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Sept. 30, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
36:56
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
Glad to have you on board today.
Today we've got a great episode with us and I get to sit down with an old friend, Jason Lewis from up in Minnesota, former member of Congress that I got to know And just watching, if you've ever, folks, and you do this, if you ever just listen, if you listen to the podcast, you're watching it today, there are certain people who can take complicated things and explain them very well.
And do so in a way that, and frankly, sometimes with a bite, that basically could offend everybody in the room, but everybody ends feeling like, hey, that was pretty good.
Jason Lewis is one of those guys that can do that.
I was going to say, who the heck are you talking about?
It can't be me.
Jason is with me today.
Jason, thanks for being a part of the podcast.
It's amazing to have you with me.
Well, it's good to see you again, Doug.
You were a real leader in the 115th when I was in D.C. as vice chair.
It was a very, very good two years, a time of accomplishment.
We'll talk about that.
But if there were ever a time when we need communicators like yourself, it's now because we're a nation on the brink, I'm afraid.
Oh, very much so.
And I think that's one of the things.
There's a two-year, and I won't call it an oasis, but there was two years, and you talk about the 115th of the Congress, was a time in which the Democrats...
We're not happy.
I mean, Trump had won the election.
They were not happy, but they were still this idea.
They were not sure if they were gonna be able to flip the house.
They still were in that mode eight years.
They were chafing under Pelosi a little bit, Hoyer and the rest.
And you still had some who wanted to do a few things.
And I remember bipartisan stuff that I did.
Criminal justice, which was actual real criminal justice, not what we're seeing out there in these liberal cities.
With First Step Act, you had music modernization, where we redid how songwriters and stuff get paid.
We did a lot of protections.
And then we, as Republicans, finally stepped up and did the tax bill, which was set up anybody.
Our economy should be Far better than where it's at right now under Biden.
But then we also did have the healthcare issue.
And I think that was one that we can talk about as we go.
But it was a time, it's really the last time Washington got anything done.
Now liberals will tell us, Jason, that the Biden administration has been a legislative juggernaut.
It's like, if you count partisan wins, don't you think that would be true?
Well, look, as we've spoken before, these guys will put their pedal to the metal and they know that they'd rather change the country than just change the Congress.
So while Republicans are looking at polls and being afraid to say this or that when we should be dominating this election cycle, Democrats keep passing bills.
They keep doing basically doing these things that's going to make this a country and a state of Georgia that your parents wouldn't recognize.
And that's what their modus operandi is.
Now, I do think there was that window.
I worked with Democrats on regional government reform, on organ donation.
You worked with them on criminal justice and all the rest.
And then all of a sudden there was almost like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I think they became so deranged with President Trump that they basically jumped the shark.
And now we're seeing a party whose the squad is controlling, not the old centrist Democrats like Scoop Jackson or you can go back to Dan Rostenkowski for that matter.
So it is a different world.
But I do think that when you look at that window of the first two years of Trump, like the first two years of Reagan, we got more done over a thousand bills.
It wasn't just tax reform, almost did health care reform.
We're not for somebody going south in the other chamber at the last minute, but we got VA reform.
We did more deregulation, congressional review authorizations than any Congress in history.
We did all the things that left this economy in this country with peace and prosperity.
And in the span of a year, year and a half of this new radical Democrat leadership, Frankly, I don't want it to sound too hyperbolic, but they destroyed urban America and they're working on the rest of it.
Yeah, because they're just isolating around.
Jason, before we get into some more of this, one of the things I've always loved to do about this podcast, and I've had a lot of folks like yourself and others, that they know us...
And they know me, and I'm sure you get this at airports, you get it, and they're like, hey, aren't you?
And so they only know us that way.
So one of the things that I always like to do, at least for a few minutes at the beginning of these podcasts, is sort of talk about your evolution, because we talked about it, frankly, it was on your radio, with you on the radio this morning, we talked about where we've come from.
And look, my first introduction to you was not in Congress, it was listening to you when you filled in for Rush on the radio.
Tell us a little bit about your background and then what staircase you fell down to say, I need to run for Congress.
How do I do that?
Well, I get the same thing you do.
I was in the airport the other day and somebody came up to me, Doug, and said, I know you.
