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This week, our good pal Larry Kudlow sits in for the making-tv-great-again Rob Long. We’ve also got Henry Olsen, author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism who tell us what why Reagan’s greatest influence may have been Franklin Roosevelt, how The Great Communicator would’ve come down on the health care debate, and supposes who would have won in a Trump-Reagan electoral contest. Later, Mr. Immigration Mickey Kaus stops by to school us on why the Emma Lazarus poem isn’t policy and what the media gets wrong over and over about this contentious issue. We also talk about the good economic news, and the tight ship John Kelly is running at the White House.
Music from this week’s podcast: The Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin
The all new opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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@EJHIll yearns to be free.
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I beg to differ that all those millions of people who came to American in the 17th-19th centuries did so to help America. Give me a break. They came here in droves because of poverty at home, civil and religious unrest in their countries, a famine in Ireland and/or the promise of free or cheap farmland in the US, particularly after the Homestead Act promised 160 acres for any citizen or intended citizen who had never raised arms against the US. In short: they came for a better life. We needed those immigrants as the US quest for more territory marched toward the Pacific Ocean and required new people to colonize and fight for the land from Indians and other countries laying claim to it. The Lazarus poem wasn’t written until 1883, two years before the Statue of Liberty came to the US, wasn’t even mentioned in her obit and was only inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the statue in 1903.
The immigrants’ motives may not have been to help America, but America’s immigration policy was definitely predicated on the idea that the immigrants would work all that unused land, thus bringing tax revenue and all the other attendant benefits.
But lately you get the idea that immigration is seen as a type of welfare—as a way to remedy the problems of the third world by permitting the poor to come here, not to mention allowing them to send remittances back home, which boosts their home lands’ economies.
Not that remittances are a bad thing—it’s better that the incoming cash go directly into the hands of regular people instead of passing through the hands of corrupt governments. It’s just that any attempt to control immigration is met with the same indignation as cuts to “entitlements”: YOU JUST HATE THE POOR.
Rick Wilson: “Sitcom pitch: Martin Shkreli and Stephen Miller in a prison cell together.”
Elite NeverTrump is about open borders. They want anyone who attempts to control immigration destroyed.
I like Larry Kudlow, really, I do. But please have him on as a guest instead of a host. Henry Olsen had some interesting points, which he should have been interviewed on – not argued with. Ask questions. Heck, ask uncomfortable questions. But let us hear the guest’s point of view more than the host’s. Larry did the same with Rod Dreher.
Ok, going to tell those kids to get off my lawn now.
I saw this tweet and I still don’t get it.
Also, I really hope to hell Shkreli actually did something criminal. I have no idea.
That’s what I meant, yes.
Nonsense.
I think I heard Ben Shapiro make a valid point about that poem. People leave out the part that says “Yearning to be free”. Not yearning for free stuff. The trick is to find the immigrants who want to be free and understand what that means.
I think you are correct, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find Americans who want to be free and understand what that means.
Yes, @kimk, this is the second time that I have heard Larry Kudlow take up all the air in the room, speaking over top of the person who wrote the book. I noticed that too with Rod Dreher, about his book, The Benedict Option. I really wanted to hear what Rod would say to Peter and Rob, but Larry just took over, took up all the air time and didn’t even talk about the actual subject of the book.
In future keep Larry as a guest.
Explained here. I have been paying big bucks for markets analysis etc. and my guys have been saying exactly what that guy’s saying for years.
My parents came over in 1927, they needed a sponsor and a job before hand. Most people, living their lives, aren’t up on the latest changes in law but they assume overall that the government that they pay for is looking out for their interests. The rage comes when people find out that while they weren’t paying attention, the rules were turned against them and that people all over the world have been encouraged to come and pick their pockets. The idea that immigrants, whether legal or illegal, can arrive and are immediately eligible for the full range of government programs , including social security, is nothing less than insane. In one instance a one legged imam with at least one wife and 14 children was not only allowed in but was given priority status, utter madness. Our own government is our enemy. Close this loophole and make sure the parasites know it and the problem will disappear on its own.
When Kudlow’s a host, I’m AWOL.
Kudlow’s one of the good guys. Cut him a little slack?
Yeah, I also am not a fan of Kudlow as a host: he just doesn’t have the personality for it. The one thing I’d say in his defense is, Olsen was commenting on something that Kudlow and Peter had personal knowledge of: the ideology of Ronald Reagan. If someone wrote a book about your former boss, you’d probably have a lot of input, too.
I liked Olsen way better on this podcast than the last Ricochet one he was a guest on. He sounded more reasonable. On the last one he was making Reagan sound like FDR himself, and didn’t seem to care whether or not the welfare state was economically good or bad, only that it would earn the GOP more votes. I think he was more cautious on this one because he had people who actually knew Reagan.
Missed the one with Rod Dreher, so can’t comment on Larry Kudlow’s overall style.
