Host so, first when did you start writing this book lacks because of the brilliantly predicts the landscape of where we are now with this election. Take me through the process of when this form in your head. Guest somebody said i should buy a Powerball Ticket because i can see the future. Its hard to say when do you start writing a book is that when you write the proposal and turning them into a script . I would say five years ago i started writing columns that led me to this book and its appetite is their appeal in wind road and i thought she kind of got radicalized and sort of changed and i have seen candidates like Christina Odonnell and share an angle saying things i felt kind of uncomfortable with as a conservative playing identity politics and casting themselves as a victim, playing the victim card as unconservative and it was a sort of populist tone that got me writing about this topic and ultimately led to the playbook comes out ssierra palen endorses donald trump. How could i have planned that . Host lets get back because theres a lot to discuss. First, remind people of the intellectual history of conservatism. I know when i go to colleges i tell students you would be surprised to learn the cocktail parties used to be conservative. Talk about that rich history. Guest there was a time not that long ago when they were too intellectual and academic and pointy headed intellectuals that couldnt appeal. But a lot of people think that the intellectual father of conservatism is aristotle which puts conservatism in very good intellectual company. But certainly, the modern leader, the modern conservative is edmund burke, the british parliamentarian who was very supportive of the american cause against the french revolution. You know, this is a guy who has been incredibly influential and if you look at the sort of battle he had against thomas and you have the birth of the right end and the left even to this day and he be believed that preserving tradition and western civilization didnt just miraculously happen it is the product of accumulated wisdom so martyrdom conservatives hearken back and i would say that the modern american conservative really starts as a reaction to fdr and the new deal and you have again brilliant man and eventually the woman that is sort of a libertarian and certainly contributed to that. People like Richard Weaver that leads us to the william f. Buckleys and so there is a rich intellectual tradition that in recent years weve got to know me from as we dumb down conservatism to win votes. Host tell me if you agree there is still contemporary intellectuals in the movement. Ive offer like thomas sole. But they seem to be getting marginalized. They are not getting as much attention as some other folks. Why do you think that is . Guest part of it is the product of the culture. You have the entertainment wing of the party really kind of dominating and so you know, he can write something fabulous but if Rush Limbaugh says something mean or an cold process something on cable news, whats going to get the most attention. So really in the book too dumb to fail, the title harkens to the too big to fail mentality where in the case of too big to fail you obviously had Financial Institutions who who had provers incentives to take risks that ultimately we the taxpayers would bail them out and i think you have a similar dynamic in the conservative movement with politicians and pundits where if you are a political pundit and it is in your best interest to have a perverse incentive to Say Something controversial or provocative event if the conservative movement cumulatively is harmed by it. Host i want to get back to talk radio because Rush Limbaugh brings up an important point. First i want to read from too dumb to fail for a minute and have you comment. You write too many of todays conservatives deliberately sean Academic Experience and expertise at politics. Many of the people doing so are not as john as they pretend to be read even the rare conservatives that possess a wealth of knowledge feel obliged to act dumb and i think thats what youre talking about is this desire to put on an aspect of dumbness. When did that become nothing . Guest the book is called too dumb to fail and then there is a thing i believe is called too smart to win where you basically have the same ignorance or that every man populism in order to get ahead and pander to the voters and its really unfortunate. A lot of the people who do this are highly intelligent. Donald trump is a billionaire who went to an Ivy League School who is obviously playing this game. Ted cruz academic resume and cachet and again, pandering to the sort of populist conservative. But the really sad part is to candidates that try to do it and cant. Bobby jindal cummock road scholar scholar, incredibly intelligent conservative tried desperately to pander and to the every man and just didnt work and i think really sad place called walker who doesnt have the academic resume that is but is a smart and capable governor who really could have been the bridge between the establishment and the grassroots. But instead decided he had to win iowa and pander to the voters and he started embracing things like the birthright citizenship which went against his brand earlier and so basically, we have a scenario where basically you have