Hello, and welcome back to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm
Sam Angel Lena as staff editor at The Federalist Don't Forget. You can email
any comments or questions for the show to radio at the Federalist dot com,
follow us on Twitter at fdr LST, and make sure to subscribe wherever you
download your podcast as well. Today I am joined by Aidan Bazzetti, President
of The Bull Moose Project, a startup a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to
training, supporting, and electing the next generation of American statesman while further building
out the brigand and conservative populist movement. It just so happens the Bull Moose
Project is hosting a Candidate the Leadership simit this week to prepare a perspective of
the candidates for the twenty twenty four elections cycle. Today, Aiden and I
will be discussing some recent headlines as well as what it takes to become as
fit as a bull moose in the political arena. Aiden, welcome and thanks
for joining. Thank you for having me. How's your morning? Then,
It's been a busy morning. So what goes into planning a candidates leadership Summit?
And about how many perspective candidates do you guys have? So we have
about forty to fifty in perspective candidates, and we our timeline for this event
was long because it's our inaugural leadership summit. It's two days, and so
we ended up planning this darkness, the deploying the groundwork in back in October.
And for that groundwork, we were thinking, what is our ideal number
of attendees, what's our budget, what kind of content we want to include?
When do we want to start opening applications for this event? Just basing
information like that, And as we entered into twenty twenty three, so a
couple of months pass, we start advertising the event, getting some preliminary speakers
confirmed, announcing them to generate more interest us. We've spent the last couple
of weeks in particulars, so what kind of materials you need? Journals,
folders, content from our sponsors, making sure our speakers are here on time,
do they need flights, hotels, Making sure all of my administrative stuff,
the back end stuff is all good so that the i RS doesn't come
and kill us later on, or you know, so we don't get charged
a whole lot of logistics. Yeah, for the logistics, So it's been
it's been busy. Most of the logistical end is making sure that we have
everything ordered and plan to arrive on time. So so that's what I've been
doing the last few weeks. Awesome. Well, also, you know,
you're a pretty young group of guys. There's about four or five of you
manning this operation if I'm correct, and you're all in your early to mid
twenties. So what is that like? Is it hard getting you know,
put establishments to take you seriously, what is it like going about getting sponsorships?
Because you guys have some pretty big sponsorships for this leadership some event.
Yeah, we do. We have Heritage Foundation, the Mesa's Institute, Leadership
Institute, and American Moment are some of our big sponsors. And you know,
there is a certain amount of of issues that you have to overcome when
when you are a younger person, when you are launching an organization on your
own. And this isn't the first time we've done something that The Bullings Project
has been around for a little bit under the radar for most people, and
so we've spent the last thing we started just about two years ago in one
form or another. And so we've spent the last two years building up trust
with people that work in these institutions, inviting them to events, proving that
even though we are young, we're capable or trustworthy, we are representive of
the movement that we're trying to build. And so when I when I went
to these these organizations and I and I pitched them on this, I said,
hey, we're we are doing this. This is our goal, this
is our mission, this is our logistical plan. I have sponsorships from these
people already, We've we've already done this amount of planning and going to them
with that basic level of trust over the last couple of years, and then
actually proving to them we've already put the work in to host this, I
think made all the difference. So being representative of the movement, what exactly
does that entail? Because it's it's a conservative populism. So expand upon that
a bit, what does that look like? Who are you know, the
main political avatars at the moment? What intellectual vein does that occupied? So
I guess well, so well as as a on the sea four and on
one of our providence, we've made endorsements in the twenty twenty two cycle,
mostly on the federal end. Probably the most representative person that went through that
cycle as Senator JD. Vance from the Great Suit Ohio of Ohio, from
the Great State of Ohio. He's probably one of the most representative representative of
our views. There are also others when I when I look at conservative populism,
there's there's a lot of debate over that term about can you be a
conservative and can be populist? What is populism? Honestly, I try to
stay away from some of the political theory debates mostly because I honestly, I
self merely have not read enough classic political theory that a lot of the people
here in DC bring up all the time. But what we're trying to do
is connect with the people and everyday America basically the ones the people who believe
even America First in the way that Donald Trump was talking about it back in
twenty sixteen, and we want those people to run for office. So it
seems like you're trying to blend dinner table economic issues as well as you know,
prioritizing America first foreign policy, trying to you know, not minimizing the
adventurism if you will, yeah, in a way, and some of our
our motivating issues as an organization, where when Blake Masters on Camping Trail said
that he wants people to be able to raise a family on a single income,
that's something that's a goal that we should strive towards. We want to
strive towards that. It practically it looks like reviewing our trade policy, which
does a lot of interaction with foreign policy in general. So our Americans and
American companies being damaged by our trade relationships, are we being taken advantage of?
