Speaker 1: I almost prefer you over zoom to in person.
Speaker 2: Harsh ask not what your country can do for you,
Speaker 2: ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: Mister girl. But you'll tear down this wall, read my lips.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty five. This is Steve Heyward sitting in James Lylyc's
Speaker 2: chair on top of a booster seat, and I'm joined
Speaker 2: with Peter Robinson today with a special guest who is
Speaker 2: Steve Hillman.
Speaker 1: So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 3: I agree, you'll never get bored with when and we
Speaker 3: never get bored?
Speaker 1: Well, Peter, here.
Speaker 2: We are without the dulcet tones and firm hand of
Speaker 2: James Lylac for episode seven thirty five. That's pretty amazing,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 1: Staggering? Absolutely staggering. Oh here's the good news. And having
Speaker 1: done seven hundred and thirty five, if we just keep
Speaker 1: doing these things, John pot Horritz and the boys and girls,
Speaker 1: that commentary will never catch up. I think that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I have to imagine there, how do they
Speaker 2: ever go back to get a magazine out?
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, And of course they will catch up.
Speaker 1: Of course they will of course they will. They do
Speaker 1: it five days a week. In fact, they've probably done
Speaker 1: ten thousand already.
Speaker 2: It could be, but I figured you were pard of
Speaker 2: the new Math, Peter, which you know, Yes, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Right, in the New Math, I'm always a step ahead
Speaker 1: of John.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well, now, you know, I guess we should
Speaker 2: start with two old Reaganites like you and me. Remember
Speaker 2: that Reagan fought a v a valiant effort while he
Speaker 2: was president to fend off protectionism and defend bolaires. He
Speaker 2: was a free trader. Now he did concede a lot.
Speaker 2: I went back into research on this recently.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh yeah, you would know, you of all
Speaker 1: people would know, you'd be the authority they were, go ahead,
Speaker 1: do you do the history. But here's my memory is
Speaker 1: he made tactical retreats. Yes, only in the interest of
Speaker 1: a strategic position, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The point is he compromised to stave off worse from
Speaker 2: his first days in office.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But I was startled to find out some particulars. For example,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty six, Reagan threatened Spain with a two
Speaker 2: hundred percent tariff across the board in order to get
Speaker 2: Spain to relax its restraints on American farm imports to Spain,
Speaker 2: and they did right. So Reagan was not a verse
Speaker 2: to playing hardball with the trade measures. There were literally
Speaker 2: hundreds of bills introduced in Congress, many of them by
Speaker 2: Republicans for tariffs and protection, and some of the trade
Speaker 2: bills that Reagan vetoed were by Republicans, one of them
Speaker 2: by strom Thurmon in his diary talks about how I
Speaker 2: had a veto at trade bill. It's a bad bill.
Speaker 2: I called up strom Thurman. He took it better than
Speaker 2: I thought he would. He said, so, yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: point is that you had a you might say, a
Speaker 2: trumpest bipartisan majority in favor of protectionism in the eighties.
Speaker 2: And and you know, I get impatient my libertarian friends
Speaker 2: who say, yeah, Reagan talk like a free trader, but
Speaker 2: he was a hypocrite because they ignored that he was
Speaker 2: a working politician at a principal man, but a working politician.
Speaker 1: You put the two of those together, and if you
Speaker 1: can't distinguish between tactics and strategy, you'll just not You'll
Speaker 1: make a hash of the Reagan record. You just won't
Speaker 1: get it exactly.
Speaker 2: And so now the odd thing is there is I
Speaker 2: think you'd say a week bipartisan majority now in favor
Speaker 2: of liberalized trade, maybe not complete free trade. I think
Speaker 2: Democrats are still protectionists at their core.
Speaker 1: But I mean I asked question when you talk about
Speaker 1: the when you talk about the weak majority in the
Speaker 1: old days of weak protectionist majority versus a week free
Speaker 1: trade majority today, are you talking about I hate the
Speaker 1: term elites, but are you talking about the hill essentially
Speaker 1: or are you talking about the general population? Because I
Speaker 1: have been very struck that in poll after poll after poll,
Speaker 1: the American people are against the majorities very but they're
Speaker 1: quite sizable majorities. It's two thirds or so. Thiniffs are
Speaker 1: a bad idea. Yeah, you know, what do you have
Speaker 1: in mind when you.
Speaker 2: I think it's both. I think there's a weak majority.
Speaker 2: I think it was a strong majority for protection in
Speaker 2: the eighties. I think it's a weak majority. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: you know the n After Treaty got through with a
Speaker 2: lot of Democratic votes. You know, Bill Clinton had to
Speaker 2: break arms to get it through and so forth, and
Speaker 2: reel out al Gore to debate Ross Paroe.
Speaker 1: You remember that.
Speaker 2: Famous moment thirty years ago. Yes, but so I think
Speaker 2: it's a weak majority. And then I think the public.
Speaker 2: You know, my hunch about that, Peter, is that people
Speaker 2: like getting inexpensive consumer goods. They say, the maid in
Speaker 2: China made in Vietnam on the labels, And I think
Speaker 2: in an unsophisticated way, they recognize the benefits of liberalized trade.
Speaker 2: It's benefited especially lower in common working class people, right,
Speaker 2: and I think they understand that tariffs could blow up
Speaker 2: and make their lives more expensive. Again, I don't know
Speaker 2: that's a I'm surprised there are more surveys that try
Speaker 2: to get at that more deeply because I've seen the
Speaker 2: same numbers that you have that people oppose it. But
Speaker 2: that may be an odd combination of Republicans who don't
Speaker 2: like trade protection and Democrats who are opportunists. So I
Speaker 2: think right now there's a lot of opportunists. I mean,
Speaker 2: my joke is this boy Trump is a genius. Think
Speaker 2: of the things Trump has accomplished in the last several months.
Speaker 2: He's made Democrats hay to Kennedy, We've been trying to
Speaker 2: do that for sixty years, right, Yeah, what else has
Speaker 2: he done? The other one now is that he's made
Speaker 2: Democrats come out against a tax increase, which is what
Speaker 2: a terriff essentially is, and in favor of free trade.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's you know, I don't go in for
Speaker 2: the three D chess stuff very deeply, but I do
Speaker 2: wonder sometimes what the political thought behind all this is,
Speaker 2: because it certainly confused the scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it has confused the scene at a minimum. So
Speaker 1: let's rehearse the argument, shall we? Very briefly? Excuse me?
Speaker 1: What I mean is, let me rehearse the arguments and
Speaker 1: then you tell me where I'm right or wrong, as
Speaker 1: I understand it. First. So, first of all, we have
Speaker 1: that we can grant. I think we can stipulate that
Speaker 1: even a very cursory examination of American history shows that
Speaker 1: the protectionist impulse, I would almost call it a protectionist temptation,
Speaker 1: is permanent. It is always with us. You are always
Speaker 1: going to find political figures, major political figures, at any
Speaker 1: given time, who are willing or insist on putting up
Speaker 1: protectionist barriers. Item one. Item two. You have the counter
Speaker 1: argument of Milton Friedman. For example, Milton had what I
Speaker 1: would call the strong free trade position, which is that
Speaker 1: it is always in your favor to engage in free trade,
Speaker 1: even if your counterparties are not we hear a lot
Speaker 1: about I can remember Milton saying, as you know, I
Speaker 1: knew Milton Friedman in his final years when I overlapped
Speaker 1: him for a few years at the Heritage at the
Speaker 1: Hoover Institution. In fact, his office was down the hall
Speaker 1: from so Milton would say, we hear a lot about
Speaker 1: Chinese dumping products in the United States. What that means
Speaker 1: is they're willing to give us their products for less
Speaker 1: than it costs them to produce them. If they intend
Speaker 1: to make us a gift, why should we object Over
Speaker 1: the longer term, the people who are out are the Chinese,
Speaker 1: not us. Okay, So that's the strong argument. The counter
Speaker 1: argument is that if you're going to engage in a
Speaker 1: welfare state. Actually I had this conversation with an economist,
Speaker 1: my friend Tom McCurdy, who argued the point with Milton
Speaker 1: Friedman himself, and Tom argues that if you're going to engage,
Speaker 1: if you're going to set up a welfare state, then
Speaker 1: you have to think twice about free trade, because you
Speaker 1: have two ways of helping the poorer people. One is
Speaker 1: income transfers and that runs through the tax system. The
Speaker 1: other is to increase their wages and that would imply tariffs.
