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This week on the Ricochet Podcast, we’re joined by political consultant Mike Murphy for a look at the GOP’s future. Are demographics destiny? Is gay marriage a bellwether issue. We tackle those issues ourselves, with Mike, and later with The Transom’s (required reading around these parts) Ben Domenech, who takes the opposing view from Mike. It’s a passionate and spirited conversation about right-to-work, the future of the party, young versus old, left versus right, changing demographics, whether Steven Crowder matters, and what exactly constitutes a RINO. A great piece of audio to go over the cliff with.
Music from this week’s episode:
- The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkle
The Ricochet Podcast opening theme was composed and produced by James Lileks.
Another classic from EJHill.
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Regarding the wisdom of approving gay marriage: Which responsible parent among you would bring your young child to watch any gay pride parade?
Astonishing: The only thing worse than that would be what we in the television business refer to as a “reverse angle” shot.
I thought my Dads looked pretty good in that picture.
Think of the words Andrew!
It’s not about Crowder and it’s not about the union thugs, IT’S ABOUT THE MEDIA and their refusal to cover it, regardless of the provocation.
He’s my answer to ‘what is a RINO?’ It’s a so-called Republican who doesn’t understand that the Media is the main enemy, they are the tanks that roll over and crush our troops allowing the Democratic infantry to stroll in and mop-up.
The biased media is robbing us of the truth. If someone robs you every day, on what day does your righteous indignation become mere ‘whining?’ The lies must be countered constantly and repeatedly, the liars must be called out publicly. Part of what has gotten us into this situation was the Bush/Rove policy of the fetal crouch , the lies of those days are now set in concrete as truth.
Seems to me that when Murphy said elections are like arithmetic…adding to the vote, he is doing CBO-style economic analysis…simplistic, static analysis of applying a change to the old data and assuming that there is no reaction.
I suggest that he and others remind themselves of the size of the Perot vote in ’92 and ’96 and the effect those numbers have on the ability of Republicans to win elections. Those bad old white males…scourge of all that is decent in the universe…don’t have to come vote for Republicans if they don’t want to. They might just do that stereotypical thing they are infamous for and exercise AGENCY and go try to start some new political party or movement. Sure, they will lose…as in ’92, but Murphy Arithmetic will be the bigger loser.
Seems to me that the Republican vote is not at all like the interest group, party machiners that can always be counted on to vote D in order to get paid – not the welfare recipients, so much as the welfare distributors…see “Free to Choose” if you’ve forgotten the real dynamic at work w/ the 47% stuff. 200!
Crowder wasn’t conducting any interviews when he was assaulted. He was simply asking — politely — that the thugs not attempt to pull down the AFP tent, especially given that there were people in there, including women and children.
There was also an African-American hotdog vendor whose cart and equipment was torn apart by these union scumbags. And they also hurled racial epithets at him, including “n*gg*r” and the requisite “Uncle Tom,” despite the fact that he was simply there to sell hotdogs.
That the MSM refused to report the violence against a known conservative commentator can, I suppose, be expected. (Although I would still argue that it in no way should be accepted, much less practically excused, a la Rob Long.) But that they also ignored this blatantly racist violence against an innocent street vendor is repugnant in the extreme.
The future of Michigan -and Detroit especially -is human augmentation.
With appreciation to Rob for revising and extending his remarks above. What was at the front of my mind listening to the exchanges on the podcast was that we need to appreciate we’re in the middle of a cold civil war that shows signs of heating up, possibly precipitously.
My earliest recollection of outright union thug behavior in the general political arena (vs. in labor disputes where it has always been present) was 2004 when they trashed Republican campaign offices in West Allis, WI and somewhere in Florida. It is becoming increasingly overt and it appears to be part of a larger totalitarian impulse of the Left that we need to take note of and push back against now, before it’s too late.
http://ricochet.com/member-feed/This-Time-The-Shirts-Are-Purple
A cut from Jay Nordlinger last week in National Review Online:
You may recall this year’s Al Smith Dinner. The tradition at these dinners is for the presidential nominees to crack wise. And here’s something that Romney said about the news media: “My job is to lay out a positive vision for the future of the country, and their job is to make sure no one else finds out about it.”Everyone laughed. No one said, “Gee, that’s weird. I don’t get it. What’s he talking about?” They knew. Everyone knows.
Murphy and now go back to the cocktail party circuit in Washington and explain to his friends that us troglodytes just wouldn’t listen to him before moving on to the next RINO losing campaign
‘Can now’
First things first, Rob. You’re a gentleman, and that’s a wonderful quality. Very appealing. I hope it’s one reason you’ve been successful.