How does this impact people's jobs well being? Things like that. We
also look at the broader, the broader issues like bay tech and antitrust,
which kind of goes a little bit back to our namesake, at least on
the antitrust angle. But ultimately, we want in America, where people have
families, people are economically secure, that our position in the world cannot be
totally derailed by by sanctions or people refusing to sell us things. Basically,
we want to measure self sufficiency and self protection for Americans and their families.
Interesting, So I have two questions, but first it's drilled down a bit
on the namesake of the Bull moose project, because pretty obviously it's an invocation
of Fyodore Roosevelt, so Teddy rose tr being, you know, republican,
one of the most famous and iconic US presidents, is also pretty famously known
for kicking off what is called the progressive era in American politics in American history.
Are you concerned about that kind of conflating at all with contemporary leftism or
you know how that might be conflated with socialistic economics and any capacity. Personally,
I'm not concerned. I know that a lot of our detractors from the
broader conservative sphere have relentlessly pointed this out to us, and it's something that
gets brought up to me every so often. But when we look at what
Theodore Roosevelt says, and I can't remember the specific speech he was giving when
he is proposing his plans for America and a new way of looking at our
economic system, he is proposing these for the time more liberal reforms for the
purpose of preventing socialism and communism from taking hold in the United States. Whether
it was necessary, I obviously cannot say, But I don't think Theodore Roosevelt
as a person is applicable to eat leftism either then or now, the heart
interjected. But to be fair, you know, contemporary leftism would not be
recognizable to anybody more than like thirty minutes ago. So that's true. It's
the whole other beast of its own different mechanicians, right. Well, I
think you know, the Progressive Party, the Progressive era, the Progressive Party
which the Roosevelt just kind of took over after that that Republican Convention was kind
of rigged from him by Taft and his supporters had two main factions. There's
Theodore Roosevelt's faction and there's one other was a more feminist faction. I can't
remember the women that were in charge of it. And because the Restive Party
had a more feminist faction of the progressive part of it, and so Theore
Rosel was just kind of swept in and took that over for his own purpose.
But he faced a lot of criticisms from that party of being more of
an imperialist and interventionist compared to the feminist faction, which was very pacifist.
They wanted to cut a lot of the military budget, and I think part
of some of the legacy that Theodore Roosevelt is associated with comes from political expediency
of the time, felt shut out by the Republicans, He did not like
Tafts, He felt like taff was ruining his legacy as president, which marri
ment not be true, and he was kind of forced to embrace in some
form or fashion a lot of the Progressive Party of views. I don't think
though that obviously not a Theo Roswell scholar, but a lot of a lot
of the reforms that they wanted happened, and I think, honestly they probably
weren't that awful. When we look at the America then and the American now,
it's clearly different. There were still problems with assimilation and immigrants of the
scale which is extremely probably a thousand percent or more worse now. Um,
But when we look at the America America that existed in the early twentieth century,
it was still very religious. There were still broadly shared social norms cultural
norms even there, even though there are differences by region, And I do
think that there probably was in a Republican system some good argument for the more
liberal reforms that they wanted, which collection of senators wouldn't look. So that's
what you mean when you say more liberal the more like, Um, I
don't want to say, I guess liberalizing of democracy. I was gonna say
democratizing of democracy. But that, right, it's kind of redundant. I
mean, okay, it's the liberalizing of democracy. Um. And things that
people take for granted now women were being able to vote, the things we
assume that have always been the way they are, right. Direct election of
senators is probably the biggest one, because a lot of people don't realize now
that senators were chosen by the legislators before that progressive error. The Watchdought on
Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between
politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. How much is the
mainstream media incohoots with the Biden administration? Since when did the media care so
much about catching leakers? Is that their job? Should they be asking more
questions instead of being another wing of the White House. Whether it's happening in
DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed.