Didn't you used to fill in for Rush?
And you were in Congress for a while?
And I said, yep, that's me.
And they said, whatever happened to you?
So...
We all get those.
Well, look, I grew up in a small business family.
My mom was from North Minneapolis.
My dad was from Iowa.
We settled in the Hawkeye State, but Minnesota was a second home.
So when I fell into talk radio after graduate school, I had an opportunity to go home to Minneapolis and St. Paul.
I did, and that was in the early 90s and raised my two daughters here for 30 years.
Loved it.
Got into radio, was fortunate enough to hit, the timing was good, filling in for Rush and had my own syndicated show for a while.
But at some point, Doug, you know what it's like.
You can be a commentator so long, but after a while, you've got to put your money where your mouth is and you want to get on the field and play.
Because the only way to really change things is to vote for them.
So I thought, and most, by the way, most commentators, most talk show hosts don't do that because they can demagogue your previous comments like Supreme Court justices from And I knew that would happen with me, and it did with CNN and all the rest.
But I really didn't care.
I just said, look, I want to do something.
And I was fortunate to come into Congress with a new president when we really have an opportunity to do things, and we did.
But it was really just more of an angst about, look, you can talk all day long, but at some point, you know, suit up, get in the game.
And so I did do that and served, I thought, in one of the more I ran for the U.S. Senate alongside the president here in Minnesota.
And two years ago in October, we were neck and neck with Tina Smith, who is the Democrat, I would say, from Minnesota, but really she represents Planned Parenthood.
We're a former employer.
But I felt that we were going to win Minnesota, really.
I felt the president win.
And we did great.
I collected more votes than any other statewide candidate in Minnesota history.
We outperformed the top of the ticket by two points.
But we had 1.9 million absentee ballots.
That's 60% of the total Minnesota vote came by mail.
We had a Secretary of State who did consent decrees with very liberal activist groups that undid absentee signatures, undid the deadlines, and removed the number of people you could collect ballots from.
You could only collect three ballots from one person, but they removed the number of people you could collect three ballots from.
And so I'm not going to sit here and tell you why I won.
I wouldn't do that.
What I will say here is we need to make certain that we have self-government that has ballot integrity.
Otherwise, the American experiment is lost.
So I do think it's an important issue that we shouldn't shy away from, and a lot of us are.
Well, and you and I both experienced something, because I was running in a weird setup down here.
Unfortunately, we didn't get a primary, and our governor had made an appointment, and he wanted to protect that appointment.
I get that.
But it made it very hard, because we did a general election jungle primary, and I had an opponent that I got outspent $60 million to $6 million.
And we lost by 4% to get into that runoff.
But it's amazing, and that's fine.
I mean, I get it.
You're just about to pay even, Mike.
I will bet you 10 to 1 that Kelly's contributions came from corporate America.
And I'm free market capitalist.
You and I did tax reform together.
We get that.
But at some point, we really do have to quit carrying the water for big corporations.
They are not our friends for change.
And that's one thing that President Trump and you and I, we brought the working man and woman back to the Republican Party.
And that's really who we need to start representing.
And if these woke corporations want to support, you know, carried interest deduction, which I don't agree with, they're going to hire Democrats to do it.
And that's what they've done.
And that's why you were outspent so much.
Oh, exactly.
Well, it is in personal money.
And what it also did for us down here was it allowed Raphael Warnock, because the way it was put up, to go unscathed.
So he was, and then we had, of course, our problems down here in Georgia, getting people back to the runoff.
But I think one of the things, let's go back and look at this is for a second, and And by the way, for folks, one of the things that I want to point out is you've got a book out right now, Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics, and the Partisan Press.
And it's out there.
Go get it.
Get it on Amazon, anywhere you get this book.
We'll try to put a link on it when we post the podcast.
For folks, I wrote a book about the impeachment, and mine was the clock in the calendar, and I talked about the fact that, as you said, when the Democrats came in in 2019, they were possessed at that point, and it was only a possession of just this derangement with Donald Trump.
And all legislating was off the books at that point.
It was over.
But when you see this book, what brought you to write the book, and what are you trying to communicate in it?
Well, you run Judiciary Ranking Member, so you know all about how we weaponize the bowels of the bureaucracy.
