Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20240622

What impact would this have on the president s ability to fill vacancies under that kind of situation . Hard to know up front except it obviously suggests that the nominees will be more to the center rather than to the right or left depending on who win it is white house. But i think that part of that will depend on the mandate the new president has, if theres sort of a first nature to the next appointment. All sorts of questions like that. Any additional questions . Thanks very much. Could i take you up on your offer when you said you might look ahead to some of the cases to come and some of the thoughts of what the block busters might be . There are three of them a pretty good term. This last term will be hard to beat. I remember a couple years ago we had the First Health Care case. We said thats the term of the century. Then a first go at marriage. The court ended up not answering but we thought that was the term of the century then when you add health care and marriage together we had a term of the century its going to be hard to follow. But we have three things. A second look at fisher, and that sure makes you think that there are at least four votes and an attempt to put kennedy on the spot. Kennedy who has never voted to uphold an affirmative Action Program about whether the university of texas hybrid affirmative Action Program satisfies strict scrutiny again. And here again well have a look at what the court means by strict scrutiny. Second case, just granted brought by mike, represents a very serious challenge to the way public unions are run whether nonmembers of public unions can be forced nonetheless to pay for fees that the unions use for collective bargaining activities that may be said to violate the First Amendment rights of the union members. And theats both a very interesting and substantial question and a quite consequential case. Then theres a really interesting case that you might have thought we would know the answer to already but we dont. What does one person one vote mean . Whom do you count to draw districts . Do you count every Single Person . Which is what the census does . Or do you count the people who are eligible to vote . And this too matters a lot. At the moment most places count every Single Person but that means in urban centers off lot of children, people who are here legally from abroad but not entitled to vote, you have undocumented people. You have people whose right to vote has been stripped from them because theyre felons. You have prisoners. So you have vastly different voting power in different districts by voting power you mean eligible voters. And so the courts agreed to decide now which way that goes. And here again, you have great political consequences because at the moment urban centers, which tend to be blue, get more voting power than rural place which is tend to be red. And that the court at least conceiveably will recast that map. So thats three pretty good cases. That doesnt include the abortion based on the texas clinic restrictions. Quite surprising having stayed the texas case that they not take it. So there were going to have for the first time in a long time a real look at what real look at what casey means. Any others . Well, those are the big ones that are here right now. I think though the lesson that we saw from this term is that just because the court is willing to look at these cases, look at these very carefully, doesnt mean that the outcome is a fait accompli. Thats the lesson we get particularly from the texas versus Inclusive Communities case, the disparate impact howsing case. There we saw the court going out of its way to really look at that issue twice granting sert on the issue, twice having the chance to hear it, snatched from their grasp by those litigants who dismissed or settled their cases. And then finally a chance to look at it and saying, looks like all the appeals courts that have considered this issue for the past four years were right. Never mind. So yeah, were going to see those cases. Keep in mind that were going to see the results of those cases no later than june of a president ial election year. So the kinds of intuitional concerns about rocking the boat and bgs a very Disruptive Force in society and in the political system may be even more heavily on the justices minds than they are right now. For instance, if they a one man one vote ruling, depending on what they say coming right before a big election, might be the kind of thing that slightly increases from 0. 1 to 0. 11 the importance of the Supreme Court as a political issue. With that weve come to the end of our time. Please join me in thanking our panelists. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption contents and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org well have that live at 10 a. M. On cspan. Also today Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker expected to announce he as republican president ial candidate. That at an event in wisconsin. Live coverage beginning at 6 15 p. M. Eastern. This weekend on cspans road to the white house, two Major Political events from yea and were the only place you can watch and listen in their entirety. Spans road to the white house. We take you there. For the u. S. House in kabul. Brian this week, our guest is conservative pollster, commentator, and pollster Kristen Soltis anderson, author of the selfie vote where millennials are leading america and how republicans can keep up. Brian Kristen Soltis anderson in your book, why did you tell us there have been one billion downloads on something called candy crush . Kristen folks used to be kristen folks used to be focused on the television so political advertising became political advertising became focused there. Technology has changed so that not just 20yearolds, but of 60yearol not just 20yearolds, but of 60yearolds, what are they looking at . Their phones. For folks in the political world who want to reach into the future, understand what the future of political advertising will look like, things like candy crush or the latest game theres always something new popping up. Finding ways to get your message in front of