to pretend to be something youre not, and the unfortunate part is that in order to pander to say the republican primary voters in iowa, you have to adopt a persona and a style that would actually hurt you when it comes to winning over the millennial sore cosmopolitan americans who i believe should be voting conservative but are turned off by the cultural baggage and the stylistic stereotypes of what we think of when we think of conservatives. Host youre not suggesting populism as large as all bad, right . I think Ronald Reagan was able to successfully marry and intellectual conservative with vigorous populism. Guest absolutely. Thats one of the things i try to define in the book. Theres a lot of words we bandy about and im guilty of it because we need shortcuts but what do they mean. One of them is populism. If populism is somebody who beliefs in the American People and the American People and instead of the establishment of the elite i actually might qualify as a populist but unfortunately it often times leads to the sort of pandering and a demagoguery and if you look at some of the modern populists say for example george wallace, we see that there is a sort of pernicious strain that comes along with populism where they basically have to think somebody to blame and that if youre not careful cant evolve into a woe is me we cant get ahead of those other people are stopping us from being successful and to me, that is unconservative. Thats not a rugged individualism that believes if you work hard you can get ahead and achieve the American Dream. That is something that i think is not conservative and is actually harmful to the human spirit at a sort of microlevel. Host do you think in some ways all of this in the too dumb to fail is a reaction to the liberal secular elite projects and thinking mostly in the 2000s in what is the matter with kansas project about liberals kind of looked at the flyover states and said you guys are a bunch of rubes, youre not voting you are interested you your interest and your just clinging on to guns and religion and so conservatives said okay we will take care of you. We will be your voice. I would imagine you would agree that is a good impulse but that it happened wrong . Guest if conservatives are saying hell do i put this i think theres a mistake when you let the other side defined who you are and i think so often conservatism in the recent years has been defined as whatever obama is for, we are against so in the rare occasion that its for something good like free trade, we must reflectively be against it and the problem with the fact is when you allow the other guy if you have a kneejerk reaction to be against whatever the other person is for you are letting him define the parameters of the debate, so that has been an unfortunate result. I think this weird phenomenon and is relieved that there are many factors that are leading us to where we are. Some of it is Barack Obamas presidency which i dont think has been helpful for the country and i think has led to a lot of americans to feel disillusioned. But i also think there are trends like globalization and if you are Bernie Sanders and youre an outsider you can blame capitalism and donald trump might blame immigration but theres all sorts of things feeding into this and i do fully appreciate that there are a lot of americans are angry, upset and frustrated and i think at least some of that desire is understandable and i can certainly identify with it. Host talk about the role of evangelicals because thats been a huge part of modern conservatism and modern Republican Coalition and you argue that attempting to win and keep the voters has been a little bit of damaging. Guest a little bit. So basically the premise of the book is that conservatism started off as an awful intellectual philosophy and it got dumbed down into and the last part is how we can get it back and restore conservatism and in a way you look backward to restore the good things about it as an intellectual force and also make it appeal to the 21st century americans go along the way of telling the story, i document how the dumbing down happened in the part of the way that it happened was we have what i refer to as immigrants under the conservative movement. It could be a confusing word that you know, we are always hearing about the problem of immigrants coming to america and how they need to be assimilated and if they are not, they could change the country in country and you wake up and its a country you dont recognize and i argue that political movements and parties are the same way you always want the influx of new people to be joining the cause or the party but the need to be assimilated into three are not eventually you wake up and you dont recognize the party that you are and so conservatism over the years had different waves of immigrants who come into the Republican Party. One of them in the late 1970s and early 1980s were evangelicals who helped Ronald Reagan win the election but they also brought with them some less than positive attributes. I actually am an evangelical and i wrote in the book its in particular faith involved in the politics. One of my heroes have a religious conversion and helped lead the fight against the slave trade and i think that is an example of how people of faith can be involved in politics