Second, FWIW, I have no problem with Mike Murphy’s POV and think you both have a real point. But in the almost quarter century since Reagan’s election, the cultural mindset has changed completely. I don’t think Ricochet could come up with a message. We’re all over the place philosophically. It’s a real problem. The media, meanwhile, are monolithically shallow. In the early 1980s I worked for two different daily papers with city editors who were vehement that we not become part of the story. I wasn’t allowed to judge an ugly dog contest for a local fund-raiser. Now the media is nothing more than an ugly dog contest—and I love dogs!
The unspoken premise of Murphy’s stance is that young people and Latinos can’t wait to vote for the GOP, and the party’s stance on gay marriage and immigration is the only thing stopping them. What evidence is there that young and Latinos voters want to change parties at all or that they will do so if Republicans just switch their positions on those two issues?
Listening to Murphy made my head explode.
In the post-war period, children being born outside of marriage was 2% among white folks, and 10% among Blacks. Now 40% of all children born in the US today are born to single moms (with it being above 28% for whites, 50% among Latinos and over 70% for Blacks).
Those “families” are living on Medicaid for healthcare, income from earned income tax credits, unemployment or welfare, she gets her housing subsidized or rent supplemented, education for her kids through head-start and pell grants, and kids fed at school by the government – that is government dependence in all the basic areas of living (food and shelter, and what we have been told is the great civil right or “means of grace,” education), covering much of her entire life (cf. Julia).
And here come the Republicans saying that we are going to downsize government, and that we want cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Just saying that ends the fight
Guess what? I think we’e going to need social conservatives to make (even if we, as Murphy suggests, talk less about gay marriage) the case for being PRO-MARRIAGE, PRO-FAMILY.
You know, it used to be that the great insight of conservatives that they understand that culture determines politics, and the great understanding of liberals is that changing culture can determine politics. Those are two different ways of getting people to embrace what they oppose. What Murphy is suggesting is that we conservatives have to capitulate to the Liberal Democratic way of doing things. And in a generation, we’ll be capitulating on fiscal conservatism!
C’mon. Let’s not be lazy. As Robinson and Lileks suggest, I don’t know – under Murphy’s approach – how he is going to replace 30+ million evangelicals, even as he makes himself more acceptable to his fellow punditocracy in the beltway.
Paul L: This is exactly the point I would’ve raised with him, if given the chance.
In the end, Murphy’s solution is far too simple.
Edited 7 minutes ago
In the last podcast they were talking about embarrassing Republicans, as though there aren’t embarrassing Democrats by the score. Somehow we have to purge all our weirdoes and they, along with the MSM, ignore the parade of crazies in the Democrat party.
Now with Crowder as provocateur – of course the story wouldn’t be the same if a Republican had punched some Democrat, would it? Get out of the bubble, guys! Youse got Stockholm Syndrome! ·15 hours ago
Going a bit afield here, Republicans don’t know what the heck they want. On one hand they complain that the Dems are so much better at keeping their rank and file in line, purging the weirdos and all reading from the same script. But then when Boehner actually attempts something like that he is vilified and there is a GOP civil war. I believe the GOP needs to be as united as the Dems to compete in future elections. I also believe, as a party, we’re unable to do that.
About Murphy: I too was just really annoyed listening to him. I’m not saying he is completely wrong, because, heck, I don’t have all the answers. But, it is the smug Monday Morning Quarterbacking about Romney’s disasterous campaign and what they did wrong in the primaries and the General. Was he saying these things earlier this year? I don’t recall that. Or maybe he was keeping his mouth shut out of professional courtesy. Eventually I had to just pull the ejection cord and skip past his segment in the podcast. I think Peter was good at challenging Murphy on the gay marriage thing. Was Romney really emphasizing it in his campaign? Didn’t think so. So what should Romney have done and said differently? Murphy then switches to “I’m just looking at the numbers. It’s arithmetic.” He didn’t have good answers when challenged.
I could go on and on about Mike Murphy but I only have 200 words here. Instead, I’ll attempt to defend my favorite RINO, Rob Long, using my own opinions about conservatives and the media.
We conservatives jumped the shark long ago when it comes to criticizing the MSM. In fact, the only reason a majority of conservative pundits have jobs today is due to their ability to point out MSM bias. Why? Because it’s easy. And hey, I know these people gotta eat. But after years of them doing this, conservatism is no further ahead than it was before. That amounts to years of people wasting time.
