Thank you for taking a break to be here today. You are brave to come and listen to me in particular. In an earlier career i was an attorney which is a group known not only for its brevity of speech and now for a long time ive been an academic which is a group not known for its clarity of speech so as i said you are brave to come on a friday to hear what i have to say. I thought i would begin with the 2012 election and as im sure you are aware after that election many people proclaimed the death of modern american absolutism. One commentator said the titanic is sinking referring to american conservatism. Another one observes that the conservative arguments we have heard in this election are going to be relics in a museum very shortly. Lots of people said conservatism really needed to change both its message and its methods if it so ever going to win an election again. It still being debated today. I noticed in this mornings wall street journal Governor Scott walker from wisconsin talking about what conservatives need to do to be relevant. His thought is they dont need to give up their principles but be stronger in their principles and people are looking for that kind of leadership. So in this book, we talk about that in the final chapter of the book. My coauthor gordon lloyd from the Pepperdine School of Public Policy and i talk about the future of conservatism in the last chapter. But we really began elsewhere and the great writer pearl buck said if you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. And so in this book our thought is to go back historically, to come back to today. In other words its not really a history book in the sense that we go back to live in an earlier era but we go back to understand the roots of conservatism in order to come back to Public Policy and politics today. The question is where do we go back to find the roots of modern american conservatism . The conventional wisdom is you go to the 1950s. Russell kirk, a great conservative political philosopher, william f. Buckley in the 1950s, National Review magazine was launched during the 1950s and so the conventional wisdom is that is where you find the beginning of modern american conservatism. And then amity shlaes this year wrote i think a very interesting book on Calvin Coolidge that proposes we ought to go further , to the 1920s because Calvin Coolidge was the beginning of modern american conservatism. I saw her week ago when i said the overly launched a coolidges cool movement. I said that probably wasnt easy to do because you see the cover of the book in the top hat. Hes not really a 21st century kind of guy but gordon and die in his book think the place to go is actually to the 1930s because in our view modern american conservatism is essentially a response to the new deal of the 1930s to Franklin Roosevelt. Response in the 1930s was the beginning of modern conservatism. That response initially actually came from former president Herbert Hoover. Lots of people debate how conservative hoover was as a president and as the secretary of commerce in the 1920s. I am happy to talk about that issue today feed like that we are looking at him in the 1930s when he was shocked really by the excesses of the new deal. The 1930s the new deal was really the height of regressiveism and we argue in this book that just as edmund burke the english political philosopher began modern conservatism as a response to the french revolution, we think there is a distinctive brand of modern american conservatism and in effect the new deal was our french revolution. The new deal changed politics, changed governance and so responding to our own french revolution Herbert Hoover starts we think to stake out the case for modern american conservatism. If you think about it in our view we are still operating under the new deal paradigm today. We argue that politics, American Economic policy today are essentially just a continuation of the new deal. This debate that started 80 years ago between progressives and conservatives, between roosevelt and hoover in the 1930s really is the frame, the frame of the 2012 debate as i will illustrate in just a minute and we think is still a frame for today. And in fact if you listen to the debates of the 2012 election youve really heard echoes of really all the themes im going to talk about today. In our book we look at three areas where Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt debated in the 30s and where we think that is still a key debate today. The first of those is liberty versus equality. This is one of the fundamental debates between progressives and conservatives. If you have read some of your American History you will remember that when the french journalist de tocqueville came to america in the 19th century he observed one of the main differences between the french revolution and republic and the American Revolution and republic is the french were really all about equality. They talked about liberty but they were really all about equality. He said by contrast the americans in the American Revolution is about liberty. They also talk about equality but what they are really after in americas liberty. This is one of Herbert Hoovers biggest complaints about the new deal is that it was turning america into a form of european totalitarianism. Hoover had spent the early part of his career as a mining engineer doing huge mining projects abroad and he had continued to live in europe when he did relief efforts. Food relief efforts during world war i and the postworld era. Belgium,avel in Herbert Hoover is a hero for essentially saving the belgian people from starvation as well as in other countries. One of the things hoover noticed during all that time in europe was that it was giving way to various forms of totalitarianism, socialism, communism, eventually nazism and fascism and then he came back to this country. He was shocked because in the 1930s he thought roosevelt was voluntarily turning us over two o forms of totalitarianism. In fact if you look at two cartoon icons of the 1930s if you will Herbert Hoover liked to talk about the rugged individual and Franklin Roosevelt said no it is really about the forgotten