Speaker 1: And if you use tariffs to increase their wages and
Speaker 1: benefit workers, you don't have to run it through the
Speaker 1: federal government. In a certain it is a tax, there's
Speaker 1: no doubt about that, but you don't have to send
Speaker 1: it to the IRS and get bureaucrats involved who will
Speaker 1: take the viig so to speak. And Tom said, in
Speaker 1: a certain sense, you could even argue that tariffs are
Speaker 1: a more efficient way of benefiting workers, the less privileged,
Speaker 1: less privileged persons in the United States. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: put all that together, and there's some pros and there
Speaker 1: are some cons. What do you make of it? Of
Speaker 1: the artica, I'm not yeah, I'm not sure I buy that.
Speaker 2: I think there are better arguments, one for in favor
Speaker 2: of tariffs.
Speaker 1: Better arguments in favor. Okay, give me your best argument
Speaker 1: in favor of tariffs.
Speaker 2: Well, let me just say make one comment about that,
Speaker 2: the argument you just gave, which is, tariffs may protect
Speaker 2: domestic workers' wages, but only at the effect of lowering
Speaker 2: the wages of workers overseas. And it takes a lot
Speaker 2: to explain why that's true. And I think that makes
Speaker 2: her stability in trading relations and so forth and can't
Speaker 2: be sustained over time, which is why it's likely a mistake.
Speaker 2: I think the argument in favor of tariffs is not
Speaker 2: their intrinsive sweet goodness or whatever Trump is saying about them.
Speaker 2: It's that they are an important tool for two reasons.
Speaker 2: One is when other nations are practicing predatory trade, which
Speaker 2: certainly would be the case of China, and they do
Speaker 2: that two ways, either by dumping or in the case
Speaker 2: of China, currency manipulation, which means that the basics straight
Speaker 2: up econ one oh one flows of currencies that would
Speaker 2: adjust their values, and then the currency we send overseas
Speaker 2: to buy stuff comes back here in the form of
Speaker 2: investment capital. It distorts all that badly. And then remember domestically,
Speaker 2: the theory about why trade protections that could be justified
Speaker 2: is the same as antitrusts. Right, we prosecute predatory pricing
Speaker 2: where someone credibly uses predator rate. That's right, Yeah, you
Speaker 2: want to crush your competition. Then you have a monopoly
Speaker 2: and you get monopo rents. As the economist would say,
Speaker 2: I think those are both sort of limited, and the
Speaker 2: basic idea the trade deficit is in and of itself bad.
Speaker 2: Is just I think economically illiterate and totally Trump seems
Speaker 2: to have bought into that.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether he is. It possible that he
Speaker 1: doesn't know better himself. I mean, the argument is Jonah
Speaker 1: mentioned someplace in the web the other day that if
Speaker 1: you go into whatever, you go into McDonald's and buy
Speaker 1: a hamburger. On the Trump argument, McDonald's is stealing from
Speaker 1: you unless they buy your Jeanes in return.
Speaker 2: Yes, John, you and I have been talking about how
Speaker 2: we need a tariff against McDonald's for their untrair trade
Speaker 2: advantages over us, especially with that predatory product that mcribb
Speaker 2: that he loves so much. Yeah, you know, Look, I
Speaker 2: think Trump's instincts and its policies are mostly fantastic. But
Speaker 2: I have joked over the years that I don't think
Speaker 2: he knows the difference between Friedrich Heydrich and the Selma
Speaker 2: Hayaks the problem.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It pains me to say this, but it's very worrying because,
Speaker 2: again going back to the Reagan example, the Reagan people
Speaker 2: knew from day one that if they didn't fix the economy,
Speaker 2: they couldn't accomplish anything else they wanted to do. And
Speaker 2: now the hazard for Trump, who I think has made
Speaker 2: the biggest bet of any president ever perhaps is that
Speaker 2: if he screws up economy, it's going to crush all
Speaker 2: the other great things that he's doing.
Speaker 1: So I think a correct as far as that goes.
Speaker 1: But b if you're going to try to save the economy,
Speaker 1: if you know, if you screw it up, you can
Speaker 1: get nothing else done, then you say to yourself in politics,
Speaker 1: as you know, Steve's sequencing matters, and this guy has
Speaker 1: decided to impose tariffs, caused turmoil in the market, shrink
Speaker 1: everybody's four O one K, and then extend his tax cuts.
Speaker 1: He only has a margin of three or four seats
Speaker 1: in the House on a good day. All you have
Speaker 1: to do. He's already lost four Republicans in the Senate.
Speaker 1: He has already he's got four Republicans McConnell, the usual
Speaker 1: suspect mckowski, Collins, but also Rand Paul have now voted
Speaker 1: against Trump to reduce or eliminate the tariffs on Canada.
Speaker 1: You just get this slight stirring in the Senate of
Speaker 1: the constitutional position of the Congress, which is that the
Speaker 1: Constitution gives Congress authority over tariffs and taxation, not the president. Well,
Speaker 1: if you lose rand Paul, you're in a position to
Speaker 1: lose three four or five a dozen in the House.
Speaker 1: And if you do that, as you're coming up on
Speaker 1: an extremely complicated, huge bill, to the centerpiece of which
Speaker 1: is to extend the tax cuts, and that fails, or
Speaker 1: it gets hung up, or it gets turns into a
Speaker 1: long protracted process, he will get wiped out in the midterms.
Speaker 1: It is to me, it is just a sa right,
Speaker 1: and then he's done. Then he's just done. Well, my
Speaker 1: big worry immediately, not the midterms, is this could screw
Speaker 1: up the tax bill. You can see things on that
Speaker 1: next right. Yeah, exactly what I'm saying. Exactly what I'm saying. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get out with I'll give you two more quotes, Peter.
Speaker 1: You'll like our instances that I'm getting animated on. I'm
Speaker 1: getting animated on the anti tariff side. But I mean
Speaker 1: as you are. I was about to say, gamely pointing out,
Speaker 1: but you're doing it more than gamely. You're granting real
Speaker 1: credence to the pro tariff It's particularly if he's using
Speaker 1: them just as a tool for if the idea is
Speaker 1: imposed tariffs to get to a world without tariffs. All right,
Speaker 1: that's sensible. You can argue about sequencing and how you
Speaker 1: do it and so forth, but at least there's a
Speaker 1: at least there he has tariffs become tactics in the
Speaker 1: interest of a larger and sensible strategy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, let me give you three quick quotes to get
Speaker 2: us out, because we're going forever on this one. Is
Speaker 2: you know, here we are, as we're talking, the stock
Speaker 2: market is crashing for a second day. And I remember
Speaker 2: there's a moment in the fall of nineteen eighty one
Speaker 2: when the stock markets started going down after Reagan's tax
Speaker 2: cut pass tax cuts passed, and a reporter, you know,
Speaker 2: a typical antagonistic border said, gee, mister President, wall Street
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to think very much of your economic policy.
Speaker 2: And Reagan's response was, I've never found wall Street to
Speaker 2: be a very good source of economic advice, which I
Speaker 2: thought was terrific.
