just in the presidency, but on Capitol Hill generally, is a lack of memory. They don't know the mistakes of the past the way that they do, and they tend to repeat them. And when I say that, I include even the recent past. One of the things that was interesting to look at with this threat of shutdown is that the last group of people is that, I believe it was Semaphore that ran the number, so I don't know if they're exactly right but it was basically more than 130 members have arrived in washington since the last

time there was a real government shutdown because when trump was in charge he could still pay you know he moved money around and made it kind of a kind of fake shutdown when it was going on and so they don't really they didn didn't really understand, you know, well, you know, a lot of these buildings are going to close and the people you're working with, they're not going to be able to, to, you know, uh, work, uh, in any real capacity. Uh, and so they just didn't understand. And that's a small thing. I think that the, the lack of memory on a lot of this stuff allows for people to revise the way that they think that they would have thought. They create

kind of a Mandela effect. And a perfect example of that for the American people, I think, is how everyone now claims that they were opposed to the Iraq war when they were all in favor of it. All of them were in favor of it. And, you know, they might, you know, for the voter, it's easier to say something like, well, I would have been opposed. But for the politicians, you know, for the voter, it's easier to say something like, well, I would have been opposed. But for the politicians, you know, we have the records, you know, we know that you are. And so it creates this weird circumstance where, you know, you have, I'll use just the example of someone like Mike Gallagher, who is one of the few politicians who, know is essentially my same age he you know came up through things at the same time that i did he obviously you know has this record of service and that kind of thing but we have a very shared uh cultural sort of vision perspective in terms

of the really quick mike gallagher congressman from wisconsin who's chairs the the joint committee on china very promising remarkable guy full disclosure i am chairman of the gallagher 24 campaign which i just started recently but you can't be chairman i was chair i'm co-chair that that that is a man i want to be in the white house but the point just being like we have a very shared like experience and this is something that we talk about a lot which is is that people, you know, even who are just even a little bit older or a little bit younger than us, you know, we'll have to, you know, even just if you're five years younger, you're having to explain things

to them about certain things that happen. And that's because you're dealing now with a group of folks on Capitol Hill where, you know, the the the youngest level of staffer likely was born after 9 11. right and so you you know or if they or if they were born before it they have no memory of it yeah um and so it's it's something where that lack of knowledge just keeps on rolling and rolling and rolling and making things worse and worse and worse and when you have a Capitol Hill that was, you know, if you look back to the, you mentioned the impeachment hearings

at the time that those things were happening, the staffs on Capitol Hill typically included people who had multiple degrees, including, you know, doctorates and the like they were, they were experts in their field. Now you have a bunch of 23 and 24 year olds running around who are underpaid, who don't know the legislative process and really how it works, who can be basically, you know, schooled by any lobbyists on the subject very easily and end up outsourcing, you know, a lot of the decisions that they make to a bureaucracy that is fundamentally opposed to every conservative idea. Every young person in Congress you see as you walk through Capitol Hill,

they are social media managers. That's what they do. Right. And that's a real problem. And that's what they understand. So it's just an incredible problem. And I want to say it's fundamental. It's not a one side versus the other side thing. It is fundamental.

And in that situation, the systemic outcomes of a Congress that acts like that effectively, it neuters the branch and it turns everything into the, you know, the, the backroom deal and everything like that, because they don't know the basics of this, of this in a way that makes any sense. And I'll just use one example of this just because it was very funny and it was related to me recently that there was a recent back and forth about um a funding issue and they had and proposals were going back and forth and they had a whole group of congressmen and congresswomen who were you know sorting things out and the staff sent it over to the to the main office for inclusion in something. And they had to send it back because they had misspelled the word border in it

throughout. And it's just one of those basic, just kind of like, you know, we're not sending our best, you know, we're not sending our best. So, and i just don't think i think that starts at the top and i think that that doesn't change overnight it changes uh when there is when people like that are forced into actually confronting something that is serious and awful when they when they experience their own 9-11 then we actually see the people rise up who can be taken seriously and who we can trust. And I think that, you know, COVID was the closest thing that we had to that. And we did a horrible, horrible job.

That was a terrible run in terms of that kind of seriousness. We are required, although we're in these lovely, this is just fascinating, which is what I say when somebody produces a speech that proves he agrees with me. It was just fascinating. But we've got to talk about Matt Gaetz and the House and Kevin McCarthy. So let's begin this way. I'll give you my brief reading, and yours will be much deeper, much richer, and probably you'll be able to correct me two or three places. So my reading runs as follows. Kevin McCarthy wasn't a genius and never claimed to be.