man. These are really two great cartoon icons of the 1930s. Hoover argued america is about equality of opportunity and its about individuals having the freedom to decide how they want to live their lives and to pursue that and so america is about equality of opportunity. Franklin roosevelt said and this is actually a little shocking to me, he said straight out in the 1930s the equality of opportunity is dead in america. You cant get it anymore. So what we have to be about in this country is equality of the outcomes. We have to design Public Policy around the forgotten man or sometimes he said around every man not around individual freedom. This i think is precisely the debate today. When people talk about income inequality and how we need to raise taxes on the wealthiest and we need to raise the minimum wage, what they are really arguing for is this equality of outcomes society. This is the way, the form in which that debate is continuing today. And so we go into this in our book. I dont have enough time to go into it in depth today but if you look at the data, the data is not as clearly supportive that there are massive income inequality problems as it sometimes claimed. Im sure you all brushed up to see robert reischs documentary about income inequality. Its hot in california and its maybe not quite as hot here in washington, d. C. We also argue more importantly is income inequality is the right question to be asking and inequality of opportunity and society isnt the right question income mobility. Are people able to move up and down the income scale not whether their incomes are actually equal. When you look at studies of income mobility what you find is we still have a great deal of mobility of income in this country. Unfortunately these studies lag timewise. They are comprehensive, difficult to do but studies of income mobility from 199,016,005. Out that we have a great deal of income mobility. It divides income into five quintiles and from that study what you find is half of the taxpayers during that 10 year period move from one quintile to another. You find that half of the people in the bottom quintile of income during the 10 year period move up to a higher quintile income which i think you wouldnt normally believe if you were just listening to the inequality debates today and then even a fourth of the people in that top quintile drop down. There is even mobility going down. Its not like the upper 1 as they always call them get their and stay there. Even they experience mobility so it sort of works up and down the scale. Thats really the question we should be asking about income. Are people in this Society Still able to find their place and move up and down . And the evidence suggests that is the case. And then of course the very fundamental question, is it really the governments business to be regulating peoples individual income . As Herbert Hoover pointed out the big problem when government tries to do equality of outcomes is that people become economically dependent on the government and sort of lose the american spirit of entrepreneurism, of liberty and choosing what you want to go after. We quote this book that came out by Lucas Eberstadt in which he points out that mitt romneys inartful political statement about 47 of the people being dependent on government is actually pretty accurate. Its 49 are receiving government payments of some form. I think we should have exactly Herbert Hoovers concern. What does it do to this spirit and the will of the people in there have fully dependent on the government . And the think again this is precisely the debate that we are having today. And so we feel like one of the problems that conservatism has is that its not really getting out the liberty message the way it was articulated in the 1930s. I think progressives would like to turn the liberty bell into the equality bell. Sorry my art is not better. I couldnt find a good equality bell but i think one of our problems today is that liberty has become a bit of an abstraction and when you ask people what about liberty, what about liberty . You dont know that we have any loss of that and im going to talk a little bit more at the end of the talk about how we address that. This whole idea of liberty and equality is one of the big debates both then and now. The second topic of debate is limited government versus Big Government, and theres a wonderful quotation reminding us that has always been part of the American Republic from the declaration of independence about king george iii. Jefferson writes he has erected a multitude of new offices and swarms of officers to rest our people and eat their substance. And i think that can be well set today of a Big Government. We suggest in her book that thereve probably two ways to look at the government versus limited government. There is a quantitative way and in fact there are several quantitative ways and there are qualitative issues. On the quantitative side there are lots of ways to add up how Big Government has become or how far away we are getting from limited government. One would be to simply add up the number of federal employees or especially nonmilitary civilian employees, which of course is that an alltime high. You could add up the pages of the federal register. Government regulation obviously again in an alltime high and frankly in the last few years growing at an exponential rate. The most traditional way to do the quantitative analysis is this chart that i have here which is the federal Government Spending as a percent of gdp. And in the early days of the republic from the founding say to the new deal it was generally 2 or 3 . Government spent 2 or 3 of gdp although there would be spikes during wartime and as you can see now we have gone to the 25 level. When my generation, the baby boomer generation, really gets on the entitlement train on Social Security and medicare and medicaid and health care that number is going to go up much further. In fact to a range that is untenable for government. We are talking about greece levels of debt and spending. So, i think from a quantitative angle this is really a concern. Hoover on the other hand was really more concerned about