And when that hit me between the eyes, In the 115th.
I started thinking about this.
And then just the craziness that was happening with Trump, starting with the inauguration, you were talking about people protesting.
I had protesters on my front lawn.
You and I were being demagogued over the American Health Care Act, which was a good piece of legislation.
And I thought, this is getting out of control.
And I'm afraid that if you let the left write history, you're never going to learn from it.
And that's what was happening already, was CNN going after every Republican, and it was getting out of hand.
But I think the epiphany for me was, you know, if you're not on the Intelligence Committee, you don't get to see the intel until they say, okay, members can come over and view this.
And it was when I did that and trudged over to the Capitol Visitor Center and looked at this stuff.
And all I remember, Doug, is sitting there going, is this all there is?
Is this all there is?
And we were consumed for two years.
It was thwarting our ability to move legislation.
The media were gaga over this lying, just absolute lying.
Trump's going to be indicted tomorrow.
He's a Russian asset.
There was a truck tower meeting, all of which proved to be a lie.
And I thought, okay, I'm going to start taking a journal.
And so I started writing a journal.
And what happened was that it started to continue through three campaign cycles, 16, 18, And 20. Well then 20 came around.
I'm the Senate nominee and we are locked down except for rioters in Minneapolis.
The third precinct was burnt to the ground.
Talk about destroying government property, right?
And it was so Orwellian, I continued with these journals.
And so now, in 2021, I've had all these journals.
And you know what it's like to write a book.
You've got to put it in readable fashion.
So I found a cabin in the Minnesota Northwoods.
And for a year and a half, I just hunkered down and wrote basically a history of how we got to the point where we've weaponized the government on behalf of one party.
That's really it in a nutshell when you talk about party animal in the book.
One of the things that's off and running, I just saw one of our candidates, and I'll just leave it at this point nameless.
Republicans, we get hung up on, I call this the bumper sticker a lot of times.
Democrats do it better because they're willing to give up a lot if they can get a policy.
They don't really care how it looks.
But we like bumper stickers.
We want to do...
We try to blame things, and then we do the term limits.
We do whatever.
We throw out what's ever popular.
You've just hit something, and I've took a lot of criticism over the years about term limits, because I've said, frankly, right now in the United States House, it's less than eight years.
And most people don't realize this, that in this next Congress, There'll be less than 40% of the membership of the Republican caucus have ever served with anybody that came in before Donald Trump.
So, I mean, it's a huge turnover.
And you see it a little bit in the Senate.
It's always the anomalies.
It's always the Schumers, the Pelosi's, the Don Young's even.
I'll just put that up.
But what happens is, is what you just touched on is the staff on Capitol Hill, which you got to know, a lot of them are great folks, but a lot of those committees have been there 30 years and they don't like change.
Then you go into the bureaucracy.
That's where I think the biggest problem is.
You know, I got, you know, if you want to talk tournament, it's fine, but let's have some kind of at least turnover in Washington in these cubicles up and down these streets because that's where the real governance is going because we in Congress sort of gave our power away to it.
Right.
No, you're exactly right.
If we don't do civil service reform, all is lost.
I think an incoming president has control over 3,000 or 4,000 employees out of 2 million.
So, you know, he's going to come and go and you're going to get those political appointees.
But really, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page proved where the departments are.
And the same with these committee staffs and all that.
So I couldn't agree with you more.
Look, what I write in the book, Doug, is that too often Republicans want to revert back to what I call comfortable conservatism.
And by that I mean, who are you going to alienate, really, if you advocate for term limits?
And I happen to be in favor of them, but I agree with you that I'm in favor of them for everybody.
But who are you going to alienate?
Nobody.
Wearing a Ukrainian flag lapel pin, who are you really going to alienate?
Nobody.
Talk about a tax cut.
We believe in tax cuts, but it's about as safe a political position as you can get.
But if you start talking about, we really shouldn't have a biological male swimming against my daughter's swim team in college.
We really shouldn't have lawlessness in the streets, although they are talking about that.
But we ought to close the borders.
Or how about this?
We get to the point right now with China, where not too many generations ago, if you unleashed a bioweapon on the world, that would have been considered an act of war.