He was a centrist Republican. He came from Bakersfield, California, and over there in the Central Valley in Bakersfield, California is a lot closer to the American Midwest than it is to coastal California. He came from a place where norms and family life were taken for granted. He was a centrist Republican in his gut. He was not an ideologue. He hadn't thought things through in great detail, but he had a talent for politics. He knew how to count noses. He knew how to raise money. And for the last eight months, he held together control of the House of Representatives on one of the narrowest margins in history he did a good job for his party and for the country and children malevolent children blew him up

that's the way it looks to me ben um i i think i agree largely with that i would just say that the you know kevin mccarthy's kind of a he's an interesting figure because he's kind of a someone that never people could never really pin down what he was you have kind of the the spiraling chaotic genius of someone like newt gingrich you have the the wonky you know, policy-focused approach of someone like Paul Ryan, you have the old-style schmoozing of John Boehner and the like, and writers kind of glom onto that because they're interesting people to write about. And Kevin, by nature of being kind of a Midwesterner in California, and with the sunny optimism that I think you have when you win the lottery and that that's the basis of your, of your, uh, you know, financial, uh, ability to start a

business and the like, um, uh, as he did, you end up in a situation where, uh, he got, I think, less attention than was deserved for how well he was able to hold together and herd a bunch of cats. And the DC attitude toward him, I think, is very different than the one that is depicted in broader media, which is that lots of people like Kevin, which is why he ended up being in the position that he was in. And they like him for non-ideological reasons. It's not, you know, I like him because he's a Reagan conservative or something like that. No, they like him because they felt like they could work with him, that he was someone who could hold a lot of friendships together, regardless of whether there were differences on ideology or policy or the like.

And above all, Kevin likes to do something that a lot of politicians don't like to do, which is raise money. He actually likes the fundraising grind, which is a little funny, but it's one of these things where he likes to hop on a plane, go somewhere and give some speeches, clap some hands, that kind of thing. I've compared him on more than one occasion to being the, uh, the social chair of a fraternity, you know, he, he makes sure that the party gets paid for. And that's something that I think he, uh, you know, was very effective at. And it's why he got to the speakership as speaker. He also, uh, had a number of wins that were kind of unexpected. He got the White House to back off on the D.C. crime stuff, that he was able to take an upper hand on the leverage in the

earlier fiscal negotiations that happened by having a bill that ultimately put the Senate in a difficult position. And he really managed, I think, uh quite well i mean there's you can always go back and say that he did you know that he made mistakes and definitely he did as well but i think that the reason that he was taken out uh is entirely uh personal animus i mean the the simple simple fact that Matt Gates hates Kevin McCarthy and a number of the other members who went along with him have their own personal grievances against him. This was not some big, bold, ideological stand. This was not like a coming together, for you know an alternate you know version of this where there would have been an ideological stand it would have probably been you know republicans and conservatives who were skeptical on ukraine funding coming together in mass to like say we're

going to get rid of kevin and that would have been a much bigger number of people because there's a lot more skeptics within the conference on that front but that's not what happened you know and and there's no way to spin it that way it's just personal animus by the way i just have to point out you know the the motion to vacate and and newt has made this point uh you know is it's it's in the rules of the house republican conference that no one puts forward a motion to vacate unless the majority of the conference agrees. Okay. And that's been a rule for quite a long time. Um, you know, the point is that in the, in the past, you, there was less of a focus on the whole motion to vacate thing. Cause there was no point, you know, it was, it was something that was a norm, uh, that was, you know, completely,

it was just viewed as something that you just don't do to your own party because it ends you. And I think that the problem is that to a certain extent, Kevin was undone by, I think his, his focus on trying to get everyone to work together, you know, and that includes, I mean, you know, getting back to the ideological thing, Nancy Mace is a very considered a very moderate member of the house and kevin mccarthy is absolutely the reason that she won her uh her last couple of races you know just nancy mace of south carolina yes and so the fact that you know she crossed over and voted with gates uh someone who she's routinely denounced uh and, and then, you know, goes, you know, she was in favor

of the, uh, the motion to hold Steve Bannon in, uh, in contempt. And then she goes on Steve Bannon show with Matt Gates. You know, it's, it's just a complete, you can see that it's just this personality driven thing. It's not about ideology. It's not about principle. It's not about policy. And effectively what it does is it hands the uh reins of the house over to the democrats because in all you know but like the you know the republicans still occupy the offices they still you know control the committees but this this just showed you democrats are united and they are willing to be chaotic in order to screw the other guy over and to lop off the head of the number one fundraiser in the republican party which is a big deal going into next year's election, because the