people where they are paying attention is important. For a lot of folks who have been doing this for a while, they are used to advertisements on tv which is fine. Lots of folks still watch tv. Understanding the future of politics is understanding where attention is being paid. Brian why did you write this book . Kristen as someone who is young and republican, i came to discover in 2008 that no longer was it weird that i was a young person interested in politics, it was weird that i was a young republican. I wanted to get at the heart at why our generation thought that being republican wasnt for them. They thought that conservative ideas were not for them. It began as a masters thesis at johns hopkins, and eventually began to evolve into something bigger. As more and more republicans came to the realization that it would be hard to win elections if they are not reaching the next generation. Brian you grew up in florida. You talk about being a member of a Computer Club. Why did you get involved in a Computer Club . Kristen my dad is an electrical engineer. He was always focused on teaching his daughters about science, math, technology. None of us became engineers but i always had that exposure when i was young. I loved playing computer games. When i was a teenager, i was taking my magazine and programming the quizzes like what kind of prom dress should you wear . I would program them in basic into my computer so that instead of writing on my magazine, i would add up the score on a computer. I was always interested in technology. That has continued now. Even now i am not myself a software engineer, that interests me. Brian Echelon Insights is what . Kristen it is a Research Firm they try to predict who will win and they get it wrong. They dramatically overestimated mitt romneys chances. During the midterms, it was the democrats who got it wrong. They underestimated the republican landslide. I am somebody younger and i want to know what his next. They are not answering cell phones when we called so we have to find new sources of data that understand Public Opinion. Echelon is all about that, merging that traditional Opinion Research with the things we can learn from analyzing social media, analyzing consumer data. There is so much information that we give off when we go to a store and swipe the credit card or tweet, and that information can be analyzed to give us clues about what people think, like, and believe. Brian are you representing any existing politicians . Kristen we are focused mostly on nonprofits and clients dealing with ideas. We have done work in the past for campaigns and party groups but at the moment, we are waiting to see which candidates in 2016 are going to be interested in using data. Brian you went to the university of florida, what did you major in . Kristen political science. I already had a job waiting for me in washington, d. C. They hired me the summer before i graduated and it got me the exposure to the world of polling and research i originally wanted to be a press secretary i watched too much west wing and that was where my interest was. I was directed toward, hey, you should check out polling because i was good with numbers and spreadsheets and data but i loved communication so polling is the synthesis of those worlds. Brian we have some video that will trigger something you have written about. You can tell us why you think this particular person is important and good at what he does. [video clip] lets level the playing field. Programming is not so foreign. It is something most of us can do right now with just a bit of guidance. Programming is about telling a computer what to do. You need to express yourself distinctly and tersely and specifically because computers are dumb devices. It can only do what you tell it to do. So if we were to pick you can tell a computer to do something, say something. This would represent a statement. You can tell a computer to do something conditionally if something is true, go in this direction. You can tell a computer to repeat its self multiple times and do something again and again. Brian who is that man . Kristen he is a professor of Computer Science at harvard. He teaches an introductory Computer Science classes that huge numbers of graduates are interested in taking because they all want to be the next mark zuckerberg, or they understand that getting the world of technology and Computer Sciences is critical in any field in which you want to succeed. I had the opportunity to take cs50 during the fall, and they encourage us to take courses with undergraduates. You can take courses in art history, but i signed up for cs50 and everybody told me i was crazy but i enjoyed it and i completed the class and got a certificate and the way i got the certificate was through something called tedx where folks can take classes online. I get as much as the real experience as possible without actually being there in cambridge on harvards campus. I write about it in the book because in cs50 we understand how technology and data is going to be playing a role in the future of politics and a host of different industries. It is an interesting way of delivering skills and knowledge. Nowadays it is a model of a Fouryear College degree where you spend a lot of time in the classroom and live on campus that is no longer the norm. The nontraditional Student Experience is now the norm, is the condition. I think that republicans and democrats have not really addressed the question of, how do we deliver skills effectively to people who want to learn about Computer Science, who want to learn how to become a nurse who want to learn about any industry where you can pickup skills . So i really think that on this question of, who is providing Affordable College education . You are going to hear a lot of discussion about that. I think particularly from democrats will talk about the issue of student loans. In the book, i suggest that focusing on the loan issue is pretty narrow, that is about debt management. I think there is an opportunity is focusing on how we deliver skills and education in a costeffective, nontraditional way. Cs50 is proving to be a great example of how folks hundreds of thousands of people have