Right mind people of the intellectual history of conservativism. I tell students, youd be surprised to learn that the rock stars at the manhattan cocktail parties used to be conservative. Talk about that rich history. There was a time not that long ago when the knock against conservatives was that they were too intellectual. There were two academic who couldnt appeal to the common man. Its completely the opposite today. A lot of people think the intellectual father of conservative is aristotle which puts conservatism in very good intellectual company, but certainly the modern leader or the modern conservative is edmund burke, the british parliamentarian who famously was very supportive of the american cause against the french revolution. This is a guy who had been incredibly influential and if you look at the sort of battle that he had against thomas paine, you have the birth of the right and left even to this day. Burke believed in preserving tradition and western servo playstation didnt just miraculously happen. It was the product of accumulated wisdom. Modern conservatives. Postmodern, right right. Right, as a reaction to fdr and the new deal. You have brilliant men, mostly men but also women who contributed to that. People like russell kerr and richard weaver. Also the William F Buckley and rich tradition that in recent years weve gotten away from it as weve dumbed down conservatism to win votes. If you agree there are still contemporary in the movement. Thomas stole and others. They seem to be marginalized and theyre not getting as much attention as some other folks. Why do you think that is. I think part of it is the product of our culture. You have the inner attainment wing of the Republican Party who is really dominating right now. You can then write something really fabulous but a Rush Limbaugh says something about the flu or and coulter so something on cable news, what will get the most attention . Really, the book, too dumb to fail, the fail, the title harkens to the too big to fail mentality where in the case of too big to fail you obviously had Financial Institutions who had incentives to take risks that we, the taxpayers, would bail them out. I think theres a Similar Movement in government. If you have a perverse incentive to Say Something controversial or provocative even if the conservative movement cumulatively is harmed by it. Yes, i hear you there. I want to get back to talk radio because i think bringing up Rush Limbaugh is important. First i want to read from too dumb to fail for a moment. You you write, too many of todays conservatives, deliberately shun academic excellence, experience, to geishas notice and expertise in politics. Many of the people doing so are not as dumb as they pretend to be, even those rare conservatives who possess a wealth of knowledge feel obliged to act. I think thats what youre talking about, this desire desire to put on an aspect of dumbness. When did not become a thing . The book is called too dumb to fail and then theres a thing that i believe is called too smart to win where you basically have the same ignorance or this everyman populism. A lot of people who do this are highly intelligent. Donald trump is this billionaire who went to an Ivy League School who is obviously playing this game, ted cruz hasnt incredible resume and pandering to this popular conservative thing. The really sad part is the candidates who try to do it and cant. Ill be gentle, a Rhodes Scholar and incredibly intelligent conservative tried desperately to pander and be every man and just didnt work. Walker a very smart and capable governor who really could have been the bridge between the establishment and the grassroots but instead, he decided he had to win iowa, he had to pander to iowa voters then he started to embrace things like birthright citizenship which went against his brand earlier. We have the scenario where basically you have to pretend to be something youre not in the unfortunate part is that in order to pander to republican primary voters in iowa, you have to adopt a persona and style that would actually hurt you when it comes to winning over millennials or cosmopolitan americans who i believe actually should be voting conservative but are turned off by the cultural baggage and the stylistic stereotypes of what we think of when we think of conservatives. You are not suggesting that populism is all bad. There are some good, i think Ronald Reagan was able to successfully marry an intellectual conservatism with vigorous populism. Absolutely. Thats one of the things i try to define in the book. What do they mean . One of the many words is populism. If populism means somebody who believes in the American People started the establishment or the gi elite then i might qualify, but unfortunately it often times leads to a pandering and demagoguery. If you look at some of the modern populist like george wallace, we see there is this pernicious strain that comes along with populism that they basically have to find somebody to blame. Its a philosophy that if youre not careful can do vault into a woe is me, we cant get ahead, those other people are stopping us from being successful. To me that is unconservative. Thats not a rugged individual that believes that if you work hard you can get ahead and achieve the American Dream. That is something that i think is not conservative and is actually harmful to the human spirit. Do you think in some ways all of this in too dumb to fail is a reaction to the liberal secular elite project . Im thinking mostly in the 2000, whats the matter with kansas . That project where liberals looked at the flyover states and said you are not voting your interests, youre just clean to guns and religion. Consider conservatism says okay we will take care of you guys. We will be your voice. I imagine thats a good impulse but it happened wrong. What i would say is that i think if conservatives are saying, how do i put this. I think theres a mistake when you let the other side define who you are. I think so often conservatism has