Actually, you know what . Im going to ill ask you the first question. Okay and ill ask you a question back there. Go. Incidentally, if you if you dont read and then theyll sort of the long form interviews that he does occasionally in the in the new york times, there worth reading. A great one where he and gail collins said down. And you had a line about the Republican Party is split between reptiles and. Which is a great line even if we dont understand exactly what it means. But what does it mean . Well. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a reptile and Kevin Mccarthy cozying up to marjorie Taylor Greene is the definition of an invertebrate. And. You. The lion, of course is, is is made in the form, a conversation. And so its little sharper than it ought to be because there are, in fact, a lot of terrific republicans who stand up for a set of principles which i broadly share. And those are the republicans who actually won their elections in november or or outperformed in in their elections. But i worry about a Republican Party that has, i think, been taken by some of its worst instincts and poor characters. I mean, i remember how good i felt about voting for George W Bush. In 2000, a man who said that family values dont end at the real ground someone who understood that conservatives them all to stand for a set of american traditions which include respect for the immigrant, which include the value of which seek bipartisan compromises where they are available, and even when theyre not refuses to treat democrats as the enemy. And i think that was a form of conservatism that. Both president bushes stood for, which i had a of time for. I thought it was a not only an honorable tradition in many ways. Right tradition, but ive been saying this to all of you in the room who are not republicans or conservatives. Want in any in any healthy democratic society. The health of it really depends on the health of its conservative party. And we used to have when the conservative party was led by like the president , both president bushes, president reagan, john mccain, mitt romney, very healthy conservative movement right now we dont have that. My view and id love know more interested know yours but that seems to me a real problem not just for the Republican Party but for the for for for the United States itself. So let me turn the question back on you. Do you think that line was was unfair . How do you see state of the Republican Party today . Well, first of all, i thought it was a great line. Im not it was fair, but it was a great line. And look, i dont understand your animus city towards marjorie Taylor Greene. Shes put finger on a vital problem facing the country which is the presence of jewish space lasers starting fires in northern california. I am deeply concerned about and i think its something we ought to take seriously. You know, i just should stop right there because there are some jerk right now, whos going to pretend youre speaking serious. So i loved it when she and matt gaetz came and said, well, our endorsement a primary is more important than karl. So i thought, who the hell is concerned about that . But you know, look, our our party has always weird elements. You know, we had the birchers in the fifties, sixties and seventies and weve had weve had david as we made the, you know, the southern the southern swing, we began to get some very ugly but but this is different because its animated i think in large measure not by values or views. Its animated by a persona and process. I want to get on cable tv and the way to do that is to say really ugly things. You know, i want to have good response in my digital fundraising. So ive got to be really ugly and i want to be im not interested in being a legislator. Im interested in being a character. And so dont Pay Attention to developing strong with my fellow committee and working, figuring out what it is i to work on, on Financial Services and seeing if i can find common ground. I just i just want to Say Something extreme that gets me invited to steve war room and i think thats not healthy. But id take your point and broaden it little bit. I think the country is better off. We have two prosperous, sensible Political Parties that are that are strong and right. Both parties are weak in part because of what weve done with the financing and so forth. A of technical things. But theyre also broken because in part because success of the republican was animated for a long and i think youve written about this by hostility to soviet communist form to world war ii communism and we won that battle at least with regard to the soviet union. And as a result we started to fray at the and the Democratic Party had led a long and honorable crusade for human rights, for the right of all, regardless of color, to participate in the american dream. And that has had a great deal of success. And so were off trying to figure out what the next thing is and both parties are are as a result, you know, sort of confused about what future holds. But theyre also vulnerable to takeovers by a strong and it just so happened at least in our our party it was overtaken by a personality i love when calls me a rhino karl rove loser total loser. Hes hes a rhino. Hes a rhino. Because because i remember being for George W Bush in 2004 when he was for john kerry, in fact, were off the record. Youre right. No press. So i end up in a meeting in may of 2020 asking me 2016 with trump at the new york apartment of a mutual friend. And its it was like the weirdest 3 hours of my life. And at one point in the conversation, hes talking to our to our friend and says the other jeb, jeb needs to Say Something nice about me. Youre very bad loser. Hes not saying nice things. I