access to taking this class and gaining skills and getting jobs in the technical World Without having to take out tens of thousands of dollars of loan debt. It is a model i would like politicians to Pay Attention to. Brian harvard is not known to be a bastion of republicanism. Kristen they were very nice to me. Brian why did you go there and what did you find among the students . Any republicans . Kristen there are some republicans. I was assigned six students to work with me, all of whom are very gracious and helpful. Harvard has a republican club. I was very honored to be able to speak with them early on in the semester. I think what is interesting about being a republican at harvard is, your beliefs are constantly being challenged but i think that makes you stronger i think the fact that you are constantly having to battle do ideological battle with the folks in your dorm i think it makes you better. Brian between two ferns. Here is a clip you refer to in your book. [video clip] zach what did you come here to plug . President obama i would not be with you if i didnt have something to plug. Have you heard of the Affordable Care act . Zach i heard about it. Thats the thing that doesnt work. Why would you get the guy who created zune to create your website . President obama it works great, and millions of americans have already gotten Health Insurance plans and what we want is for people to know that you can get Affordable Health care. Most Young Americans right now are not covered. The truth is that they can get coverage for what it costs to pay your cell phone bill. Zach is this what they mean by drones . President obama a lot of young people think they are invincible. Zach did you say invisible . President obama no, no. Not invisible, invincible. Meaning that they dont think they can get hurt. Zach i understand that nobody can be invisible president obama i understand that. Brian why did you refer to this . Kristen this is a video of obama going on a video podcast with Zach Galifianakis where he tries to encourage young people to sign up for Health Insurance. When the Affordable Care act was launched, one fear was that younger folks were not enrolled in Health Insurance because they think, i dont really need it. The odds of getting sick are low. If the insurance pools were only older americans, it could become financially unsustainable. The administration was focused on young people. This is one of the ways president obama went about doing it. This show gets huge viewership. After he went on this web show it was the number one driver of traffic to healthcare. Gov. It was important that the president do this because the website had a rocky rollout. The website kept crashing. He had to go convince young people, im sorry, please try again to make sure that the law could succeed. He wasnt just doing an interview on the sunday morning talk show, he wasnt doing an interview on the network news. He was going to this really silly comedy podcast and trying to deliver this message and millions of people saw it. Brian what was Zach Galifianakis up to when we watched . Kristen luckily, you are being much kinder to me. It is part of the joke, he is a comedian. He is kind of pretending that the president is boring, giving him a hard time. It is a variation on the shtick at Stephen Colbert used to have. Putting on this persona like, he is unimpressed with the guest and needles them over things they believe. Brian what is your message to republicans . Kristen my message is that it is ok to be funny, it is ok to put yourself in situations where you can take a joke or in here the president was ok with jokes about the website being quote, created by the guy who made the zune. That is a tough interview. The president knew that being able to poke fun at yourself acknowledging imperfection rather than putting up a front was the better strategy. Brian what is a zune . Kristen it is microsofts version of the ipod that did not sell particularly well. Brian lets go back to the debate to 1996. Bob dole, who is a funny man but this is not a funny moment. [video clip] senator dole this is important business, this election. I ask for your support, i ask for your help. If you want to get involved, tap into my homepage www. Dolecamp96org. Thank you. God bless america. [applause] brian one interesting thing is that bill clinton laughed. Not laughed at him, but it sounded like he thought it was a pretty smart move. What was that . Kristen that was the first time a candidate mentioned a web url in remarks, he was directing people to his website. He missed the dot. On one hand, it is an incredible historic moment. I a did an interview with one of the tech consultants for the Dole Campaign who said, as soon as he saw that clip, he knew the website would not be able to handle the traffic because this was 1996. He also talked about how because doles website missed the dot, it was marred with this mistake. I mentioned some of the News Coverage at the time was, dole tried to do something to reach out to the internet generation but failed in the execution because of that misspeak. Brian was his team not ready . Kristen they did not know that that was coming. That moment of panic i describe in the book where he and his colleagues realize they are about to get a whole bunch of traffic. We have come such a long way in terms of campaign technology. I write about this very basic they had to get a backhoe to put a t1 line into the house, and get Internet Service for 1000 a month. Nowadays, you dont get a gold star for having a website, or even being on twitter and facebook isnt cuttingedge anymore. Campaign technology in the last 20 Years Technology has come such a long way and the campaigns had to adapt. Brian how would you grade president obama and mitt romney from the last campaign . Kristen president obama set the standard for what campaigns need to be like in the future. In addition to being very effective at marshaling support through social media and organizing, the obama team was also very effective at collecting data and using data to pinpoint and turn out voters. In a way that republicans were not. The romney team there is a man who is now the director of Data Analytics for jeb