Speaker 1: Right boom.
Speaker 2: But then I got to thinking about something a little older,
Speaker 2: back in the nineteen twenties, when Churchill was Chancellor of
Speaker 2: the Exchecker and facing a decision that is parallels this
Speaker 2: one in some respects, and it was when and at
Speaker 2: what valuation to return to the gold standard, which they botched. Yes,
Speaker 2: but he had a line that it sounds very trumpy,
Speaker 2: and he said I would rather see finance less proud
Speaker 2: and industry more content. That is, in substance what the
Speaker 2: Trump pro tear people say.
Speaker 1: All right, they want to, except that industry doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be content at all. I correct winging and whining
Speaker 1: and re shoring, as the term now goes very grudgingly. Well,
Speaker 1: in particularly these tariffs. Some there are industries that over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years has made a real effort
Speaker 1: to get their supply chains out of China, so they've
Speaker 1: put them in places such as the Philippines and Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Boom Trump puts on them as well. Yeah, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I'm not sure contented industry is quite the
Speaker 1: right way to put it.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I mean there's evidence that capital investment is
Speaker 2: pausing right now, which is a bad thing. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: of the uncertainty.
Speaker 1: But I did dust off.
Speaker 2: It's very rare that I would say anything nice about
Speaker 2: John Maynard Keynes, but he wrote a pretty good essay
Speaker 2: at the time called the Economic Conquences Economic Consequences of
Speaker 2: mister Churchill, And after going through a very coach and
Speaker 2: explanation about why they made a mistake in their valuation
Speaker 2: point for gold, he has a sentence which you can
Speaker 2: use right now. He said, what now faces the government
Speaker 2: is the ticklish task of carrying out their own dangerous
Speaker 2: and unnecessary decision. I have a hard time running away
Speaker 2: from that right now, but I'm hoping for the best.
Speaker 2: There's a lot more illumination we can bring to the subject, Peter.
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Speaker 2: Steve Hilton joins us. Now you may know him well
Speaker 2: from Fox News, but you should know him now for
Speaker 2: his brand new book called Cali Failure and Boy. For
Speaker 2: a native of California like me, and for a transplant
Speaker 2: like Peter. This is a subject near and dear to
Speaker 2: our heart and about which we have lots of thoughts.
Speaker 2: But we want to hear yours. So, Steve Hilton, welcome
Speaker 2: to the Ricochet Podcast.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic to be with that. I'm so happy we
Speaker 4: could do this.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 4: I don't know what you know. I feel terrible, Peter,
Speaker 4: you know, it's so why haven't I done this before?
Speaker 1: It's exactly exactly, and we see each other quite often.
Speaker 1: Actually we only live a few miles apart. We should
Speaker 1: simply start recording our own conversations. Oh, Steve, let me
Speaker 1: ask you the large question. Yeah, I'll give you the
Speaker 1: large questions. A touch of biography here so you can
Speaker 1: see why I really care about this question.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the Northeast. I had relations who
Speaker 1: had moved to California and written at the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, as it happens, and in the family
Speaker 1: collection we have letters that they wrote back to the
Speaker 1: men who are still farming northeastern Pennsylvania, and they said,
Speaker 1: come to California. You don't go through another winter again
Speaker 1: with just they were describing paradise. I worked for Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan in the White House. Reagan his old California hands
Speaker 1: ed Meese Linnofziger. They spoke about California as if it
Speaker 1: were paradise. They really loved it. It meant everything to them.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan himself used to say that if the Pilgrims
Speaker 1: had landed in California instead of back east, nobody would
Speaker 1: ever have bothered to discover the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: The state was that beautiful, It was that much of
Speaker 1: a paradise to ordinary working people, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: the families of Ed Mees and lindov Sigger and Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan were when they went to California. What went wrong?
Speaker 1: How could you take a state so blessed with talent
Speaker 1: and beauty and natural resources? What went wrong? Well?
Speaker 4: I first want to underline how much I agree with
Speaker 4: all those sentiments, and I'd add or add to it.
Speaker 4: It's not just the physical beauty, their magnificence of our
Speaker 4: landscapes and the diversity of them, and the weather and
Speaker 4: all those things. There's also something magical and inspirational about
Speaker 4: the idea of California, the ideal of what California represents.
Speaker 4: And to me, there's a spiritual, emotional, intellectual dimension to it.
Speaker 4: It's not just it's the most amazing place to live
Speaker 4: in that sense, or should be. It's that it represents
Speaker 4: the best of what I think of as America. And
Speaker 4: there's a line, right, I think it's actually the first
Speaker 4: line in the but I can't recall now, But which
Speaker 4: is this? I I feel very strongly about this. California
Speaker 4: means to America, what America means to the world. And
Speaker 4: what I mean by that is that I had this
Speaker 4: love for California even before we moved here, and it
Speaker 4: represented to me the best of what I thought of
Speaker 4: as America. And we can throw around words, but I
Speaker 4: think we all kind of have a feeling for, you know,
Speaker 4: innovation and energy and optimism and ambition and swagger and
Speaker 4: start up hustle and this sense of anything is possible,
Speaker 4: and also another dimension which is less referred to, but
Speaker 4: I feel it very strongly, and it very much connects
Speaker 4: to where things have gone wrong, the rebel spirit. That's
Speaker 4: why we've got so many people creating in this incredible industry.
Speaker 4: You know that's Hollywood, you know, centur Aco or Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley and so on. Inventions and just the rebels and
Speaker 4: the builders and the dreamers and the creat that's what
Speaker 4: it's all about. And I felt that very strongly. I'll
Speaker 4: just tell a very quick story, which is that back
Speaker 4: in the day when I was working for David Cameron
Speaker 4: before he was Prime Minister, there was a story, a
Speaker 4: cover story in the Spectator magazine and which of the
Speaker 4: print edition.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 4: I know people in America read the Spectator online, but
Speaker 4: it's I think it's the oldest political magazine in the
Speaker 4: world printed. And the cover story, the headline was California
Speaker 4: Dreaming and the theme of the article was Steve Hilton,
Speaker 4: David Cameron's policy guru, as he's developing the ideas that
Speaker 4: will drive the Cameron administration, is inspired by the notion
Speaker 4: of making the UK more like California. And that was
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, twenty years ago. Yes, that seemed
Speaker 4: like a good idea at the time, and now as
Speaker 4: we all we love thing because there's not a single
Speaker 4: policy advisor to a single political leader anywhere in the
Speaker 4: world that would want to make their country more like California,
Speaker 4: which just tells you how far and fast we've fallen.
Speaker 4: And we could go through the details, but the real
Speaker 4: answer to your question, I think I'll just very quickly,
Speaker 4: you know, get to that, which is the combination. The
Speaker 4: headline is why it's all gone so wrong in California
Speaker 4: is the combination of one party rule and really bad ideas,
Speaker 4: and that's what we've had. The one party rule has
Speaker 4: been achieved over the last couple of decades with a
Speaker 4: couple of that's mechanical and structural things. The building up
Speaker 4: of the government unions is a dominant funding block for
Speaker 4: Democrat politicians. This seriously hard to beat Democrat machine has
Speaker 4: emerged funded primarily by government unions. And I mean the
Speaker 4: other aspect of that, there's very important of the lawyer,
Speaker 4: the trial lawyers. Then there's a real issue there, but
Speaker 4: there's really the government unions that control them. So you've
Speaker 4: got this big machine that wins elections because they've just
Speaker 4: got a lot of money and activism and union members
Speaker 4: that go out and phone bank and work and all
Speaker 4: the rest of it. Secondly, very important and not discussed enough,
Speaker 4: is because of the fact that the policies that have
Speaker 4: caused this decline, that have given us these absolutely catastrophic
Speaker 4: outcomes in California, the highest poverty rate in the country
Speaker 4: for most of last year, the highest unemployment rate. Imagine that,
Speaker 4: the highest rate of unemployment of all fifty states. Right
Speaker 4: now in number two. You know that great progress the
Speaker 4: highest cost for every essential housing, gas, electricity, water, the
Speaker 4: worst business climate in America ten years in a row.