We don't want to talk about that stuff or globalism or private equity or endless wars, all of that, because people get upset.
The Human Rights Campaign really gets upset.
I don't want to go there.
That's too hot.
I don't want to talk about climate.
I don't want to talk about elections.
So what gets changed?
Nothing.
Look, it's gotten even so bad with Kamala Harris.
I mean, this is really an interesting point.
Kamala Harris was asked by Chuck Todd in a recent interview...
And she made her standard pitch about the border being the most secure border.
And even Chuck Todd had to call bull.
Well, and that came on the follow-up of Biden and Harris and the administration saying, well, the reason the NAEP test scores for fourth graders hit a rock bottom low is because Trump mismanaged schools during COVID two and a half years ago.
No!
What?
And this is the point, though, Doug, and this is why you got outraised, why I got outraised.
They have a Democrat media complex.
They have money and media, and they can gaslight the country over and over again by repeating the lie.
And that is effective, I hate to say.
Well, it is.
And I also have the, you know, look, and I'm one of those conservatives, I think a lot like you.
Look, we'll point out the fact of the liberalism and the media agenda that is driven.
But also, it's one of those things where I'm also seeing that comfortable conservatism that you've talked about.
I'm seeing conservatives use it as a crutch.
And they just sit it out and they won't push back.
We've got to push back.
And there's ways to do that.
Because, you know, look, Their revisionist history.
You and I talked about that.
I made that example this morning when we talked on the radio, was about this big drought in the West Coast.
And we talk about climate, and if you don't believe anything, it's climate.
Huge drought.
It's been going on for about, frankly, it's been going on for about 15 years now.
But there were several articles, and I think, I don't want to say where it was printed, but it was one of the larger publications said, it's the worst drought in 1,200 years.
Okay, I'm slow, but I get math even if I had to take, you know, my hands and my shoes off.
I can figure this out.
That's 800 A.D. So, you know, all that I'm told is it's the combustion engine, it's people, it's cows, it's whatever.
I mean, they just undercut their own argument, and they don't even understand that they're undercutting their own argument.
But who's going to point it out other than Doug Collins?
I mean, that's the issue, isn't it?
I mean, that's what gaslighting is.
You keep telling people the sky is green when it's blue, and pretty soon enough people say, well, I'm not going to go there.
It's green.
And that's why they called it climate deniers.
Then we went to vax mandate deniers.
Now we're COVID deniers.
Now we're in election deniers.
At some point, this self-censorship has got to stop and you get nothing done.
I mean, the Democrats aren't consumed with being too radical.
They don't mind it.
And yet Republicans, I can guarantee you know this, it wasn't that long ago where the top Republican consultants were all members of the Lincoln Project.
That's who those guys were.
That's who's advising Republicans not to talk about climate change, not to talk about this radical trans ideology, not to talk about China, not to talk about the border.
So I do think Look, I mean, I was never going to be in danger of becoming a career politician.
The voters thought of that.
But I'm glad I stuck to my guns and didn't apologize for what I believed and got some good things done because I couldn't live with myself otherwise.
What's the point of it all?
Well, you've got to do it at a certain point.
And okay, I'm going to go here.
You went there a little bit.
Explain to me, again, talk about revisionist history or just changing history.
I don't care what you call it.
But how can you have, quote, and I'm tired of looking at this, you go on MSNBC, CNN, and sometimes even Fox and others, and you see these Republican consultants who have not worked for, who criticize President Trump every day of the week.
They criticize Republicans.
They, I mean, they work against what is considered, you know, many of us consider conservative.
But yet, the mainstream media out there is going to say, here's Republican consultants.
No, those are not Republicans anymore.
Let's at least move them to independent.
Let's do something to say they're not where the Republican voters are today.
And if they were, they'd be out there being hired, but they just don't reflect it.
That's the part where the media tries to make, by using labels, everybody look the same and try to isolate those who are pointing out the deficiencies in their argument.
It is hard to overestimate the falsity of Steve Schmidt or Rick Wilson ever be considered a Republican.
And this whole notion of, and I'm glad you brought this up, because everybody thinks it's Trump's abrasive personality.
And let's be honest, he's a different kind of politician.
You and I both know that.
I'm not afraid to say that.
But different times call for different leaders.