bush. One of the smartest folks on the right, but he was understaffed. It was him versus the obama team. I think the Obama Campaign set the standard for what campaigns need to look like in the future. Brian what about mitt romney . Kristen he tried, and i think he ran a conventional online campaign. He wasnt doing much revolutionary stuff that the obama team was. I mentioned that the obama team was using online games as a way to reach folks, putting advertisements in need for speed and nfl. It is using things like xbox it is using things like xbox live where people are playing games all over the country, to feed ads. There are tons of technological opportunities. Republicans are beginning to catch up a little bit or they are beginning to use social media more effectively. In 2012, if you looked at mitt romneys facebook page, it was a lot of fundraising pleas, how many people were at the rally. As soon as the election ended, we started seeing pictures of him on the beach with grandkids. Him taking selfies with people in airports. It became more personal. I am hopeful that republicans will take away a lesson that you should be using social media as a way to show your personality. Pull back the veil, pull back the curtain. Help build that trust. Brian i want to ask you what you think of the next video we are going to show, these are College Republicans from youtube talking about republican millennials. [video clip] they still think guys in d. C. Can govern the economy. The old way isnt working. It closes down innovation. It makes us feel stuck. Now it is our turn. We have an opportunity to better ourselves. The next generation of leaders, and educators, whether we want to go about old ways or if we are ready for fresh ideas. We are republicans because our principles getting Old Washington out of the way of ideas that have the power to grow our economy. We know our generation can do better than washingtons failings. We know it because our generation has changed the way our world works. Brian as you know i know more than you probably because ive been around a lot longer politicians have been running against washington forever. What makes them think that this is going to matter now . Kristen this generation is more distrustful and frustrated than previous generations. Running against washington has always been an easy goto. We have seen a sustained level of the percent of americans who say we are on the wrong track. The percentage of americans who feel economically insecure particularly the Younger Generation who is coming of age in an era where the idea that they can immediately get a job that will pay them enough to buy a home and have a car and live the american the old American Dream is fading. They have so much student debt they cannot get the jobs they wanted with the career paths that would help them advance to make the money they want to lead the life they want. There is all of this frustration and i think what College Republicans the reason why you see as like that republicans have been unfairly branded as the party of old, the party of the past, the party of the American Dream that doesnt exist, the party of what has been. In order for republicans to win, they have to prove that they are the party of what is next. What is next is not centralized planning in washington or big bureaucracy, what is next is innovation. We saw lyft this was technology responded to the problem of inadequate transportation in urban areas. This is showing that the free market came in to solve a problem. I think that is why you see young republican saying, we are not about what is old, we are not about washington running everything. We are about putting power in individuals hands. They can disrupt the status quo. And try something new. I think poll after poll shows that there is an appetite among millennials for something new, something that doesnt look like it has always been. Brian here is this is also from youtube, from an Organization Called republicansarepeopletoo. Com. [video clip] kristen republicans like cats and dogs brian do you know the group . Kristen it is an outgrowth of a campaign that was done in the western u. S. Around mormons, that was all about trying to change the perception of the church of latter day saints, the idea that you put ads on buses showing a diverse set of faces to break the stereotype of what folks thought of when they heard the term, mormon. I think folks looked about and said, that is a successful campaign, lets try that republicans because republicans are misunderstood. What i have seen whenever i talk to young people is they do have this unfortunate perception of what republicans are. They think republicans are older, predominantly white religious, conservative, living in rural areas. A lot of data suggests that is not completely wrong, but there are different ways to be republican. I think one of the big challenges the party has is the need to demonstrate that being republican doesnt just mean you have to be religious, you have to live my way or the highway. We need to be reaching folks who live in cities, not just rural areas. We need to reach folks who dont go to church on sunday. We need to reach folks who are not married, maybe they are living with her boyfriend and have kids. Republicans do well among married, white, older folks. Young people are not going to church or getting married as much. Republicans need to adapt and reach a broader swath of voters. Brian put this together, what about the idea and you have a lot of statistics about people are having children before marriage, republicans are having children before marriage what has happened . Why the change . Kristen what i think is happening is that a lot of young folks have looked at their parents generation and they saw my parents maybe their parents got married early and then got divorced. They had parents or they saw parents generations buy homes and then the homes lost value. Or they saw their parents work at the same job for 2030 years and then during the recession they lost that job and, you know, were struggling to get something new. So they saw a lot of things that their parents generation was going through and have said, i want to live a little bit differently. Maybe