A Former Politician Explains How It Really Works

Ladies and gentlemen, everyone knows we have a lot of problems with politics and our elected

officials.

However, and I can tell you this with a certain degree of authority, a lot of what people

think are either the major problems or the major solutions are not actually the problems.

And the reason why I can say this with some authority is because I'm a former elected

official.

I spent 10 years in a state legislature.

And what I'm going to do today is I'm going to tackle the three biggest misconceptions

about what's going on within our politics, our political class.

And then I'm going to give you at least two major things that you as an individual can

actually do that could tip the scales quite a bit if it can be done effectively.

All that coming up on this episode of making the argument.

So I'm going to say by that there are three major misconceptions, things that I hear

people say all the time that as an elected official and as an elected official that shares

a lot of the same frustrations that the body politic does.

It drives me nuts because I'm looking at it going, that isn't it.

That isn't it.

And for some reason, people don't want to listen to it.

And it's not because I'm trying to minimize the problems.

It's not because I'm trying to say that people are wrong about everything.

It's because I'm trying to give you insight on what actually goes on behind the scenes because

I've been behind the scenes.

This is why I can say with some authority that the problems that you're saying are the

biggest problems are not.

They're close.

They're close.

But they're not quite the problem.

So let's jump into the first biggest misconception that I see repeated by people I tend

to agree with.

And that is it doesn't matter who gets elected.

The unipartee runs the country.

It's not that I don't understand the frustration with this comment or this accusation.

It's that it's it's horribly incomplete.

And what ends up happening is I see two people that say it.

One group of people that say it are the people that are never really involved anyways.

Right.

They don't really pay attention.

These are the people that two weeks before the election, they're well, I've been undecided.

Look, ladies and gentlemen, one thing that we typically know is that when you look at

who the Republicans offer and who the Democrats offer, right?

If it's between Donald Trump and Joe Biden or Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and you're

undecided a week before the election, you just don't know what the hell is going on.

You're just not paying attention.

You're not morally superior.

You're not going through and really carefully trying to understand all the ins.

You don't care.

You don't care.

And it's irritating.

It's one thing to be an independent.

It's one thing to say that I don't like either of them.

It's another thing to say.

I just have no idea who I'm going to vote for between two people, which largely have

diametrically opposed world views and political policies, right?

That's just hard one.

So there's one group of people.

There's not paying attention.

And they say this because it gives them an air of moral superiority.

But then there's another group of people and they are paying attention and they're saying

the same thing.

Why are they saying the same thing?

Well, especially if you're a conservative, you're saying it because you kind of look at

it from the standpoint of, you know what, I want smaller government.

I want lower taxes.

I want less government spending.

I want fewer wars and low and behold, no matter who gets elected, I have more spending.

Maybe I get certain tax cuts, but they're not significant.

I know where near as significant as I would want.

The government keeps expanding and low and behold, we keep ended up in more wars.

So why does it matter?

Why does it matter who I vote for?

And that frustration is completely understandable and I would argue justified.

What's wrong is to say that it just doesn't matter because of quote the unaparty.

And let me offer a prime example of why that frustration is justified, but claiming that

it's the unaparty is wrong.

Look at Virginia right now.

Now I was plenty frustrated when we had a Republican governor and we had a Republican

House and we had a Republican Senate in Virginia, which was, I think it was 12 years

ago that we had that or or 14 years ago that we had that and we got some things done.

But nowhere near as much as I would like done, okay?

Then all of a sudden for two years, you have a Democrat governor, a Democrat House and

a Democrat Senate and they get all kinds of crap done.

They get all kinds of stuff done that we're not able to undo because even though we had

the governor, even though we had the House, we didn't have the Senate.

And all it took was a one seat Senate majority to top everything governor Young can want

to do with a Republican House wanted to do.

And then what happens?

They get back in charge and low and behold, they're running as far to the left as possible.

So the thing I want you to understand is it's not that nothing gets done when the left

actually gets their trifecta, they tend to run as far to the left as they possibly

can.

They try to get as much done as they possibly can without losing control.

And they're even willing, they're even willing to temporarily lose control of maybe the

House or maybe the Senate or even the presidency.

If it means that they can entrench their policies, their government programs, their bureaucracies

as a part of the future conversation that sometimes referred to as the over 10 window.

But the over 10 window is, it's kind of like, it's kind of like the window of allowable

political thought and ideas.

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And the more you push into the left, the more you exclude certain right wing ideas is

now being extreme because the cultural shift, the political shift in the country has shifted

to the left.

The left is very good at using the government to shift the overton window to the left.

And they do it by more government spending, more selective taxes on certain groups, government

regulations, which either runs their, their, the businesses they don't like out of business

or forces those businesses to comply and donate and support them.

Before they create new constituencies, either through welfare programs, through mass immigration,

through illegal immigration, they create new constituencies, they continue to expand government

and that's the source of their power.

So things can change very, very rapidly when the Democrats have complete control.

Now, there's going to be a socialist wing of the Democratic Party that's never satisfied.

Like we never get everything done.

Well, they, yeah, that's because they want to seize the means of production.

That's because they're commies, right?

And they don't understand how the world works.

So they get frustrated, but the left does tend to get things done when they're in power

because they use the government as the source of solving problems.

Now, when the right gets into power, they tend to not achieve nearly as much.

Why?

Right?

Because that's the source of the frustration.

A lot of the people talking about the uniparty tend to be conservatives.

They're not exclusively conservatives, but they tend to be that way.

And it's because they say they never seem to get anything done.

And there's a couple of misconceptions there.

One is a lot of conservatives who don't treat politics as their, as their daily thing, right?

It's not one of the top priorities.

They know what they believe.

They're reasonably informed, but they're not following politics every day.

They will get frustrated and they will think that nobody is fighting hard enough.

And in part, that's correct.

And I'll explain why.

But in another part, they also sometimes expect more than can be reasonably expected within

our system of government.

I would have people look at me and be like, Nick, you've been an elected office for ten

years.

How come you haven't gotten this done yet?

Because I'm one vote out of 140, right?

There's 100 delegates.

There's 40 senators in order for me to get anything passed.

I need to get 51 delegates to vote for it, 21 senators to vote for it.

And then I need the governor to sign it.

And at no point in my ten years in the Virginia General Assembly, did I ever have a Republican

House, a Republican Senate, and a Republican governor?

So I would have bills die in the house.

I would have bills die in the Senate or I'd have bills die on the governor's desk.

And it was that because I was not fighting hard enough.

I certainly stood on principle.

I certainly carried difficult bills.

I certainly went out there and talked about what I was doing and made arguments for it.

We just didn't have the votes.

So there'll be some conservatives that will be mad at Republicans for not getting something

done.

And part of the reason why they're mad is because they're kind of blaming the wrong people.

So you have people right now that are furious at Donald Trump because we're not cutting

more from the budget.

Donald Trump doesn't write the budget.

Institutionally, the house is the one where you're supposed to, the budget is supposed

to originate in.

And Donald Trump can make recommendations for the budget all day long.

But if it doesn't have a house or a Senate that will pass the budget, the problem is not

Donald Trump not getting things done.

The problem is you have a Congress that won't get things done.

But then it'll get done in the house.

And it's like, well, you have the house, you have the Senate, you have the presidency.

Why are you not getting anything done?

Then you look at things like the filibuster.

And really what the filibuster does is it creates conditions where you can only get

significant things done if you have 60 votes.

Well, guess what?

Republicans haven't had 60 votes in the Senate for decades.

So if the filibuster can stop everything at 60 votes, you can do one of two things.

You can get rid of the filibuster or you can recognize it without 60 votes.

You can stop everything.

You can slow down the entire train in that one body.

You can have 59 Republicans in the Senate.

And all it takes is the remaining to say, nope, we're going to filibuster.

And that's it.

You're over.

It's done.

So when you start to understand how the mechanisms of government work, you can start

to assign the blame work properly belongs.

Like right now, Senator Thun, the Republican majority leader, he's the reason why him

Senate Alistair Mkowski from Alaska, Senator John Curtis from Utah, and a couple others.

They're the primary reason why we can't get a talking filibuster.

You know, forget the old school filibuster, we actually had to talk and do these things.

Right.

We can't even get that anymore.

Now it's just the threat of a filibuster.

And John Thun is saying, well, I can't do anything about it.

And he can't do anything about it because one, he's not willing to twist arms and make

threats against Lisa Mkowski, Curtis, or the other Republicans in the Senate that are

holding this up.

So it's not that you shouldn't be frustrated with Republicans, it's not that you shouldn't

be frustrated with Republican leadership.