Speaker 4: So it's spectacularly bad outcomes. And the thing that's not
Speaker 4: discussed enough is that a lot of that, a lot
Speaker 4: of the policy that has led to that, which I'm
Speaker 4: sure we'll discuss, emanates from the legislature. And so what
Speaker 4: you've had is is a legislature that since twenty twelve
Speaker 4: has had a supermajority for Demo over two thirds majority,
Speaker 4: which means that they can pass whatever they want with
Speaker 4: no Republican input, no real constraint, and they've had no
Speaker 4: constraint from the governor because you've you had a governor
Speaker 4: that just simply hasn't pushed back on that. Jerry Brown
Speaker 4: a little bit did. That's why the decline has accelerated
Speaker 4: so much under Gavin Newson, because he really hasn't pushed
Speaker 4: back against what's coming out of the legislature at all.
Speaker 1: Too busy with podcast.
Speaker 4: Well exactly, and then you've got so why, But the
Speaker 4: supermajority is very important. It is not a legitimate supermajority,
Speaker 4: is the direct result of jerry mandering. Is very important.
Speaker 4: Everyone understands this California is a much more republican state
Speaker 4: than people think. People look at the supermajority and the
Speaker 4: way people talk about it outside of California. Oh, it's
Speaker 4: so deep blue. Caln never be Republican again. Well, actually,
Speaker 4: if you look at the average share of the vote
Speaker 4: in statewide elections since the last time Republicans won, which
Speaker 4: was twenty two thousand and six Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection, the
Speaker 4: average share of the vote for Republican candidates is forty
Speaker 4: one point seven percent. So that's not fifty, but it's
Speaker 4: not twenty either. But twenty percent is the number that
Speaker 4: for many years was the representation of Republicans in the
Speaker 4: state legislature. Because in two thousand and eight, voters passed
Speaker 4: a ballot initiative on independent inverticomas redistricting. That was the
Speaker 4: process was hijacked by Democrats. They're very good at that,
Speaker 4: and they completely distorted the intent of that ballot initiative.
Speaker 4: The superficially, yes, it was an independent commission with equal
Speaker 4: numbers of Democrats and Republicans. But now for this book,
Speaker 4: I spoke to people involved in that process. The maps
Speaker 4: were drawn up by government union members. The staff of
Speaker 4: the audit Department and whatever in Sacramento, and then they
Speaker 4: inserted all these criteria. One notorious one that they inserted.
Speaker 4: The original tent of the ballot initiative was to have
Speaker 4: districts formed around existing city county boundaries and so on.
Speaker 4: They added a new thing called communities of interest, which
Speaker 4: enabled them to in the English phrase, driver coach and
Speaker 4: horses through it. So you end up with this jerrymanned legislature.
Speaker 4: Instead of forty percent representation in the legislature, which is
Speaker 4: what roughly speaking, Republican support would would entail, it's not
Speaker 4: thirty five, thirty twenty percent right now, it's up by
Speaker 4: a little bit. So the supermajority pushes through whatever it wants.
Speaker 4: And then you combine it with the bad ideas, which
Speaker 4: is this ideology that has just gone has been let
Speaker 4: run rampant. And that's really what I try and define
Speaker 4: in the first chapters of the book. What does it
Speaker 4: mean when the phrase that I use is that California
Speaker 4: really has been treated like the Wuhan lab of far
Speaker 4: left extremism. They've been cooking up this.
Speaker 1: Experiment the same results too.
Speaker 4: Yes, right, And so what I've tried to do in
Speaker 4: the book is unpack what that is, because it's not
Speaker 4: enough just to say, oh, it's democrats. California is bad
Speaker 4: because we had democrat put it's worse than that. The
Speaker 4: outcomes are worse than anywhere else in America. So what
Speaker 4: really has been driving it? And so the the main
Speaker 4: trust of the book, the first part is to understand
Speaker 4: this ideology, this new leftism that has had these calamitous results.
Speaker 1: So Steve, I'm going to turn you over to Steve
Speaker 1: Hayward in just a moment to discuss the ideology and
Speaker 1: the policy. But first it occurs to me that there
Speaker 1: are people hearing you for the very first time who
Speaker 1: want to know why am I listening to a man
Speaker 1: who's written a book on California who has a British access.
Speaker 1: So I mean, your story is in all kinds of
Speaker 1: ways of California story in the sense that, like me,
Speaker 1: you're an immigrant. But briefly so that we can get
Speaker 1: to Steve and get back to the book, but briefly
Speaker 1: you'd better explain to you start in Hungary and get
Speaker 1: yourself here, get your family here, what was doing exactly?
Speaker 4: By the way, very beautiful moment, I had two lovely
Speaker 4: Hungarian moments. Why Hungry because my parents are Hungarian, both
Speaker 4: my parents, my stepfather is Hungarian. Everyone's Hungarian, the whole family.
Speaker 4: Most of my family still lives in Hungary.
Speaker 1: Finally they live Hungary for what reason?
Speaker 4: Well, my father and step My father was a sportsman
Speaker 4: in Hungary, pretty well known. He was the goalie for
Speaker 4: the national ice hockey team, played in the Olympics, pretty
Speaker 4: well known anti communists, got targeted by the regime, defected,
Speaker 4: I think that's the right way. He was playing in
Speaker 4: Berlin and actually went to the British embassy and ended
Speaker 4: up in Australia. My mother came in a less dramatic fashion.
Speaker 4: She was able to get to London for an English
Speaker 4: or something with English, learning English or studying something like that.
Speaker 4: Met my father actually working at Heathrow Airport in the
Speaker 4: restaurant there, the cafe. That's where they met in the
Speaker 4: early sixties. But my stepfather has the most interesting story.
Speaker 4: He actually really did. He was from a small village
Speaker 4: in the western side of Hungary, and he tells the
Speaker 4: story about how they when the Russians, when the Soviets
Speaker 4: came and crushed the revolution in nineteen fifty six, they
Speaker 4: heard on the radio the Russians are coming. The Russians
Speaker 4: are coming, and they said, okay, so we're going, and
Speaker 4: they literally ran. He and his brother and some friends
Speaker 4: they ran for the border with Austria. They climbed barb
Speaker 4: by fences. Half of them were killed in the attempt.
Speaker 4: Ended up in a refugee camp in Austria, and thence
Speaker 4: to England, where I was born, So that's the Hungary part.
Speaker 4: We moved here in my family and I twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: My wife who you know very well, Peter Rachel. She
Speaker 4: and she was then working for Google, had a big
Speaker 4: job at Google, running global communications and public policy for Google.
Speaker 4: I was working in ten Downing Street, a senior advisor
Speaker 4: to David Cameron, he's the Prime Minister at the time.
Speaker 4: And it was really the when our second son was born.
Speaker 4: It was just very you know, the traveling for Rachel
Speaker 4: back and forth California, the time difference. So we just
Speaker 4: decided to move and we really didn't have an intent
Speaker 4: of staying. Well, we didn't really think long term about it.