i view buying a home is risky so i will just rent. I dont feel it as as good an investment. Maybe i dont want to get married. I dont think i am ready for that yet so i think i want to live with my girlfriend and we will see where it goes. It is sort of not wanting to commit to the big institutions that millennials have seen may or may not have worked out great for their parents in certain cases. I think that is what you are seeing this rejection and walking away from traditional institutions, whether it is marriage, religion, media this is sort of lack of trust well, i am just going to sort of do things my way. Brian why are you a republican . Kristen im a republican because i believe that when people are freer, society is better off, trade, when you have markets figuring things out, when you have people having the ability to be creative and innovative on their own rather than wellintentioned folks trying to manage everything in the government and make society perfect from some centralized washington, i think it is better off you know, i am a big cold war history nut. It is one of my favorite things. Growing up, when i first was in High School Learning about the cold war, you know, i was very interested in figuring out well, why is it that our system works . I had to do a debate in 10th grade history where we had to debate the resolution, capitalism creates a more just social order than communism. And i was engaged in that debate and i realized that capitalism and markets are good, that people having to work for what they get is good, that incentives are powerful. That we understand what incentives are an a matter and they can create better social so that was very early on as a teenager was when i first began to get these kind of republican leanings that have turned out into my career. Brian we have picked three people who are running on the republican side for president and just got little clips of what they talk about as being important and i want you to watch this and tell us how many millennials will go along with any of this. [video clip] as concerned as i am about who is answering the phone at the white house, i am concerned about who is answering the phone at your house when god calls and says, are you fed up . Will you wake up, will you show up, will you stand up, will you pray up, will you speak up, and will you promise to never give up . We have the ability, because of immigration, to be an emerging country again, to be full of optimism, to believe that our future is brighter than our present, but we have to fix a broken immigration system and do it in short order. What we need is a government that strengthens the family, not competes with that, and a government that with the president that values our traditional values, not try to replace them. In that realm, we are going to have an attorney general and we are going to appoint judges that dont just honor the second amendment, and all the constitutional rights, but also disband against the defend against the the discrimination that they are now facing. Brian can you get elected president if you hold traditional values . Kristen the challenge is, to what extent do we require fellow citizens to hold onto those values . That is the real divide that we are seeing. As i mentioned, lots of young people still hold faith. They may not go to church, but they are more likely to pray daily than were young adults 2030 years ago. There are a whole variety of metrics when it comes to drinking, drug abuse, sex, younger people are actually behaving in a slightly more conservative fashionthan young adults were 2030 years ago so when it comes to living more traditional values, in some ways, millennials are actually living a more puritan lifestyle than previous generations. But when it comes to a question of, what should the government expect from others and what should the government expect in terms of family values or what have you i thought i think it was marco rubio said, we need to make sure a government is not replacing values, that the government is not imposing and you can bend that around and say, we dont think the government should be in the business of defining family, but rather strengthening it. Lots of young people define family very differently than previous generations. Again, children before marriage, maybe they wont get married at all. They view family as being extremely important. Nowadays, young men and women are more likely to say that being a good parent and a good spouse is one of the most important things in life compared to young adults 20 years ago. They have actually increased in the importance they place on being a good spouse or parent or partner. When it comes to living family values, millennials are there. When it comes to how the government defines family and when it comes to rhetoric defining family or goodness as an adherence to a certain set of religious tenets, that is when you see folks back away. Brian youre a floridian. You saw two floridians there. Marco rubio and jeb bush. What do you think millennials will see and you had jeb bush talking about, you need to value immigration. Rubios parents came from other places talking about family values what will millennials see in either one of those men . Kristen bush has a huge opportunity because he has carved out a position of being forwardlooking. Most folks who do not follow politics closely see jeb bush, and they think he will be a lot like his brother and as i write in the book it was during his brothers presidency that millennials really began to start having their breakups with the Republican Party so in that sense, the last name would be a hindrance but i think governor bush presents himself in a way that he is very reformfocused, he is proimmigration reform, he speaks spanish fluently. The sky is the limit in terms of his potential to appeal to young people. The millennial generation is in and of itself extremely diverse. In states like new mexico, nowadays, more young people are hispanic then white. When you take a look at the exit polls from the 2012 election mitt romney won young, white voters. By six or seven points. But because the millennial generation is so diverse, by the fact that he lost young