But if the blame is not properly assigned, then what happens is the good guys get the

same blame as the bad guys, and then the good guys are like, well, what does it matter?

If I'm sitting here fighting really hard, and I'm going to get the same blame for somebody

that's doing that's actually responsible for this, and then here's what happens.

Here's the crazy part what happens is the people that believe this is all the uniparty

and they're tired of hearing excuses, they don't show up for the good Republicans that

are actually fighting, those guys lose their seats, and guess who keeps theirs?

The squishes, why?

Because they cut deals, they raise more campaign finance money, and they were able to go out

and campaign and keep their seat, they were able to cut deals and keep their seat.

And then here's what they do.

They go to all the Republicans that are trying to stand firm, and they say, look what happened

to your buddy.

Your buddy stood firm on this issue, was he rewarded for it?

No, they blamed him.

They blamed him and kicked him out.

So you just got to play the game because I'm still here.

I did what they all said they didn't want, and I'm still here, and your buddy's gone.

So no, it's not that there's just this mass uniparty that gets everything done, it's

not that there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats, there are significant differences.

But you have to be able to identify and isolate where the problems actually are, and that

requires pain more attention than just either listening to what's randomly going out

there on social media, or just showing up every once in a while to get frustrated that

quote, nothing is getting done.

When you actually look at what the Trump administration has done, President Trump has actually done

more than any executive in my lifetime.

Has he done everything I wanted?

No, has he done everything that he wanted?

No, but why?

And that's the part that you actually have to look at in order to understand how the process

works to properly assign the blame.

But there are significant differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Here's the last thing I'll say on this before we move to the second misconception.

The other reason why conservatives get frustrated with Republican leadership is when we're in

charge, it feels like we don't do as many significant things as the Democrats do.

Why is that?

Well, the Democrats base is built around spending money.

It's built around, you know, there are various social programs, their government programs.

It's built around taking your money and the distributing in such a way as to buy votes.

Now they're not going to categorize it that way.

They think they're doing the loaders work and doing a moral mission, right?

But that is an in effect what's happening.

Now what do Republicans usually ask for?

Well, we want to be left alone.

We want the government to, we want the government to reduce its spending.

We wanted to reduce taxes.

We wanted to stop being involved in every aspect of our life.

And here's what usually end up finding out, generally speaking, the side that just wants

to be left alone will be defeated by the side that wants to run everything.

And I have some solutions for how do we address that, but that is a practical reality.

Here's the other problem that ends up happening.

You have a lot of Republicans that will say that they generally want spending to go down.

They generally want fewer regulations, but then they have some government spending that

they want.

So you'll have Republicans that say, well, yeah, I want to cut overall spending, but I want

to cut these welfare programs.

Oh, but I still want to keep these farm subsidies.

And then you'll have other Republicans that say, well, look, I got a problem with all

these farm subsidies, but I want subsidies for this one industry because that's going

to help American jobs.

And then you'll have another Republicans say, well, look, I don't mind a little bit of

a social safety net over here, but I don't want this spending over here on corporate welfare.

And so now if you're a Democrat, they all want more spending.

So that's easy.

If everybody who voted for you wants more spending, now it's just a question of who gets the

spending that you can do that particular year.

And everyone waits their turn and everyone knows their turn is coming.

And if you're a Republican, you need to cut government spending because that's the principle

that you ran on it because that's what needs to be done.

You're going to piss off part of your constituents who said, no, no, no, I wanted you to cut

that spending, but not this spending.

And then when you cut that somebody's, no, no, no, I wanted you to cut this spending.

Now that my spending.

And so the end result is is Republicans end up voting for more spending.

Why?

Because it's actually easier.

It's it you were less likely to make one of your constituencies mad if you vote for

more spending.

And then what do you do on the other side?

We just vote for tax cuts.

Will that create additional problems, right?

So Republicans are in this catch 22 where Democrats, all of their constituents want more government

and more spending.

Okay.

Well, that's easy.

You can't get all the government and all the spending you want.

Will it once?

So each year is just negotiating who's going to get what this year?

And then you come back the next year and hope you get a bigger cut.

But for Republicans, you're constantly finding this battle with people who, well, yeah,

I want to cut 80% of that spending, but I want to keep mine.

And in reality, the answer is no, we just need to cut spending.

We need to cut the size of government.

And yeah, there might be a little pain associated with it initially, but it is the right thing

to do.

Well, to stand up and actually do that is difficult.

I remember I voted for maybe two budgets.

My entire time in the general assembly, I think I voted for two budgets.

I voted against, I voted against more Republican budgets than budgets I voted for.

And every time I did it, I was told, Nick, you're going to get in trouble.

You're going to get into the teachers going to be mad, the police are going to be mad,

the firefighters are going to be mad because you didn't vote for the budget.

And I'm going to say, I'm going to go back and explain exactly why I didn't vote for

the budget.

I'm going to explain, look, if the budget had just included the money for legitimate

functions of government, I would have voted for it.

But it didn't.

It included a bunch of government spending, a bunch of redistribution of your tax dollars

into places I thought it shouldn't go.

So I voted no in order to send the message that we need to cut spending.

And guess what?

I kept getting reelected.

But a lot of other Republican politicians get afraid that if they don't vote for the

budget, they're going to get in trouble.

This is why in Virginia this year, we had 14 Republicans that voted no.

I think we had two other Republicans that didn't vote.

I think one was gone that day.

And then the rest of the Republicans voted for a very bad budget.

Why?

Well, they played this little game where you take certain parts out of the budget that

you don't like and you vote against it to demonstrate that you don't like it.

But then all those bills get put back in the budget because the budget gets voted on

as one bill.

So you got to do a performative dance.

You got to do a symbolic vote against all the things you didn't like.

But in the end, when it comes down to brass tax, you still got to vote on the budget.

So they did because they all believe that if they go back and they tell their constituents

I voted against the budget, they're going to get in trouble because even their Republican

constituents, constituents will have things in the budget that they wanted.

But if you don't have Republicans that are willing to say, no, I will not vote on this

budget because it is fundamentally bad, then you're never, you're always going to expand

government.

You're always going to expand spending, right?

So again, is there a uniparty?

I would say that yes, there is a certain, there is a certain group of people in elected

office that are constantly negotiating that, that have never found a principal.

They want to compromise on in order to have access to power or in order to get their particular

budget amendment passed or in order to keep their committee, right?

There are always those people that will constantly compromise on just about everything and

will never vote for any sort of fundamental change because what they're protecting is their

special place within the system as it works.

Okay, but those are individual members.

There is a stark difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party.

There is not a stark difference between every Republican and every Democrat.

And if you don't make that proper distinction, then what will end up happening is that over

time, you will actually reward the very people you don't like within your party.

So no, it's not, you can't just make these blanket statements and expect to fix what

you want fixed.

The second misconception I want to go over or actually, let me see if I got any questions

from the audience on this particular one question, what is the best way to build and maintain

a Republican trifecta at the state level?

Procion, I will, I will get to that at the end here.

Woodfield said question, is this why Trump wants Senator Thune to throw out the filibuster

to shift the over 10 window?

He wants to throw out the filibuster because he recognizes that he's not going to be able

to get anything significant done during his administration with the filibuster in place.

So right now, the biggest thing to, to prevent the save act from going into effect, which

would effectively, which would be an effective measure to prevent people from illegally voting

or illegally registering to vote, right?

If you don't give it to the filibuster, you will not get the save act theoretically.

If you, if you resorted to the talking filibuster, you might be able to do it, but the bottom

line is, was we're running out of time at this point before the midterms come.

So the reason why I want to get rid of the filibuster is not just to shift the over 10

window.

It's because it's simply being acknowledged at this point that you're not going to be

able to get anything significantly significant done unless you have 60 votes in the Senate.

That's almost impossible to achieve.

And so the filibuster stands in the way of doing it.

The argument against getting rid of the filibuster is it actually provides a mechanism to

slow down the process and make sure that radical things don't happen overnight.

But here's the problem though.

The next time the Democrats are in charge of the Senate, they will get rid of the filibuster.

So it's, it's probably going either way.

It's a question of who does it first and can they get anything out of it.

Um, okay.

I think I got all the questions on that misconception.

Let's move on to misconception number two.

This misconception number two, our politicians are all bought and paid for by special interests

or lobbyists.

Are there some politicians that can be bought or paid for sure?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

But that's not the norm.

Um, and let me, let me give you, let me give you an example of this.

It's not that lobbyists or a special interests can't have an oversized role to play in legislation.

That's not what I'm claiming.

It's this idea that they're all just bought and paid for.

That's actually not accurate.

