i think you did but we got that. another thing to talk about is the republican establishment. which way are they leaning in the past, they have not leaned toward your candidate. no. why should they? newt has made a whole career of being anti-establishment. when he was elected speaker in 1994, it was a disruption not only to democrats but to republicans. newt subsidiaried the send owneriowne seniority system for chairman. a lot of republicans who wanted ear marks and pork barrel politics, he said no. so of course, they are mad. i want to talk about bob dole had to say. hardly anyone who served with newt in congress has endorsed him and that fact speaks for itself. in my opinion if we want to avoid an obama landslide in november, republicans should nominate governor romney as our standard bearer. so look. . bob dole suggests that gingrich
the freshman class with him are supporting him now or endorsing him now. he did make enemies. that you can t dispute. i don t dispute it, but i would look at it from a different perspective. when he came to washington, he didn t come to make friends, but to shake up power. when you do that, you have to take power from some. even though they were freshmen, they didn t understand why they won, and couldn t understand why newt was putting people in chairmanship over them, because he broke up the seniority system. when you take power away from them, they re not going to like it. there s lots of people waiting in the wings, because he restored rick tyler, it s interesting to hear your perspective.
historically, we ve been around 18% of our gross domestic product coming in as revenue. and now we re under 15%. the last couple of years. the last time we were that low was preworld war ii. right. also keep in mind, this is where i found it very difficult in washington to get proper context to numbers. because every number is multiplied by ten. it s kind of an odd way of doing math. but if you look at our own tax code that we essentially have in place now, our tax code did generate over 18% in 2006 and 2007. which is a pretty good number, but still keep in mind that our historic spending has been at 19%. so what you had had said, and i ve noticed some other freshmen members of congress are starting speak out, you came in with this whole change message, and suddenly you re findings it s very hard to have much influence, you know. those of us that cover this place, we can tell you that, because the seniority system i happen to think seniority is
we want you to vote, you re not going to get our money, or look at how the tea partyers went after scott brown. what you re seeing is, the whole seniority system is also impacted by, you ve got the tea partyers. john boehner can t get any votes, is the challenge i would have to what jimmy s saying. it strikes me that the-ov other piece of this is, particularly now that chairman or leadership don t have, maybe it s the pork system, i don t know, that s part of my question. they don t have a lot of leverage if a group of members that is backed by an outside group that can raise money for them supports them, they re on much more of an even footing than hay used to be. look i m losing the audio here. that s okay, professor. can you hear me now? yeah. all right, go ahead. look, if you look at the current the budget ceiling debate that just concluded, in fact, a majority of the tea party caucus voted with the speaker. you know, i agree with the lady that you could see the influ
can help elect or not elect. they have an unfair advantage, and they ve taken advantages of it over the years. what you ve seen happen is that while the pay isn t really what it should be for government workers, because the politicians didn t want to bust their budgets and raise taxes, they gave lots of concessions when it came to pensions, when it came to health care benefits, and when it came to work rules. the whole seniority system that the teachers have. right. and that s what has to be overhauled. and you see live protesters here. this fight is going to go on in wisconsin, and again, it s happening in ohio, happening in indiana, happening in california, new york, new jersey. different in each state. but the basics are the same. dpofs lo governors looking for money in state employees pension and health care plans. you spent time reporting on libya and the u.s. options in libya, you ve been back and forth to the region many times over the years. you were listening earlier, d