hispanics and young africanamericans by such huge margins, he lost the youth vote by 20some points. I think jeb bush understands that the Younger Generation is diverse. And understands the need to appeal beyond just white voters. I think that is why you cannot separate out appeals to hispanic voters in millennial voters because the age and race issues are so linked in that regard. Brian im going to show you a republican from the floor of the house of representatives in 1996 in california. His name is Duke Cunningham. I want to have you put this in perspective. This is 19 years later. Especially what is going on in this country right now. Lets watch this. [video clip] is there any shocking doubt that the same people that would vote to cut defense 177 billion, the same ones that would put homos in a military, the same ones that would not no, i will not sit down, you socialist. Mr. Chairman. I thank you, mr. Chairman. Parliamentary inquiry do we have to call the gentleman a gentleman if he is not one . Order. The gentlewoman from colorado is recognized. And the gentleman from vermont is recognized. The gentleman from california is he still here . My ears may have been playing a trick on me but i thought it heard the gentleman say something, quote unquote, about homos in the military. Was i right in hearing that expression . Absolutely, putting homosexuals in the military. You said something about homos in the military. Was the gentleman referring to the thousands of gay people who have put their lives on the line in countless wars defending this country . That is the group of people that the gentleman was referring to. I am talking about the military people in the military do not support that is not we were talking about, but you use the word homos in the military, you have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives brian there is a lot in there including the fact that Duke Cunningham went to prison Bernie Sanders looks about the same that he does today. He is now running for president. That was pat schroeder, the other person in there. What did you think when you saw that . What would happen today of somebody talked like that . Kristen i am concurring with Bernie Sanders. That nowadays would be there would be outrage. I unfortunately dont remember if there was any outrage when congressman Cunningham Said that in 1996, but nowadays, there would be enormous amounts of controversy and i think, rightly so. Folks would have to condemn it. The Republican Party you have seen the reaction, the various reactions to the Supreme Court decision around samesex marriage at the end of june. You have this wide variety of responses where you had some that were saying, we should not have to listen to the Supreme Court. But even there, those statements, i dont think you need to see the furthest right folks these days run for president , coming out and using slurs. Meanwhile, the folks at the top of the field, jeb and rubio, their states said, i dont agree with the Supreme Court ruling, but lets love one another and be tolerant and move forward. The Public Opinion on whether it is samesex marriage and gay rights has just changed so dramatically in the last 20 years. That is why it is only been the last year or two that somebody like Hillary Clinton has held the position that samesex marriage ought to be legal. The polling has changed dramatically and quickly and that is in no way shape or form representative of where the Republican Party is today. Frankly, that seems like an extreme voice even for 20 years ago. Brian have you heard of bob dornan . Ive heard of bob dornan. Brian bob dornan was a congressman from california. I dont want to look like i am piling on, but he was far right. As was randy cunningham. You have to see this, this is from 1996. The same day we were commissioning one of those big ships for a medal of honor winner, 2,000 wild, partying homosexuals, hundreds of them almost naked down here in our biggest most beautiful taxpayer owned and operated auditorium, the Andrew Mellon auditorium directly across the street from the actual starspangled banner, the 30 by 40 foot flag that flew over fort mchenry in baltimore is on the north wall of the National Museum of American History and directly across the street is this homosexual cherry jubilee. Unbelievable. Brian that flag, by the way isnt flying the way it did back a lot of things have changed. Why have we changed as a society . Not everybody has. A large percentage of young people in particular say homosexuality is fine. Kristen there are a few things at play. If somebody says they know somebody who is gay or lesbian they are more likely to then support things like samesex marriage and gay rights, and the proportion of americans who report knowing somebody who is gay or lesbian has increased. As more and more folks have come out of the closet, become open about their Sexual Orientation it is actually creating a cycle where more people know somebody who is gay or lesbian, feel more compassionate towards them, feel more comfortable, feel less hostile. It just goes from there, which encourages more folks to feel like they can come out of the closet. Etc. , etc. So you have seen this dramatic increase in the number of americans who say they know somebody who is gay and lesbian, particularly for younger americans, those proportions are huge. The second thing is this sort of change in approach to traditional religious values. As i mentioned, a lot of millennials do not identify as christians or muslims or jewish, or what have you but the way they express their faith and the way faith plays a role in their lives is more about love thy neighbor, treating other people with respect, am i doing the right thing, am i living a life of service than it is of placing judgment. This is a very nonjudgmental generation. The idea that you would judge somebody or call somebody a name or say horrible things because of somebody Sexual Orientation is just not acceptable to this generation. Brian you said in your book that you had bonded with a woman who is a canadian. Kristen yes. Brian here is a little bit of this woman. She is a member of the house of commons in canada. I want to ask you why you bonded with