the qualitative aspects of the government. Government in his day wasnt all that huge. His concern was how much of our lives is government running . How much is the quality of nature of our life really impacting and controlled by government . And so one way i look at that is well, how is the federal government doing in terms of taking over more of our lives . One example we mentioned in the book is the classic local state issue has always been education. Everybody would agree whats the one thing thats local and yet today if you ask teachers and educators whats the primary influence on k12 education, especially on k12 reform, education reform they will say the federal government. Starting i would say with no child left behind in the last decade, continuing with race to the top grants today. What the federal government has essentially done is bribe states. They cant force them but they can bribe them with cash to follow their federal approaches. So we have essentially the last decade federalized education. Health and welfare was always part of the states purview but once again with obamacare i cant call it that now. Its the aca now. Obviously health care is now essentially federalized. So, this would have been hoovers concern, how much of government control and this was roosevelts big thing. We need more regulation or economic regimentation if you look at areas of our lives and areas of state and local policy taken over by the feds, that really is a serious problem. The last issue we take up that we think is very much a then and now comparison is constitutionalism. In this part of the book, we found in our research two great speeches. One given by Herbert Hoover on Constitution Day in 1935 and one given by Franklin Roosevelt on Constitution Day in 1937 so two years apart. Its just a classic comparison and contrast. Roosevelt begins his speech by pointing out that the constitution opens with the expression we the people. And he said so, this reminds us that the constitution is a peoples document. Its not a lawyers document, it is a peoples document. It was done by the people and for the people and what that means is according to roosevelt when the constitution gets antiquated and a little out of date and he was giving us a 150 Year Anniversary of the constitution we the people can fix that. We can take it over and change that in any way we want and accommodate it to today. If we need regulation and people ask if thats unconstitutional we shouldnt have to worry about that. You will remember he tried to pack the Supreme Court to get more judges on there to quit slowing down his centralization and regulation agenda, unsuccessfully it turned out. But he finally got enough judges to go along to begin the cycle of increased regulation and the regimentation. So this was roosevelt. The irony is if you look back on the new deal there were no constitutional amendments that were part of this new deal revolution. Of course the constitution says this is how youre supposed to change it. You are supposed to change it by passing and adopting amendments. There were no of amendments in the new deal. The only amendment in that timeframe was to say the president can only have two terms after roosevelt had multiple terms. It was all done by reinterpretation or by workarounds and i will talk in a moment about how we do that today. Hoovers speech is quite different. Hoover starts with the first 10 amendments of the constitution and he says what this reminds us of is one of the main purposes of the constitution is to protect the people from their own government. Its the exact opposite of the roosevelt view. The rest of his speeches about federalism and he says we have this great system of federalism. Checks and balances, balances of power making sure nobody can get behind the wheel of the government and start running over people or running headlong in one particular direction. He said all of this apparatus here is to make sure that the founders called it the cool deliberate sense of the community is carried out, not some minority or majority faction of the people. Of course if you look at the debate today this is exactly the debate we are having today. Roosevelts we the people in the constitution may call today the living constitution. There are all kinds of claims out there that the constitution is antiquated and prevents us from tackling the Serious Problems of the day. There calls for constitutional conventions and calls for just ignoring sort of the checks and balances because that is really slowing government down. There are workarounds and i dont know if you followed the National Popular vote act where people who dont like the Electoral College say we know we can never get an amendment to eliminate the Electoral College so we will just do a work around and we will say that if enough states pass a law requiring electors to vote for the winner of the National Popular vote then we have effectively won the Electoral College and that is getting a fair amount of traction. Again, rather than manning up if you will and amending the constitution, we do these workarounds and we make it a living constitution to get rid of its anachronisms. So our final chapter then is about the future of conservatism. At the beginning of this chapter we admit we have two authors in this book and we have written together over the years. When we sat down after the 2012 election which is when we were fishing this look we had a disagreement about the effect of the 2012 election. One of us thought that this was a no country for old men moment. The ruraljones is texas sheriff. As he comes up against the drug money, the amazing weaponry if you will, and the drug trade and traffic in his area, he just said, you know this is too much. , i can cant handle this anymore. He was overwhelmed. Im going to have to give way in terms of my leadership. That is how one of us felt in 2012. Effectively, a new majority had come together, a majority that was progressive and not conservative majority that had younger voters, that had a lot of people who were receiving government assistance in one form or another that were constituting a new majority that essentially wanted government to