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The hard thing about producing a weekly podcast is coming up with relevant topics to talk about. Nothing ever happens in this boring administration we’ve elected. Yawn. This week, we’ve got Pat Buchanan (you must buy his new book Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever) who weighs in on those endless Nixon/Trump comparisons, and gives us his take on how the President is doing so far. Then, our old pal Dennis Prager made some waves this week with a column titled Why Conservatives Still Attack Trump. We delve into that and his new project with Adam Corrolla (he’ll be on in a few weeks too), No Safe Spaces, a film on the decay of free speech/thought on college campuses and what this means for our country. Also, join us on July 23rd for a special taping of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson at the Reagan Library, hosted by Pat Sajak. Details here.
Music from this week’s podcast: Fixing A Hole by The Beatles
The all new opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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Cool, @EJHill.
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I agree with you. My social bubble is also largly on the left, but I also think that many folks on the left believe they are larger in number than they are. Also most folks on the left are in urban, coastal bubbles and usually don’t interact with those who don’t share their views. I am a novelty to many of my lefty friends , but their downfall will be their insistance that everyone agrees with them, when in actuality most people don’t. They don’t report it but the Democratic party is in big BIG trouble. Their push to the far left and alienated a lot of their constituency and they don’t seem to be making any moves to try to widen their tent.
I agree with you that one of the left’s problem is thinking their views are universal, when they clearly aren’t. I think that problem exists on both sides though. For instance, you said “in actuality most people don’t.” The election said that in actuality most voters do agree with them (by about 3 million people). But those people aren’t distributed across the country, which is how to win an election. Regardless, do “most people” really agree with either side? It seems roughly 50/50 with 3% swinging with the economy.
Maybe. I think things can change fast. A common narrative entering 2016 (created by the 2012 Republican Autopsy) was that the right was in trouble because (to paraphrase) “their push to the far right had alienated a lot of their constituency and they didn’t seem to be making any moves to widen their tent.” That narrative turned out to be pretty wrong! One reason I think predictions are silly.
I agree, predictions are silly and we can never know what will happen. Look at Trump. No one thought he was even serious when he came down that escalator and now he’s president. If anyone thinks they can predict the future, is kidding themselves. But to your point sure the Democrats won the popular vote but that isn’t how presidents are elected. Also with that you have to take into account those who normally would have voted Republican but didn’t because they were a never Trumper living in a blue state or a union rep who liked Trump’s message but didn’t want to vote against their pension. So many variables.
But still it is annoying to go to a party with a bunch of people who assume you think they way they do.
President Trump absolutely kept his promise to appoint a conservative to replace Scalia, did the right thing in pulling out of the Paris agreement, and has helped the economy by pulling back a lot of regulation.
I promise you it didn’t hurt to say that.
Couldn’t agree with you more. While I consider myself a true centrist (I hold some left leaning opinions and some right leaning opinions) my friends assume I’m progressively left. I find it pretty funny sometimes to let my friends know I’m not that passionate about the whole climate change thing, heh.
I’m pretty conservative, and socially too. Yet, I can still get a bunch of Brooklyn hipsters or gays in Chelsea, to have a nice chat about politics. My approach has always been socratic, because I go into the lion’s den a LOT, and don’t want to get my head bitten off. But I can usually find common ground and can always fall back on 90’s pop culture references.
Forgive me for harping on this (and yes, I did see the “almost”), but I think this is important.
Here’s the opening of an article by David French from yesterday:
If that ain’t unmitigated praise from a former NeverTrumper, I don’t know what is.
More interestingly, here’s how French concludes his piece:
Notice that the criticism — one of, I think, two small ones in the piece — proceeds the “but” that begins the final sentence. That is, the point of the final sentence of the piece sentence is that Trump kept an important campaign promise.
The list of things we on the political right should rail against is a long one. I think Trump’s flaws are found several pages down that list, yet so much time is spent discussing those flaws. How old is he? Is he really going to change? This is what we have to work with. Please let us focus on something else on that long list. In this big, daily, national debate, when we spend so much time talking about Trump, I think we’ve fallen into the trap of redirection. If we do use that ‘yes, but’, have it appear after the shortest possible defense or criticism of the latest Trump tweet, and before we redirect the topic back to any one of the far more important political issues.
“Three Republicans [McCain, Graham, Collins] joined Senate Democrats on Wednesday to reject an effort to overturn an Obama administration rule limiting methane from oil and natural gas drilling.”
I haven’t seen the Guardians of the Conservative Galaxy up in arms over this (There was a post by a junior staffer at NRO making note of it). Are they monitoring all Republicans for adherence to conservatism, or only Trump?
So, it’s not enough that they’re praising the President, now you’re upset with them for not being enthusiastic enough?
Dennis Prager says we are in a war with the Left and I agree. But sometimes it seems like Donald Trump and a significant portion of the Republican party have waived the white flag in this war with the Left.
Trump says he opposes changing Medicare and Social Security, two social-welfare programs which are on course to bankrupt the United States of America.
Trump says he likes single payer health care as it is practiced in Australia.
Prager says conservatives should “report for duty” and follow General Trump. But General Trump has already surrendered to the Left.
I’m not saying Trump is the only Republican to do this. But I never heard Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Scott Walker provide such a carte blanche endorsement of big government social-welfare programs like Medicare and Social Security. Nor have I ever heard them lavish praise on single payer health care the way Trump has.