Speaker 4: We just thought, let's see how it goes. But there
Speaker 4: was a very, really, really moment I remember very clearly,
Speaker 4: which is four years in. We'd been living in the
Speaker 4: Bay Area to be close to Google. I was teaching
Speaker 4: at Stamford. That's the first thing I did, and then
Speaker 4: I did a tech startup and whatever. But twenty sixteen
Speaker 4: I went back to the UK to campaign in the
Speaker 4: Brexit referendum, which I felt very strongly about it. I'd
Speaker 4: always been especially since working in ten Downing Street and
Speaker 4: seeing the impact of the EU. I was very in
Speaker 4: favor of leaving and back there for a couple of
Speaker 4: weeks doing that, and I remember really clearly landing in
Speaker 4: at San Francisco Airport straight after the referendum and we
Speaker 4: were just taxing to the term. I really remember this,
Speaker 4: just looking out at the hills and I just thought
Speaker 4: to myself, Oh, it's so nice to be home. And
Speaker 4: then I thought, oh, that's interesting home. And really that's
Speaker 4: the moment when I realized and actually really de facto
Speaker 4: is all, you know, we really had no intention of
Speaker 4: moving but moving back to England. But it really is
Speaker 4: home in the deepest sense, not just literally where I'm
Speaker 4: raising our family with my wife and establishing our life here.
Speaker 4: We've now been here thirteen years, but just spiritually I
Speaker 4: used that word a lot. I just feel so connected
Speaker 4: to California. I feel at home here in a way
Speaker 4: I never have anywhere else. And then just to bring
Speaker 4: everyone up to date, yes I still have the accent,
Speaker 4: but I am an American now. I want to reassure
Speaker 4: listen views. I became a citizen in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4: Very proud American, but a proud Californian as well. You
Speaker 4: know this is there's nowhere better than California, and we've
Speaker 4: just got to stop this disastrous ruining of it, which
Speaker 4: is effecting us here but the whole country because California
Speaker 4: means so much to the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in spite of it all, you can say that
Speaker 2: I'm glad to hear that I'm a native Californian. But
Speaker 2: there's actually a deeper personal parallel. My British grandfather, who
Speaker 2: struck out from London as a young man to the
Speaker 2: some of the far eastern colonies, somehow made his way
Speaker 2: to Los Angeles in nineteen ten and never left. You know,
Speaker 2: he bought a little house and watched the Hollywood sign
Speaker 2: go up in whenever that went up in the thirties,
Speaker 2: whenever it was right, sort of seen it all, and
Speaker 2: you know, I grew up, you know, came of age
Speaker 2: in the sixties and seventies, back on that era. Maybe
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know the famous article worth
Speaker 2: finding James Q. Wilson from nineteen sixty seven in commentary
Speaker 2: on a guide to Reagan Country, and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: Long Beach is Iowa by the sea, and I can
Speaker 2: go on a long time about the importance of the
Speaker 2: aerospace industry, and it's declined at the end of the
Speaker 2: Cold War for being one important factor. And how we
Speaker 2: got to this point that I think is an important part.
Speaker 2: But you're onto the more important enduring parts, which is
Speaker 2: one party rule, bad ideas, unions and all the rest
Speaker 2: of that. You just said something there at the end,
Speaker 2: which is California is important to the country. Here's an
Speaker 2: odd thesis for you. California is what has brought the
Speaker 2: Democratic Party nationally to its lowest public approval ratings in
Speaker 2: its history of the history of polling right. And the
Speaker 2: reason I say that is California has always been the future.
Speaker 2: We always used to like to say that when California
Speaker 2: was conservative or at least voted for conservative ballot measures
Speaker 2: and elected conservative governors. And I think Democrats looked up
Speaker 2: at some point in the last twenty years. Remember, Democrats
Speaker 2: were anti illegal immigration until very recently, even Obama made
Speaker 2: tough statements about immigration, right. I think they looked up
Speaker 2: and they made a simple conclusion that was wrong. It was, Oh,
Speaker 2: California flipped from being, you know, a red state to
Speaker 2: a blue state really fast because of immigration.
Speaker 1: Let's do that everywhere.
Speaker 2: And they said, we're going to flip Texas the same way,
Speaker 2: We're going to flip the whole country the same way.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that not only was that an
Speaker 2: unpopular policy, turns out a lot of those population groups
Speaker 2: that immigrated don't like it either. And we've seen this shift, right,
Speaker 2: And so I think that, you know, in an odd way,
Speaker 2: the fetish for California among liberals, it's what explains a
Speaker 2: lot of their current travel.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's why I use the analogy of the
Speaker 4: Wuhan lab and the virus, because it has infected the
Speaker 4: rest of the country, and so many of the bad
Speaker 4: ideas that have caused being a misery in destruction across
Speaker 4: the country really did start here. Whether that's you know
Speaker 4: what it's called global the climate legislation in California that
Speaker 4: we've been stuck with that. It's been so disastrous for
Speaker 4: you know, our economic competitiveness and jobs and people's living standards.
Speaker 4: That is the model for the Green New Deal, banning
Speaker 4: gas stows, gas cars, all that stuff that all started here.
Speaker 4: The race and gender ideology, the extremism there that started here,
Speaker 4: the ballot harvest. You know, you know, you can go
Speaker 4: through all of these things. Is actually pretty much all
Speaker 4: the bad things started here, but from this ideological kind
Speaker 4: of mindset. And I think actually it is connected to
Speaker 4: the one party all because when you are in that
Speaker 4: position of complacency, like you think, well, I'm never going
Speaker 4: to be beaten by the other side, and it just
Speaker 4: makes you open to take over by the extremists and
Speaker 4: the activists because you're not paying attention to your voters
Speaker 4: and your constituents. You're only thinking about the party and
Speaker 4: and and and and pandering to what they want, and
Speaker 4: so it throws up a one party rule like that
Speaker 4: throws up I think this an increasingly weak and useless mediocrities,
Speaker 4: these machine politicians. You see that now, and what California
Speaker 4: is producing on the Democrat sides, people like Newsome and
Speaker 4: and and Kamala Harris and Karen Bass, and I want
Speaker 4: to give you a really this may sound like a
Speaker 4: small example, but I think it's really significant in terms
Speaker 4: of why everything is a disaster. Karen Bass, classic California
Speaker 4: machine politician. Just the other day I saw her You're
Speaker 4: a post on X and it was I think, I'm
Speaker 4: getting this almost exactly right. I have just signed an
Speaker 4: executive order streamlining pers for rebuilding in Los Angeles. This
Speaker 4: is like a week ago. I think, oh, great, okay, fine, good.
Speaker 4: I mean four months too late, but I'll take it anyway.
Speaker 4: Then I just but the post was above a video
Speaker 4: clip from her press conference making the announcement. So on
Speaker 4: the principle of you know, do your research, I thought, well,
Speaker 4: I'll watch what she actually said. I did watch it.
Speaker 4: This is what she actually said. Remember, the post is
Speaker 4: I just signed an executive with a streamlining What she
Speaker 4: said was, I have just signed an executive order tasking
Speaker 4: agency heads with developing paths forward towards streamline. This is it.
Speaker 4: This is the problem because you have people, and that's
Speaker 4: the attitude and the mindset that is everywhere in California
Speaker 4: and explains because the root cause of all of the
Speaker 4: you know, when you look at the unemployment, the poverty,
Speaker 4: the housing costs, et cetera. So much of that category
Speaker 4: of problem, which really are the foundational problems, because housing costs,
Speaker 4: for example, are the number one reason people are leaving California.
Speaker 4: We lost representation in the Congress for the first time
Speaker 4: in our state's history. The projection is we're losing another
Speaker 4: three or four seats in twenty thirty. So because nothing
Speaker 4: is done, nothing gets done. You can't build anything. You
Speaker 4: can't build the water infrastructure. That's why our farming industry
Speaker 4: is being crushed. We don't build energy infrastructure. That's why
Speaker 4: electricity prices are so high, gas prices, that's why industries
Speaker 4: cost go up, and that's why they're leaving. Because you've
Speaker 4: got this bureaucratic mindset. You've got people who think that
Speaker 4: doing something equals tasking agency heads with developing paths forward
Speaker 4: and they sincerely believe that is action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that would have made Sir Humphrey Apple
Speaker 2: be very proud here that state.