But it wasn't that that bugged him.
I mean, oh, he's not humble enough.
You think Barack Obama was humble?
Bill Clinton was humble?
No, not at all.
It was the issues Trump was threatening them with.
The end of globalism, controlling the border, all of these issues that they were advising their Republicans on.
You really ought to come out with a climate platform.
You really need to do that.
And don't alienate the human rights campaign by being a traditionalist.
You can't do that.
And so Trump was threatening that status quo issue-wise.
And I think that's why they turned on him.
That's why they didn't like him.
And now from, you know, Bill Kristol to Schmidt to Wilson, they are venomous in their hatred.
And I really do think the Republican Party needs to get serious about Telling those people politely, here's the door, we'll see it, because you can't operate like this.
We saw that in the 115. You and I were working hard to pass an American Health Care Act that undid the price controls, that let people choose the health insurance they wanted to get.
The CBO admitted it would lower premiums.
Now, the reason we didn't get nicked in 2018 on a tax reform, because we passed it and it worked.
Had we passed that, I'm convinced it would have worked.
But we had a couple of individuals in the Senate, I think, frankly, out of spite in many cases, torpedoed that legislation.
And so we are our own worst enemy again.
And we've got to have more cohesiveness in the conference.
And I do think, you know, you're probably closer to this than I am, but with Jordan and McCarthy sort of mending fences and coming together and James Comer on oversight and Jim on Judiciary and Kevin going along with it.
I think hopefully we're getting there, but it won't matter if we don't take back the House.
Well, yeah, and I think that's an interesting point you make there.
And look, I'm going to bring it up because I think it's an honest discussion.
You mentioned cohesiveness, and here's one of the things we've talked about.
I've talked about it on the podcast, I've talked about it on the radio, and I've talked about it on interviews, is that, and we've mentioned it this morning, is, again, we've got to understand that the policy is what we've got to focus on.
At the end of the day, it's about a policy.
Democrats are the best, I mean, they have been the best in the eight years that they've had it since 92, the eight years in policy, you know, basically, of knowing, okay, we've got to get 216, 217, 218, depending on how many is in the House, We'll give two or three passes, but the rest of you, you don't have a pass.
You gotta suck it up.
This is the best we're getting and go.
You saw it firsthand.
I saw it firsthand in those long caucus meetings where on healthcare, we ended up negotiating against ourselves.
Good lot of immigration bills.
Immigration.
I mean, guys, what is it going to take for Republicans?
Across the spectrum, my hope and your hope both is, and I'm helping candidates all over the country, is we get 225, 235, 240, whatever the number is.
I think here's the difference.
There's too many caucuses within caucuses, and that's just not a slight against the Freedom Caucus.
I know those guys.
I agreed with them probably more than I did the leadership, but I didn't go there to represent that.
I went there to get this stuff done.
And that's what we did, and you know that as well as I do, and it's in my book on the health care bill, how both factions, he had the Northeast Squishes that, you know, we want the Long Amendment before we pass the health care bill and all that stuff, and then he got the Freedom Caucus.
In many cases, they were just afraid of a primary.
So Trump was stuck between those factions.
You and I were stuck between those factions.
The goal isn't to go there and say, I represent the Tuesday group and the Main Street Republicans, or I represent the Freedom Caucus.
The goal is to work with everybody and get all the good stuff done, and at the end of the day, move the ball forward.
And that's what we were up against, and that's what Republicans are up against.
And Democrats don't see—now, maybe they do, but they don't seem to have as big a problem there as we do.
Yeah, we've got to get back to an understanding that at the end of the day, giving a speech and getting a million likes on Twitter is not as effective as actually getting something passed.
And I think that's the part.
And I say that as a guy that voted against reauthorizing FISA. So I was this fire-breathing talk radio host.
Oh, yeah.
But I realized that the health care bill was, A, a good piece of legislation.
I talked about it on the radio before I got to Congress.
But, B, it was the best we were going to get.
Exactly.
And we were undercut by the other chamber in that case.
And I think some of it out of spite of overturn.
Well, it was.
And I think, you know, look, please remember, folks, you're listening to this podcast, you know, Republicans, it was killed in the Senate.
The bill itself wasn't killed.