and make a positive difference. Unfortunately, in america if you look at the modern history of evangelicalism since about 1925 post world war i era, you had a scoops monkey trial and its really hard to underestimate the profound impact that have on people on evangelicals specifically in america and we have a situation where basically you have to make a choice that you were either going to be an intellectual or you were going to be in evangelical and was a false choice that they but they were seen as mutually exclusive and so you can sort of extrapolate that for about 50 years and you basically have a situation where a lot of the people who were joining the conservative movement to help Ronald Reagan were actually antiintellectual. They were very skeptical of anything that might be perceived as intellectual and i think while there were some good things to come from that, today we are sort of paying the price with the stereotype of republicans being the stupid party. Host so obviously conservatives in the Republican Party still wants to be the home for people of rigorous faith. How do you suggest the party reach out to evangelicals like you while not sounding antiscience . Guest the good news is in the recent years even java calls have made Great Strides at sort of marrying the sort of thoughtful understanding and appreciate the science and popular coach or with the devout faith. So theres no longer this decision like you can either believe in the virgin birth or you can be taken seriously. And i think that the candidates like marco rubio whose a young up and coming evangelical, this is much more in keeping with i would say the modern young evangelical movement is very different from what we saw with the sort of i dont know, cultural war silent majority iran of our parents and grandparents. So they are less cultural warrior but still people of devout faith actually have these interesting nuanced positions where they simultaneously can be read back god used evolution and the earth could be billions ofyearsold and that god created the universe and put it all in motion and they be leaving the virgin birth and the resurrection. So, we are eliminating the false choice which i think plagued us for so long. Host lets talk about young people because maloney knows where the youngest generation in history, theres 80 million of them. Theyve been taken for granted by liberals and virtually ignored by conservatives as a voting bloc. Millennials today today have a deep distrust of government. Is it now the perfect opportunity for conservatives to reach out to young people, maybe have them for life, and life and health of these . Guest i couldnt agree more and as much as my book lays out a lot of problems conservatives face and conundrums demographically, theres a huge opportunity right now because in a way if you think of it, Hillary Clintons version of liberalism is a 20th century command and control factory model of government. It really is, it is a top down antiquated version of government and if you compare it to a young lady living in a city and you order on your smartphone and get in the car and order a concert ticket i think you are conservative because number one youre not going to be leaving the government regulations that would stifle creativity, you are entrepreneurial by your entrepreneurial by definition at this point by virtue of what youre doing and youre not going to want the government to manage your Retirement Fund you want to be at that point a conservative and you probably are you just dont know it. But if your view of what conservatism means you have to write about write around with a Confederate Flag in the back of your truck youre not going to be a conservative and thats why im optimistic. There are candidates like marco rubio and paul ryan who are legitimate candidates but also have the potential to sell to the american audience that would be different than the coalition that we are used to. Do you think its possible that republicans in the near future can win over the maloney also is a longterm project . You have to go into the assumption that its a longterm project that we are at a crossroads right now. The party of marco rubio and paul ryan is a different maybe for generations than the party of donald trump and we dont know what direction we are going to go as a movement or a party that it could send a very different direction. I would say Donald Trumps philosophy of sort of doubling down on working class white older rural, southern merida voters is in the short term not a crazy idea that sort but sort of like getting a reverse mortgage. I think in the long term its probably not the best move if you want to win the future. Not to say that we should sell out the current conservative base but either way i think hes basically arguing your going to appeal these new people, these records that havent been voting. So either direction involves bringing in some new people into the coalition its just a matter of which people are growing in terms of the demographic population. Host i want to talk about him later but doesnt he have a point that democrats have been bleeding older, white bluecollar men. There are no blue dogs anymore. And isnt he right someone like him could finally get those people whove been staying home box to vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders but to vote for him . Guest it could work. I belief the real problem is a longterm problem, it is a brandname brand name problem and longterm mathematical problem that i am not one of these people convinced that its crazy in the short term. I think its feasible that a donald trump the donald trump could change the game and a change and pick up voters who feel like theyve been left behind, absolutely. Host lets shift for a minute. This has always bothered me. Why do conservatives want to make every subculture job the standardbearer of the movement . Im thinking of ken davis, georges ammerman commits likely see a crazy person and say they should run for president. Its one thing to defend certain principles and in each of the cases there is something there to defend but how do we stop embracing people who make us look bad . Guest i dont think ben carson is crazy but we sort of thrust him into the president ial race when he shouldnt have been doing that, he should have run for governor host should be a doctor. I hear hes a really good doctor. Host guest and if you think about the conservative cause, whos more valuable, someone runs for president among 17 people were the leading surgeon whos africanamerican and who is prolife and talks about the culture of life . He was more valuable before he even for president in terms of advancing Everyone Wants to start at the top and i think that the conservatives have some weird things happening. There is the penchant for lost causes and also the sympathy of any of my enemy is my friend got she was never a conservative but as soon as the politically correct liberal thought police went after him he we would defend him. Why . Because hes the picked up these horrible people doesnt mean hes like edmund burke or something. I think another issue that happens, ironically we are always talking about how the west coast and all that but we are like the biggest fan boy for the celebrities and usually its never the alist celebrities to decide. Its like people find jesus in prison but people discover there are conservatives only after their career has for the flamed out in hollywood and we will welcome them with open arms. Its a bit stressed so we are to are coming in by document that in the buck, this trend but i think is part of the gunning down. You turn on a cable news show. I dont want to hear the doctor dynasty guy is talking politics and i dont think a nascar driver is necessarily the best person to talk to me about whether Eminent Domain is good policy but thats what youre getting in a lot of political commentary these days. Host but isnt the issue also that look, i dont mind if tony stewart has a political opinion. He is as title to it as much as i am and he can talk about it, that isnt the bigger problem the hypocrisy on our side but we completely dismiss hollywood and celebrities as irrelevant and stupid and unimportant until one comes out for our side and then its Clint Eastwood is coming to the convention and hes going to talk to an empty chair, thats fantastic. Guest you are right its a lot of hypocrisy and we just write off the culture of stake in the leverage off hollywood and the entertainment world except when it suits us. Host i had this long running debate with andrew right guard before he passed about whether if we disagreed about whether we wanted to put the hollywood artistic celebrity kind of culture and play in that space and make conservative projects and movies or whether we wanted to just be really good at being conservative and i dont think you can do both. It gets very tricky as we are discussing. Whats your opinion . Guest i think i probably agree with andrew. I think politics is downstream from culture and its important that people the conservative worldview becomes more involved in the arts. But i think its different than trotting them out to talk about politics. They shouldnt be talking about politics. It should be people that are conservative in the worldview that happened to be good at making movies were telling jokes or being a chef, whatever it is in the culture. I think its a mistake when we publicize them then you have what happened to doctor ben carson. He would have been much better staying out of the sort of overt political arena and weighing in sort of on the edges edge is helping create a cultural life for him. Host so i want names. Who are among the worst people perpetuating this impulse in the modern contemporary conservatism . Guest for me to name them is in a sense a compliment because the people that are the worst for the people that are notable. There are people that have made an impact. The worst person in the world nobody knows who they are. They are sitting at home. Take this as a badge of honor. I would say one name thats a big thing you talked about before is Rush Limbaugh. I have an interesting relationship with him not that i know him but my dad who was a prison guard turned me onto listening to his show around 1988 when he Went National and i wouldnt be sitting here if it wasnt for him. I listened to this show all the time. He really helped inspire me. But over the years i do feel like he has abdicated responsibility. A classic example was donald trump. You had a have a lot of talk radio hosts, mark levin being another name who lately sort of turned on donald trump a