been defined as whatever obama is for we are against. On the rare zero occasion that hes for something good like free trade, we must be against it. The problem with that is when you allow the other guy, if you have a kneejerk reaction to be against whatever he is for, i think thats an unfortunate result. This weird phenomenon, there are many factors that are leading us to where we are. I think some of it is Barack Obamas presidency which i dont think has been helpful for the country and i think it has led to a lot of americans to feel disillusioned, but i also think there trends like globalization, industrial, if youre Bernie Sanders and youre an outsider, but theres automation, globalization and all sorts of things that are feeding into this. I do fully appreciate that there are a lot of americans who are angry, upset and frustrated. I think at least some of that desire is understandable and i can certainly identify with it. Talk about the role of evangelicals, because thats been a huge part of modern conservatism and modern Republican Coalition and you argue that attempting to win voters has been a little bit damaging. A little bit. So, the book, basically the premise is that conservatism is started out as a thoughtful philosophy and the last part is how we can get it back and restore it. In a way, look backward to restore the good thing about it as an intellectual force but also look forward and make it appeal to 21stcentury americans. Along along the way im telling that story, i document how the dumbing down happen. Part of how it happened as we have what is immigrants. Political parties and movements, we always always want new people to be joining our cause and be assimilated and if theyre not you wake up and dont recognize the party you are. Conservatism over the years has had different waves of immigrants who have come into the Republican Party. Some of them were evangelicals who helped Ronald Reagan win the election but they also brought in some less than positive attributes. I actually am an evangelical. I write about in the book that i believe its important that people are involved in politics. I think there are example of how people of faith can be involved in politics and really make a positive difference. Unfortunately in america, if you you look at the modern history of evangelical evangelicalism and the post world war i era, its hard to estimate the impact it had on people. Unfortunately we had a situation where basically, you had to make a choice. You were either going to be an intellectual or you were going to be an evangelical. The two were really, it was a false choice false choice but they were seen as mutually exclusive. You can sort of extrapolate that forward for about 50 years and you basically have a situation where a lot of people who were joining the conservative movement to help Ronald Reagan were actually at the intellectual. They were very skeptical of anything that can be said perceived as intellectual. While there were good things come from that, were paying the price of republicans being the stupid party. So how do you, obviously conservatives in the Republican Party still want to be the home for people of rigorous faith. How do you suggest the party reach out to evangelicals like you while not sounding antiscience . The good news is, in recent years i think evangelicals have made Great Strides at marrying their thoughtful understanding and appreciation of science and Popular Culture with a devout phase. Theres no longer this decision where you have to either believe in the virgin birth or be taken seriously. This is much more in keeping with the modern young evangelical movement. Its very different from what we saw with the cultural wars, silent majority era so its less righteous indignation, less ultra warrior stuff but still people of devout faith and they have these interesting new position where they simultaneously cant believe that god used evolution and that the earth could be billions of years old and they can believe in creed and that god put it created the universe and they believe in the resurrection. Were eliminating that false choice which i believe played dust for so long. Lets talk about millennials. There are 80 million millennials. They been taken for granted by liberals. Theyve been virtually ignored by conservatives as a voting block. Millennials today have a deep distrust of government. Is now the perfect opportunity for conservatives to reach out to young people, maybe have them for life and how do we do that . I couldnt agree more. As much as my book lays out a lot of problems that conservatives face, theres a huge opportunity right now because, in a way if you think of it, Hillary Clintons version of libertarianism as a model of government. Its a topdown antiquated version of government, assemblyline government. If you compare compare it to, i always talk about this, if youre a young lady living in a city and you order over on your smart phone and then you get on the phone and you order a concert to ticket on stub hub, your liberal. Your entrepreneurial by definition by virtue of what youre doing. Youre not going to want the government to return your fun when youre managing your stock Market Portfolio on your smart phone. You ought to be a conservative and you probably are but you dont know it. If your view of what conservative tis as a means is that you have to look like boss hog and ride around with Confederate Flag in your truck, youre not going to be a conservative. Thats when optimistic because there are people like marco rubio and paul ryan who are really legitimate conservative candidates but also have the potential to tap into and sell conservatism to a 21st century american audience that would be different than the coalition that we are used too. You think its possible that republicans in the near future can win over millennials or is this a very longterm project for you . I think you always have to go into anything with the assumption that its a longterm project but i really think were at a crossroads right