Most of the politicians I knew, most of the people I served with, both sides of the aisle

actually did have core principles and they had core principles that they were not willing

to surrender.

Some of them would be more willing to compromise than others, but there was still core principles.

Let me give you an example.

There was no amount of money that Planned Parenthood could offer me to get me to vote for abortion.

No amount.

And guess what?

Planned Parenthood never gave me money.

Well, if they wanted me to get me to vote a certain way, why didn't they just give

me more money?

Because that's not how lobbying works.

What ends up happening is various special interests.

And by the way, we use special interests as like a broad term and as a pejorative.

Okay.

If you're for the second amendment, that's a special interest.

If you're pro-life, that's a special interest.

If you're pro-abortion, that's a special interest.

A special interest just means basically a particular topic or a category of law for which

your organization or your group is specifically focused on.

That's all a special interest is.

Maybe one of us as voters have different issues that are more important to us that are

in effect, our special interests.

Right?

So it's important to distinguish between special interests as like when it's having negative

impacts or negative effects.

And a special interest is just the thing which exists as a source of like group identity.

So Planned Parenthood was never going to give delegate Nick Freitas money because I was

never going to vote the way they wanted, no matter how much they offered me, right?

On the other hand, I was going to vote pro-second amendment whether the NRA or the VCDL or the

GOA supported me or not, right?

So national association of gun rights could send money to my campaign or not send money

to my campaign.

And I was still going to vote for the second amendment.

And yet those organizations would support me endorse me or send me money if it was appropriate

for them to do so.

So why would they do it if they already had my vote because they wanted to help keep

me in office?

So when you look at special interests or when you look at these various lobbying groups,

what those lobbying groups are is just basically a group of people that have pulled together

resources in order to advocate for policy.

And the people that they support or they give campaign contributions to are not, they don't

typically give campaign contributions to try to convince you to vote a particular way.

They give you campaign contributions to keep the people that already vote the way they want

in office.

Now can those contributions have an impact?

Yeah, they can.

Like it would be, it would be foolish for anybody to say that, oh, well, they don't have

any impact.

And so some people will say, well, just, just get special interests money out of the

game.

I'm going to explain a little bit later on the third missed conception on why that doesn't

work the way people think it does.

But specifically focused on this, what happens is is that obviously if you're part of a

pro-second amendment group and you want to work with other pro-second amendment people,

well, there's two things that you want to generally know.

You want to know what sort of bills are before the legislature and which politicians are

carrying good bills, which ones are carrying bad bills, which ones are voting the right

way, which ones are voting the wrong way.

And you want to support the ones that are running the right bills and voting the right way.

And you want to oppose the ones that are not doing that.

And so you give money to the organization you belong to, they spend money supporting

the politicians, the vote, the way that you like, and they spend money going against

politicians that vote the way you don't like.

And that's how it works.

Every once in a while you will get a particular issue and it's usually not on something fundamental.

It's usually on something where there's gray area or there is legitimate room for compromise.

And those are the places where you might see lobbyists switch over it and they will try

to convince somebody that maybe they don't typically agree with, but they think that there

might be an avenue for compromise.

And so you will see stuff that way.

Now in Virginia, they could not give any campaign donations while we were in session.

We were not allowed to take any money while we were in session.

Does that mean that never happened?

I don't know.

I can't accuse anybody.

I know I never did it.

I don't know if anybody else that did it either because all that stuff has to be typically

reported, not to say there's ways that can't be hidden.

So you can see elements where special interests will come in and they will try to lobby someone

in order to try to get them to vote a particular way, but it's usually within realms of again,

a compromise window.

And like I said, some people have very narrow compromise windows.

That was me.

Other people have very wide compromise windows where you can't even tell what they're

principled on.

That's other people as well.

But it's important to understand that the way special interests interact is they usually

represent a large group of people that are focused on a particular issue.

And then they bring subject matter expertise and they bring campaign contributions typically

in order to try to advocate and keep people in power.

But money usually is spent to keep the people you like in power, not to try to buy other

people's vote who don't usually agree with you.

Again, not saying you can't have one-offs, but it's important to understand how the

money actually plays into that realm.

Okay.

So let me check the chat right here to see if there's any questions on that one specifically.

Question what is the best way to build?

Okay.

No, no, no, there it is question.

How does lobbying work on issues where you don't already have a strong moral position?

So I kind of already answered that one, but to give you an idea, let's say you have

an issue that is not quite a like a strong moral foundation.

So maybe you have something on, maybe you have something on energy policy with respect

to power lines or something like that.

And somebody is lobbying you say, well, hey, we want to adjust the law right here to allow

these kinds of power lines or to go in this sort of place or we want this sort of process

where we work with the localities.

And there's good do it and there's bad to it, right?

And so it's not a perfect bill, but you've got to vote yes or no.

And so what it is is you'll look at it and what you're looking for is not to be paid

off, which you're looking for is to find a way that they can actually make the argument

that achieves your objective because a good compromise, here's how I define a good compromise.

A good compromise is one that doesn't betray any core principles, but allows you to create

a situation where maybe it's not exactly how you would like it.

Maybe it's not perfect, but it is actually better than what it is right now.

And so there are times where you'll see crossover votes, you'll see people saying, okay,

I get it.

It's not perfect, but this does actually solve a real world problem.

And those are areas where that special interest can have an oversized impact.

A lot of times it's not that the special interest is convincing you of that because they're

paying you, they're convincing you of that because a, they do have a lot of subject matter

expertise within the respected area.

And B, they actually represent a lot of people usually within that industry.

So like Farm Bureau, there was some issues that I really disagreed with on Farm Bureau.

There was other interests that I agreed with on Farm Bureau.

And then there was others where it was like 50, 50, right?

There was some good things happening.

There was some bad things happening, but I would listen to Farm Bureau.

Now the one thing that is the death knell is when you have a lobbyist that lies to you,

I will never trust them again.

My agreement, whenever I talked to somebody that was coming into lobby me, whether it

was a civil organization, whether it was a professional firm or whatever it was, my,

I always had a couple of rules.

One, if a constituent is coming to see me, they get priority because they took time

out of their day to actually drive down to Richmond and visit me and they're not a professional

lobbyist.

They get priority on my schedule.

However, I would listen to professional lobbyists because they're there to advocate for

something and they represent a lot of people.

And so I let them come in and I would talk to them.

My rule was very simple.

I don't lie to them.

They don't lie to me.

So my whole thing was like, look, I'll be honest with you about what I plan to do and

what my values are.

If you can, if you can find a way to explain or to craft the legislation in such a way that

aligns with my values, well, then I'll give it serious consideration, but I won't violate

my principles.

And then the my vast majority of my experience with lobbyists was, is they respected that.

Because what they're looking for is the number of votes they need to get it done.

They're not looking to convince every person.

They're looking to get the votes they need in order to get their bill passed.

So if they would come into my office, sit down, I would say, hey, I'm sorry, but I'm

a hard no.

They would say, thank you.

Get up and leave.

They wouldn't sit there and waste their trying to, trying to convince me.

They would go into the person they thought they could convince.

Right.

So that's how a good lobbyist operates.

They don't lie and they spend their time.

They spend their clients money and their time where they think they can get the biggest

impact.

Another question here from Aspen, what about always own, what about always owing other

representatives votes on their issues instead of voting the way their constituents want?

Okay.

This is interesting.

So when we say voting against your constituents, here's an important thing.

And I always used to use this example.

People would come to me and they would say, Nick, are you going to vote the way that

we the people want?

And I would always say, we the people don't agree on what we want.

Right.

That's the reason why the makeup of legislative bodies is so diverse.

Right.

You have Democrats, you have conservatives, you have Republicans, you have liberals, you

have leftists, you have socialists, you have, you know, free market guys.

There's a lot of different people.

Why?

Because we the people disagree on what we want.

And so the processes go down there and actually fight.

My job as a representative was to tell my constituents, this is what I believe.

This is why I believe it and this is what I intend to do.

And then what they did was they delegated responsibility to me to go down to Richmond

and try to do that faithfully.

Now you do have some people that get down there and here's the trap.

Here is the one of the biggest traps that will turn a principled politician into a squish.

They get down there and maybe it's leadership.

Maybe it's a desire to serve on a particular committee.

Maybe it's just oversized pressure.

And here's how the conversation goes.

Here's how they turn a principled politician into a shell.

They take him into the office and they say, look, buddy, I get it, you know, you really

want this.

However, you know, if you carry this bill or if you vote this way, your constituents

might say that they want this.

But the bottom line is most of your constituents are not paying attention.

That's actually true.

Then they'll say things like and if you vote for this, it's actually going to hurt us

over in this other area and you care about this area as well, right?