somebody needs to talk to him. And he was clearly saying to my friend, you know, the guy sitting to me needs to Say Something, jeb, i said, well, if i were you, id just drop it. Jeb sort of a sort of a guy whos got strong feelings and it makes you look weak because, you know, youre to tell him to say nice things about. And remember, it just reminds people that you said about a dozen times that you wouldnt support the nominee of the party if you didnt, you were treated fair. Do you think jeb thinks you treated fairly . So if you i dropped the i, i drop that all he said. Well the older bush the old man he needs to Say Something nice about me. I said no, no, hes 91 years old. He beat his boy. Hes earned the right to sit on the sidelines. He says, well, the younger bush, the younger. But she needs to Say Something nice about. I said, you know, no, he doesnt. I said, you were for john kerry in 2004. I dont think so no, i dont know. I said well in october of 2004, you said you agreed with george bush on tax cuts, but you agree, john kerry on the war and tax cuts were yesterday and the war was now. That sounds to me like the guys getting ready to vote for john kerry. Well, i dont remember. I, i said, well, you are the guy that gave a lot of money to two elect nancy pelosi speaker in 2006. And in march of 2007, you were asked how good she was doing and you said youre doing a wonderful job, except hasnt done enough to impeach George W Bush. And i said he said, well, yeah. And i said youre also the guy who said that he knew about 911 in advance and let 3000 people die in order to plunge country into war and. Youre also the guy who said he deliberately lied about the intel in iraq. He said, well i guess i said those things and i said, so i wouldnt be counting on him saying anything nice about. You let me ask you, carl, do you. I wrote a column right after the midterms in which which was titled Something Like donald trump is finally and and its going to look really bad for me in the annals of punditry if that turns out to be wrong. But i dont think im wrong. Where do you think trump now in the Republican Party . Yeah, well, you may be right and you could be wrong. Both of us have counted that guy out. Let me just find one thing here to answer question. I think that. I think that a couple of things about him and about him decline and this this is a piece thats in the wall street journal tomorrow really wellwritten deeply impressed with the work thats gone into. I think ive done a hell of a job with it myself, but this is these were interesting numbers in. December in the usa today suffolk poll. People were asked two questions would you vote for republicans . Will you vote for him if hes if he runs . In other words, will you vote for him for the nomination and you want him to run the percentage that want him to run in december was 31 . Now. 57 , actually 60 something percent. In july, 50 some odd percent in november. And 47 in december that they would vote for him. But and think about that. Yeah, weve got 16 of the people who say, im willing to vote him, but i really wish he wouldnt run. And you only have 1 that say, given my druthers, thats the guy. So somethings going on there and. Whether thats going to turn out to be the case, i think all depends on who the other candidates are and how well they run. And particularly the question of how big is the field. Heres other great numbers. And i literally had do a spreadsheet. Theres this thing called excel. Its amazing. I recommended to. Think about this in february of 2016, he won 34 of the vote in the two primaries that month and got 84 of the delegates in early march primaries. He won 33. There were 15 of them. He won 33 of the vote and got 45 of the delegates in the latter part of the month. He had 46 of the vote but took 67 of the delegates. And the reason was we had too many people left in the race at that point. So they were splitting up the vote, not getting the threshold, get a delegate, but thereby giving him an inordinate grasp over over the over the delegate hall. So the question is going to be one of the key questions is going to be a tactical one how quickly do people say, well, i had a run, but i dont really have a chance and im out of here. And thats awfully hard. Do i think its going to happen, but its awfully hard once you have the ambition to run for president , its hard to say. Well, you know, but, you know, if i stay in and a couple more primaries maybe itll be like South Carolina for biden. Somebody will save me. But both of those, i think, are going to be critical. Is the governor of florida going to run president . Yeah. Yeah. He yeah, sure. He he is. It was i think being announced today or maybe was announced last night. Hes coming to dallas, texas, houston, texas, on the third and 4th of march to speak at the lincoln day dinners of the major of those two major county republican parties. You dont do that unless you got a hankering to do something more than, you know, entertain. At the Governors Mansion in tallahassee. But theyre to be a lot. Weve got a conference coming up on february 24th. We have a big registration project in texas and. We have come in Chris Christie. Nikki haley, brian kemp, interesting. Mike pence, tim scott, chris sununu, Chris Christie and Kevin Mccarthy. And some of those people are, you know, because theyre thinking about it in their party. The governor of maryland, governor larry hogan. Larry hogan, former governor, former governor of maryland. Yeah. No, not coming. Nobody knows him in texas. Yeah, texas. Yeah. So the Republican Party today, the richest, have kind of a long, strange trip or. Is it permanently altered . I yes. To both. Its had a weird trip and. It will be altered in