Speaker 1: And if you know the old reference right, well, let
Speaker 1: me uh.
Speaker 2: So I mentioned growing up in the sixties in California
Speaker 2: with aerospace. That was my dad's business. But it was
Speaker 2: also when liberals built things. Pat Brown built water projects, dams,
Speaker 2: lots of schools, and abundant housing was allowed. That was,
Speaker 2: by the way, usually below the median price for the
Speaker 2: national average.
Speaker 4: It was the most affordable. It's unimaginable today, but California
Speaker 4: had the most affordable housing in the country. Exactly the
Speaker 4: typical house price in California, the median is this is
Speaker 4: the real number. So half of the houses homes in
Speaker 4: California are more expensive than this nine hundred and nine thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's unbelievable, it's insane.
Speaker 2: Well, here's a two part question for you, and I
Speaker 2: think they go together. I think I know which one
Speaker 2: you want to talk most about. I'll do in reverse order.
Speaker 2: I'm following great interest these abundance liberals who have come
Speaker 2: along like as reclined, and you know, we talked about
Speaker 2: it on this show last week.
Speaker 1: I wasn't on, but I you.
Speaker 2: Know, and then also, you know, in my time in
Speaker 2: the Bay Area, like you, I've become aware to spend
Speaker 2: some time with the Yimbi movement to progressives, I said, gosh,
Speaker 2: we're over regulated. And what I find in both cases
Speaker 2: is well this you may remember this, Peter, the abundance
Speaker 2: liberals we have now remind me of the Atari Democrats
Speaker 2: of the eighties, you remember them, Peter. They were going
Speaker 2: to be the They were struggling to compete with Reagan
Speaker 2: and his pro growth policy. So we're going to be
Speaker 2: Atari Democrats. And within months Atari moved to the Philippines
Speaker 2: and then ceased to exist. So I think the Abundance
Speaker 2: Liberals are not going to get very far with their
Speaker 2: unions and all the interscripts you know about. But part
Speaker 2: two is and you can skip that if you want,
Speaker 2: but part two you can't. What do you make of
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsome trying to change his tune so radically right.
Speaker 4: I'll put them together. So I'm very so abundance, Yes, agree,
Speaker 4: that's what we need. But who caused the scarcity? They
Speaker 4: did with their bad ideas and the ideology and the
Speaker 4: incompetence and the bureaucratism and all this that I detail
Speaker 4: in the book. If you look at the two years
Speaker 4: ago started a policy organization focused on California's policy problems
Speaker 4: and how we turn them around, called Golden Together, And
Speaker 4: if you look at the policy papers that we published,
Speaker 4: it basically is the abundance agenda. I mean, we literally
Speaker 4: have Our policy paper on energy is called Energy Abundance.
Speaker 4: Our policy paper on water is called Water Abundance. So
Speaker 4: no argument that we need that. Then you look at Gavin.
Speaker 4: I'm going to bring in Gavin Newsom so on this
Speaker 4: kind of fake rebranding tour in this podcast announ where
Speaker 4: he had Ezra Client on his podcast to talk about
Speaker 4: a bundle, and it was just it reminded me of
Speaker 4: the time a few years ago. Do you remember when
Speaker 4: you had those shocking scenes of the railway theft, the
Speaker 4: looting of the railway the trade trains in Los Angeles
Speaker 4: and we had that do you remember that and packages
Speaker 4: all over the railway lines.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, of course.
Speaker 4: And Gavin Newsom goes down there, he's the governor, literally
Speaker 4: does oppress availability in front of all this chaos and
Speaker 4: mayhem and says, what the hell's going on here? It
Speaker 4: looks like a third world country. I would say, yes,
Speaker 4: who's in charge?
Speaker 3: You are?
Speaker 4: So it reminded me of that, but this time with
Speaker 4: even less excuse because that was three years ago and
Speaker 4: he'd only been governor for I know three years. Now
Speaker 4: he's been governor for over six years. So he's sitting
Speaker 4: there with Ezra Clent and they're talking about abundance, and
Speaker 4: in this hilarious he says, yes, terrible the regulation, it's
Speaker 4: so bad, it's really terrible. On and on like this,
Speaker 4: Gavin Newsom is agreeing, and then at one point he said, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's on us, the sort of fake accountability. He's expressing
Speaker 4: that it's on us. No, well, who's this nebulous us?
Speaker 4: It's not on us, it's on you. You're the governor.
Speaker 1: It's you.
Speaker 4: And so that's what I think about the Gavin us
Speaker 4: to think there's this extraordinary detachment of himself from any
Speaker 4: kind of agency in these matters. So he says the
Speaker 4: party is toxic without any kind of acknowledgment that he
Speaker 4: drove a huge proportion of the agenda that made them toxic.
Speaker 4: He said on another podcast, we've become too judgmental, without
Speaker 4: actually acknowledging that he's the one that constantly smeared people
Speaker 4: who I mean, do you remember when he talked about
Speaker 4: people who didn't take the vaccine, didn't comply with vaccine mandates.
Speaker 4: It's like drunk driving, do you like killing people? Totally
Speaker 4: disgraceful smear right, And he's now saying we're too judgmental.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just unbelievable and so and then of
Speaker 4: course the obvious and hilarious if it wasn't so terrible.
Speaker 4: One about agreeing with Charlie Kirk that the biological men
Speaker 4: and girl sports is deeply unfair and then doing absolutely
Speaker 4: nothing about it. Even in the week where you have
Speaker 4: two Republican state legislators bringing forward legislation in Sacramento to
Speaker 4: you would to deliver what Gavin Newsom just told us
Speaker 4: he agreed with.
Speaker 1: Steve the future. It looks hopeless to me. And here's why.
Speaker 1: Super majority Democrats holding a supermajority in the legislature for
Speaker 1: more than a decade now Republicans the middle class leaving
Speaker 1: the state, fleeing the state. It has benefited some states.
Speaker 1: The state of Idaho has moved into the firmly into
Speaker 1: the Republican column. I have a friend who's in the
Speaker 1: state government in Idaho, and he said, it's really very simple.
Speaker 1: All the bad Californians moved to Colorado, and all the
Speaker 1: good Californians moved here to Idaho. Well, good and bad,
Speaker 1: they're not here anymore. You've got the unions running raising
Speaker 1: the union which you just described that is now enshrined
Speaker 1: in law and longstanding political practice. Here we have a
Speaker 1: Democrat demographic shift. Steve was talking about this that the
Speaker 1: Democrats found it so appealing that the large influx of
Speaker 1: Hispanics tend to vote Democratic that they tried to replicate
Speaker 1: that on a national level. That's a separate problem. Okay,
Speaker 1: it all looks pretty hopeless to me, and yet Steve
Speaker 1: has titled the second half of his book, Cali Future,
Speaker 1: What can we do well?
Speaker 4: The Cali Future is the policy plan turning things around,
Speaker 4: replacing this ideological extremism with positive, practical solutions that address
Speaker 4: all the things and more that we've been talking about.
Speaker 4: People can read that in the book. I am very
Speaker 4: proud of it. I think it's a really serious, comprehensive
Speaker 4: plan that, if delivered, would restore California to the glory
Speaker 4: that we all understand and that basic idea of the
Speaker 4: California dream, which is not complicated. It is a good
Speaker 4: job that pays enough to raise your family in a
Speaker 4: home of your own, in a safe neighborhood with a
Speaker 4: good school, so your kids have a better life than you.
Speaker 4: That's it, and we can get back to that with
Speaker 4: sensible policies, but they won't be implemented if we don't
Speaker 4: win elections and achieve power. So that's what you're really
Speaker 4: driving out. Let's address that I think that it is.