Well, you know, if you if you hurt us over here, then we can't help you over here.

So now all of a sudden voting the way, you know, maybe the majority of your constituents

want is not really moving the needle with your constituents, but it's hurting you in

another area that could also potentially have negative impact.

So now you start to think, okay, maybe and then they then they finish it off.

Here's the here's the killer, right?

You know, if we if you can't get reelected, you can't do good things down here.

And if you can't be a team player, it makes it harder for you to get reelected.

And then what they do is they point to all the team players who are getting their budget

amendments passed, who are getting their committee assignments to get more money and they

say, see, look, and then they'll point to a conservative that stood on principle and

lost their seat and they'll say, look, see, your constituents don't really care about

the principle.

They may say it.

They may say that on the campaign trail, but when it comes down to brass tax, here's

how it really works and you got to go along to get along and you get some of what

you want and you be a team player.

And that's how they convince you because now that politician that went in there very,

very principled is thinking, well, you know, that's that's true, right?

I'm not going to get everything I want.

So I got to find ways to compromise and slowly but surely they start compromising on things

they shouldn't.

But then they don't get punished for it.

They don't get a primary challenger.

They don't there.

People still vote for them because they got the right letter by their name.

And so they're like, oh, well, I guess my constituents don't really care.

They seem to be happy enough to reelect me.

And now I'm on a really good committee assignment.

And now it's easier to fundraise.

So I must be doing what I should be doing, right?

Because after all, if I can't get reelected, I can't do good things.

And what ends up happening is getting reelected becomes your primary concern.

And the thing was, is none of that was necessarily a ball face lie, right?

It was all logically consistent.

And so that's how they turn people into the sort of politicians that essentially will

compromise on anything to keep their seat or keep their committee assignment or keep

access to power.

So that's how they do it.

And it's very frustrating.

It's very frustrating.

But part of the reason why it works is because the politicians to do it don't get adequately

punished by the constituency.

And I'm going to teach you, I'm going to teach everyone on how they, how you can effectively,

not just randomly get mad and angry and yell and scream, how you can be effectively engage

with your, your politicians, your elected representatives to stop that and nip it in the

button.

Lowell has a question, are the areas where you can compromise, do they resolve into bipartisan

bills often?

Well, yes.

So the most bills, believe it or not, most bills are bipartisan because most bills are

not doing things that are significant.

There's a lot of bills out there that are either, you know, strictly local issues or

there's not very controversial.

The bills which are more controversial are the ones where it's harder to get bipartisan

support.

So basically what will happen is you'll either have, you'll either have like a Republican

in a difficult district and they might think, well, if I vote for this bill, it helps me

in my particular district.

So maybe Republicans don't like it.

But in my district, I got a lot of moderates or I got a lot of independence, and I want

to do this bill to appease them.

So I'm going to vote for this bill to show that I'm bipartisan.

Another thing that will end up happening is you'll have certain Republicans in safe districts

that will be like, yeah, I'll vote for your bill as long as you vote for mine.

You happen, this happens a lot with things like budget amendments.

This happens a lot with government spending or government programs, right?

You'll have a Republican in a safe district that they want their government program.

So they'll vote for your government program.

And that happens all the time.

And that's one of the ways that they end up doing things that I think are really bad.

But in the end, their constituents aren't punishing them for it, so they continue to do

it.

Okay, I think I'm going to answer all the question on that.

So now I'm going to move to the third misconception, and here is where I'm going to piss off

a lot of people.

The third misconception is the, if only we did this, that would fix the problem.

And I'm going to, I'm going to cover three, there's more, but I'm going to cover three.

One of them is if only we had term limits, that would fix the problem.

Now let me just say right off the bat, I have been a fan of term limits.

I term limited myself.

I didn't have to stop running after 10 years.

I chose to do it.

I have publicly signed on for federal term limits.

The reason why I'm telling you term limits is not some silver bullet that solves every

problem is because some of the worst state legislatures we have have term limits.

Term limits didn't fix Colorado.

So it's important to understand that there's a trade off with term limits.

The benefit of term limits is you get a little bit more turnover and politicians.

The negative part of term limits is one, you don't get to keep the good ones.

And two, the bureaucracy, especially as the bureaucracy expands, starts having a lot

more control over the process, the bureaucracy and lobbyists.

Why?

Because your term limited politician is only there for 8, 10 or 12 years, but the lobbyists

or the bureaucracy, they're there their entire life.

And so when it's happening is new legislators end up deferring to the people that have been

there who explain, well, this is just the way it works.

So it's important to understand that while term limits can have positive things, it can

also have negative things.

So it's not a silver bullet.

I'm not saying you got to oppose term limits, but stop acting like term limits solve the

problem.

It doesn't.

The problem, the problem is much deeper.

And I'm going to explain that in a second.

The problem is much deeper, but term limits can have positive effects.

They can have negative effects, but what it is not is a silver bullet.

The second thing is, well, if only we can change campaign finance reform.

If only we can get money out of politics, okay, but you can't, you can't get money

out of politics.

Remember a while back when we paid, when they changed federal campaign finance reform.

And what federal campaign finance reform was going to do was going to keep all those,

you know, special interest money and dollars in Kim and lobbyist impacts.

It was in a corporation going to keep all of that out of our federal politics.

Did it work?

No.

No, it didn't work.

Why?

Because the bottom line is as long as you have the government controlling this much of

our economy, whether it's through spending, whether it's the regulations, whether it's

through subsidies, you are, of course, going to have money to interest that are participating

in politics.

And so if they can't give money to a candidate directly, well, then they set up a pack.

And then that pack sends out money.

And then what are you supposed to do?

Oh, well, the pack can't campaign.

Really, you're not allowed to engage in freedom of speech.

I'm not allowed to start an organization and spend money on an ad in order to advocate

for a particular policy.

Really?

That's not how this works.

That's what's ever going to work, right?

It's like with term limits.

If you want politicians that are going to actually vote the right way, well, then you need

to engage and actually elect the politicians, they're going to vote the right way.

Term limits are not going to solve that for you.

If you want a government that is not so obsessed with campaign finance and fundraising and

all that, well, you can do one of two things.

One, you cannot be so convinced by campaign ads or two, you can vote for politicians that

are not trying to have a massive federal bureaucracy that are not trying to have massive government

intervention into the economy through regulations, subsidies and taxes.

But as long as the government is massively intervening in economy, then the people within

the economy are going to find a way to either contribute to politicians or spend money in order

to influence elections.

This should be a no-brainer.

You can write all the laws you want.

You can make it as difficult as you want.

You can pass public financing of campaigns.

We've had Democrats that have tried to pass bills and say, well, now all campaigns will

be financed through tax dollars.

Okay, great.

Does that mean that the special interests are no longer going to spend money on campaign

ads?

Does that mean they're not going to find ways to try to influence elections?

No, of course they will.

Why?

Because whoever gets elected could have a massive impact on what happens to their industry.

Right.

The same Democrats that will scream about corporate money never seem to scream about union

money.

Alloys, associations, teachers unions, labor unions, they donate tons of money to politicians

in order to try to affect certain outcomes.

And it's totally disingenuous for the Democrats to be like, oh, I can't believe corporations

are trying to spend money, but unions should be able to, oh, okay, because unions don't

have a specific interest.

The bottom line is you can pass campaign finance reform all you want.

The biggest thing that you want in campaign finance is transparency.

You want to know who's spending money and who they're giving it to and for what reasons.

Transparency will give you that.

But you know what happens every time to do campaign finance reform.

Here's what happens in Cummins benefit because the harder you make it to raise money, the

people that it hurts are the challengers.

Because as an incumbent, let me let you in on a dirty little secret.

All the special interests, all the lobbyists, here's what they look for.

If you're an incumbent politician and you vote with them 70% of the time, you're probably

going to get the endorsement and you're probably going to get a campaign check.

Why?

Because it's easier to bet on the person that's already there that will side with you

at least some of the time than it is to take a risk on the person who's probably not

going to beat the incumbent.

And now you've just pissed off the incumbent.

So whenever they pass campaign finance reform understands something, the incumbent already

has a baked in advantage.

The restrictions serve to hurt the challenger more than the incumbent.

That's just the reality.

So remember when you have a lot of politicians pushing for campaign finance reform, they're

probably trying to tip the scales and favor of themselves over their challengers.

Again, it just is what it is.

I wish there was a silver bullet with campaign finance reform that would make it easier,

but there isn't.

There just isn't the third one.

And now I'm really going to make some people mad.

And that is convention of states or an article five convention.

You have a lot of people in the conservative movement that say Nick, the solution here

is just to do a convention of states, right, which is a constitutional process where the

states, you have two ways that you can do a constitutional convention.