pick up the tab for what they wanted government to do. And if that is the new majority , then, in his view, that was a no country for old men moment. He wasnt sure how we would put a stop to progressivism. The other author was more optimistic. If we stayed with the hollywood movie theme, he was mr. Smith goes to washington. Everything is going to be fine. Harold wilson, former Prime Minister of britain, said a week in politics is a long time. You have seen that it here lately. Three weeks ago republicans were dead and now the democrats are dead for the blowup of obamacare. A week in politics as long time. Sure, the people get carried away but one election doesnt decide the future of conservatism or progressivism. The American People are centerright, he said, and if you give them a chance they will come back to their senses. What we decided was to ask hard questions that conservatives need to answer and ive just listed two of them here that we think are important. One is, does liberty still resonate . If you go back to the history of conservatism and if you had to pick one theme that is the essence of conservatism i dont see how you could avoid picking liberty. For edmund burke individual oferty was the essence modern conservatism. When Herbert Hoover started speaking out against the new deal his speeches were called , the challenge to liberty. That is how he saw the new deal, as a challenge to individual freedom. Conservatives historically what conservatives are about is economic, religious and political that is the heart of conservatism. But the question is does liberty still resonate with people today . Has liberty become just an abstraction to people that is part of their daily lives . I live in california obviously and when my wife and i were discussing some redesign in our home and i said i need a new showerhead. This one is kind of clogged up and i would like a more powerful one. We cant get that kind of showerhead because its illegal here in california. I said, well, but i want these knobs. We cant have these knobs. Those are not permitted where we live. I said, if i cant have my shower maybe im over regulated. It was one of those moments where liberty was not an abstraction for me. I cant get a shower so ive got a problem. If you lived in new york city there was a time when you couldnt buy a 16ounce soft drink. You could buy as many eight ounces as you want and you could accumulate 32 or 64 but you couldnt buy a 16ounce. A lot of people looked at the silliness of that and said liberty is not really a n abstraction if you cant buy the kind of coke you that you want to have. One of my children just got finally his first fulltime job with benefits and you do the math and you see you are paying taxes until march, april and in may, and younto think, well im understanding a , little bit more of the power of the state. Its not such an abstraction. And if i may say i think the American People are having one of these nonabstract liberty thoughts right now when their personal Health Insurance policies are being declared illegal by the federal government. If we go back to those two icons of the 1930s, the rugged individual, the forgotten man, we think american policy works best when policymakers think of both of those when they are making policy. The individual who wants freedom who wants to be able to work and , get what he or she needs and then the safety net to protect the forgotten man, the person who may not be able to succeed as the individual. But when we have gone off one deep end or another is when we have had problems. If you take health care the last , time the government worked on health care in the 1960s, the great society, medicare and medicaid what was the solution . , the solution was for the individual and you worked at your employer generally and your employer gave you a certain kind of health plan and you negotiate with your employer perhaps to get the kind of plan that you wanted. And then for the forgotten man , the addition of medicaid and the addition medicare and the building of the safety net, the extension of roosevelts new deal safety net. That is how the forgotten man was covered. In obamacare, i think theres a huge tip now to the scale that the American People are only now seeing. In order to cover the uncovered , and im not an economist but hoover economists have pointed out that probably only about 15 of the American People could not get Health Insurance who wanted to get it. So in order to meet their needs we had to federalize the whole system. Now people are waking up that its illegal to have the policy. Its not just whether the president promised it but its also a liberty moment. I cant have this policy that i worked for and we all agreed that i would have. Its now illegal to have that policy. They just restated that yesterday in california. We are not going to allow those policies to be. Instead you need a more expensive policy that probably has things that at least in the case of my children in their things that they dont want. 20s, when liberty becomes less abstract it becomes more real. And i think that is a question conservatives have to wrestle with. How can we make liberty real to people . That is at the heart of conservatism. The second question we raised is the time for conservatives to give up on values . There a lot of people today saying this is the time we need to get rid of all these crazy social conservatives, christian conservatives and the difficult social questions that they keep raising. Certainly in california where i am from we have lots of people who would be fiscal and economic conservatives but who on social issues would be moderate, would be liberal, would be libertarian who are not really interested in a lot of the attention to those issues by government. But one thing we concluded in this book is we have to remember that conservatism has always had some kind of value space values based component. Edmund burke, again the father of modern conservatism said that we needed a manly regulated liberty. We couldnt have been under regulated liberty. In order for liberty to work, we need a manly regulated liberty. The founders also knew we were going to have a free