Check out the Watchdought on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts well. To be fair, though,
the whole point of the Senate was to give you equal footing to each state
in Congress. But back to they're coming out in the weeds there, but
interesting, interesting little sidebar, But back to the summit. This is to
train Canadate's for the twenty twenty four election cycle. And you guys are looking
more specifically at the federal level. Correct, We're actually looking more on the
local and state. There's you know, a decent amount of people that always
look at the federal stuff. It's it's the most flashy, it gets the
most attention. There's nothing wrong with that. But one of the reasons that
we're actually looking at the local level. And when I when I say local,
I really mean very local and state levels, so like school boards and
things like that, school boards, state legislatures, city councils, county commissions,
things like that. Interesting And the reason why we're looking at that is
because, like I said before, we made endorsements in the twenty twenty two
mid terms, and Republicans as a whole did not perform as well as people
expected, but particularly particularly the candidates that we felt aligned with our values the
most, and when we were doing our diagnostic on that we candidate, the
conclusion there are a couple main themes. One, there are first time candidates.
They never run for office before, low name, might credentials kind of
varied depending on who it was. They've never had to raise money before,
so they basically started from scratch, and a lot of them had no political
experience either. There was a lot of This is more of a you might
have more background information on this, but from my perspective, it felt like
there was a lot of influencer politics. I felt like people were more attuned
to getting retweets than they were knocking on doors and shaking hands and kissing babies.
That's part of it, and that's broadly under the category of candidate and
experience. It's difficult to be a candidate, and it's difficult to run a
campaign for Congress. Depending on the seat, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars,
if not millions of dollars that you have to raise, and of course
you want to win. But when you have somebody running for office for the
first time, they've never run before, they've never raised money before, they
don't know how it works. They've probably never been in politics before, which
generally people like to hear they don't like career politicians on an instinctual level.
But that runs into a lot of problems. So people got drifted by consultants,
They tricked themselves into believe in that online support was real support. They
struggled to raise money for any variety of reason, and it's just hard.
There's a very high failure rate for federal offices, especially Congress. When we're
looking at the local and state level, the local dynamics are always interesting and
you can run into some of the same issues, but things like county commission,
city council, state legislature, depending on where it is, can have
just as high a bar for necessitating candidate experience. But you need to raise
less money. There's less people to knock on doors, for less people to
talk to. It's a good testing ground for people to get experience being a
candidate. It's a good testing ground to get experience being an elected official actually
having responsibility for hundreds, not thousands of people with the decisions that you make.
And so earlier when I said we are trying to build a movement that
we are starting from the ground floor, are there are a lot of groups
that are focused on staffing. There are a lot of groups that do voter
engagement with millions and millions of dollars. That's not us. What we're trying
to do is develop leaders. It's finding a grassroots activists riled up. But
if you don't have a leader, they will disappear. It's fine to have
staffers that are good, and it's necessary actually, but you also need the
people to hire them in the first place. So you need a farm system.
You can't just have people to take over if you don't have that talent
to take over when the other people retire. Exactly. Need someone to vote
for right, no, exactly. And so we're hoping that people that go
through our training, especially this training and beyond, when they get into local
office, they will get experience. They will find themselves, they will figure
out how things work and avoid the critical mistakes people that ran for Congress made,
and over a period of time, you know, they get experienced,
they get a record, they learn the issues, and they are able to
move up and then move up, probably hopefully in a more successful manner than
if they were just leading a regular life and then a snap decision decided to
run. So you're trying to build out like this farm system of conservative I
don't want to say activists, but conservative enthusiasts to you know, fill the
nation with many trs will say, are they all? Are you focusing specifically
on people of populist inclination, or are the candidates who're trying to recruit more
just you know, conservative of the fusionists breed for lack of a better term,
Do they have to be, you know, these new right types or
would you take someone who's more of the libertarian vent who happens to be skeptical
of big tech. That's a good question. When when we went through the
process of looking at the people who apply for the summit, I spoke with
just about every single person, and on our form for this we have a
general surveys. We could understand how they felt on a variety of different issues
that we cared about that typical conservatives cared about UM, and so then I
would get on a call with them and talk about it and see what they
thought UM in a more fluid setting. And generally, but the people that
we interviewed I would say were probably about eighty percent of the way there.