This is what always frustrates me when people say, you just couldn't pass your health care bill.
No, what was done in the Senate was, is there was just basically a skinny pack and just said, okay, we're going to pass this and go to conference where we could have actually done the bill.
McCain killed a conference.
For somebody who is so lauded as being the Person to, you know, work bipartisan, work in committees.
He killed process.
He didn't kill a bill, which in turn killed it.
It frustrates me to no end.
I know.
I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying that I think that as much as anything, people forget in 2018 healthcare was a huge issue.
Huge issue.
And by defeating that bill, we got all of the downside of proposing the bill, but none of the upside of passing it and seeing the good stuff, right?
So I wrote an op-ed in the journal about how I think McCain's thumbs down really hurt our chances in the midterm.
The Washington Post, just what you said.
Oh, Lewis doesn't know what he's talking about.
There was a skinny bill he was voting.
That wasn't the point.
It was the point to get something to conference.
That was it.
And, you know, it's really frustrating because, as I say, we're our own worst enemy sometimes.
And we've got to get over that and move the ball down the field, like you say.
But these...
Well, one of the things, Jason, and I refuse to name the name to keep that person anonymous.
They're still in Congress.
But I'll never forget in 2018 of those fights.
And I was in rules committee as well.
I mean, I'd been there at four in the morning and we'd have people come in.
You got to put this amendment in.
You got to put this amendment in.
And I remember one of these amendments, I'll leave it as amorphous as I possibly can.
It was dealing with the risk pools, those kinds of things.
And we couldn't get past these votes if we didn't get this in.
So we had to rework everything.
And one of the proponents, I'll just say a proponent, there was many of them, but one of the proponents said, you got to do this or I can't vote for it.
Well, we got it in the bill.
We got it out of the House.
Later in that 2018 cycle, you're exactly right.
That was a huge issue in many of our races.
And one of the reasons, frankly, we lost because we had members who couldn't explain it.
And I remember this member calling leadership and saying, why are they attacking me for doing this and describing the amendment?
And leadership said, you were the one that wanted the amendment.
I mean, it's just, again, sometimes it's for play and not for work.
And we got to get over that.
And I think that's why the Tax Reform Act was such a big deal.
Because at the end of the day, we did We got most of what we wanted.
And was it 100%?
No, but we got something that actually worked.
No, that's exactly right.
We pay traded over a trillion dollars in foreign profits.
Tax revenue is way, way up.
The biggest beneficiaries are the lower bottom.
Not that that's a reason to do it, but that's a fact.
Had I had my way, I would have eliminated carry interest as a capital gain and taxed it as ordinary income, which I think it really is.
But we got SALT deduction limited so that we're not I'm giving a subsidy to high-tax states, all of which proved that rising tide worked.
And that's why none of us got knit, at least I didn't, in the 2nd District of Minnesota, on the economy in 2018. It was healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, and that was due to our failure to get it done.
It was interesting, and you just made something, and I want to point this out for the podcast listeners, because they've heard me talk about it, Jason, so many times, and I just beat this drum, because it's something we've got to understand.
Democrats get policy done even if it costs them position in power.
But I'll show an example.
You and I have talked about Obamacare, Dodd-Frank.
You know, a lot of this stuff got put in.
They got put out, but it's still here.
That's right.
Their policy lasts a lot longer than they do, and they don't care.
They're more committed.
They're more committed ideologues than, quite frankly, we are in a more positive sense of the term.
They're committed to their philosophy.
It's not a good philosophy, but they're committed to it.
They're committed to it.
We're committed to the last poll.
And that's a huge problem.
And that really does stem a lot from the consultancy class.
The consultancy class is obsessed with polling, obsessed with just, you know, raising money, which is great, but we're never going to compete with them.
You know, Barry Goldwater and Bob Dole came together on one thing, Doug, and I'm wondering what you think about this, and that is you should be able to contribute to campaign if you can't vote.
Well, what would that do to K Street?
But you know, I wouldn't have supported the infrastructure bill in the last session.
But you know as well as I do why it was passed.
Every lobbyist who was going to hold a $10,000 donation for your campaign said, you vote for that or else.
And the campaign manager saying, you got to vote for that.
And that's how it gets done.