some ways. Im not certain how big the ways will be and ill be interested. Your reaction . I think this whole Popular NationalNational Populism of, you know, we are going to be America First was a meeting where neo isolation us we want to withdraw from the world that aint gonna work. I dont think its there. I mean its like its like people opposition to bidens retreat from afghanistan was not. Hey you boggled it and 13 americans died in it in kabul was why the hell are you giving up the advantage and letting the bad guys win . And so is an element in our party that our new isolation but the vast majority of them retain instinct. That is, america has a role to play in the world. And Ronald Reagan was, right. Peace through strength. But there are some things i there is a healthy concern, i think, among a lot of people for what do we need to do for people are not staying up for for the working middle class that has fallen behind now a lot of that you know my economic and my economist friends say a lot of that is exaggerated. But but there are a lot of people who think, you know, i got a long service and dayton, ohio, and its hard to make meet and its because, you know, the government helps those who got a lawyer in washington, a lobbyist in the law and a loophole in the law in the system made fair. And there are some real needs, it strikes me, to reinvigorate training programs, alternate to college. I mean, the whole idea that everybody has to go to a four Year University in order to have a good career. We need to get rid of that. Weve got a little ranch in blanco, texas, and a ranch foremans grandson wants to become a welder, doesnt need to go to college for. That and we tell him, well, well send you to state teachers, to texas state technical college, where in 18 months you can become a welder and hell start out making 105,000 a year. And at age of 19 and we got it. So there are some healthy things there. And weve all got to deal with the issue of big tech. I have no idea. I mean, it strikes me that social media is so corrosive and so powerful. And these algorithms are so addictive and such a corrosive impact on. Our social dialog that something weve got to look into it. But i have no idea. The answer is so my, you know, conservatism has always a kind of. Two faces. Theres a conservatism emphasizes, first of all, National Anti borders, sovereignty, tradition. Thats a european style conservatism. There is an american tradition of conservatism, which is very different, which is the idea that what the idea that what should be conserve is itself a liberal order. The constitu is a liberal document declaration is a liberal document. So americans conservatism, as i have always treasured it, hinges on the idea that were trying to preserve or conserve is that Old Fashioned liberal ideal that politics exists to maximize the liberty of the responsible exercise liberty by the by the individual so long as it doesnt impinge on the liberty of his his fellow man or woman and in addition to that, you might say that that vision is enhanced when when support habits of mind that create more responsible citizens. So conservatives believe in the family, we think. And theres a lot of empirical evidence to show this, that products of stable two parent households tend to have Better Outcomes in life than those who are not. Say that people who arent children of Single Parents cant succeed, but their chances are diminished. We believe in institute tions like the military because we think there character forming. We believe in the value of business because. Its has qualities that are both institute rational but also risk taking. So theres a whole architect of values and virtues that go into maximizing the liberty of the individual. But at the end of the day, vision of american conservatism doesnt forget that this was uniquely conceived to defend unalienable rights, not the least of which is the pursuit happiness, a profoundly subjective and individualistic belief. And i think the Republican Party, fundamental change between 2016, 2015 and the present in that abandoned that vision of conservatism, which i think reagan championed. But the bushes championed mccain championed. So on to something closer to an Old Fashioned blood and soil conservatism that has more in common with characters like viktor orban in hungary or. Some of the more or mrs. Le pen, Marine Le Pen in france than it has to do with with the american version in the american version of conservatism that admire is what in europe is called liberalism. Right . If you go to holland, its liberal party that more or less champions my, my, my view. I think the challenge for the Republican Party today the question mark for the Republican Party today is cannot find way back from kind of trumpian you know borders national, polity trying to reverse the 14th amendment to get rid of birthright, birthright citizenship, to go back to a different version to that earlier version. And i think you could actually profit as result for that for some of the reasons that you mentioned, which is that the Republican Party at its best is a party that stands aspiration. Its not about winners in society its not about people who are rich but its about people who are aspiring to be rich or at least aspiring to be a little richer than they are a little better off a little a little better educated. Thats the sweet spot for the Republican Party. Its got to figure out how to get back there. And its going to take a while. Yeah, well, i couldnt agree more with what you said i have a slightly different on the nature of where we i dont think were in as bad shape when it comes to the rank and file. The Republican Party as as it might be thought after the last couple of years. Yo