There's a certain amount of variance, the way they're being populous issues, the
way they're like, yeah, being populous, adjacent um sharing the majority of
our values, I guess is probably the better term. And there's a certain
amount of variants that you have to have when you work on politics. It's
just the reality of things. We're never going to get everybody one hundred percent
in line with us all the time, and that that's a fact, and
it's a fact to be because everybody has their own opinions. People that run
for office and Florida are going to be believed different things and people that run
for office in Texas or California or Ohio. It's just how the United States
work. It's different geographic interests. The agricultural industry in Ohio is very different
than that of and so we look we look for general agreements. So what
do you think about big tech? What are your opinions on restoring manufacturing?
What is your opinion on the family in general, quote unquote pro family policy?
What do you think about some cultural issues, immigration, the border?
And that gave us a good baseline of who exactly was interested in our program.
Interesting, so you mentioned you know your your principles, what exactly are
those and how do they align with populism? And then let's also drilled down
and unpack what populism is, because at any given time, it seems like
there's thirty different operative definitions of populism. And there's also you know, there's
a left populism, right populism, and like a centrist populism at the same
time. And on the bend diagram there seems to be a good deal overlapping,
but a lot of distinct differences at the same time. So as far
as our values go, and they're on our website as well, it's and
what is that website so people can find website and bull News Projects dot org.
Our first value on there is a fair market and that's something that we
basically lifted from Theodore Roosevelt. And a fair market to us is the principle
that the American economy should work for Americans and American companies. And when I
say American country needs so it's kind of start interject it's like you're honestly inverting,
but you're taking the America first principle and putting it into the marketplace.
Right, And before I go on with that law, what I will say
is a lot of our focus with policy UM is taking this America First message
and focusing it domestically. The America First foreign policy is still within our purview,
but we've really been focused on applying all of our principles in domestic politics.
So that's a very unique distinction because I think America First, generally it's
a it's a visceral and instinctual response people have, and I think it's personally,
I think it's properly oriented, UM, because you want to people want
to prioritize their neighbors, their and their families and their their interests. UM.
That's you know, generally the role of a nation. But we're so
used to thinking of it, as you know, America First in terms of
foreign policy. People don't think of it in terms of the marketplace. That's
a very unique distinction that that's very fascinating. Yeah, and you know,
on our website we have a quote from Theodore Roosevelt that I just pulled up
that that really inspired this, And the quote is, those who advocate for
total lack of regulation, those who advocate for lawless lists, lawlessness in the
business world themselves, give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be a
deadening movement towards unadulterated state socialism. So Theodore Roosevelt very clearly against state socialism,
and we are also against state socialism. And so when we look at
the American economy, we want Americans and businesses, primarily smaller businesses, not
these million billion dollars multinational corporations, to have an equal playing field in their
in their communities. And there's a lot of interesting ways that we could break
this down that could probably go on for hours, but when some basic examples.
You take the healthcare industry, right, a lot of people want to
hear rid of Obama Care, you know, all the super hundreds of thousands
of pages of documents. One of the biggest problems in the medical industry,
especially in rural communities, is the fact that hospitals and ambiance companies are the
fact of monopolies, which is not something that people think about. If there
is one hospital within one hundred miles, they can set any price they want
and people have to go there or just not go to the hospital. That's
a very broad focused example. But you know, when when we look at
economic regulation, we want safety standards up, we want but we also want
people to succeed. If we want people to be able to start a business
not get taxed until the ground, especially if it's a small business. We
want that environment where somebody can feasibly launch something and be able to live off
of it and not get totally crushed by competitors on the same ground them.