In this conversation, I liked the arguments between Kudlow and Olsen. Olsen has a thesis about how conservatives ought to understand Reagan’s intellectual legacy. Kudlow’s pushing back with his recollection of their actual policy work under Reagan was important to test and verify Olsen’s reading of Reagan.
I’ll believe Trump wants tax cuts when he starts working with Republicans in Congress to get them. So far he is selling the same stuff to the same people over and over. Kudlow is deluded.
What tax cut plan has congress proposed? When I search I find plenty of articles in this format:
Trump unveils tax cut plan…but congress…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=congress+tax+cut+plan+2017&t=hu&ia=news
I’ll echo the comments regarding Kudlow as a host – he needs to be kept on a short leash…
Seems to me that being a good guy does not exempt him from the requirement of common courtesy.
Nice to have Kaus back on. He’s an immigration patriot.
The RAISE Act should be debated widely because it’s a first step in the right direction. Even the childish debates over Founding Father Emma Lazarus are important – they wake people up to the recognition that immigration is a POLICY, like farm supports or national parks or space exploration, not Holy Writ enshrined in our Constitution. We can change it and we can end it.
Angela Merkel is the new Emma Lazarus. If what is happening to Western Europe – to Holland, Sweden, Germany, France and Great Britain – is what you want for the United States, you have your champion in the here and now.
But it’s up to us. Japan, like England, is an island nation. It is also global, modern and high tech. It has, as did England, labor shortages; but it did not subscribe to the utopian universalist delusion that we are all the same. The Japanese people have never thought that anyone can become Japanese. Instead, they find the idea absurd (as do Americans if they contemplate moving to Japan or China).
Thus, the Japanese have no immigration, no terrorism and no internal race conflicts. They decided wisely.
England has Londonistan and Manchester.
We have California and 300 sanctuary cities.
Good podcast. I’m a bit mystified about the feedback that Larry Kudlow was somehow not civil or something. Seems like he’s seen many people attach various motives and attitudes to Ronald Reagan’s name over the years and is wary about it. I didn’t think there was any more to it than that and enjoyed the back and forth of one person loaded with hours and hours of research and the other with firsthand experience.
Anyway, I thought it was well done and Mickey Kaus was as interesting and enjoyable as ever. Good stuff.
I agree the GOP is acting weirdly as though they have all the time in the world, but Trump needs to SELL his plan to the masses AND to Congress and push it through kicking and screaming. You know, the way he sells himself.
If we really wanted GDP to grow, we’d just conquer the rest North & South America. GDP would skyrocket.
GDP per capita, however, would nosedive significantly…
Ah, @lazymillennial it is against the dictates of political correctness to notice certain things…such as long division. Or this:
To many of Kudlow’s conservative stripe our government is a government of the Economy, by the Economy and for the Economy. In their more honest moments they will admit that “if there is one thing that the Republican Party is for, it is tax cuts.”
Not conserve the culture. Not conserve the people.
Tax cuts, so that the wealthiest can endow think tanks and magazines whose writers explain to us why in fact the culture can’t be preserved and why in fact we people need to accept our own displacement.
And following along are the politicians who rouse our righteous anger and then defuse it, shrugging that nothing can be done even when they are in charge, acting in every way like a front for the people they claim to oppose.
Finally, when one steps up and says he will defend our civilization, he will protect our people and he will put America first – that he will “walk the talk” – that man is hated by many (blessedly not Larry Kudlow) who claim to be conservatism’s elite.
Don’t notice that, either.
Time for some of the new ingredients in this melting pot to do so and time to quit adding more for awhile.
National cohesion is at stake and it seems to me we are barely holding together.
Having recently seen a man in a nice car with a Palestinian flag in the front license plate holder dropping off his hijab’d wife to her nice car saying “bye bye” in Arabic in a Starbucks parking lot in my city 1100 and 800 miles from any border, I think immigration has GOT to be reduced. Full stop. This is not what Emma Lazarus envisioned and if it is, she was misguided. Yes to the Cotton/Perdue Act.
@gromrus
I repeat:
Angela Merkel is the new Emma Lazarus. If what is happening to Western Europe – to Holland, Sweden, Germany, France and Great Britain – is what you want for the United States, you have your champion in the here and now.
There are many who do want it. They are the enemy.
I’ll believe that we’ll get meaningful tax reform when I see a relatively concrete proposal from the Administration and a few detailed speeches on the subject. I hope the White House has learned that the problem isn’t a grid locked Congress. Congress is always gridlocked. If they can’t log roll they can’t accomplish anything that isn’t demanded from them. Demanding means the thing is simple enough to understand and be sold to the people so that Congress gets mail, calls, push back, editorials, as well as calls from the White House. This couldn’t happened with health care because Price is a creature of the Hill and thinks like they do. That’s not true here so the President has to get with it.