Speaker 4: First of all, let me just say very clearly, I
Speaker 4: think twenty twenty six, the next round of elections here
Speaker 4: in California, is our best shot at winning power in
Speaker 4: California for at least twenty years, without question. And here
Speaker 4: are the ingredients. I'm not saying it's easy or inevitable.
Speaker 4: It's going to be very difficult for the reasons we've discussed,
Speaker 4: but it is not completely impossible, and it seems to
Speaker 4: me it's looking more likely with time, not less. So
Speaker 4: if you look at the ingredients, first of all, the
Speaker 4: baseline is higher than most people think. It's not twenty percent,
Speaker 4: it's call it forty percent. That's already the gap is
Speaker 4: less than people think. Secondly, the gap is growing less
Speaker 4: all the time. In twenty in the last election, you
Speaker 4: saw really interesting signs of progress for Republicans. Ten counties
Speaker 4: flipped from blue to red, including but you know, Fresno County,
Speaker 4: the fifth biggest city. You saw ballot initiatives. Just to
Speaker 4: be partisan about it, Republicans won on all the key
Speaker 4: policy based ballot initiatives. So the big one that a
Speaker 4: lot of people paid attention to Proposition thirty six, which
Speaker 4: reversed the worst successes of Prop forty seven, the legalized
Speaker 4: crime up to legalized theft up at nine hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty dollars a day. Carmla Harris won Prop thirty six,
Speaker 4: which didn't completely reverse that, but did some good work
Speaker 4: on it past seventy percent, including in every county, a
Speaker 4: majority in every county. George Gascon defeated in LA. The
Speaker 4: mayor and da in Oakland and Alameda County defeated. Mayor
Speaker 4: of San Francisco defeated, and so on. You saw signs
Speaker 4: of progress elsewhere locally. So Huntington Beach is really interesting story.
Speaker 4: Huntington Beach not a huge city in Norwich County. It's
Speaker 4: like number thirty I think in the league table in California,
Speaker 4: but iconic surf city USA. So just over four years ago,
Speaker 4: the council in Huntington Beach was six to one Democrat
Speaker 4: Republican six to one. A friend of mine, Tony Strickland,
Speaker 4: put together a slate of candidates in twenty twenty two
Speaker 4: they called themselves the Fab four. They ran on a
Speaker 4: very very strong conservative common sense message, very trumpy, you
Speaker 4: could use that term. And they won control four to three.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And they went ahead and implemented a very direct and
Speaker 4: they did what they said they would do. They cleaned
Speaker 4: homeless encampments, They prosecuted low level crimes, they addressed the
Speaker 4: books in the library that parents were concerned about, They
Speaker 4: introduced about initiative for voter ID, etcetera. They did the
Speaker 4: things they said they would do. Just now, in November,
Speaker 4: they ran a bigger slates seven can. They called themselves
Speaker 4: the Magnificent seven. So for those who say won't win
Speaker 4: in California's room, but you have to detach yourself from
Speaker 4: President Trump, these guys literally called themselves the Magnificent seven,
Speaker 4: they won seven zero. So you've now got a clean suite.
Speaker 4: And just this week Huntington Beach rated by by wallet
Speaker 4: dot com or whatever best run city in California. So
Speaker 4: you've got a combination of political energy policy results being
Speaker 4: delivered and a city that was that's gone from six
Speaker 4: to one Democrat to seven zero Republican in four years.
Speaker 4: So these are ingredients. Then you look at the Latino
Speaker 4: vote exactly as you said, there's the largest group in
Speaker 4: California were now forty Latino thirty five percent White, fifteen
Speaker 4: percent Asian, five percent Black, five percent other. It's not
Speaker 4: true that Latino is a Democrat. It's more true that
Speaker 4: they're just disengaged and so don't know. I mean, if
Speaker 4: you just think about the lot of it, and in California,
Speaker 4: particularly hammered by these policies, especially the climate extremism that
Speaker 4: dries up the cost of everything. You know, telling people
Speaker 4: you can't have a single family home when that's your dream,
Speaker 4: you have to live in some apartment like we're North Korea.
Speaker 4: You can't have that truck that you been aspiring to
Speaker 4: because you've got to have some electric thing that you
Speaker 4: hate and doesn't make sense for your job. All of
Speaker 4: these things really really coret messages that can bring into
Speaker 4: the Republican fold working class Latinos. And that is the
Speaker 4: opportunity I think. And there's one more aspect to this.
Speaker 4: I think it's important for people to understand because sometimes
Speaker 4: you look at the percentage totals and you think, well,
Speaker 4: that's an insurmountable gap. But you know, even if you know,
Speaker 4: we're looking at it more positively, it's forty percent Republican
Speaker 4: sixty percent Democrat. That the gap is less than some
Speaker 4: people might assume, but it's still a very big gap.
Speaker 4: Big swing would be needed. But here's another way of
Speaker 4: looking at it that's particularly struck me after the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four election in California, which is the number of votes,
Speaker 4: the total number of votes that you would need to win.
Speaker 4: So twenty twenty six is a midterm election, and midterm
Speaker 4: elections have a lower turnout, and political people tend to,
Speaker 4: when they're projecting what the turnout would be, take the
Speaker 4: average of the last two and if you do that,
Speaker 4: the number you get for a reasonable assumption of how
Speaker 4: many votes will be cast in California in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: six is eleven point seven million. That's the number. So
Speaker 4: to win with fifty plus a little bit percent, five
Speaker 4: point nine million votes, that's your target to win five
Speaker 4: point nine million in California in twenty twenty six. In
Speaker 4: the presidential election just now, without even campaigning in California,
Speaker 4: not really doing anything, not spending any money, President Trump
Speaker 4: got six point one million votes in California. And so
Speaker 4: when people say there are no they're not enough Republican
Speaker 4: votes in California. You've got to convert all these Democrats.
Speaker 4: How are you going to do that? All these independent
Speaker 4: how are you going to convert them? There are enough
Speaker 4: Republican voters in California. To put it in a simple way,
Speaker 4: if every person who voted for Donald Trump in California
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty four votes for the Republican candidate for
Speaker 4: governor in twenty twenty six, that Republican governor candidate will win. Now,
Speaker 4: of course that is a big if because it's hard
Speaker 4: to get presidential level turnout in an off year. But
Speaker 4: that's a solvable problem. That's something you can do with
Speaker 4: a good campaign. You can and actually Republicans and in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four really accelerated ahead of Democrats in their
Speaker 4: ability to turn out votes and the whole delivery of those.
Speaker 4: You know, the swing state suite for President Trump was
Speaker 4: based on really good work turning out, registering and turning
Speaker 4: out voters, especially what they call low propensity voters, voters
Speaker 4: who tend not to vote. Latino voters come into that
Speaker 4: category from California. And so you put all that together
Speaker 4: and you say it's absolutely doable. We just got to
Speaker 4: get to those people who voted for a president. True,
Speaker 4: of course, it'd be wonderful to persuade Democrats and persuade independence.
Speaker 4: And that's true, you are on a big tent. But
Speaker 4: the argument that is impossible because they're just not enough
Speaker 4: Republicans in California has just been comprehensively disproved.
Speaker 2: Well. I think, Steve, you may know the numbers from
Speaker 2: this Democratic analyst David Shore, who I've met is very
Speaker 2: very good, and Peter, you're oblivious to these nerdy number things,
Speaker 2: I know, but you know he had report recently that
Speaker 2: noted that Trump won not because of higher numbers among
Speaker 2: white voters.
Speaker 1: It's been flat for Republicans for twenty years.