Congress can initiate one or the states can initiate one.

Now the conservative argument against convention of states is we're going to get a runaway convention.

You're going to get a convention where all of a sudden they're going to rewrite the

second amendment.

You're not going to be able to control it once the convention takes place and we're going

to actually end up with some really, really bad things taking place.

So no, just keep the process the way it is and vote better.

The convention of states people say, well, the threat of a convention of states at times

has gotten Congress to act on things that they otherwise wouldn't act.

Here's what I'm going to say.

There are good arguments for the convention of states and there are bad arguments for

the convention of states, right?

That's just a reality.

But again, this idea that convention of states is the silver bullet, which solves everything.

No, it isn't because I reject the claim that the convention of states will likely end up

in a runaway convention where all of a sudden a smoke-filled room rewrites the constitution

and there's nothing we can do about it.

That's typically not the way convention of states would operate.

The convention of states would send representatives from each state.

They would they would recommend amendments to the constitution and then it would come back

and you'd have to go through the state ratification process, right?

Or Congress could take up the legislation and attempt to pass it that way, but that would

still require state ratification.

So it's still a slow process.

Now again, I can see some positive benefits to convention of states and I can see some

potential problems, but either way, it isn't a silver bullet.

It just isn't.

And I wish people would understand this.

I'm not saying don't continue to work on it if you really believe in it, but please understand

that all it does is it creates another mechanism for achieving things.

It's not something where once you get the convention of states, all the problems are sold,

right?

You're just going to have new problems.

Now, they may be better than the problems that you currently have.

I will concede that, right?

I have voted for limited convention of states legislation.

But please, please, please, don't act like it's a silver bullet that's just going to

solve everything.

I'm not saying you to shy away from it if you like it, but understand that it doesn't

just solve it all.

Okay, let's go to some of those questions on this third misconception.

Let me see, question, how much control do aides have over a representative's vote?

How do those aides get selected?

So typically you select your aides, right?

So in the general assembly in Virginia, you have a budget where you can allocate it however

you want.

You typically have, in Virginia, we had an administrative assistant, and that administrative

assistant, two delegates shared one administrative assistant, and they were a nonpartisan and they

were just there to help manage the office.

They really had zero to no control over how a delegate or an elected representative voted.

Then you had your own staff.

I had my chief of staff, a genius, she was outstanding.

I would talk to Gina about things, and I would ask her about what was going on because

a really good aid has their finger on the pulse of kind of what's going on behind the

scenes and is also like tracking things like your schedule and tracking things for lobbyists.

The biggest influence a chief of staff can have or a legislative aid can have is they

have a lot of control over your calendar.

Now you ultimately control it, but you can't field every single call that comes in.

So a good aid knows how to prioritize your calendar, knows how to prioritize your meetings

in order to make you the most effective.

But theoretically, if they wanted to play little games with it, they could.

And did it.

I had a Gina was an outstanding chief of staff, outstanding age, she did a great job.

Now in Congress, you have a much bigger budget, right?

And you have your DC staff and then you also have your constituent staff back home in

your district.

And here's how this happens.

A lot of times your aides end up being the people that worked on your campaign.

And then a lot of times your aides end up being people that leadership recommends to

you.

So leadership will say, Hey, you're going to need people that know how DC works.

Let us recommend some aides.

Now this is where you can get a little bit dicey because your staff should be loyal to

you and your objectives.

But if a lot of your staff was selected and was recommended by leadership, that doesn't

mean information isn't getting leaked somewhere else.

And a lot of times when you have like kind of this permanent constituency down there, you

have some people that are they're very, very good.

They're loyal to the office.

They recognize what their professional duties and responsibilities are and their job is

to help you navigate DC.

You have other people to understand where their bread is buttered and where their bread

is buttered is by the people that keep recommending them for jobs, not necessarily by the person

they're currently working for.

So it takes a lot of discernment on behalf of the legislator to know who should they trust,

who should they not trust and what sort of responsibility should they give them that

feed in to making them the most effective person they can be on your staff.

People have different talents and you should put them in the places for which they have

the most talent, right?

But loyalty is very, very important that they're not loyal to you.

Then you can be in a lot of trouble really, really quickly.

So there's an old adage that Morton Blackwell has from the leadership of an institute

and he says personnel is policy because here's what's going to happen.

You're going to go into a place like DC or Richmond or a state capital or whatever it is

and you're going to have the things you want to do, right?

And your constituents are part of the influence on what you're doing.

But your constituents are not tracking the day-to-day bills.

Your constituents are not tracking every amendment that comes up.

Your constituents have delegated authority to you to navigate that and understand how

to work it and hopefully do what's right for them.

But they have delegated that authority to you.

Then what you do is you hire your staff and who you surround yourself with has a huge impact.

So if you surround yourself with a lot of principled people, well, then you're going to tend

to vote more principled because they're going to reinforce that.

Now if you surround yourself with a bunch of principled people who are incompetent, you

might vote better, but you might also create a lot of enemies and not get anything done

because you're not effective.

The what you want are people that are both principled and effective who kind of understand how

things operate and who can help you kind of pick, okay, which battles am I going after

in order to have the greatest impact?

Because the goal is not to just always vote the right way.

That should be one of your goals.

Your goal should also be to be effective and you want to be able to hire staff that will

help you be principled and effective.

But if you hire a bunch of squishes or if you, let's say you have some people on staff

who are principled and some people you hire do because they know how the system works,

well, if they're not principled or if they have different principles, then they're going

to constantly be trying to get you to go in their direction.

And the more people you hire like that, the more you will probably go in that direction.

It's just human nature.

So it is very, very important that when you hire staff, you hire them both or a combination

of principle and competence, right?

And then you will have people that will give you wise advisors, right?

It's right there in problems, right?

You need wise advisors because there's going to be times where you fall isolated, you

fill alone and the people that you've brought into your inner circle are going to have

a lot of influence on what you do or say.

And so you have a responsibility to hire people and just surround yourself with people who

respect your principles and are trying to help you carry them out to the best way possible.

Okay.

The next one here, Caleb said, question, should we roll back, should we roll back the constitution

to the 15th amendment?

So if you rolled it back to the 15th amendment, you would get rid of some good amendments

and some bad ones.

You would get rid of the two worst ones in my opinion, which is the 16th and 17th amendments.

But this is kind of a question for what should we do next?

So I'm going to save it for that.

Plus, you would get rid of the 19th amendment women would not be permitted to vote, right?

And I don't know that that's the best course of action.

But those are the three misconceptions.

So a quick summary.

Does a uniparty exist?

It's not so much that a uniparty exists or that all Republicans and Democrats are the

same.

You have a small subset of both Democrats and Republicans that constantly cut deals with

one another in order to kind of protect their privilege position.

But they don't think they're protecting their privilege position.

They think they're protecting the institution and they're making the necessary compromises

in order to keep the system running the way it runs, right?

And those people will always fight against the people who want to change the system in

any sort of significant way.

So if you just say, oh, it's the uniparty, it doesn't matter.

I promise you, if you were one of the more right of center people, if you were one of the

more right of center people, if you were one of the more conservative people in Virginia,

they decided to sit out in the last election because it doesn't matter who's in charge,

you're about to find out the hard way it fricking matters.

When they're coming after your guns, when they're taxing you higher, when they're preventing

you from being able to have access to government contracts because you're a white man, you're

going to find out real quick who's in charge matters.

So stop being lazy.

Don't accuse everyone of being a part of the uniparty.

Knowing the people that are actually fighting hard and support them, don't use the uniparty

or things never change as an excuse to do nothing because what you're going to end up

happening, what you're going to end up getting is Democrats in charge.

And then you're going to find out that things can change real fricking quick because whenever

they get a critical mass, they do a lot of stuff very quickly.

Second one, all politicians are bought off.

No, they're not.

Are there some sure, but the vast majority of politicians were elected to do a particular

thing and the people that send them money are not the people that are trying to convince

them to do something different.

They're the people trying to convince them to keep doing the things they were doing

anyways.

They understand they got to win elections, so they give money to support them.

All right, the only areas where that's probably playing off is in the margins, right?

Planned Parenthood is never going to give me money, right, because they know I'm never

going to vote the way they want.

Gun groups will give me money not because they're convincing me to vote a certain way, but

because they know I will vote a certain way.

So understand that distinction because it's important.

It's not that special interests can't play a negative role in politics, all right, but

they can also play a positive one.