One of our other principles is what we call it rust's rejuvenation. Is that
an acronym or is it? So? The acronym is rural urban, small
town rejuvenation, obviously inspired by by the rust belt that that principle deals more
with reshoring manufacturing, bringing jobs back, reviving a lot of the dying communities
across America, especially in the Midwest. It kind of goes in line with
our fair market principles. A lot of our stuff is interdependent on each other,
so we want a fair American economy. That means we don't want to
prioritize foreign companies that have outsourced all these jobs. We want jobs to come
back in. We want people to be able to raise a family and pay
for a house and you know the modern American amenities. Right. So it
seems like in regard to you know, comparing your brand of populism too,
you know, I guess more leftist brand of populism. The emphasis on you
know, actual entrepreneurialism is very heavy as opposed to just the actual jackboot of
regulation being pushed down. That seems to be more of the leftist brand.
So the the it seems to be an unfair, you know, characterization that
you know, conservative populism is just socialism. You know, we just you
just disprove that. So I think that's an important distinction that ought to be
more emphasized. I mean, right, Granted, I don't think attractors will
necessarily allow that to be made because it's usually bad faith the characterizations. But
yeah, the interesting thing, and there's a lot of I don't usually like
the term new right because there are so many different, very niche, very
theoretical factions. I don't start to interject again, but I don't think there's
I think all these different labels are counterproductive at the end of the day,
right, it's all it does disturb to put people in different camps, and
to cause ideological infighting and to further fray a coalition that ought to be moving
towards the same goals. Right for us, our animating one of our animating
principles I guess to put up plainly is we are not afraid of using government
to actually care for people, to protect. Not careful, but we're not
afraid of using government to protect people, protect the interest of its citizens and
a variety of different fields. And that broad statement is what brings those attractors
to say, oh, your collectivists, you're socialists, you want this and
that. No, we still believe in we believe in America as a nation
as a people, but we also believe in a certain amount of individual action,
responsibility, entrepreneurship, kind of that frontier like spirit that animated America for
you know, just about two hundred years. And so yeah, it's it's
that broad statement is what brings people to make those bad faith arguments. But
I don't think it's bad to realize that, yes, the government sometimes can
do good things, and the government does have a responsibility to care for its
citizens. I think it's right and fair to say that a lot of regulations
do not help Americans. And what I would personally say to that is,
and there's an excellent book about it that I cannot remember the name of right
now. A lot of the regulations that we have are redundant, they're wasteful.
We don't want waste. We want efficiency. We want the government to
run well and have a a very sharp focus on certain issues. So we
want regulations that benefit Americans over foreign corporations, foreigners, foreign countries, but
we don't want regulation that will strangle the economy and small businesses. Makes sense,
So, you know, building off of that, what would be the
ideal slew of what would you do differently if you had you know, the
blank, you know, legal bad what regulations would you implement today if you
could? You know, I think one of the examples that in this book
that I I might have to put it in the show notes or something like
that, because I'm just totally blanking. I'm very numeorous. There were two
examples that suck out to me from that book. The first was that two
or three different federal agencies had different regulations on pizza because of the separate the
separate categories of toppings, you know, whether it's seafood or meat or something
like that. But probably one of the biggest examples is a tree fell on
a creek and it was something like a class sea creek, which meant that
the town could not just pull out. They had to get an environmental study
and they had to bring in their lawyers to see how pulling the tree out
of the creek would affect the environment around it. Stuff like that is stupid.
There are some environmental regulations that I'm sure are good, but a lot
of the like the redundancies, the oh we need a five year, multimillion
dollars study the creek. It doesn't make any sense. Again, I can't
remember the book, but or specific specific regulations in mind, but a principle
of well, maybe things should be streamlined. Maybe you don't have to go
through a ten year process and ten stages of management to poltry out of there.
That makes sense. So let's sticking back a bit to talk about,
you know, actual the differences of the populist candidates at the moment. RFK
Jr. Recently announced his presidential campaign, and as we discussed numberfore started recording,
he's pulling at fourteen percent of the President Biden's current support. What are
your thoughts on that? Do you think there's a vein for these you know,
more populist trending democrats to kind of cut in and kind of be spoiler
candidates for the twenty twenty four cycle, or do you think it's kind of
game over on that because also at the same time you have more leftist populists.