And now that we're just getting our butts clean and fundraising, we need to start taking a look at that too because money and media really has diluted our message, which is a majority message.
Well, and I think that's one of the things that we're not real good at.
We're still the independent contractors out here.
Democrats are a corporation.
You just got to look at it in that way and how they act and how their members act.
As we look forward, I mean, we got an election cycle coming up.
I'm getting...
And I've been out traveling, going to come up and travel some more.
But what I'm worried about right now is Republicans are doing the same thing.
I'm seeing some similarities to 2018. Now, look, before I get into data on the DougCollinsPodcast.com, you send me emails, I believe the House is going to, we're going to flip.
The Senate's going to be closed, but I still think we're going to flip that back as well.
But we've got a lot more work to do there.
The House is going to flip.
But I'm seeing House races that are a lot closer than they should be.
On the same reasons 2018 was bad is because they're not explaining or they're not at least giving a viable alternative to the mainstream narrative.
They're not giving a mainstream narrative on the Dobbs decision, abortion.
We lost the New York 19 race, Jason, my personal opinion.
We lost that race because you had the Democrat, did all abortion, The Republican was just focused on the economy, because that's what the consultants told him to do, and he never answered the abortion question.
You are so right about that.
And I'm seeing this, and look, and I'm not saying by any means, I'm as pro-life as they come.
You're not going to see Doug Collins modify on that, but we've got to explain it.
Instead of just letting them lie about it, I'm concerned we're going to lose five or seven seats that we could have taken if we don't do this.
You've been in politics longer than I have, but how many times I mean, this is just ad nauseum.
Have you heard your campaign manager or consultant say, if you're explaining, you're losing?
No, voters aren't stupid.
Sometimes you need to explain things.
And it might even be longer than 30 seconds.
And I don't know why these people who get, I guess, a reputation in the consultancy world for wins, keep coming back to that when we're now seeing this red wave receding because they're being told, stay silent on that.
Don't talk about the elections.
Don't talk about abortion.
Don't talk about climate.
Just ride the wave.
So they're silent while the other side is hacking away at them, chipping away at the lead.
And your point is really good on the life question.
I'm pro-life too.
But if you don't stand for something, so all of these Republicans are being told, look at the chaos in the country and just attack that.
So pick your favorite candidate.
That candidate failed.
That candidate failed.
We're going to run an ad that said that candidate failed.
Great.
What does that tell the voter that you're going to do?
It doesn't tell the voter you're going to do anything.
So on the abortion question, look, my position is clear.
I'm pro-life, and I don't think we should be using abortion for birth control, for same-sex selection, for disabled children in the womb, or in the ninth month with taxpayer-funded money.
Now, my opponent is in favor of all of those things.
And you've got to get them to answer why they're in favor of late-term abortion, not just why you're in favor of pro-life position.
But they're not being told to do that.
And I do think there's a danger of just riding that wave and going back to a comfortable conservatism where, what are you going to do about the border?
Cut taxes.
What about abortion?
Cut taxes.
What about the war in Ukraine?
Cut taxes.
That way you won't alienate anybody.
Yeah.
How do you fix Washington?
Term limits.
I mean, it's like, oh, guys, get past your two-word answers.
That's right.
Plus, we're beyond that.
It used to be during the Reagan era and the Jimmy Carter era, where the economy was front and center, and the supply side movement was just starting out, and we had to sell it.
We're talking about the very fundamentals of a civilized society now.
Law and order, life, borders, China issuing a bioweapon.
This is not politics as usual, and if you're not willing to talk about that, then you're not the right leader for the times.
Exactly.
Folks, this will not be the last time you get to hear Jason Lewis.
Jason, I'm glad we have reconnected and we've been talking back and forth.
I mean, I just respect his communication, his book.
You've got to go out, Party Animal, you've got to go out and get it.
It's just, we're going to be talking about these, especially coming into the election.
Jason, thanks for being on the podcast.
Let's definitely not make this the last one.
Let's keep this up.
100%.
Thanks for all the work you did and all the work you're doing here in Minnesota as well, Doug, on behalf of our candidates.
Keep at it, and we'll see you down the road.
Appreciate it.
All right, folks.
Doug Collins' podcast.
We'll see you again soon.
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