Speaker 2: All of his gains came from minority groups, every single
Speaker 2: one and beyond all that. But Trump won the popular
Speaker 2: vote by one point seven percent. Shor's analysis was I
Speaker 2: think his bulletproof says, if you'd had turnout of all
Speaker 2: eligible voters in the country, Trump would have won the
Speaker 2: popular vote by five percent, and some of his biggest
Speaker 2: gains were here in California, many of them in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles County. This is causing night sweats among Democrats who
Speaker 2: pay close attention and the rest want to ignore all this,
Speaker 2: So I think you're onto something there, Steve.
Speaker 1: Could you began we began this conversation by talking about matters.
Speaker 1: Really you use the word spiritual. Since then, you've been
Speaker 1: talking about practical politics and bolts of policy, and of
Speaker 1: course that's what you have to do to accomplish anything.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if I could ask a question. This
Speaker 1: is just occurring to me for the first time, so
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure that I can formulate it correctly.
Speaker 1: But we have forty percent Hispanic. I talked recently to
Speaker 1: my old friend Chris Cox, who served sixteen years in
Speaker 1: Congress from Orange County, a district in Orange County, and
Speaker 1: I said, how does the GOP come back? And he said,
Speaker 1: there's one answer to that question. Right now. The GOP
Speaker 1: in California is a white party doing reach out to Hispanics.
Speaker 1: It needs to become the other way around. It needs
Speaker 1: to become a Hispanic party reaching out to Anglos. So
Speaker 1: there's this problem that politicians' longtime political figures here understand.
Speaker 1: Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles once made a remark to
Speaker 1: me that struck me as very beautiful. But I don't
Speaker 1: quite know what to do with. But you, Steve Hilton,
Speaker 1: being the creative figure that you are, might know what
Speaker 1: to do with. There may be some kind of opening
Speaker 1: or some Archbishop GM has made this remark. Now, of
Speaker 1: course he was born in Mexico. A huge proportion of
Speaker 1: his people, the Catholics in the Diocese of Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: which is by the way, the largest Catholic diocese in
Speaker 1: the country, are of course Hispanic. And he said something
Speaker 1: beautiful can arise from this, and he spoke of the
Speaker 1: double founding of America. We all know, of course that
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independent States from seventeen seventy six. That's
Speaker 1: when Mission San Francisco was founded seventeen seventy six. So
Speaker 1: there's a kind of what was taking place, the European
Speaker 1: Anglo founding of America on the East coast, which of
Speaker 1: course built the country. All our great institutions are fund
Speaker 1: arise from that. But there is something something wonderful that
Speaker 1: at the same time there was a Hispanic founding here
Speaker 1: in cal and there's maybe there's some It feels to
Speaker 1: me as though this is one area where California could
Speaker 1: once again be the future for the country somehow or other.
Speaker 1: An openness a fundamental openness to the to Hispanic culture.
Speaker 1: But as expressed through practical politics, there is no recent
Speaker 1: immigrant from Mexico who doesn't want all the things that
Speaker 1: you just described. Schools that work, the ability to buy
Speaker 1: a car so that he can travel from the central
Speaker 1: Valley over here to do his job as a gardener
Speaker 1: or construction work, all of that. But there's some It
Speaker 1: feels to me as though there's some Anyway, I just
Speaker 1: put that to you, because you're so creative in these matters.
Speaker 4: Well, I agree completely, and I would say I've you know,
Speaker 4: personally been spending a lot of time really understanding that,
Speaker 4: you know, literally living with families over you know, in
Speaker 4: East La of the weekend, so I'm going to church
Speaker 4: with them and going to the baby shower, you know,
Speaker 4: and really unders standing it. And we know, it's really
Speaker 4: interesting to me. It reminds me totally. I mean, it
Speaker 4: really does remind me of the immigrant experience that we
Speaker 4: had in England as Hungarian immigrants. It's the same, it's
Speaker 4: exactly the same thing. You just want to work hard
Speaker 4: and climb the ladder of opportunity. And the Democrats who
Speaker 4: have been in charge, who've patronizingly assumed that these people
Speaker 4: are always going to support them. Have smashed the wrongs
Speaker 4: of that ladder one by one. The good job that
Speaker 4: pays well, well, we have the highest unemployment and we
Speaker 4: tax you so much that you don't keep enough to
Speaker 4: raise your family in a comfortable manner, a home of
Speaker 4: your own, and that's totally out of reach to people,
Speaker 4: A safe neighborhood. Don't make me laugh. A good school Latina.
Speaker 4: Do you know the proportion of Latino kids in students
Speaker 4: in our schools who who read at grade level about
Speaker 4: thirty percent. It's just unbelievable. You know, it's a crime
Speaker 4: what's being done. And so you know, all of these
Speaker 4: things are just that it's almost that it's not like
Speaker 4: their Latino it's just that they happen to be the
Speaker 4: largest group in our state, and so of course have
Speaker 4: to be central to everything that we do. But it's
Speaker 4: a universal message and Republicans get it and Democrats seem
Speaker 4: not to because they've crushed it. And I think that
Speaker 4: it's going to be a really really exciting moment when
Speaker 4: we can, like you know, make those two things come together,
Speaker 4: and it's just restore that California dream that is so
Speaker 4: simple and basic and beautiful. It really is, and you
Speaker 4: just it's and that's what this state is all about.
Speaker 4: And when people think of the American dream, I think
Speaker 4: for many, for decades, they thought of California, and that's
Speaker 4: what we need to get back to. I'm very confident
Speaker 4: that we can and hopefully before people, you know, sooner than.
Speaker 1: People think we will, before everybody leaves the state. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad Peter you asked that question about the
Speaker 2: second half of the book because you know, people only
Speaker 2: think about the main title, Cali Failure, to think it's
Speaker 2: only doom and gloom and how did we get in
Speaker 2: such a mess, But the second half Cali Future. So
Speaker 2: the whole title for listeners is Cali Failure, Reversing the
Speaker 2: ruin of America's worst run state. Steve Hilton, thanks for
Speaker 2: doing this book. Good luck, Thank you so much. Great
Speaker 2: to be with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: You know, Peter, we could spend hours talking to Steve Hilton.
Speaker 2: I know you probably have, and hopefully we'll get him again.
Speaker 2: There was one other part of his personal story that
Speaker 2: resonated with me. You know, I mentioned how, you know,
Speaker 2: my British grandfather came to California never left, but I
Speaker 2: didn't know about his Hungarian background. And you know, I
Speaker 2: never tired of mentioning my late friend Peter Shram, who
Speaker 2: left at exactly the same time after the Revolution of
Speaker 2: fifty six, and his father said, we're out of here,
Speaker 2: We're going to America. Why are we going to America, dad?
Speaker 2: And his dad said, because we were born American but
Speaker 2: in the wrong country. But his story of getting out
Speaker 2: is exactly the same. They might have been in the
Speaker 2: same group of people walking across the plain to get
Speaker 2: to Austria, having to dodge, you know, army troops firing
Speaker 2: at them, having to ditch their weapons at the border,
Speaker 2: climbing a fence, and then being in an Austrian refugee
Speaker 2: camp before coming to California. So I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: funny how small the world can be sometimes and yet
Speaker 2: here we are. So anyway, I was thrilled to hear
Speaker 2: all that. That was great stuff. That's a cheery note
Speaker 2: on which to end this week of tariff turmoil and trouble.
Speaker 2: And for listeners, you know what comes next. You're supposed
Speaker 2: to give us a five star review on Apple or
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Speaker 2: want to hear from you in the comments section at
Speaker 2: Ricochet four.
Speaker 1: Point Oh, Peter, great to see you. I hope we
Speaker 1: have you back again soon. Steve A pleasure, And I'm
Speaker 1: feeling I'm feeling encouraged about our beloved Golden State. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not easy to make me feel encouraged about
Speaker 1: this place, all right.
Speaker 3: It's hard to take your times right right Bye bye
Speaker 3: next week, guys. Oh, I'm James Lonnix and I'm at
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