I know Matt Gates recently referred to Elon Omar as a leftist populist.
What do you think the trajectory of, you know, left in populism is
in American politics at the moment. That's a good question. With with RFK,
I'm loosely familiar with with him over the last couple of years over the
pandemic. He's most notable for his um being an outspoken critic of the COVID
nineteen jobs when it comes to and I don't know the rest of his policies,
but I'm sure you know, the anti vax stuff is probably the most
considering his candidate. He's very critical of the CIA as well. Yeah,
with that kind of I don't even know if it would be right to call
him a more conservative Democrat's compared to Joe Biden and many of the Democrats Now,
I think there is still a road for them. I think it's rapidly
disappearing. I would be interested to see if he continues to the primaries how
he performs, because I do think there are there are Obama voters right and
there are still a lot of older people that are Democrats that are conservative but
just vote won't vote for Republicans. So I think if he continues through the
whole cycle without dropping out, and we get to see some results, I
would be interested to see what the demographic breakdown of his the vote share is.
I think I think he'll I think having the named Kennedy, there's always
going to be a big coalition of you know, people who support that American
dynasty. It definitely helps. I'll be willing to bet it's mostly older people.
I think. I think the route for a quote unquote conservative Democrat in
the way that we would probably understand them is flatlining very quickly. Um one
of the only conservative Democrats left probably Joe Mansion on the federal level. The
I mean, I think even then, the label conservative Democrat is very you
know, what does that even mean? It's like they're willing they don't like
I think at this point it probably just refers to Democrats that are they don't
want to cut off they want to keep oil subsidies exactly. They want to
keep oil subsidies, and they may or may not support abortion right, which
is rather they tow the line on abortion that they obscure their stance. I
think referring to Joe Mansion, as you know, conservative democrat is kind of
specifically with him, is a little if he because he's kind of a political
anomaly. Um. Yeah, being in West Virginia, which is the that
is Trump does Trump vill uessay like he should not he should not be in
office next cycle, which is part of the reason he's considering a run for
president. You know, it's there isn't really a he should not be able
to get reelected as a Democrat in West Virginia, right. I guess the
conservative part of Joe Mansion is the fact that he will not go along with
these reforms that would probably destroy the United States, you know, which is
energy. That's right. If he goes again school, which has in the
past in the past calendar year, that's it. That's game over. That's
entire's a huge part of the States. It's a very low bar to be
a quote unquote conservative Democrat right now. Um, I think the more likely
is Alan Omar, leftist populist AOC. That one the documentary on AOC's ron
is very interesting. Um And honestly, one of the one of the influences
for what we are doing came from and I'm probably will we get attack to
us, but it came from what the progressive left is doing. In the
modern Democratic Party. You have all these organizations Justice Democrats, they recruit progressive
challengers and they just hammer it and they just throw everything at the wall,
and they see what's six. We're a little bit more nuanced. We want
people to win in a variety of different districts because we are we're focused on
promoting the welfare people, not necessarily just advancing strict ideological goals, which is
why there's a certain amount of acceptable variants. Right. But if you look
up how to run for office on Google, the first five pages will be
ninety nine percent progressive organizations. There may be one or two. There's a
reason for that. Yeah, well, there's definitely a reason for that.
But run for office dot org. You look at the where you put in
your address and you see what offices are available and all other stuff, and
you look at their partners and it's all democratic and progressive organizations. There's probably
one or two websites that are more conservative to talk about running for office.
But it's all there are. There's an entire campaign apparatus and nonprofit apparatus for
progressives, and they go to the most niche groups possible. There there are
progressive firms for data, they're progressive firms for grassroots targeting their progressive firms for
everything, and they only work for progressives. On the nonprofit side, there
are groups that only train women. There are groups that only train women of
color. There are only true there are groups that only train progressive Hispanic candidates.
So you have like this hyper targeting of the niche identity groups that the
left values so much, and they will just throw everything at the wall.