So just blankantly saying special interests or just blankantly saying they're all paid

off is not only an inaccurate reflection of what's actually going on, but it causes you

to misunderstand what the problem is and then to hurt the good people while you give top

cover for the bad people because the bad people get to go in and say, look, see, they blamed

you for something I was doing, but I kept my seat because I got the money and you got

fired because you didn't get the support from your base.

So again, don't be lazy in your understanding.

The third one, the silver, the things that are offered up as silver bullets are not silver

bullets.

Term limits, convention of states and campaign finance reform will not solve the problem.

The problem is much more fundamental.

What is the problem?

The problem is is that you actually need elected representatives that are willing to fight,

and are willing to take the heat and that are willing to actually stick to their guns

in order to change things while at the same time understanding they can't get everything

they want all at once.

There's two types of principled politicians, right, and these are principled people.

There's principled people that if they're not getting everything they want, then there

are no.

And what ends up happening is they get relegated to sidelines because the bottom line is

is that nobody gets everything they want.

So they get relegated to sidelines and they make their speeches and they take their votes

and they get really good scores, but they don't, they're not able to accomplish anything.

They do have principled politicians where they don't compromise on their principles, but

if it can move, if can move the ball down field, if it can actually shift the over 10

window.

So they're not going to compromise for everything that's slightly better.

They will pick and choose battles where they know that the strategic win is worth the

pushback of the pain that they're going to receive.

And they will double down on that.

So those are the principled politicians that will vote the right way.

And in so far as they make compromises, they're not making compromises that shift the over

10 window in the opposite direction.

You will see a ton of Republicans in safe districts that will compromise on, like, well, yeah,

but I got this spending bill for my district.

Yeah, but you voted for something that sets a precedent to increase government spending.

That's bad.

Right.

Let me give you a perfect example of this.

In my entire time in the general assembly, I only voted for, like, I think two Republican

budgets, two.

And I voted for no Democrat budgets.

And I got threatened each time this was going to cost you, but I said, no, I promised my

constituents I was going to do something.

I'm going to stick to it.

I'm not going to play the little games.

I'm going to stick to it.

And then I voted for a budget.

Did that budget have everything I wanted?

Nope.

Did that budget have a lot of things that didn't want?

Yep.

So why did I compromise and vote for that budget that time?

Because it had significant tax increases, or excuse me, it had significant tax cuts.

Significant tax cuts, the likes of which we had never seen before in the general assembly.

And so my position was, okay, I looked at the government spending we were about to do.

And I looked at and I said, is this government spending going to happen, whether I vote for

this budget or not?

Yes.

Is this government spending completely out of line of what has been done in the past?

No.

Are the tax cuts significant?

Yes.

Are the tax cuts significant compared to what's been done in the past?

Yes.

By voting yes for this budget, what I'm doing is I'm signifying that look, I know I'm

not going to get everything I want, but this is moving the over 10 window in the right

direction, which is an emphasis on tax cuts, not government spending.

And so if that's what I can get, then I will go ahead and do that in order to signify

that I'm willing to work.

I'm willing to compromise, provided that the over 10 window is shifting in the appropriate

direction.

Right.

So that's what's important.

That's what you need.

You need people that are willing to do that who are also willing to stay in office.

But the only way those guys are willing to stay in office is that if you're not constantly

acting like we fix everything with term limits, campaign finance, former convention states,

the only reason those guys are willing to stay in office is if they're not getting punished

for what all the squishes are doing.

If you're calling them a member of the uniparty because they haven't gotten everything that

you wanted yet, when they're one vote out of hundreds, right, but after a while they

get tired and they leave because what's the point?

What's the point if they're not going to get any support?

And that leads me to the two things that you can do right now that will have an oversized

impact on getting the sort of people that I just described.

Getting the sort of smart, principled people who that you can then support and feel confident

that they're making good decisions on your behalf, right?

And here we go.

I'm going to describe it in three words, primaries, primaries, primaries.

I cannot emphasize this enough.

The number you think that voter turnout is bad for the presidential year because only

60 or maybe 70% of the electorate will vote.

Off your elections, it drops to 50% or lower sometimes.

When it comes to primaries, you have a fraction of the population choosing between the candidates

that will have the Republican nomination or the Democrat nomination.

Your vote counts so much heavier in a primary because so few people participate in the primary

and the primary is where you get to choose what kind of Republican will represent you.

And what ends up happening is the squishes, the compromise people, the people that are appropriately

labeled as the unit party.

They have an oversized influence on the primaries than you do because the bottom line is most

people aren't paying attention, which means whoever has name recognition and whoever

has money typically wins outside of a large scandal.

Now where was this proven false recently, Texas, Dan Khrinshaw had name recognition.

He had encompassy and he outspent his opponent four to one that is typically all it takes

to win a primary.

And once in that district, once you win the primary, you pretty much won the general.

And yet he lost.

Why?

Well, in part it was because Donald Trump didn't come in and support him.

That was one.

Two, he had done some things that had pissed off his constituents, especially his conservative

ones.

Three, he got into a very public fight with people like Sean Ryan.

And four, they actually picked a primary challenger who was not some whack ado that was running

out there full of conspiracy theories, just running because they want to run.

They actually picked somebody who was a state legislator who had some experience, who

knew how to campaign, who knew how to fundraise.

They knew how to do all the things to actually be effective.

So they picked a successful primary challenger against a powerful incumbent and one.

Why?

Because you don't need all the money in the primary.

You don't need as many votes in the primary.

If you can just organize your base and convince enough people who generally never vote in

primaries to show up this time, you can win.

And that will send shockwaves because I'm promising you nothing gets leadership to pay

attention more than when their prized incumbents start losing to conservative challengers.

Get involved in the primaries.

One of the ways that you can do that is getting involved with your local Republican committee.

One of the ways that you can do that is getting involved with different organizations at your

state level that are involved and on issues.

Some of them are like family foundations.

They may be second amendment issues, whatever it is, they may be educational freedom groups,

whatever it is, start getting involved with those groups because they will actually tell

you what's going on behind the scenes.

They will inform you.

You don't got to go out and research all of this on Google.

If you have a couple of trusted state level organizations, they will tell you what's going

on with your second amendment rights.

They will tell you what's going on with family and cultural issues.

They will tell you what's going on with taxes and you can trust them.

We had some great groups in Virginia, Virginia citizens, defense league on second amendment,

VCDL is a gold standard.

There's other great groups.

Gun owners of America is awesome, national association of gun rights, awesome, right?

And then we had groups like family foundation, awesome, in Virginia, right?

And there's others, society for human life, Virginia society for human life.

These groups would let you know what was going on and what was really happening.

Not just what your politics instead was happening, but what was really happening.

So you trust these organizations, you get more informed.

And then what you start to do is instead of just picking some rando to challenge an incumbent,

you actually start looking who are the people in your district that either have some sort

of accomplishment that your community or district recognizes is good.

They could be an industry leader.

They could be somebody that's done a lot of work in the charitable area.

They could be somebody that's very prominent within the church.

They could be somebody that's a state legislator or a member of the board of supervisors.

They could be somebody that understands how this game works.

It can actually articulate your principles and you're not going to find out later.

You know, we're sleeping around or embezzling money or something like that.

They've gone through some sort of process where they've been vetted so they can actually

go out and run.

And maybe they don't win the first time.

But just by challenging the incumbent, they will usually get the incumbent to vote better.

And by the first time they challenge the incumbent, they gain name recognition, which puts

them in a good position to run a second time if the incumbent doesn't change.

So primaries, primaries, primaries, please for the love of God, trust me on this.

I can't emphasize enough how you can have such a big oversized influence by just becoming

involved in the primaries and helping to pick good candidates.

Because a lot of times with primary challengers, you might have two or three and two of them

are not going to have a chance.

God bless them for running, but they have zero chance and all they're doing is distracting.

And then you will generally have one where it's like, okay, that's the person that gives

us our best shot.

And that's who you need to coalesce around.

The person that gives you the best shot to actually challenge that incumbent and actually

get a good representative in there.

The second thing that will give you the most oversized impact.

And this is more long term, right?

So the second one is not a long term, this is what we can start doing right now.

If you are sending your children to be educated by the institutions, which are fully invested

in the government running education, fully invested in the unit party, fully invested in

Democrats who give them more money, we'll then expect your kids to get a lot of messaging

from the Democrats.

And it'll be subtle, but it'll be there.

Sometimes it's not subtle at all.

Sometimes they're putting the gay porn right in your kid's public school library.

And then you're sending them your mad about it.

Why can't something be done?

Something could be done.

Get your kids out.

I can't afford it.

Great.

This is the part where you go to your churches and you say, why are we sending all this money

to other places around the world, but we provide no resources to parents within our congregation

who would like to get their kids out of an educational institution that is directly educating

them against the will of their parents.