now. The party of marco rubio and paul ryan sends a different message, maybe for a different generation than the party of donald trump. We dont know what direction we are going to go as a movement or a party, but it could send a very different direction. I would say, Donald Trumps philosophys philosophy of sort of doubling down on workingclass white, older, rule southern married voters is in the short term not a crazy idea but its sort of like getting a reverse mortgage. I think in the long term its probably not the best move if you want to win the future. Not to say that we should sell out the current conservative base. Either way, i think trump is basically arguing, were going to appeal to these new people, these democrats who havent been voting who have been staying home who either direction involves bringing in new people into the coalition. Its just a matter of which people are actually growing in terms of a demographic population. I want to talk more about trump later, but doesnt he have a point of the democrats have been bleeding older, white, bluecollar men. Theyre all know blue dogs anymore. Isnt donald trump right that somebody like him could finally get those people who have been staying home not to vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders but to vote for him . I think its possible and i think it could work in the shortterm. I believe believe the real problem with him is a longterm problem its a long term mathematical problem im not one of those people that leave its crazy in the shortterm. I actually think its feasible that donald trump could change the game and pick up voters who feel like theyve been left behind. Absolutely. So lets shift for a moment. This is always bothered me. Why do conservatives want to make every whack job the standardbearer of the movement . Im thinking of bundy, davis, zimmerman we see a crazy person so they should run for president. Its one thing to defend principles and sometimes theres something there to defend, but how do we stop and bracing people who make us look bad . Its not even crazy people. I dont think ben carson is crazy but we sort of thrust him into a president ial race when he shouldnt be doing that. He should be a doctor. I hear hes a really good doctor. That too. If you really can care about the conservative cause, whos more valuable a guy who runs for president among 17 people or a guy who is a leading neurosurgeon whose africanamerican and who is for life and talks about culture of life. I think he was more valuable before he ran for president. Especially now that this race has damaged himself. Absolutely but everybody wants to start at the top. I think the conservatives have some weird things happening. Theres also a sense that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As soon as the politically correct liberal thought police went after him, we defend him. Why just because he is the victim of these horrible people doesnt mean hes a little edmund burke or something. I think another issue that happens, ironically, were always talking about weird on the left coast but we are the biggest fan boys for celebrities. Usually its never a list celebrities who decide. Its usually like how people find jesus in prison. People discover their conservative only after their career has flamed out in hollywood. Well just welcome them with an open arm. Its so weird. I document that in the book. This trend that i think is part of the dumbing down. Through on a cable new show. I dont want to hear the duct dynasties guys talking policy. I dont think a nascar driver is necessarily the best person to talk to me about Eminent Domain being good policy, but thats what were getting in a lot of political commentary. Is and it also, isnt it also that. I dont mind of tony stewart has a political opinion. Hes in title to it as much as i can. Isnt the bigger problem the hypocrisy on our side that we completely dismiss hollywood and celebrities as irrelevant and stupid and unimportant until one comes out for our side. Then its Clint Eastwood is coming to the convention and hes going to talk to an empty chair, thats fantastic. I think youre right. Its a lot of hypocrisy and we just write off the culture mistakenly, we write off hollywood in the entertainment world except when it suits us. I have this longrunning debate with andrew before hes passed about whether, and we disagreed, whether we wanted to court a hollywood artistic celebrity kind of culture and play in that space to make conservative projects and conservative movies or if we just wanted to be really good at being conservative. I dont think you can do both. It gets very tricky as we are discussing. Whats your opinion question but. I think i probably agree with andrew. I believe politics is just downstream from culture and i think people need to have a conservative worldview and become more involved in the arts. I think its different than trotting them out to talk about politics. They actually shouldnt be talking about politics. It should be people who are conservative with a conservative worldview who happen to be really good at making movies or telling jokes or cooking and being a chef. Whatever it is in the culture. I think its a mistake when we politicize them. Then you have what happened to doctor carson. He was in much better staying out of the political arena and weighing in on the edges to create. Okay, so i want names. Who are among the worst people perpetuating this too dumb to fail impulse in modern contemporary conservativism . I think for me to name them is also in a sense a complement because the people who are the worst are the people who are notable. There are people who have made an impact. The worst person in the world, nobody knows who they are and theyre sitting at home so take this as a badge of honor. I would say, let me throw one name out to name youve talked about before which is Rush Limbaugh. I have an interesting relationship with him. Not that i know him, but my dad who was a prison guard turned me on to listen to his show when he