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