long time they provided and cover and they helped this monster essentially grow into the point where they couldnt stop him and i think that, you know, they can say im just an entertainer or whatever the copout is but i do miss the days when you have had someone like william f. Buckley who accepted the sort of mental of leadership and responsibility. Its hard enough. There arent a lot of gatekeepers left of the rights to essentially police the right answer youve gone too far you are hurting the cause. I think rush is one of the few people left who actually had come and people get mad at me when i say this but the moral authority on the right to call out donald trump initially and say no hes not a conservative and i think he missed that opportunity. And i dont know if it was because he hangs out with donald trump or because he just liked the fact that he was taking on the politically correct whatever origin was because he thought that it was a stalking horse for ted cruz or whatever the reason being i was a little disappointed. Host as you know, i have run into archambault. I merely suggested not long ago, no commute was after 2012 i believe, i merely suggested that once in a while conservatives should feel free to disagree with people like Rush Limbaugh and you would think that i had spit on the pope. Theres just been you know, hes almost untouchable. So it takes courage to call out people like rush or ann coulter. Guest i name names in the book and shes one of them. Host have you gotten backlash cracks because i know i do when i do that and its hard because we want you want you know, you felt welcomed in this community for so long and then all of a sudden your sacrilege. Guest i have to say ive been stunned at the positive reception this book has gotten and i think that its because weve arrived at a point where people who were conservatives are fed up with people who exploit the movement and actually hurts the movement. Ive had people like Eric Erickson to meet positive things about the book is a talk radio host himself and conservative blogger and author. Ive had people in the Weekly Standard do a great review, henry wilson wrote a olson wrote a fabulous review and the Weekly Standard about this book. I spoke with the Leadership Institute on the wakeup breakfast there was a conservative organization i used to work and im telling you so many people, many people have come up to me every Single Person came up im glad you wrote this book. I was expecting pushback and when i first started writing the columns i got a ton of pushback. If i dared to say anything bad about christy odonnell, i was a sellout. I think the timing of this is right in so many ways including the fact that people are fed up. When she sends out something where can and im paraphrasing but she said i dont care if donald trump performs abortion in the white house as long as he has this hardcore immigration policy i think people are finally waking up and even a lot of conservatives who were hesitant to engage in introspection or sort of criticism of the conservative cause. Host do we finally reached political mass. Host so do you think all of these very successful and arguably talented faces of the party for the past ten, 20 years like Rush Limbaugh and ann coulter are they on their way out or are they going to have to kind of all lived together for the next decade or so . Guest thats a good question. I wonder if we are out of the midst of the reordering where you have a conservative movement that i would be a part of that belief is in the small government and free trade and free markets that help bring about and help humans to basically reach their potential for the most joy and prosperity in a more populist nativist parties movement that basically is for protectionism and wants to build walls and essentially become a a european style white identity politics and thats what im hoping we dont get to because i fear we could be headed to a direction where our politics is no longer decided based on ideas or philosophy but it becomes essentially what tribe are you in and so if you are a College Graduate or minority, you just automatically are assigned democratic and if you are a working class white person you just reflectively become a republican and i think the politics should be about ideas and we should have this debate about ideas and you shouldnt identity politics shouldnt define your political persuasion. Host thats what liberalism says. Guest i know and thats the sad part is in many ways. Theres there is a conservative argument that says they do it, too or we have to fight fire with fire but i reject that thread why should we emulate the worst liberalism . Host i want to be very clear you say modernize the middle and moderate. You are not suggesting the watering down of conservative principles or sort of cleansing the party of the staunch social and political belief. What does modernizing look like for you . Guest thats an important point because so many people that have written books about how to fix the Republican Party or the conservative movement, their recipes just we are a couple of liberals. Host stop talking about abortion so much. Guest exactly. I was at a book party recently, a sort of swanky nice affair and i dont do a lot of the georgetown cocktail parties but this was a stereotypical thing and