And a lot of times they are focusing on local races. RAOC and Elanomer
and some of the squad are big successes, but they're also taking over city
council school boarding school boards. They've had this figured out for decades, it's
not it took the right until recently to really get it act together. You
know, you mentioned justice Democrats. That's the right tends to put its It
does do recruiting things when it comes to politics, but it tends to put
those people into for profit media and influence our roles. Nowadays, Google isn't
necessarily to build out a farm farm system kind of how you guys are.
It's more focused on ROI, return on investment. It wants to because it's
just kind of how the the the Republican bases inclination is to people were entrepreneurial
people. We want to make a profit so we can increase our quality of
life and increase the quality of life of those around us and then our communities,
so we tend to turn to make businesses instead of you know, right,
we're not necessarily focused on micromanaging every aspect of our communities life and our
neighbors lives, So we don't really think about recruiting everybody who might and like
micromanage right for office. And but that's how we that's how those other people
get into power and destroy everything, right, Well, yeah, and that's
that's part of the problem when it comes to conservatives running for office. There
is an establishment apparatus. They hand picked people ahead of time that typically are
m veterans, typically our business and others. Look at the people I'm gonna
I'm not gonna use you know, specific individuals, but just look at who
are the like, you know, prominent. Let's look at the aesthetics of
it. Look at individual prominent Republicans and you can see, you know,
who is being backed by, what interested why they're being backed by them?
And part the problem with that is these establishment circles that that quote unquote recruit
these people really can't pick them. They're not the Cannis that they picked,
unit advanced any new ideas. Um. They are probably most of the time
great people. They are just not responsive to the current issues of the country.
And they also tend to be on the older side, which, depending
your point of view, may or may not be a bad thing. We
actually at our summit we have a fair amount of younger guys, but also
people in their thirties and forties, which is older than me, but in
politics, so pretty young in politics, Like I would argue being in your
sixties as young. I mean, granted, being in your sixties is young,
I would argue in general or not young, but you're not You're not
over the hill, I would act, you're not. You're not an elderly
person of just sixty, but you're setting your ways. Um. But I
think there is a certain amount of reaching out that people like us can do.
But besides that point, the conservatives do not like to run for office
if they do not think they will win. The progressive left, whether they're
activists or candidates or what, they make a living out of being a perpetual
victim, the throwing spaghetti at the wall and saying with six, they throw
everything at the wall. They see what's six. If they lose an election,
then they just go right back to screaming. And it's normal. But
conservatives who un for office are typically a little bit older. They have families,
children, maybe grandchildren, businesses, or reputation. It's asking a lot
to have them possibly throw it all away just to lose. Well, there
isn't a financial system to support being a perpetual, you know, conservative rebel
rouser. There's also not the societal mechanisms to you know, bail conservative rebel
rousers out of jail perpetually. There's not. There isn't the infrastructure too,
or the interest to just keep that in place. And it's interesting when when
we talk about rebel rousing and it comes to brings some mind that the whole
Tennessee three thing. And I think one of the one of those guys I
can't remember his name, brought in a child sized casket. I believe that
was justin Pearson. Right, the progressive left, and this is something that
I've seen a lot of people say in social media. Oh, I hate
theater kids. They're all the kid nationalism, theater kid nationalism, theater kid
progressivism. Um, it's and people they left is soak it up, even
independence and centrist because they're all theater kids. The left is entirely made up
of theater kids or kids who were like in the crew of like the kids
are worth the lights. It's not right and it's all fun and games to
say, oh they're theater kids. There, that's a political sun carrying in
a casket. And then they understand optics. They understand the optics, or
rather they understand the optics that motivate their base. We're into normal, normal,
like well adjusted people despise that and think it's incredibly import taste. But
right, the people who donate to Active Blue monthly eat that up. And
the interesting thing about that is that you will do these theatrics to rile up
their base and get support. Um. But then and then conservatives online or
otherwise they'll be oh like that that was portas that doesn't actually do anything.
And then in secret, these Democrats will just pass yeah, legislation and regulation.
Is that just kill conservatives And that's why we've we've lost control of a
lot of aspects of government. To be fair, in Tennessee, I think
they very much overplay their hand, and we're seeing that in the state House.