This is the part where if you're a pastor and you're watching this.

If you're an older and a church and you're watching this and you send a lot of money

to Uganda, good for you.

But if your major role for charitable giving is to send flip flops to Uganda twice a year

in order to destroy the domestic cobbler market, well, you do nothing to help your parishioners

actually be able to provide a quality education for their own children.

Then you suck, dude.

Honestly, you are not doing your job.

Those two things right there, getting involved in the primaries and raising a generation that

is not being constantly inundated through academia, the media, Hollywood, in such a way

to where now all of a sudden you thought you were raising them one way and they're voting

completely different from you because their college professor said so.

You change those two dynamics and within one generation, you will see an oversized change.

It's not term limits, it's not campaign finance reform.

It's raising kids in the way that they should go and actually get involved in the primary

elections that matter the most to actually select the people, to give the people that want

to fight for you a chance to be able to do it against an incumbent see or against leadership

that is unwilling to budge.

That's how you do it.

Period, the end.

Those two things are two of the things you have the most impact on.

You vote in a primary, your vote has more weight.

Why?

Because it's so few people that vote in a primary.

And with your kids, you have more influence if you take the influence, but if you're going

to share the influence with left wing academic institutions and yes, your public school has

become a left wing academic institution.

I don't care how liberal, I don't care how conservative you think your district is.

The bottom line is the vast majority of teachers had to go to a liberal university in order

to get their degree and the most liberal portion of any university tends to be the education

department along with the studies departments.

So that's what's happening, but if you can pull your kids out or if you're going to keep

them in, you got to do a whole lot of extra work in order to make sure they're not being

influenced by that in ways that you don't want, but you do those two things.

You raise a generation to actually believe in our principles, our faith and our conservative

principles and to vote that way because we have more kids.

The left doesn't have kids.

They abort them.

The left has a birth rate like half what conservatives do.

Does that mean it means in one generation we win unless they import a population or

they educate your kids for you?

You can be mad at me all day long for saying it.

The math is the math and democratic processes are ultimately about math.

Raise your kids, participate in primaries.

You will have a far greater impact than a lot of the other stuff people are out there trying

to do right now.

Raise your kids, vote in primaries.

Okay.

There's a part where I want to get into any misconceptions that maybe I didn't cover.

Those are the three big ones that I wanted to cover.

Those are the two solutions I wanted to cover, but I'm going right now.

I'm going to see if there's any other questions.

Caleb Howell said, should we roll back the constitution back to the 15th amendment?

I want to say all the way back to the 15th amendment.

I would be satisfied if we could get rid of the 16th and the 17th.

The 16th amendment to the constitution is the federal income tax.

What it basically did was it gave the federal government the power to do a bunch of things.

The federal government was never authorized to do is still not authorized to do, but now

since the federal government can extort you and extort states with your money, now they

say, well, we're not, we're not mandating you do this at the federal level.

We don't have that authority.

That's not one of our enumerated powers, but we have all this money and you only get

the money if you do what we want.

Well, where'd you get the money?

Oh, we got it from you.

So that's what the federal income tax does.

It gives the federal government the power to tax you and by the way, to tax you to progressive

rate, which means it taxes people differently.

So now it's taxing people that actually make enough money to be taxed in order to give

money to either corporations that have better lobbyists or to people that don't pay anything

in taxes at the end of the day because they're net beneficiaries.

And so what have you just done?

You've created two constituencies that the people with lobbyists that are closest to power

and the people that are getting money from the government without actually having to

contribute more and they vote against the people in the middle who are actually making

the country work.

So get rid of the 16th amendment.

17th amendment is the popular election of senators.

Senators were never supposed to be elected by the population of their states.

They were supposed to be appointed by the state legislatures because the Senate is supposed

to be a representative of the state and the state apparatus.

And if you're wondering why that is, I did a whole episode on anti-psychosis.

This is the the polybius theory of the idea that there's there's good and negatives.

So you have monarchy versus tyranny.

You have aristocracy versus oligarchy and then you have democracy versus mob rule.

And part of the reason why the Senate was organized the way it was was to actually create

an element of positive aristocracy.

I know we always think of aristocracies being a bad thing.

Aristocracy is not always a bad thing.

It's bad if it's hereditary title, but it's not bad if what you're talking about is a group

of smarter or not smarter.

Smart wise elder statesmen that are kind of pushing back against the passions of the overall

body politic.

It's a part of anti-psychosis.

So get rid of the 16th, get rid of the 17th.

You improve that.

But here's the deal.

How are you going to do that?

Look at the process for emitting the constitution.

It's incredibly difficult on purpose.

The only way you're ever going to get to that is if you actually elect enough people

that are willing to do that at both the federal level and the state level and the key

way to do that, educate your kids and involve yourself in primaries.

Okay.

Another question here.

Since both R&D, excuse me, Michael Thompson asked, since both Republicans and Democrats

love to spend money on pet special interests and no one will blink, how do we get them

to actually cut spending?

You reward the politicians that actively vote to cut spending, which means they campaign

on cutting spending and then they cut spending.

You can't do this game where it's like, oh, I want all of this stuff.

I want all of this non-legitimate government spending to be cut because the government

shouldn't be running welfare, it shouldn't be running education, it shouldn't be running

healthcare.

That's not the job of the federal government.

It's not even really job of the state governments, right?

But I want the one spinning on the farm subsidy.

I want the money to come to me because I'm a farmer and I want the farm said, no, no,

you have to take a principled stance and then you have to reward politicians that will

cut spending and they're going to cut it across everything, right?

Because it needs to be cut across everything.

Now, there are certain things that are legitimate functions of government, right?

The government exists, the federal government especially exists to have a military.

That's what it's supposed to do.

Your state governments are supposed to have a court system and state police and things

like that.

So you can be a little bit, you can want to cut that like defense spending and things

like that.

But you recognize those are legitimate functions of government, whereas other things are

not legitimate functions of government.

And so what you do is you tell your politician, I want you to cut spending, I understand

you're going to cut, you're going to have to probably cut it across the board because that's

what the compromise works.

But if you do it, I will reward you.

I will reward you with public praise, I will reward you with my vote, I will reward you

with campaign contributions, whatever it is, I will reward you.

If you create a culture where you reward people for cutting the spending, you'll get more

people wanting to do it.

But that's hard to do.

It takes up, you're going to have to raise a generation to want that and advocate for it.

Let me see another one question.

Another misconception will have any third party fix the two party system.

No.

Here's, well, okay, let me, let me take that back.

We'll fix the two party system.

It will create something different than the two party system.

But here's what I would ask you to do.

Go look at Europe.

Most of Europe is parliamentary systems, which means they have a lot more political parties.

Are they in better shape?

Are they more conservative?

No.

So again, the question is not, do more parties automatically improve the system?

It can or it cannot.

It just depends.

It improves the system is more principled people doing the right thing.

Maybe that's in multiple parties, maybe that's in two parties, but again, it is not a silver

bullet.

If we just add more political parties, that doesn't fix our problems.

Technically, we do have more political parties in the United States.

They just don't gain the same attraction.

So again, I'm not saying it's automatically bad, but it's not also automatically good.

Again, it falls into that category of it's the silver bullet that isn't a silver bullet.

Because what you need at the end of the day is good representatives, regardless of

what party they belong to, but typically parties coalesce around particular interests.

Now in the UK, you have the system right now where you have the reform party and that's

challenging the conservatives.

You also have the, I think, restore party, which is making sure that the reform party doesn't

just become more torres, right?

On the left, you have the green party challenging labor.

So the thing to say is it can be beneficial if it achieves beneficial results, but it's

not a silver bullet.

Okay, looking for more questions.

Here we go.

Sir, potatoes, question.

What is the best way to deal with folks who refuse to vote but still complain about the

outcome?

If someone's just lazy, they're lazy.

It depends on your relationship with them.

So if it's someone that you really know, sometimes if someone that you really know and they really

do care about the issues, what you can do is you can share this with them and you can

say, look, there is a way that you can have an oversized influence.

But stop focusing on things that aren't going to matter and start focusing on things

that do matter.

And these are the things that do matter.

But if you just sit it out, again, Virginia is a great example of this.

We had a lot of conservatives in Virginia, a lot of people that go to church in Virginia

that decide, well, I'm not really happy with my Republican candidate, so I'm not going

to vote.

Okay.

Are you happy with the candidate now who is about to gerrymandor Virginia into oblivion

who's going to take your guns, right, or make it legal to transport them, who is going

to raise your taxes, who is going to spend your tax dollars on transiting your kids,

right?

You're right.