society that works you have to have a virtuous people. You have to have virtues. Otherwise freedom doesnt work. Our concern is that we not, conservatives not throw out the baby of values with the bathwater but instead probably conservatives have to work on having in our view less specific , less concrete values and be working on a broader set of values that makes the Free Republic work. Ronald reagan is being quoted saying just because you disagree with someone 20 of the time doesnt mean you cant work with them on the other 80 . Unfortunately conservatives have gotten down to where if we disagree on 2 we cant be friends anymore. Im sorry, we cant work with you. Thats going to be a losing proposition. Rather than throwing out that it seems to us conservatives need to move towards some broader sets of values. We also suggest that conservatives have two we learn federalism themselves. They preached this federalism message but when one of their favorite pet issues is at stake they are just as happy to go to the Supreme Court. We complain about judicial activism but we are right there going to federal court in going to the Supreme Court. If we believe in federalism they probably have to practice that ourselves and not make every issue a federal issue. So that is sort of the argument that we make. I think of the old story in closing about the husband and wife who are having a conversation. The husband says to the wife i just have to ask you, if i lost everything. If i lost the house and if i lost the car and the boat would you still love me . The wife thought for a moment nd she said yes, i would miss you, but i would still love you. Well, why i tell that is after 80 years, progressives and conservatives are still kind of joined appear together. Conservatives havent dropped from the scene and progressives are still trying to expand the new deal and add new things to very conservatives are in their wrestling against it. Its really amazing if you look at the relevance of conservatism is really amazing that obamacare is passed and signed into law over three years ago. Still being debated and worked out today. So conservatism isnt dead and liberty is an dead as you look at this obamacare is debate over a law thats been in effect for over three years. The political philosopher wellmark kendall says the American People are centerright in their hips, in their constitution if you will. I think the argument that we make in this book is that conservatives could just give mericans some philosophy and some ideas for their heads and their hearts they would match up with their innate conservatism in their heads then conservatives might have a hopeful future. So that is our book. Thats our essential case and im happy to open the floor for questions, comments. You dont have to format as a question. If you want to just make a comment, thats great. Just dont go on superlong. Ets open the floor. And see what you might want to say. Yes, sir. You spoke of checks and balances and this administration has been very good at the workaround youre talking about towards spending spending has become automatic with a continuing resolution. He Nuclear Option, how can congress claw back some of the uthoritys or powers that we delegate with these past administrations . David unfortunately, this is not a republican or democrat problem. Whoever is in power doesnt want to give up executive power, it seems like. In the bush administration, we had signing statements and executive orders at each administration seems to ratchet it up further. Its not a problem with a particular president or administration. I would give a couple of hopeful signs. One is probably the only institution you hear willing to roll the clock back a bit is the u. S. Supreme court. We have two or three justices who openly say now that we are not so much slaves to every Court Decision that has been decided ahead of us to say im sorry, we were wrong when we made that decision and go back to a time before the most recent Supreme Court decision. That gives me some hope that if some of this is challenged in the legal sense, we have some justices on the Supreme Court that might be willing to clawback or rollback the clock to some decisions that have been made. The second hopeful sign and this is always painful to wait for, i of history. Er view it goes so far and finally you think, ok enough and i will just say just a quick story im from california. The California Republican party has apparently hit absolute rock bottom. Theres a two thirds democratic majority in the legislature. We had a new head of the republican a few weeks ago and we were giving him all of our Brilliant Ideas about how they could do a better job and he said thats all interesting but i have one goal and ive forgotten how many seats they have to win two undo the two thirds majority, he said the only goal i have is to save the three seats and we would give im a round of fabulous strategies and ideas and communications. Thats great. I only have one goal, i want to win the three seats. So the Republican Party has gotten so bad that they finally did again and say heres the thing we have to rollback. I would guess in the penjuler view, it will hit a stage where you had some democrats joining some republicans on the recent obamacare vote. He had not many but at least three joined on this Nuclear Option vote. That was painful because wait until the pendulum gets too far and its really painful. Those are a couple of hopeful forces i see out there. Other questions, comments . Yes . From my perspective, i dont know if its accurate or not, but it seems like people who disagree with conservatives, whether its moderate left or more liberal, maybe its the same vice versa, but dont see a difference between conservativism and extremism on the right. So im wondering if you agree with that perception and maybe if thats a big problem with why people are saying conservatism is dead, because they see it all as extremism . And lastly, how can conservatives separate themselves or make it clear that you can have conservative principles and values without being an extremist . David that is a good frankly, politicians, and i know thats the environment