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Allowing Free Exchange of Ideas
00:03:57
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| You hear all the voices. | |
| You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds. | |
| I absolutely love C-SPAN. | |
| I love to hear both sides. | |
| I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased and you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments. | |
| It's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country. | |
| You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | |
| At our table this morning, Heath Mayo, who is the founder of Principles First, here to talk about your organization and your sixth annual grassroots summit here in the nation's capital. | |
| What is Principles First for folks who need a reminder? | |
| Sure, yeah, no, thanks for having me. | |
| Principles First is a grassroots organization of Americans. | |
| Started out as a center-right group of Republicans who were focused on sort of the conservative principles that had long defined the Republican Party. | |
| But I think since 2016 when we began, that project has sort of evolved and we've sort of seen and been the recipient of the energy in the country that is hungry for something new in our politics. | |
| So we've seen our coalition grow from, I think, folks who would have pretty comfortably said that they were Republicans or, you know, former Republicans into independents, people who never subscribed to either political party and either, even some of these center-right, center-left Democrats who are frustrated with sort of the radical bent in the direction of the radical part of the Democratic Party. | |
| So it's grown into a bigger tent than when we originally started, but we're really all about the principles that make America America and that have made us one of the greatest nations in the world. | |
| Who can be the leader of your movement? | |
| And is that person a 2028 contender? | |
| I think a lot of people, you know, the way that we think about politics is a little different than the political parties, right? | |
| Since we put the principles before the politicians or the parties, there's a lot of people that can be principled. | |
| You know, people can disagree about how to implement the principles, but as long as you are leading with your ideas, leading with your arguments as opposed to personality or name-calling or changing, you know, waking up one day saying one thing just because that's what's popular, and then turning around the next year and increasing spending after you said that we should reduce the deficit. | |
| Like those types of inconsistencies are really what we're fighting against. | |
| So we're looking for consistent champions of ideas, people who actually believe what they say and are wanting to go to Washington to get it done. | |
| So I think there's a lot of people that say that they are that type of politician, but the proof is often in the pudding. | |
| We were just talking about the president's handling of the economy. | |
| And according to a Pew Research Center poll, when they asked about the president's handling a year into his second term, I want to share these numbers from you from inside the polling. | |
| 49% of Republicans rate the economy positively today, the highest mark of President Donald Trump's second term. | |
| Views among Republicans are up five percentage points from since September and 13 points since April. | |
| Does the president still have the backing of the Republicans and the Republican Party? | |
| I think he does. | |
| Look, I mean, the Republican Party, I think that's evidence of, because, I mean, I think if you pulled the Democratic Party or Democrats, self-identifying Democrats, the numbers would be completely the opposite. | |
| So I think we've seen that in our politics for a while, the siloization of information. | |
| I mean, I think good morning. | |