If you would have got a Republican governor, you wouldn't have gotten everything you

wanted.

But you know what?

When it happened, that's stuff.

That's stuff.

When it happened, because it would have been vetoed.

So again, if they're just lazy, then they're just lazy and call them that like, dude, you're

not principled.

You're lazy.

It's something you're above it all, right, you're beneath it all.

You're the very person that perpetuates the problems that you claim to not, that you

claim to care about because you don't participate.

But if you, if you can find someone that's principled and you can show them ways to effectively

participate and you can provide them options and they can see some benefit, even if it's

little, right, even if it's little, then a lot of times you can pull them off the sidelines

and get them into the fight the way that they need to be.

The other thing too is to remind people that, look, if you're upset about politics, but

you don't want to get involved in campaigning every day, I get that, but what are you doing

with your kids?

Are you having these important discussions with your kids?

Are you raising your kids in the way that they should go?

Because that is the most, that's the most powerful legacy that you have long term.

So there's still ways that they can participate.

Maybe you show them ways to participate that will have an oversized impact, but isn't as politically

motivated.

And then you, you kind of embarrass them to get out at least vote, right?

At least vote at least vote in the primaries.

Give them someone to believe in and you can get them off the bench of this from time to

time.

That's a great way to do it.

iPhone.

Okay.

Where, where's it?

That doesn't help.

Just tell me, just read the question for me.

All right.

What is the best way to maintain and build a Republican tri-factor?

Okay.

The best way to build and maintain a Republican tri-factor.

So once you have a Republican governor or a Republican house and a Republican Senate,

right?

At the state or federal level, the best way to do it is to actually do things that people

care about.

So the, like, so for instance, one of the best things that the Republicans did when they

took back the house in 1994 was they had a, they, what they called the contract with

America.

And what was unique about the contract with America is they didn't just say elect us and

we're going to try to do all these things.

What they said was if you elect us, if you give us control of Congress within the first

100 days of us being in control, we will pass the following legislation.

I tried to do this in Virginia and I couldn't get my own party to go along with it.

I couldn't get my own party to go along with it.

One of the things I said was we need to say getting rid of the car tax is something that

we will make a priority.

We will do it in the first 30 days.

If you give us the house, we, in the first 30 days, we will pass a bill to get rid of

the car tax.

Couldn't get, couldn't get Republicans to go on board with it.

But if you actually have people that say, okay, listen, what we're not just asking for

you to vote for random Republicans, we're actually asking you to vote for an agenda.

And then you pick like five things that impact people directly that they understand that

they want to see more of and you say, give us the power and we will do this in the first

100 days.

So you gave them something concrete that they care about and you give them a deadline.

If we don't do it by this time, then we, we failed.

Because here's what that does.

Everybody that's saying it doesn't matter who I vote for, it doesn't matter what they

do.

They all say the same thing.

What you just did was you gave that person something to vote for which they can measure.

Because you either did it or you did it.

So don't just give them esoteric principles.

Don't just give them concepts of what you would like to accomplish.

You tell them if you put us in charge, which means if you give us the power to do these

things, if you don't give us the power to do it, we're not obligated to do it.

That's fair.

Reasonable people understand that.

Give us the power to do this and we will do these things.

These bills, not, oh, we're going to lower your taxes, which taxes, oh, we're going to

cut regulations, which regulations.

Oh, we're going to secure the vote.

How?

Right?

They got to be specific and then you've got to give a deadline.

So give me power.

I will do these specific things that you care about within this deadline.

And if you do those things, here's what ends up happening.

That person, maybe they didn't like all five things you wanted to do.

Maybe they liked three of them and maybe the other two they didn't care so much about.

But here's what they know.

You did what you said you would do, which automatically distinguishes you from everybody

else that they think of in politics.

It's one of the reasons why Trump was popular.

Even when he was saying certain things that were politically unadvisable, why did they

believe him?

Because Trump was saying things and attempting to do things based off of what he said.

And so it was like, you know what?

I may not like 20% of what he wants to do.

But because I can trust that it'll actually diligently try to do the 80%, that's worth

my vote.

So that's what that's what has to be done on there.

And now once you do that, and once you have a trifecta that actually accomplishes it,

now you have something to run on, not just something to run against.

And if you can consistently do that, and here's, and here's what you also do.

You prioritize the things that the majority wants as your primary objectives.

That isn't mean you give up on all your principles.

You just prioritize the principles based off of what you can achieve.

Because once you achieve the things that they wanted, now they're willing to listen to

you on the things that they're not as certain about.

So maybe out of those five things, they really like three, they didn't like two as much,

but you got the three things done and they saw a benefit.

Okay, now I'll listen to you on the other two.

What do you want to do?

Those are the two.

Well, because of this, this and this.

Okay, that makes sense.

Do the other two.

And that's how you actually build a legacy that you can continue to perpetuate.

So that's the best way to achieve a trifecta.

If people, if you put us in power, we will do these specific things within this deadline.

Okay.

Cool.

Okay.

Yeah, I think I got all the questions.

So there you go, ladies and gentlemen, that is the best way to do it.

I hope you found that beneficial.

Oh, got one more question.

You got in right on right at the finish line, my friend.

Question, what kind of experience do you need to run for a political position or office?

Okay.

It kind of depends.

Now, there's an old Alex Hermosi quote that he actually gave, not about politics, but

about social media.

And he said, you know, don't go out there and preach it, everyone.

Or don't go out there and tell everyone what to do.

Go do something meaningful, go do something meaningful, go do something that is admirable,

go do something that is difficult, go do something that is hard and then talk about

what you did.

When it comes to politics here, what I would say, we have a lot of people that they just

love politics and they want to be in, they want to be an elected office.

I think it's important to do things which actually signify to your constituents that you

either know what you're doing or you know how to overcome difficult challenges or whatever

it is.

So that might be in business.

That might be in charitable work.

That might be in the military.

It could be in politics, but I think sometimes it's good to be able to do things which everybody

can relate to outside of politics and say, okay, that provides some sort of objective criteria

that this guy knows what they're talking about and can take useful experience into the

political realm and make good decisions.

Now on top of doing those things, being involved in politics is a good way to actually run

for office.

But what I usually like to tell people is if you're just showing up to run, which is you

can do that.

Governor Youngkin did that.

It's not like he was really involved in politics before I ran for governor and he won

and he did a good job.

But there were things that I saw, there were experiences that Governor Youngkin I saw

harmed him.

There was times in particular where I would sit and I would say, hey, you don't have

enough votes to do what you want.

You don't have enough votes for policy.

You only have enough votes for politics.

And that frustrated a person that was used to getting things done if you could just make

the right argument and make the decision.

So what I would say is getting involved in politics means serving in your local community.

It means serving in your local like Republican committee or whatever it might be because

what that signifies is you're willing to fight.

You're not just showing up and saying, pick me, I want to lead you all because one of the

attitudes I had when I had somebody that I had never met that wanted to run for office,

I was like, where have you been, dude?

So let me get this straight.

You weren't here when we needed other people to win.

You weren't here to knock doors.

You weren't here to donate.

You weren't here to spend your time.

You weren't going to do any of that.

But now that you want to run, we're all supposed to do that for you, right?

So I would say, don't presume to lead people you've never fought alongside.

I think that's a good principle.

You can do important things, but get involved in a way.

I'll give you an example of this.

A guy I know who's running for Congress in the seventh district right now, Doug Olivant.

Doug Olivant came into the district and he was lieutenant colonel military.

He did a lot of strategic stuff, really intelligent guy, a very smart guy, also understands how

DC works.

He was thinking about running for office, but he didn't just run.

He actually got involved with this local committee.

He got involved in other campaigns.

He helped other people run for office.

That was a guy who understood the value of fighting alongside before he presumes to lead.

And I think that's a good principle to follow.

So I hope that answers that question.

Okay.

Once again, thank you very much.

Good question.

I hope you guys found this beneficial.

If you did like, share, follow, subscribe.

We'd really appreciate it.

Also, just so you know, if you look over my shoulder there, that's right.

I wrote a book.

It's called the man book and I discuss a lot of things.

There's like 52 things that every man should know.

And it's everything from how to cook a steak to, you know, how to deal with being married,

how to raise kids, how to raise boys versus how to raise daughters.

And then we have some other fun stuff in there like how to hotwire a car.

Why do you need to know that?

If you need to ask that question, I mean, you need this book, right?

But you right now can go pre-order.

You can own the book that John Lovell described as the worst coloring book ever.

That was my fault.

I sent it to him and didn't even give him a heads up and heads up.

But anyways, go check it out.

Once again, thank you very much and we'll see you next episode.