in which we work, are not the best at communicating philosophical conservatism because it comes down to a win lose on particular issues and conservative politicians have to win at the end of the day. That is the game. Its a challenge who they are listening to. Thats why we wanted to write a book like this because it seems the core message of conservatism is not as extreme as Many Political leaders made it sound. We think some of the political leaders have made mistakes in embracing the win at all costs strategy, where conservative means are important along with conservative ends. If you study william f oakley, conservative means are not as extreme as some of the things conservatives have been doing in recent years to win at all costs. In our view, we think the political leaders need to think about conservative means as well as ends. Yes, they may not win every round doing that, but it seems it will make their message more consistent in the long haul. Secondly, this basic message of liberty. Conservatives have to find a way to make that resonate with people. Personal liberty is not an extreme message. But at the end of the day, we acknowledge the message of progressivism is sometimes friendlier, if you will than the conservative message. Theres the famous quote from William F Buckley who said conservatives are the people who stand at work history yelling stop. Thats not as appealing. I worked for senator bob dole and he was called senator gridlock. And he didnt mind that. He would say there are a lot of bad ideas in washington and somebody needs to stop them. That was his idea of conservatism. He had a good line, some college gave him an honorary doctorate degree and he said at least they have to call me dr. Gridlock now. But this is one of the problems of conservatism. When you hear a problem, progressives are quick to design a government solution for the problem. We feel your pain and we are going to design a solution to picture pain solution to fix your pain. But conservatives, the next part of the message does not get heard, we believe an individual freedom. We believe in churches and all of these association approaches, the older president bushs thousand points of light. We believe in those things. We believe in a safety net but not a complete takeover of health care. I think the conservative message is a harder one to get across, but we think it can be improved and liberty can be made to resonate with more people. I dont want to guide too much off my own children who are in their 20s. But they are not interested in politics. They are fairly typical of a generation that needs to be reached in one of my sons said all politicians are just trying to tell us how to live. And he thinks that of conservatives and liberals like. Alike. Conservatives are trying to tell them what to do on social issues, liberals are trying to tell them what kind of insurance they can cannot have. He is just frustrated with all of them. Maybe that is part of our messaging maybe the messages liberty, lets keep the government out of your way so you can decide. Even for 20 years old, that can be a favorable message. Any others . Es, sir. I think a lot of it was answered or gave ourselves a couple of questions when we saw the governor races between christie and cuccinelli. The media highlights the polarity within the Republican Party. I would like to ask in regards to modern conservatism, between the centerright and conservatives themselves, who would be right in this instant and how can we create more of a unity within the party rather than a separation . David it is tricky because at the end of the day, what conservatives have to do to be most relevant is when the president ial election. And to do that, you have to find somebody who both embodies the messages and can win. It is a lovely thing to write a ook of lyrical philosophy, but basically you have to find a candidate that can win. A lot of people saw in the last election that mitt romney was not a philosophical conservative. He was more of a pragmatic businessman and maybe was not at the core, bought into all these olicies and then we have the debate now between christie and cuccinelli example. One thing i think conservatives have to do is quit killing each other and to give each other a little room to breathe. Right after the election, Chris Christie has beaten his opponent by a moderate landslide and says after that im a conservative. And in my view, he has had this sort of conservative impulses to lead with conservative policies. Hes obviously in a blue state and not going to have the same success that you have in my home state of kansas, for example. In my view, you cut him a little slack for the kind of place he has to govern. But then republicans come in and call him part of the coalition or have the rhetoric to suggest hes not a real conservative. It seems to me they have to give each other a chance to play that out rather than cut each other off at the knees. And again, i think when conservatives or republicans get frustrated enough with losing, then they come to their senses and do that. I doubt if its going to be a book or speech thats going to make them do that. I think its going to be too much losing that makes them do that. And that is painful to watch. You have to wait until the train wrecks before you can go ahead and fix things. One more or shall we get back to work . Thank you very much for coming today. I know going back to ancient conservative history might not be the most interesting thing to do, especially when washington is the here and the now. I always like to quote what former senator alan simpson used to say is washington is the only place where sound travels faster than light. I know it is a fascinating place and i appreciate your taking time to come and think about this today. We have a copy of the book. Chapter five is the current, most relevant part, so if you want to read one piece of it, take a look at that. Thank you for coming and we will stand adjourned. [applause] youre watching American History tv. Covering history cspan style with event coverage. Eyewitness accounts. Rk ivel films, lectures in college classrooms. All weekend, every weekend on cspan 3