likeliest candidate of your party is someone who's spending all the money he raises on lawyers. So that's a problem. Okay, so let's project. Let me throw a couple scenarios at you. You tell me whether any of them makes any sense. One is disarray in the Republican Party helps non-Trump candidates because he represents that disarray and that kind of chaos. you know, Dickie Haley or Ron DeSantis, you're like, I'm going to get there. I'm going to bring us together, and I'm going to, you know, crack heads, and we're going to march in unison. Scenario A, right? Scenario B, Republicans don't really care about that stuff. They don't really care about anything, really, because they all kind of have an audience

of four and a half, five, six million people on Fox News or OAN or Newsmax or combined, and that's kind of why they're there in the first place um no disrespect everybody wants to be a star but that is different from what congressmen in america used to want to be they knew they were never going to be stars they just wanted to they wanted to get rich on graft and bribery and they were like you know they were small businessmen from a district right um so that is that that is a party that is now prefers to be a minority party and make noise sort of like

the greens um the third part is that it shows that there isn't an ideological um argument to be made here uh in the same way that you mentioned ukraine ukraine would have been an umbrella argument right and that was that was absent um which means it's kind of a free-for-all and in a free-for-all um that's when you get either a crackpot leader or you get a really good leader right um which is it going to be so first off i don't think that your scenarios are necessarily uh at odds with each other there's kind of a venn diagram where you can say yeah there's well i work that way yes and uh and obviously like harris you love venn diagrams i do i do let me let me propose something to you because i'm still thinking about i'm actually writing a column about this uh as we speak and so i'm thinking about it

the idea that i have is this there's a the political machinery was what held uh ideologically diverse and regionally diverse political parties together for a long time that the actual mechanisms and operations of the party system was what held them together and that that endured through through the period of the cultural homogeneity of the post- that process beginning and no longer having the power that they had. And so instead, they kind of turned to, well, the parties were about money and that that was the way that started holding the parties together, particularly over the past 30 years or so, as you saw conservative Democrats disappear and you saw, you know, sort of religion become identified with the Republican Party and particularly active religion and, you know, a number of other effects going into that. I think that what we might be seeing happen here is the

end of the cultural sort that it's over now especially post dobbs post gay marriage that the cultural short is kind of it's over but there's no longer something that holds these things together you you don't have the uh you know the same kind of glue there that was effective in sort of making sure that everyone stayed on the same path. And at the same time that you don't have that, the party's power over the money side of things has degraded because now you have the ability to do the sort of televangelist version of this as Matt Gates and Nancy Mace did. Nancy Mace is, by the way, citing her website repeatedly when she's doing any of her TV

appearances and basically say, you know, come and give me money because I'm an avatar for your frustrations, regardless of whether I actually pass anything or not. Um, that, that to me suggests that we're going to be going through a period where the chaos becomes normal, where people just shrug at what just happened, even though it's historically, you know, out of, out of place with everything that we knew about the power of the speaker or the way that the hierarchies were supposed to work or anything along those lines. And in periods like that, I think inevitably you end up having some strong leader eventually emerge. It just is a question of how long it takes because people get tired of the chaos. It's's kind of in the background but it's it just keeps going and it keeps going and it keeps going and then eventually they're just like they're done

with it they want it to stop and they want someone to stop it i just don't know how long that's going to take yeah uh because i think that it could be the sort of thing where you know we're looking we're looking back on this and we're saying you know and this is kind of the scary thought uh people are looking back you know right now people are looking back on the tea party and they're like oh man those calm old days of 2010 right right you know when lots of people were pulling their hair out and just you know completely losing their minds uh during that period and uh and now we're thinking of it as the good old days. And so it's very possible that the same kind of thing is happening to us right now

if that leader doesn't emerge, if there's not someone who can, Reagan-style, though I don't think you should just quote reagan or more more likely nixon style uh uh come come back and unite the various threads and chaotic uh elements and actually have a majority party that seeks to win with the majority which republicans have not done um you have to answer the following question really briefly because i'm getting notes here that we promised to let you go. Who will be the next speaker, and when will he or possibly she finally be elected? Personally, if I was handicapping the situation right now, or if I was placing a bet, I would bet on Jim Jordan. The reason that I think Jim Jordan is likely is to get it uh is nothing

to do with trump trump is backing jordan because trump thinks that jordan is going to get it um the the thing that is going to be interesting about that is jordan has enormous credit with the conservatives in the house but he's generally more pro-business than a lot of those conservatives meaning like the for someone who has a lot of that populist tenor i mean just to give you one example he was he's far less critical for instance of like big tech than a lot of of the same populists are and that's going to be an interesting thing so so there's no chance that out of sheer exhaustion they'll say oh what the heck give patrick mchenry the job make it permanent so i will i'm a big fan of patrick mchenry i've interviewed him a couple of times he's this he's this very smart he's he's he came

into congress you know as one of the youngest members he's wanted to like get out of it for a while he almost didn't run again uh and people keep convincing him to come back because he's really smart and they like we need you you're you're one you're one of the people who does his job and does it well i love the fact that the introduction of most of america to him is just as the guy who really slammed that gavel down hard it's not a bad introduction yeah that's pretty good yeah yeah i wonder who i wonder who is imagining underneath that gavel. He's just seeing his face right there. But the thing about McHenry is I think I just don't think that he wants it.