her and what we can learn from watching her. I am humbled to be here today and join the cabinet of Prime Minister stephen harper. Over the last few years, our focus has been on ensuring that canada continues to prosper, that we see job growth, economic development, and certainly being part of the western Economic Diversification team is something that im very excited about after spending years of my career prior to politics working in innovation and enabling research and development. Our focus with our government as we head into the fall will be ensuring canadas longterm economic prosperity. Im very pleased to be here. Im very pleased to work with our conservative government and i am wonderfully excited to see canadas future continue to grow and shine. Brian in her mid30s kristen she is phenomenal, she is a rising star in canadian politics. So i had the opportunity to meet her in 2013 in london, put on by an organization that tries to bring together young, right of Center Leaders from all over the world to get to know one another, to share what our challenges are, and it was there that i met michelle and a number of others and came to find that it is not just in the u. S. That the centerright party is sort of struggling to reach the next generation and she had some really great lessons and insights that i wrote about in the book. She also in addition to being bright and young, being a young, conservative woman, sort of unfortunately makes you you are considered an oddity in world these days. The because of your gender and your age, it is all that you would be conservative. She and i bonded because we had shared experience of folks wondering, how can you be young and female and conservative . I think she is a great advocate for centerright, promarket values and i am excited to watch her star rise in canada. Brian i come to you probably too old i would come to you and say, im going to run for office, what do you advise me to do based on all the stuff that you know about the Younger Generation . Kristen i would want to know what you stand for, what you believe. Even if those hadnt been formed into big broad policy positions, i would never advise somebody and i try to make clear that i dont want anybody change their position on something and pander to reaching young voters. What i i dont want to ask folks to say be more like democrats and that is how you will win i would say, tell me what you believe in and lets figure out how to apply to solving modern problems. What are are the things that nobody in this race is talking about that a lot of people care about, where are their places in this political market for you to enter and sort of have a message and ideas that will resonate. I think about it this metaphor that has been used about the pizza and the box. So Dominos Pizza was struggling to sell pizzas and they had to go on this Big Marketing campaign to say, we are sorry, we know you dont like our pizza, we promise it is different, come try it. And so the debate was, did they have to actually change the pizza . Or did they just needed change the box and the marketing and do the marketing and say we are sorry, we are better. I would say, republicans need to look at both. If youre running for office, your Marketing Needs to be savvy, your message the way you communicate doing things, going where young people are its critical, making sure you are not just doing shaking hands with folks at country clubs and airing ads on the news, but really trying to be innovative and get your message across in new ways is keep her but then i think that making sure that your ideas are new, as well, that what youre talking about is not just the same sort of ideas and talking post that folks have heard from politicians brian take for instance you mention in the book there is 1 trillion in student debt for college. What can you say to a young person other than the government is going to take care of it . Kristen i think this has been proposed by marco rubio i think he is one of the senators involved that would make it easier for folks to repay their loans in a way that is sort of a way that is linked to their income so that folks who have fallen on hard times can pay back a little bit later. It is not absolving debt, it is not saying the taxpayer will wave a magic wand and wash it away, it is saying lets make it more adaptive to the economic realities you are facing. That is just one idea of countless ones that is opportunities that are out there for folks to say, here is the problems they are facing, lets not spend a lot of taxpayer money internally to go away, but guess what, it is just more debt the generation will have in the future. Brian the last two president s have added 12 trillion in debt to this country. What do you say do young people care about that . What do they think about that . Kristen whether it is Something Like the National Debt or our entitlement, Social Security medicare, young people think that this is a problem. In fact, the challenges they think it is almost too big a problem to be solved. If you do surveys of young people and say, do you think youll ever see Social Security . Theyll say no. They want to be in charge of their own retirement, they dont think that Social Security is going to be there for them. They dont want the programs to go away, they dont want to slash them or engage they dont want to see Government Spending horribly slashed, they just assume that the problem is so big and they just have no sense of how we deal with it. I think the challenge for a lot of politicians on the right when we talk about things like that or entitlement reform is we look at it from an ideological point of view. We say we to limit Government Spending, because small government is good. And we need to reform these entitlement programs because limited government is good. And for a lot of young folks limited government in and of itself is neither a good nor bad thing, it just is. They want to know how with is going to the economy better . How will this make sure i will keep money in my pocket . How will this nation my retirement is more secure and less sort of less terrifying a prospect . I think republicans need to get better about talking about what they