somebody said to me what do you think of john kasich and i said he seems like what liberals think would be the perfect idea of a Republican Party. Good governor, very popular governor but in terms of the president ial nominee, for me is a nonstarter and he doesnt appeal to me and i knew he wouldnt designate up to a certain type of liberal host everyone i talk to say john kasich has the best chance. Guest im like you guys are so out of it. But, that is the same standard that isnt what im advocating. Actually to me right now i be right now i think marco rubio and ted cruz are sort of the two guys that i think sort of best embody True Movement conservatism. I think probably mark rubio types more into the modernize dont moderate thing i think that he could appeal to the sort of 21st century navy millennial voter in a way that ted cruz couldnt put both of them are young, smart, legitimate conservatives. I am not advocating becoming more liberal. I think donald trump is advocating the coming more liberal he just seems to be conservative because we cant wait toughness and anger with conservatism. I would venture to say if you go down the list and have a litmus test of what i belief i compare to donald trump and Ann Coulter Coulter i would be by definition much more conservative. So i am strongly prolife, for lower taxes and whatever it is. But i will go back to my story about uber. Its not about changing your position is becoming more pro abortion to attract more voters. Its about having a party and movement. Host is that talking differently or an issue of voting differently . How do we get there and modernize right now . Guest i have three chapters on the topic. So, theres a lot to it but i think some of its i hate to ascribe to the politics of having the right nominee can make a difference just symbolically speaking the donald Trump Nominee is different than marco rubio and marco rubio president speaking spanish fluently talking about his father being a bartender and the essence of the American Dream that goes a long way and obviously the movements need to have think tanks and actually try to identify, train and recruit future is what they did when they modernized the Democratic Party. That opinion leaders and intellectuals and writers can not just a word of of a little bit so to speak in the right direction but this is a pretty we didnt get into this mess overnight and its not nothing to be fixed overnight either. Host lets really get into this because its not just a way to talk about the news. But it really does talk directly to the time we live in. Each got more and more. Seeing these trends sort of bubbling up that i didnt know he was going to be the vessel. Host do you think this is just the problem pulling the same kind of faith on the party because thats where we are just at right now. Guest writing the book i think this would have manifested another way. Kim davis for example or maybe ben carson catches fire. They were able to uniquely identify the moment anyway but nobody else did. Its to find these issues when. He people have been capable of based on its pr. I dont know that they have the full populace. Host its always existed and at times they found democrats more appealing and its times republicans more appealing but the group of people thats very angry and afraid and looking for people to blame always american hes the first candidate running for president who publicly identifies them because for anyone else it would have been very perilous to have done so. Guest throughout history i think Andrew Jackson would have had a popular candidate in William Jennings bryan and george wallace. Pat buchanan is sort of similar. The timing was better. Mike huckabee and Rick Santorum who both won iowa in 2008 and 2012 respectively. They are conservative to a certain degree and they have to be completely shameless to go all in on it with a middle ground at the edges. But they fully exploited this moment in a way that nobody else could have. Host we also learned that nuance is no longer really valuable commodity for someone like rand paul who has nuanced positions and i for one was very grateful every time we got to share his point of view, even when we disagreed with it there didnt seem to be oxygen for people like rand paul. Guest that is an interesting question because in some ways it is cyclical. Weve always had the rights of populist candidates and even through history, we had oscillating between the sort of intellectual elites and populism and its gone back and forth. Think for example you have people like Andrew Jackson who obviously were populists. So we had different moments but while some of it is cyclical there is also a linear thing happening where the politics is gradually getting just progressively dumbed down. Host on both sides are just the right . Guest its a bipartisan phenomena but its disproportionately hit republicans for a couple of reasons. One is the democrats already had their time in the wilderness if he had they had to sort of go through their identity crisis to couple those moments when they sort of gave up the Michael Dukakis thing and went with the southern governor thing at least thats what they had to do in the era of reagan in the 90s to finally win the had to lose the president ial election and come to jesus moment where they would go with