However, I will say that as interim speakers go, he's kind of perfect for the job because he's detail oriented and he's, uh, unobjectionable and he really is about making things run and run very effectively. And you can tell that just by how dapper he is. Um, he, I think that the real, I mean, this is not out of any animosity towards Steve Scalise, but the simple fact is that Steve Scalise survived a horrible shooting and attempted assassination, which took place just a stone's throw, by the way, just up the road from my house. I drive by there almost every day. And that, in addition to his cancer diagnosis, is simply, I think, going to be too much of

a burden for him to do the kind of physically rigorous travel that a speaker has to do. And, you know, I think that basically people on Capitol Hill are like, Steve, look, concentrate on getting well, you know, and, and we don't want you to take on even more. But that's not out of any animosity toward him. I don't think, I mean, there's staff level disputes and stuff like that, but it's not like they're skipping over it because they don't like him. I do think that one thing that is kind of underlying this is Tom Emmer, who is, uh, uh, who is the current, uh, who's more moderate. I think he very much wants to be speaker, but not right now. I think he wants to do it, uh, in the future where there is a Republican president and you can actually accomplish a lot as opposed to what it will be under Jordan, which I think is actually a pretty good thing for Republicans is, is just something that just goes balls to the wall

after the Biden administration and after the president on every single thing. Uh, and that's what, frankly, I think a lot of those people that you were talking about before who were plugged in and watching our network and all the other networks and listening to talk radio and the like, I think that's what they want. And I think that, uh, you know, Jordan will be effective at doing that though. He will of course have to suffer the indignity of occasionally putting on a blazer, which, you know, really is something that he tries to fight against. Um, but, but look, this is a bad thing for the Republican party. It's a bad thing for the Republican party. And it's a bad thing for conservatives. And the simple reason is this. The Senate, which is run by people who are all

more moderate than any of the people in the House leadership, now is in a stronger position in terms of leading the party when it comes to policy and the directions they take on legislation. That means less conservative legislation. It means more spending. It means, I think, a lot of frustrations that are going to come out. And the Senate has a much, much greater chance of flipping to be Republican after the next election, just based on the map, than the House does of being held by Republicans. So you could easily end up in a situation where a Republican Senate is driving policy in accordance with what Mitch McConnell and the three Johns that's Thune, Cornyn, and Barrasso want. And I think that's

going to make a lot of conservatives really upset. And I think they only have the hateful in the House to blame for it. Because it was a very good thing in this past nine months to have the house driving policy, uh, and, and seeing just bits and pieces of, Hey, you know, we could actually get to a place where populist conservative policies are being done in a serious way. Uh, and instead I think, you know, it's, if it goes back over to the Senate, it's going to be a lot more business as usual. I'm going to try to make, I'm making a note of that technical term you used just a moment ago, Ben. I hadn't heard that in a while, but yeah, balls to the wall. Was that it? Yes. Yes. It's a technical term. Hey, gentlemen, just before I, before I go,

uh, I, I have to ask, have you talked at all about what's going to happen to movies and TV after this writer's strike? Well, for one thing, I hope I get paid. I hope so, too. Obviously, that was the primary concern.

I can tell you that you've fallen on hard times. Quickly, I would just say, I think only good things, because it's going to be all those big companies are going to have to break up. And when they break up, there's more buyers and more sellers, or more sellers and fewer buyers, which actually is good. But the buyers aren't vertically integrated. So competition in programming gets bigger and bigger and that's good the number one thing that i care about is that we actually expose the fact that no one is watching yeah so many of these shows that are crappy and woke and stupid and predictable

yeah and that lots of people are watching shows that are just like cop drama you know those are the number one shows and like the number one show on netflix is with suits right i mean um reruns yeah no i i'm i'm i love reruns band don't you know that's more reruns screams rob that's how it works but but you're i mean look all that's nothing's holding back um you know nothing's holding anybody back from making a great movie that um adheres to their values you just have to be willing to risk that's what they did with sound of freedom and that's what anybody can do you make a good movie that's exciting and interesting uh that adheres to your values and people will watch it yes and complaining about it, you know,