believe not in terms of ideological wins but in terms of real, practical outcomes for people because millennials are not as ideologically right of center and do not care as much about the idea of limited government as maybe the older generations do. Brian levin is somebody you speak highly of in the book. Here he is talking about the difference of conservatives and liberals. The difference between conservatives and liberals are profound. Conservatives begin from a constrained and limited notion limited set of expectations of what human beings can achieve. What Human Knowledge can achieve, what power can achieve her because of those low expectations, they value very highly the achievements we have in our society, the things that work. And they want to preserve them. They want to save the preconditions so those things continue to work. Liberals tend to begin from higher expectations, from a notion of greater perfectibility in a human being. Higher expectation about Human Knowledge, about human power. And for that reason, they start out with a sense of outrage about what is failing, because they think we can do a lot better, they dont begin by appreciating what is best, they begin by trying to undo and root out what is worst. Both of these things are very valuable and important and necessary. But they are quite different. Brian what is it about him that young people seem to like . I see a lot of reference to him. Kristen what i think he is talking about is why conservatism can be a more optimistic and forwardlooking ideological approach that, whenever i do focus groups of young voters, they not only say that they think republicans are older and backwards and backward looking, of the 1950s they also say that republicans are angry, the republicans are the ones sitting on their front porch, shaking their fists at the kids. I think what he is articulating is why conservatism is not necessarily the angrier side but rather the one that has humble expectations for what humanity can achieve and a desire to celebrate the things that we get right. The belief that inherently humans can wind up if we are humble about what we think Big Government institutions can do we can wind up being a little bit more optimistic about the future instead of believing that everything is terrible, and everything needs a program to fix it. I think that sense of cautious optimism can take root in a take root with millenials in and that joyful warrior posture is something that politicians think brian what evidence is it that any republican president and last 4050 years believed in smaller government, limited government . Kristen i think if you take a look for instance that when folks talk about you know ronald reagan, for instance, they like to talk about him as somebody who was in favor of limiting government if you take a look at defense defense is always the area where folks that sort of complicates the equation because republicans the last couple of decades have been much more aggressively prodefense, lets build a robust military brian what you think of that . Kristen i am of the view that there are a lot of bad people in the world, a lot of bad ideologies and we need somebody to keep us safe and that burden has fallen to the United States brian to continue . Kristin to continue. Now, that doesnt necessarily mean invading somewhere we have no ability to succeed and when it comes to where my generation falls on these issues, millennials are interestingly split. You have older millenials who remember advisedly the iraq war. We remember that this did not go so well. And generally, now take a more restrained approach toward active military engagement. On the other hand, younger millennialis, they are coming up in the era of isis, where it seems like the world is a very dangerous place and you have Vladimir Putin, who is making noise in ways that is troubling and so actually the Harvard Institute of politics poll of Young Americans that came out a few months ago shows that younger people and particularly the younger millennialis are open to the idea of boots on the ground to deal with isis. You have the Vladimir Putin who is making noise in ways that are troubling. This question of what a republican foreignpolicy view looks like its one that you will definitely see play out in this debate. Youve got the whole spectrum of views from marco rubio who is for a robust defense all the way to rand paul who takes a more libertarian view. That debate is still one that has yet to be hashed out. On the right. Brian do young people want to put on uniforms and go to war . Kristen you have started to see a sort of backing away from concepts like patriotism, which is troubling to me as somebody who considers herself to be quite patriotic. Backing away from labels and big institutions, you even see younger people nowadays who are less likely to say they think that the military will do the right thing. Huge majorities still do but it has been in decline and trust and big institutions. I think a for a lot of young people, they want to make the world a better place, they are very missiondriven but it is less about patriotism and and their own country, it is less about fighting wars and more about, can i start a nonprofit that will solve something . Can i create a new product or idea or technology that will alleviate poverty somewhere. Millennials are a very missiondriven generation, they want to make the world a better place and they are very confident of their generations ability to do so but they are looking for things like nonprofit service, and social entrepreneurship as vehicles for doing that. Brian back to a lot that you talk about in the book. There are two things that you talk about in the book. The first is a romney at from 2012 and we will have on from the Obama Campaign and i want to talk about each one of them. Kristin 0k. In the last few years, and america has been knocked down, 23 Million People cannot find work. 4 billion every single day. Somebody doesnt get a job done we have to hold them accountable. Obamas second term would be a rerun. We need somebody who can turn it around fast and that man is mitt romney. There is not much time left in and the future of our country is at stake