clinton and i think writenow democrats are more disciplined and they have a president and the bully pulpit can impose the order. Its happening out there and try to find who they are. One example of how technology has changed. It wasnt that long. In the world world where the residents 24 rec seven cable news and putter he seems to be the unique man in this moment. Thats very similar to the macho thing about winning in the polls was an early idea that was a play on the theocracy. Host not to give the impression that you think youre smarter. I went to a community college. Not at all i think part of the reason i am so angry and turned off to this phenomenon is that i feel hes exploiting people where i came from. I feel accused manipulating some of the good. It happened in some of the best of the families and i even have some of my own. [laughter] i have taken some heat for suggesting that he should have ran in a thirdparty even if that meant they lost the white house because the damage hes doing to the party and the brand is done. Its already done and its looking irrecoverable. We made some great inroads after 2012 with younger people, minorities, and it seems like he has unraveled a lot of stuff. Guest the Trump Coalition goes against it. Like anything a smart person would have set like if we are going to win the future we need to do a, b. And c. Host he doesnt care about the health of the party because that is the establishment. Guest i dont think the damage yet is irreparable area i dont think the nominee would send a horrible message to a lot of americans about what the Republican Party gets in i still think that you could end up with a Republican Party that is a party that looks like a marco rubio, paul ryan optimistic solution oriented conservative forwardlooking 21st century conservatism that would be incredibly appealing and could go up against Hillary Clinton and again what was it sitting in the announcement yesterday candidate from yesterday ideas from yesterday. The contrast she would become a bridge to the past and conservatism could be a bridge to the future. Host so lets say in your ideal world, marco rubio wins the nomination and we have this great standardbearer who was a lot more adept at reaching out to these various groups that we want included in the party politics. Where does donald trump go and more importantly, where do the angry donald Trump Supporters go and i dont mean where do they vote but where do they go, where does that anger go and how do we deal with as a party the reality that they are still out there without completely writing them off . Guest the one question is where does donald trump go, i have no idea and its interesting to think what kind of damage could he do, like does he come into the fold and be a good soldier, does he go wrote . I think its probably too late. He could cause a lot of trouble by just talking and undermining candidates. So, that is a wildcard i dont know the answer to that i do know that republicans and conservatives have to find a way to bring most of the supporters into the fold and while i think that a lot of them are misguided, i think that they are by and large probably good americans who are sincerely angry and frustrated and in many cases we havent lived up to the promise of the American Dream that they were promised. And i see it happening where im from in the old days where you could graduate from high school and have a middle class lifestyle. Those days are gone and its unfortunate. It really is it sad for people who i see it in my parents generation middleclass lifestyle owned their own home and some of their kids. I think that its important that we have a sort of Surgical Strike to take a out donald trump would not go after the people and the Little People who belief in. I hope some of these problems fixed themselves. If we actually get a president in there who stops isis from beheading christians, some of this frustration is very legitimate, and we could look if we could look back at this as a moment in history just like the moment people wanted to take up pitchforks and torches that they put them away and got a nice job and beer drinking a lot hayes and writing in uber and we can all be happy and coexist is a big conservative movement again. Host at lets say ted cruz got i think some flak for bear hugging donald trump as long as he did and that was to collect his voters when donald trump went away and it looks like hes successfully collecting those voters also after iowa son went to marco, but if you are marco rubio have used h. Rob is wrong and isnt the right messenger for the party but i am somehow the guy for you guys . Guest hes talking about the guy that can unite the party and hes talking about how he is the candidate whos optimistic about how he can appeal to a lot of americans. Host that isnt what the supporters want to hear. Guest but the can make the argument that hes the best candidate to go up against hillary and i just think that its rare for the Political Party to go back generationally and democrats are being asked to do some difficult things. As many problems as a document, democrats have some problems, too. One is that its hard to win three president ial elections in a row. Number two is difficult for the Political Party to go backwards to in terms of generationally and thats what democrats