Transcription
Well, Tucker is leaving the GOP. He has come right out to say that there is no way he can trust a political party that is not loyal to the United States. And um, it reminded me of something. When I, when I was in the general assembly, there would be times where we would be working on a controversial issue. Maybe it was um, trying to get more school choice, which was difficult to get through the general assembly. Maybe it was abortion, whatever it was. Um, and and we generally had two groups that that were working. Um, you had one group that was constantly trying to push the Overton window, which was an incredibly important role. You had another group that was trying to work with respect to the reality on the ground, right? Then, and in a healthy environment, those two groups are working together. So, one side is is constantly pushing to try to move the ball downfield. They're constantly trying to move the direction of the conversation in a way that allows us to be able to get better policy. And then the other side is is working within the parameters they have right now with respect to the number of votes they can get, with respect to kind of where the electorate is at. And again, a healthy relationship is when they're working in conjunction with one another.
But here's one of the things I learned early on. There's a lot more money to be made um by being divisive. And what I mean by that is the people that essentially were trying to push the Overton window, um, if they were working in conjunction with us, what they would do is they would talk to us and they would say, "Okay, this is where we want to go. These are the bills that we've seen. Who on our side of the aisle is the problem?" Right? Because we already know the other side wasn't going to work with us on anything that was even slightly controversial. So, who on our side was the problem? And when those two sides are working together, what ends up happening is you end up identifying the people that are just obstructionists, which is to say that they are the conservatives. They are the Republicans that will never work with you. They will always be problematic. And those people are good to primary. And that's essentially what you want to do. You want to primary Republicans that say they, they talk a good game when they're at home, but they don't do anything when they're actually in Congress or in the state legislature or wherever it is. Uh, and that allows you to move the ball forward.
When you're not working together, what ends up happening is that same group that's supposed to be moving the Overton window essentially attacks any Republican that doesn't do what they want anytime they want it done. And and honestly, even if you were to do the things that they want, they make more money if you never get it done because then they never lose the issue. And when you're trying to appeal to a broad base of Republican voters or a broad base of Republican um donors, a lot of them, they don't expect the other side of the aisle to be on your side. And so when you get an email asking for money or whatnot, you're kind of like, whatever. I've seen this a thousand times. But if you get an email saying, "Oh my gosh, you've been betrayed by your friends." All of a sudden, now you're clicking into that and you want to know what happened. And well, sometimes it's true. Sometimes you have been betrayed by people that you think you should have trust. Those are the people you want to primary. But other times there's not a difference in philosophy. There's not a difference in overall objectives, but there may be a difference in strategy. And usually it's short-term strategy. And when the Overton window crowd starts attacking the people that are really diligently trying to get things done, but are having to do it within a difficult environment, that's where you know that one side is just grifting at this point. Not always. Sometimes there's mistakes. Sometimes there's confusion. Sometimes people disagree on strategy, right? That's all perfectly acceptable. But when you see people that are constantly dooming about the right, constantly dooming about conservatives, constantly dooming about Republicans, they can't acknowledge a single win. It's all just doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, grift, grift. And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about what's going on, some of the positive things that are going on. Not because I want to distract from negative things that are going on, because I, I want to improve. But the bottom line is we've actually experienced some pretty significant wins. And there's two problems going on right now. One is that we still do have Republicans that are just obstructionists. They're always, they're always a problem. And then we also have so many problems that we're trying to fix that even when we start to fix something in a particular area, there's always going to be a group of people for it. It's never fast enough. It's never good enough. They want it fixed overnight. And that's usually coming from people that have had no responsibility for actually fixing the problem, right? Their, their entire careers have been punditry. They, they've never had to work through the legislative process. They've never had to work through the electoral process. They've never had to put together policy to actually implement things and and make the things that they want work. Nothing. Their entire job is just to talk about it. And they've had no experience in anything else. And and I get it. At this point stage in my life, I'm doing a lot of punditry at this point. But I can at least point back to a time where, you know, I wasn't just talking about war. I was fighting it. I can talk to a time when I wasn't just talking about legislation. I was actually carrying it. I, I've, I've tried to be in the arena, not just on the outside talking about what's going on in the arena. And so I, I hope you'll, you'll find this beneficial.
Here's what it comes down to. Um, I, I'll bring this up so you guys can see it. Uh, and and this has to do with with Tucker Carlson essentially saying that, you know, he's, he's leaving the Republican party. Tucker Carlson, I would not support the Republican party. There's no chance I would support the Republican party. How could I support a political party that is not loyal to the United States? I voted Republican my entire life. I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican party, but there's no defending this. I'm out. And part of the question, and Carol Swain actually asked, where are you going then? What, what are you going to do? You're out. You're not going to support the Republican party. Okay, that's fine. I, I know people that will not support the Republican party or haven't supported particular candidates, but I've, I've always understood the logic of what they were saying. For instance, I have a lot of libertarian friends that I respect greatly and they have a particular political objective and in many cases I, I agree with some of their, some if not most of their policy positions, not all. Um, but I understand where they're at. They, they want to, they want to blaze a different path. Um, but but for Tucker to say, "How could I defend a party that's not loyal to the United States?" Tucker does this all the time, right? It's this idea that Tucker has come to a particular conclusion about it. And if you don't agree with that conclusion, well then just not loyal to the United States, right? Nobody in the Republican party is loyal to the United States, right? None of those people care. Not like Tucker does. And it, it's, it's just I don't know. It's, it's getting a little bit old. It's getting a little bit old.
