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This week, the rare single guest show. But when that guest is Senator Ben Sasse, he has enough brain power to fill two segments and that’s exactly what the does on today’s episode. Mostly, we discuss his WSJ Op-Ed, Make The Senate Great Again, which is a manifesto on how to fix the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. Also, some thoughts on Woodward v. Trump and the less than great mayor of the City That Never Sleeps.
Music from this week’s show: The Sand Hills of Old Nebraska by Ole Rasmussen
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This is what I’m talking about:
I do? Or Sasse does?
I think the point is just that Sasse is chock-full of half-baked ideas.
Do you really want more of this?
Brutal.
Sasse.
Sorry about that.
That is not correct. For example, Daniel Webster was a Senator from 1827 to 1841 and again from 1845 to 1850. John Sherman was a Senator from Ohio from 1861 to 1877 and again from 1881 to 1897.
It’s his style!
I was kinda surprised James interrupted a Q&A session with a US Senator to do an ad. Then again, there may be contractual requirements to talk about XYZ before minute ABC . . .
Jonah has called Ben Sasse his spirit animal. When he first started his podcast, it seems that part of the plan was to have Sasse on as a regular.
He hasn’t been on for awhile, and probably it’s for the best. Professionally, it’s not good for a journalist, even an opinion journalist, to be too closely associated with a particular politician.
I don’t know. U.S. Senators appear on programs all the time with advertising that play in the middle of an interview. It’s par for the course.
Then again, it’s quite possible – especially since Rob didn’t interrupt – that bit was inserted later.
Just for clarity, this isn’t the thrust of what I’m talking about in that post.
Jonah Goldberg doesn’t wear it on his sleeve, but he’s really into Austrian economics. He asked Ben Sasse some great questions that could only come from somebody like that, and Sasse just completely flubbed it. I had a conversation on Twitter with a moderately famous libertarian and she observed the same thing.
You have got to get it straight in your head about how government is dysfunctional in this era.
I’m not an expert on this, but another example might be Senator Mike Lee. He talks a good game, but he’s almost literally the senator for Google more than anything else.
Isn’t this a binary election of whether or not you want single payer shoved down your throat?
I was looking at Twitter today and that is the most stark, irreversible thing that can happen. I think that’s the actual reality and risk. Why wouldn’t you think that’s the way to look at it?
It’s Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher who does the Half-Baked Ideas episodes of The Remnant, not Sasse. 🙄
The spot was added after the show. We did not make Senator Sasse sit through a hair loss commercial. But I’m happy to know that the edit was so seamless, you couldn’t tell. @jameslileks
That Sasse thinks more collegiality means he won’t get taken by Dems indicates he is just a suckered, an easy mark. I have no respect for his naivete.
Those “decorum conservatives” always get rolled by the Dems because they think that honorable Democrats still exist. Ha ha ha.
This discussion is very educational.
We really need to reach across the aisle.
The gloves come off: His name is now Shitt Romney.
I no longer think they are that naive.They are frauds and always have been. I have complete contempt for them all.
public sector unions have too much power in California
Crowder is a conservative comedian right?
blue collar union workers are part of the Trump coalition
Why is the math off? 14 years. 5 years. 16 years. 16 years.
Looks like both guys left the Senate at various times to serve in the Cabinet, as Secretary of State or Treasury.
Part of the thinking behind Senators’ six-year term was that the people who elected them, state legislators, would know them well enough to trust them for six years.
When the progressives managed to pass an amendment to provide for direct election of Senators, they left the six-year term in place, creating a situation in which a Senator could get reelected by pretending to be a conservative in the sixth year of his term.
Several Midwestern liberals took advantage of the situation, until 1980 when the Republicans finally ran ads telling voters what they had actually been up to for the last six years.
If Frank Church, who saw the main enemy as the CIA not the USSR, and Birch Bayh, had remained in the Senate, it’s likely Ronald Reagan could not have won the Cold War.
Crowder is babbling about free trade. The fact is blue-collar workers are getting hosed by bad policies that don’t accommodate the fact that we are importing wage deflation and job destruction.
When you listen to Trump’s economic advisers they are working on it. You can’t just shove idealistic crap about free trade and automation down these guys throat’s and expect society to hold together.
Libertarians have a blind spot where “free” trade with slave states is concerned. As we have seen with China and Cuba, our trade goes to strengthen the system of oppression.
The easiest, most logical way to send power back to the states is to make it illegal for anyone running for office within a state to accept campaign contributions outside that state. No senator or representative in D.C. should be there because of money given to his campaign from any state other than the one he purports to represent.
Down Texas way I think they call guys like him all hat and no cattle.
That’s just for starters.
The whole system is based on inflation. Our government and our financial system. The amount of globalized labor that will work for nothing is infinite. You have to deal with that realistically. Republicans that just babble idealistically about trade are cruel and are committing political suicide. It’s not even logical if you study it.
We have done every single thing wrong on this since the Soviet Union fell and now it’s a much bigger headache than it should have been. Central planning is worthless.
It was completely nuts to trade with a fascist mafia state. We should have just traded food and energy so they don’t die and that’s it. This was a huge mistake, and try to get any Never Trumper to say that.
I forget where I heard this, but someone was saying Nixon really screwed up normalizing relations with China.