have to do is it as a bridge to the past and marco rubio is the candidate that can run and he wont even have to say it because a split screen picture of marco rubio has but young look about him first is Hillary Clinton host or Bernie Sanders and sort of the grandfather kind of guy. Rubio would be a strong contrast to that. Host lets talk briefly about the democrats. I tend to agree he would be the best contrast against someone like Hillary Clinton but you know what shes going to say about him and she has been painting every candidate with a trump brush. Host when is the last time somebody won by arguing they were the more experienced candidate and the other person was an experienced. Im not saying this is a good instinct that if they care that experience george bush have beaten bill clinton. Its hard to pin him as a donald trump guy partly because in terms of his lucky and bodies by a graphically. Hes a really eloquent communicator like mitt romney. To get him in as a an evil republican. Interestingly i think that trump and rubio can both run good campaigns. I think rubio is much like the picture to be working the edges and painting the corners and finessing it a little bit of both to be effective against hillary. Host said even about the chances that the white house. Guest im probably more optimistic than a lot of people are. My concern about the Republican Party is more longterm than shortterm. Its too tried to build a party or a movement that can win the future. Lets talk of the hispanics are a classic example in texas and about 20 years the lights are going to constitute or the anglos are going to constitute 38 of the electorate so the good news is that they won the hispanic vote as recently as 2014 proving that it can be done as long as republicans dont continue to go out of their way to alienate hispanics. Its pretty much game over. Figures from california to new york and we could be headed that way. In the statehouses we havent done well nationally. What do you see as the answer that we are so good. They were focusing on the power and the importance of the state and local elections and the attorneys general below the radar. I think some of it is not so positive. They do better when theres low turnout in the midterm than they do in the high turnout and there is a danger that we could have a paradigm whereby the Democratic Party becomes the party that always wins the presidency and always becomes the party that controls congress and i will tell you the problem with that is look what happened in the last eight years years you want to talk about Nuclear Deals with iran and executive orders that i think are unconstitutional. The presidency is incredibly important and if republicans keep going down this path where essentially they can speed the National Elections and high turnout elections. Host they have been marked by an incredible gridlock and partisanship and divisiveness i dont think that is all the fault of republicans. Who is best though to make this change and frankly do conservatives want that to change . They seem to gravitate in some respects to people like ted cruz who were seen as just being a foreigner in the side of the democrats and many republicans as well. So do we want to start reaching across the aisle again and get stuff done or do we want to really dig our feet in . Guest in too dumb to fail we talk about compromise and were sitting here in washington, d. C. That wouldnt be the capital if it werent for compromise. Thomas jefferson basically having a dinner party and certain states would pay from the revolutionary war and returned from moving the capital here to washington, d. C. Its bad when you come from a store values. In that kind of compromise that has happened is obama has poisoned the well and we now have a sort of titfortat situation where people have negotiated in bad faith and they dont trust us and we dont trust them and it becomes a vicious cycle and we need to get out of that cycle. Interestingly when someone like donald trump and this is where you see the establishment types like bob dole say they would prefer donald trump over ted cruz because he could be someone that knows how to cut deals and work for the other side so if you are a hardcore conservative maybe you wont like that that but thats sort of an establishment argument as he could get things done. Host and he doesnt come in with the baggage that some of the senators and governors have had over the past eight years. Guest he would take pride in that. Gridlock would be the least of the problems. Host give me a prediction of who wins the nomination and the presidency. Guest that is a good question. Im going to go with rubio for both and i think this is a gutsy call i dont know, i dont know what on whats odds they are giving me right now. But im going to go with rubio. Host thank you for talking. Guest thank you. That was after words, booktv Signature Program which offers of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed. Watch the past programs online good evening everyone. Thank you for coming out tonight. I work with some of the evidence at the store and on behalf of the owners and the staff, thanks for coming out and welcome to politics and prose. Right now i just have a few logistics if you can turn off your cell phones we are recording this event this evening