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And and then, you know, when it comes to that kind of dooming, you also have the dooming, which, you know, goes into the 2026 generic congressional vote, which shows Democrats up by about 4.9 points. Now, it should be understood that throughout the course of American political history, um, especially in the last what 75 to 100 years, the political party that controls the White House tends to lose seats in Congress and during the midterms. And part of that is because generally speaking, the president comes in with a lot of goodwill. They're never able to get everything done that they're supposed to. There's always controversy that takes place as a result of policies or whatever else. Um, and then the the party that lost the White House is usually the more motivated to get in there and win the midterms or to vote during the midterms. And so if you go back all the way, I think to the 1940s or 50s, there's only been a handful of times where the political party that controlled the White House also picked up seats in Congress at the same time. Okay? So, we should understand right off the bat out that it, it can be difficult and people have every right to be concerned about what's going on in these midterms because obviously people are concerned about things like gas prices. They're concerned about things like the war in Iran. Um, there, there's a lot of things that they want done within the United States and some of those things are actually being done, but some of them are not, and and people are rightfully upset about it. But the question always comes to, okay, so what are we going to do about it and where is the real source of the problem? This was one of my biggest frustrations when I was in the legislature and I was trying to work with groups who were legitimately frustrated and I was trying to say, look, um, don't get frustrated with all of us because some of us really are trying to work for this and some people are not. We have some people that are just going along to get along and as long as they get their budget amendments in, they're happy, but they don't want to fight any real fights. And the, the solution to that is primary those people, not painting all of us with the same brush. Because what ends up happening is the people that do fight, they get tired of it. Especially when they get attacked by their own side, not because of anything they've specifically done, but because they're being lumped into this group that apparently, according to Tucker Carlson, is no longer loyal to the United States of America.
And so, here's what I want to do now that I've kind of, I've, I've streamed this up. I want to talk about what are some of the wins. And and I'm not just talking about like minor things. I'm talking about what are substantive wins that we've experienced over the last two years that in, in many cases, we, we just, we haven't seen wins like this in decades, in decades. So I'm not talking about some little pitting tax cut over here. I'm talking about substantive wins. What do I mean? Well, here's a good one. This is the total number of federal employees. And as you can see, ever since the 1950s, there's been something of a steady stream of this going up higher and higher. Then you have a drop off in the '90s and then you have a spike in 2010, you know, various spikes. But, but it's been the growing bureaucracy. When we talk about the deep state or when we talk about the administrative state, this is what we're talking about, the massive bureaucracy that started in the 1940s and that we are never able to get back to kind of regular patterns. Now, some people will say, "Well, Nick, the federal government's doing more than it's ever done before." Yeah, that's the problem. I'm the sort of guy that looks at Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, and I think, "Yeah, this is what the federal government should be focused on. I don't need it trying to run healthcare. I don't need it trying to be involved in education. I don't need it trying to be involved in in the vast array of things that it's doing." And yet, it still does these things. And the bureaucracy becomes almost kind of like this shadow government where mid-level bureaucrats can wait out the elected officials and kind of carry out their own agendas. But I want you to look at this right here. Now, we, we can say all day long that well, that's, it's not enough. I want more. And and that's usually what we hear from the the people like Tucker, like I want more. Why isn't more happening? Okay. Well, I'm, I'm fine with us being frustrated and wanting more. Okay. But I think we also need to point out just real briefly that we're talking about the, the most significant cuts in the federal bureaucracy in half a century. Is, is that not a win? Is this not something that we can look at and say we're, we're actually seeing the bureaucracy itself shrink? In fact, what you want to do at this point is, if we're working carefully, we want one group of people going, you know, hey, uh, good job. And we want another group going, we want more. Right? That's the Overton window versus the practical considerations of what we currently have. You need to actually encourage the people that are doing the things you want to continue to do the things that you want. You don't want them to get complacent. You don't want them to think, "Okay, we've done enough. Everybody's happy." We want them to keep fighting, to keep working. But this is significant. This is significant because again, you, you follow this across. I mean, let's look at this, right? Right. 267. Okay. How far back do we got to go before we get to something that lower than that? We got to go back to the '60s. We got to go back to the 1960s. This should be something we are celebrating. This should be something we are acknowledging. This should be something we should look on and go, okay, the, the GOP did something substantive that we want. They are slowly, they are slowly but surely reducing the size of the federal government. All right. This is a win. This is a win.
You want another one? Here's one that I think a lot of us didn't think would happen. Eight convicted of terrorism charges in Texas immigration center shooting, sentenced to decades in prison. How many times have we heard, "Oh, elect the Republicans or we're going to go after these guys." Well, this time they did. And and it's not just here. We could also talk about the federal prosecutions that are going with the Somali fraud case. Um, we could, we could probably talk about more federal prosecutions that are going to start to take place in California, Ohio, and other places that Nick Shirley and others are uncovering fraud. But again, I, I would point something out. Most of the fraud that's going on in these places should have been identified at the state level. Why wasn't it? Because you have Democrat governors, Democrat attorney generals, Democrat district attorneys, Democrat mayors. They don't prosecute it. So, the federal government is now finding ways to federally prosecute these people for what they're doing. That's a win. This is a huge win. They went after Antifa. They went after Antifa. And they didn't just say that we're going to go after this organization or they're really bad or we're going to have a congressional committee hearing. No, they convicted him. And when you look at the list of charges and when you look at the sentences, oh my gosh, this was significant. We got people going away for 25, 35, 50 years. 50 years. If you wanted to send a strong message to Antifa that the days of you getting to run around cities and burn things down at will, the days of you getting to walk through the streets and threaten people, the days of you getting to actually beat up people like journalist Andy Ngo, those days are over. You will go to jail, you will go to prison, and you will go for decades. But apparently this, apparently none of this, apparently, you know, slowly but surely reducing the deep state and going after Antifa, none of that represents any loyalty to the United States of America, according to Tucker Carlson. Okay.