What the MSM is doing is neither unconstitutional nor illegal. We hate it because it works. Given that, you’d think we conservatives would have more than one channel. But, we’ve wasted our time over the last 20 years criticizing instead of creating more than one Foxnews. And given that channel’s lonely status, it’s easy for the uninformed to avoid.
If we had more conservative reporters and channels, we could even the odds. Until then, we just sound like whiners. You’re welcome, Rob.
Breitbart would have identified the puncher, pressed charges and sent the guy to jail and that would have been news. And yes, I realize I am applying a double standard.
Haven’t listened yet, so nevermind if someone made this point: Isn’t the problem with Crowder more that he just isn’t as talented and clever as a provocateur as, say, Andrew Brietbart was?
Does anybody doubt Andrew would have been in MI this week “provoking” and “asking to be punched” and that we all would have been laughing and rooting him on? ·3 hours ago
But we have won before. With an even more monolithic media than we have now. My point — which was maybe inartfully made — was that we spend too much time on complaining about the media, and not enough on pushing our ideas. Does anyone remember Reagan complaining about the media? ·8 hours ago
The media was monolithic, but MUCH more balanced than today. People who voted were smarter and less polarized. Now it’s at propaganda levels and they are more effective.
True there is a lot of complaining about the media -for good reason. That is the main problem. You want to deal with the issue – the core issue – right? I want to do more than “complain” by the way, I hate that word, since it seems to me to be pejorative. We must DO something. For my part, I call out those on *our side* like Mike Murphy who go on NBC Meet the Press and commiserate with Democrats about how bad the GOP is. I’ll continue to do that. At the very least these folks need to be called out and marginalized. Mike Murphy as de facto “spokesman” for Republican point of view only helps them.
Truly, I don’t know what to actually do, Brietbart had/has some pretty good guerilla tactics.
One thing I’m contemplating would be to demand our pols and pundits stop going on those shows. Stop allowing the Democrat operatives dressed up like reporters and anchors to *moderate* debates. Even GOP primaries fer godsakes!
Haven’t listened yet, so nevermind if someone made this point: Isn’t the problem with Crowder more that he just isn’t as talented and clever as a provocateur as, say, Andrew Brietbart was?
Does anybody doubt Andrew would have been in MI this week “provoking” and “asking to be punched” and that we all would have been laughing and rooting him on? ·3 hours ago
I was thinking of something similarly romantic. Could be. But, Breitbart also had some misses. Some things he spent a lot of energy pushing went nowhere. So who knows if he could have raised the profile of that story?
Gov: No. It’s not whining to point out the behavior of the left. Whining is saying “the double standard isn’t fair” and believing that someone will think better of you and your cause because you’re the victim of unfairness, then sulking when nothing changes.
The left may think it’s a happy-clappy Kumbaya circle of peace and tolerance. I don’t know why we have to participate in keeping that idea pristine.
Murphy’s audio quality is terrible. This has been happening a lot with guests who call in to the Podcast. Really hard to listen when every third or fourth word is dropped.
Now James is joking about the bad audio quality. He is actually joking that he couldn’t hear most of what Murphy said. This is not a joking matter! You guys need to fix this or stop doing Podcasts. There is no point to a Podcast that can’t be heard. (Unless you are trying to make some metaphorical point about how the Conservative message is now so out of touch that most voters can’t hear it.)
Personally, I think it’s time for Mike Murphy to retire. He is an old guard consultant, and his recommendations don’t convince me they match what is needed in the current environment. He reminds me of a baseball star past his prime trying to hang on. Yes, we need to examine our policy recommendations in light of conservative principles, and yes, we need to learn how to explain those policies in a more voter friendly way. But we should not adopt the progressive view of people as simply members of a racial, gender or economic class and the policies that implies. We have a new class of young conservative politicians at the state and federal level, and we need a new class of consultants to support them.
Ben Domenech is not a consultant, but he has a much better understanding of the current environment and what needs to be done about it. I think James’ suggestion of “more Federalism” is right on. The federal government did not grow to this size overnight, and we are not going to reverse it in one or two elections. We need more examples of the successful implementation of conservative policies.
Yes!! Don’t really understand why everything has to be on Skype. What about good old land lines?
Wait. Rob thinks *I* win our arguments?
Can someone please explain to me how state laws allowing or banning gay marriage are supposed work? What happens when a gay couple married in one state goes to another state where gay marriage is banned.
In general I’m a big fan of federalism and states as laboratories of democracy. But I don’t see how it all works for things like marriage that you carry with you wherever you go.