criticized by creating, as Michelangelo said. Now we need to go back and redo, I don't know, The Amazing Mr. Limpet, Don Knotts is a fish. Because it really is all about identity. He not only believes he's a fish, he actually is a fish. It's very cruel to people to not accept. It would also be uh you know i mean casting there will be hard because you need to cast someone who also identifies as fish

you would yeah you absolutely would right because there's not enough inclusion of the price for me i have to hear there ben thanks so much it's been great and uh you know i know you we kept you a little bit along but we've learned a lot i want tom emmer because he's a Minnesotan, and he's kind of a normal guy. And Minnesota normal actually haven't gone together very well in the last couple, two, three years or so. So I think, you know, the Emmer's ascension would be good for us all. And I like him. He's got a good firm handshake. He's got that good politician smile, too.

We'll see. We'll see. And if you want to know what's coming up next, go to the Transom. That would be Ben's sub stack. You can look for it. Well, we'll have all the links in the podcast thing here. Ben, thanks a lot. Good luck. Great to be with you. Regards to DC.

The thing about a sub-stack is, and a lot of people have put them out, and you figure, how do I get people to look at this stuff? How do I surface my work? You don't want to put your light under a digital bushel, do you? No. The thing of it is, is that the digital world, getting your stuff out there, it's hard. It's full of hurdles. But with Persist SEO, you've got a season to guide. Are you feeling overshadowed online?

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With Persist SEO, every challenge meets its match. That number again, 770-580-3736. We thank Persist SEO for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Well, gentlemen, we went a little long there. Anything more you want to state? I think Rob usually tells us that some places where human beings are getting together, those will be in short supply, perhaps. And we need more.

We need more people to step up and do the Ricochet meet-ins. Yeah, yeah. Ricochet meet-ups. Yeah, yeah. Ricochet meet-ups are in process now, but if you go to the Ricochet members' side and take a look and see what's there, we would love to see you there. And if you don't see anything there that suits your specific

schedule and location, you can start one of your own. Just join Ricochet and do it. I do have one event. Our friend Joe Escalante, former, I mean, occasional Ricochet contributor and punk rocker.

And Matador. Yes. Wanted me to let, and Matador, exactly, wanted me to let you know, James, that he is going to be headlining on October 7th in his band, The Vandals.

They'll be in Minneapolis this weekend. Oh, my God. He told me to tell you that although this looks like a hideous punk warehouse show, it's actually our biggest U.S. payday ever, and it's sponsored by a beer company. He says, I don't expect James to come to this, but I just want to know I'm thinking of it. Wow. Isn't that sweet? I wish I'd known.

That's great. I'm going to see if I can, you know, get together for a cup of coffee or something like that. No, I want you to go to the punk show and take a selfie and post it. Well, the thing about it is, I would have to shave, I'd have to get out the glue, I'd have to tease the hair into the spikes and all the rest of it.

I'd have to put a safety pin through my earlobe and all that stuff. I never was a punk rocker. I was a new wave guy. Punk was stupid, but you know what? At least punk has persisted in many ways and matured into something, which is not the aesthetic.

The aesthetic was always played out early, but the general geist of it. And I wish we had more of this today instead of the sort of manufactured auto-tune stuff that we have, but that's another podcast, an interminable one at that. Maybe I'll do it. Maybe I should. In any case, thank you for listening. Thank you, Ben. Thank

you, Peter and Rob, for showing up again. And for all of you who at this very minute are going to do two things. One, you're going to go to Persist CEO and see if they can do anything for you, because they can. And two, you're going to go to Apple Podcasts, right? You're going to leave a review, right? How many stars? Right, five. And that helps us get more people. Or if you're not a member of Ricochet, you will become one. Because once you do, the doors open, the portal cracks wide, and you can get into the member feed where all the funds, I mean, the great main page is great. Main page I love. It's solid stuff. And it's written by members, by the way.

This is not some handed down from on high site. This is the place where the members, who are an extraordinarily talented group of people, and smart, and clever, and wide-ranging. Well, that's what the member page is full of. And you just never know what you're going to find. I'm going to go there this afternoon, dip in, get yelled at, yell at something. Well, no, we don't yell. There's a code of conduct.

But, you know, now and then, there's a stern word or a spirit of debate, an elbow in the ribs. So you have that. It's the place you've been looking for, Ricochet.com. And we'll all see you at the podcast next week right here. But now we'll see you in the comments at Ricochet. Still, but almost soon to be 5.0, still 4.0. Next week, guys.

Next week, fellas. Ricochet. Join the conversation.