You know, they're not the Republicans are not messing around. They're not
They're not playing around with any of this funny business. I don't want to
say a funny business, but any of this tom foolery. Rather. Um,
they're they're they're fed up and they see it for what it is and
it's they understand that. Justin Pearson and the quote unquote Tennessee three. Um,
all these they're just grifters who want they're fifteen minutes of fame to try
and turn it into something more. They see it for what it is and
they're not. They're going straight through it. They're not playing around, And
I mean I support them being spelled. I think they should have expelled all
three. They should have they should they should have expelled all three. Yeah,
but I mean they expelled the two the whole. It was one vote
that kept I'm blinking on the woman's name, but because she didn't hold the
megaphone. But that was an actual instance of them encouraging I don't want to
say, imagine if the roles were reversed that meme because you're lied Conservatives.
Yeah, it was bad optics. And well I think she really she didn't
get expelled by one vote, and it was because she didn't hold a megaphone
and she like apologized or something like that to to some people in the caucus.
So it means it's an interpersonal relationship thing, but very easily was twisted
by the media into something else. But to be fair, that's how it's
always going to be. The media is never the corporate media, the tattletale
media, the insert pejorative here media, whatever you want to call them,
uh, legacy shills, whatever, they're always they will never engage with doing
good faith. And the GOP Conservatives, Republicans, the donor class is always
going to make the naive mistake of thinking, maybe they'll give me, maybe
they'll treat me in good faith. They're not going to. They want to
see you dead, they want to see you bankrupted. They want to see
your town of filled de fent Anel. They want to see everything you stand
for it burned. They hate you. And that's one of the lessons that
we're trying to impart on our attendees. It's the one thing I'll be telling
them is it's difficult to run for office. You put a lot on the
line and you can lose, like if you're not indestructible. But it's important
when when you are running or when when you are an elected official, that
you realize the media is really never help to help you. There are instances
where they might quote unquote help you by attacking you, but they will never
engage with you in good faith. And the sooner you understand that, the
easier you will be able to navigate. But you know, as tr said,
the glory belongs to the man of the arena. That's right. That's
right. And the second part of that speech, or that that section in
the speech talks about how he basically spent the rest of that speech insulting people
who never even try. And the interesting thing about Theodore Roosevelt is he started
his career, his political career as a state representative, and he used his
first speech on the floor to complain or yell about the selection of their speaker,
who had been chosen by the Tammany Hall political machine. And I don't
I believe that speaker was not chosen. So his first speech was his first
victory. He went on this huge anti corruption shree that got him a lot
of publicity and newspapers from all across the US. We're talking about how awful
it was that more young people like Theodore Roosevelt did not exist in politics because
he was in his early to mid twenties at the time, and he after
that speech, he was attacked for the way that he spoke, the way
that he looked, the sheer brazenness of going against the political machine in New
York, but across the country people were looking at the reports of what he
was saying and doing and thinking, why don't we have more young people like
this? And the same problem then is still true today. Well, to
be fair, you know, even the conservative movement as it currently stands was
kicked off by a bunch of young men in their early to late just in
their twenties in general, but was in his twenties when he started the movement.
Right, It's it's always been that way. It's always been young people
who want to see a change in their lifetime for their for their for themselves
and for their posterity. That's that's always always been, you know, exactly
a lot of the quote the founders, at least at the start of the
revolution were be young as well. Alexander Hamilton, m a handful of others.
And I think that some people we're in, you know, the average
lifespan back then was like, you know, thirty three, so that's a
little different. But yeah, I mean, well those those infant mortalities brought
it down. But I mean it's the youth is the drive of history.
And I think we were talking earlier about our sponsors and and supporters and things
like that, and I think it's good for us that they realize that being
young is not necessarily a detriment um. There are there are always risks.
There's always a period of time where you have to radically shift your behavior the
way you think and kind of realize, wow, I am in the real
world, I am participating in the political process. I have to take myself
and this seriously. But once you've hit that, if there is a support
network of organizations of legacy or not. And people, even if there are
only a few years older older than you or decades older than you, if
they realize that this is something to cultivate, then I think it vodes well
for the kind of movement that we're trying to build. Definitely well does it
for us here then? As always, thanks mostening.