This leads some conservatives to conclude that will not simply “report for duty” as Dennis Prager is requesting.
Barry was, for 8 years, from the media.
If Donald Trump had sat quietly and smiled while the person interviewing him used the [really bad racist] word, would Ben Sasse have given him a pass? Or would Sasse have condemned Trump and then taunted him about it over and over again on Twitter?
Pat Buchanan is a great guest, because of his historical perspective and experience in politics. That doesn’t mean you have to like or agree with him, though, especially considering some of his writings.
For him to hint at some dark state planning around Iran is typical Pat. He thinks all overseas entanglements are just that – entanglements, and history has often proven him right. But he talks the threat of Iran down for lots of reasons, one of which has been his long-standing problem with Israel. He completely walked past the long, continued, and ever-more-present threat of Iran dropping a nuke on Israel, and how Obama actually made it much easier for this to happen more quickly.
Apparently for Pat, that’s an easy way to rid what he sees as the cause of overseas entanglements in the latter half of the 20th and early 21st century. And he’s OK with it. By this logic, he’s OK with the nuking of a Western nation. Would he be OK with Iran if they serially threatened France or Great Britain, and were in such proximity to actually make it happen?
I’ll quote Bill Whittle (who was quoting someone else, I think): Politics is downstream of the culture. The reason you have such a “progressive” presence in Congress is because of culture, not the other way around. Politicians aren’t elected, then change the culture – the culture is what causes (or allows) progressive politicians to win elections.
The Civil War argument is convenient because it then means you don’t need to apologize for or justify the general’s actions, even if he does burn Atlanta to the ground and then stomp on its ashes. At best, this is a war of ideas, a cultural war, but for most people, they don’t spend all waking hours thinking about it – they’re living their lives.
Which is how those who love gov’t and all it can do for them get away with incremental growth in its size and influence, until we find ourselves in places where our choices are dictated to us, or taken away, at the whim of 535 chowderheads in DC, who apparently know more about how to run my life than I do.
That thought alone, that reality, should send 10 million people to DC with pitchforks. I am a free man. I am not subject to these idiots, or should not be. If they went home for 2 years and did nothing, not only would I survive, but I would thrive.
We all would. Until we smack ourselves awake, we’re going to continue to let losers control our lives and limit our decisions.
Progressivism is about empowerment, but empowerment of the government, not the people. Why that’s so hard to see, mostly due to willful ignorance, is why it continues virtually unconstrained.
I first heard that saying from Andrew Breitbart. If he didn’t coin it, he made it popular.
@bd1 I really hope you are kidding.
So you’re defending Maher’s use of that word because he is a comedian? You’re right that Sasse seemed to find it funny.
Prager doesn’t seem to understand the difference between conservatism and the Republican party.
Medicare and Social Security are out of control social welfare programs on course to bankrupt the United States of America.
Trump says that he will not touch either program.
Conservatives at National Review say that those programs must be reformed.
Prager has chosen to be a loyal soldier in the Republican cause.
National Review has chosen to be a magazine advocating conservative ideas.
How many folks here agree with Dennis Prager that conservatives are at war with the left? And the end is to destroy it or be destroyed?
The reason I ask is that I don’t think it is possible for one side to destroy the other. America requires the tension and balance between multiple ideologies to stay strong. I believe Dennis’s kind of winner-take-all mentality is one of our society’s biggest problems on both sides of the aisle, and prevents either side from getting anything it wants.
I certainly know on the far left a lot of people agree that there is no middle ground.
One of these main reasons I joined Ricochet yesterday was to understand what folks here believe on this point.
It’s not clear what Dennis Prager means when he says “we are in a war with the Left.” He doesn’t seem to think that when you see someone with a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker on their car you should put a knife in their back. It seems more likely that Prager would support conservatives signing up for a Republican campaign for US Senate.
If that’s the case, Prager could have said that “we are in a political contest with the Left and the stakes are enormous.” Prager chose to be vague.
But in this battle between Trump and the Left it is important to acknowledge what they agree on.
Trump and the Left agree that Medicare and Social Security should remain unreformed so that they can proceed on their course to bankrupt our country.
If there is something worth going to war over, perhaps the fiscal solvency of the United States of America is that something. But Trump has surrendered that ground. Knowing this, Prager tells conservatives to “report for duty.”
Huh? I said nothing about Maher (although I really don’t care what that guy says). And SEEMED is the key word here. To me, Sasse looked uncomfortable and unsure how to react, a completely natural reaction when one is on live television in front of a live studio audience. I thought he did GREAT.
P.S. I admit to some bias when it comes to Ben Sasse. I think he’s great and Peter Robinson and I were lucky enough to be able to spend some time with him yesterday too:
You quoted Sasse saying comedians had latitude to do this. I don’t believe in guilt by association, but Sasse has repeatedly used that standard to condemn Trump.
One, that’s a total non-sequitur and had nothing to do with happened on the Maher show, and two, Sasse has criticized Trump in areas where he disagrees with him. So what? Is that now not allowed?
Nice table there, brother. :D
Sasse has tweeted extensively about “covfefe”, but not about the Paris Climate Agreement. Do you guys ask him about the latter issue?
This show was mostly about his book.
Location shooting requires improvisation. The cardboard raising the table will never be seen on camera.
…in which Rob and Lileks couldn’t bring themselves to acknowledge that Trump did something good without belittling him.