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Dec. 14, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
52:51
Different sides of the Aisle
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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.
Alright, everybody.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Again, continuing today in bringing on friends that we enjoy talking to and also enjoy frequently appearing with on Fox News and other places to discuss our opposite views of life.
And that is what makes the world go round.
And for some of you...
You avoid, you know, avoid probably is not the way to look at it, but you sort of dread the Thanksgiving and the Christmas and the holiday parties and everything else.
Like, oh no, that uncle that disagrees with me.
And I had one of those uncles, my dear Uncle Steve.
I mean, he would come in, folks, and we would start and he'd come sitting in.
He'd been single all his life.
He'd come into my mom and dad's place and he said, well, I saw your speech the other day, disagreed with every bit of it, but I love you.
It's good to see you.
And it's like, thanks Uncle Steve.
Well, today, Kevin Long is on with us.
Kevin has become a real good friend.
We've been on shows before, and we keep talking, and it is really good.
But it made me want him to be a part of this podcast, and hopefully a regular, is we can express really differences, and also where we agree on a lot.
But in light of a current topic, and I wanna hit this with you, because probably you and I both are gonna be asked about it here pretty soon.
One, welcome to the podcast.
Glad to have you here, Kevin.
And the Kristen Sinema story, which broke, you know, as we're taping this podcast, which will come out, it'll be a few days old when this comes out, but I'm going to say from someone who served with Kristen, this did not surprise me in the least.
What about you, Kevin?
Hey Doug, it's really good to be with you and I'm so happy.
You and I have built this friendship now over the course of a few years in different Fox News green rooms and now your listeners get to hear what we talk about in the green rooms before and after our shows.
Exactly.
So it's going to be fun.
Listen, I know you served with now Senator Sinema when she was in the House.
I always have a great deal of affection for Senator Sinema.
I knew her before she got elected to the House of Representatives.
She's a character.
She's a lot of fun.
Really interesting.
She has an incredible life story.
For many months, even maybe years, she lived out of a gas station with her family.
She survived on the edge of poverty.
I was not necessarily surprised by this action.
She is also really a self-preservationist.
And I think she's reading the tea leaves in Arizona.
She's seeing, you know, now another former colleague of yours, Ruben Gallego, chomping at the bit to take her on.
I think he would probably fare very well against her in a Democratic primary for that Senate seat.
She's up in two years.
And I think she's going to say, I'm going to run with the eye next to my name, maybe pull a few Republicans to my fold that we saw kind of reject some of the extremism on the right in Arizona and some of the Democrats that, you know, reject some of the left stuff, you know, with Raul Grijalva and stuff like reject some of the left stuff, you know, with Raul Grijalva and stuff and run up that center pike.
So we'll see if she's successful in that.
I'm not surprised by that at all.
Well, and for me, look, and I knew her very well.
She came in the same class I did in Congress, so we knew each other.
Our offices were very similar.
And really, the interesting thing about her is she is, to get to know her She's very funny.
She works hard.
I mean, she goes around all over.
She's one of those members.
There were several of us on the Hill that you would never see us just sitting on the Democrat side or Republican side.
We're always sort of walking in between.
Well, she would always be one.
She would walk in the Republican cloakroom.
I love that.
Yeah, she would actually make some funny comments because she has made it very clear that she is a bisexual background and others.
And she would make it very clear.
She would use that to sort of...
Take people off guard, I guess is the best way to put that.
She's been playing both sides for a long time on that front.
She's equal opportunity.
She said, hey, I've been on both sides for a while.
It was just her.
She got into the triathlon stuff.
I'd watched her.
We were all in the gym.
I think the interesting thing for me, and I think you hit it perfectly, I don't think this is...
I'm going to be a little cynical.
I don't think this is much about the party issues as it is a little bit of a self-preservation.
It is more of a...
Okay, because she is...
And as you know, and this is something we can talk about, I do believe that there's a lot of legislation that can be done bipartisanly.
The problem is when you go back to the election side of this, If you do things that are counter to the quote base, then you've got an election problem.
And I think this has become more and more.
It's totally an incentive, you know, incentives for the electorate.
There is no incentive, you know, really for her to work across party lines and win a Democratic primary against Ruben Gallego.
Let's be very frank.
I think you're absolutely right, Doug.
It's going to be interesting to see.
Look, and I was one of those that was able, I had a great group of folks here in Northeast Georgia that I represented.
What most people never wanted to understand about my district was, is our district was what I'll call true populist.
Okay?
In the sense of going back to the old Even under the days of, in Georgia, we had Yellow Dog Democrats.
We had, you know, this was my area, but it was also the mountains, the Appalachia, sort of leave me alone, government, get out of my life.
You know, going back to, frankly, the moonshiners, the revenuers, we don't want you in our heels.
And so we always had to balance that, but yet they always...
And again, and I say this to this day, in the 9th District and many of my upper counties, the mountain counties, where the TVA is very much alive and others, you had an old school How do I say this?
And I don't want to really call it New Deal, but in some ways it was.
The government was there for a reason.
And you remember the old Alabama, I don't know if you're a country music fan, the old Alabama song that said, you know, Mr. Roosevelt gonna save us all.
You know, it was that kind of, that mentality on the farm and the farm country down here that there was a part for the government.
So it's always mixed.
I'll have to tell you, Kevin, one of the funniest experiences I ever had.
Again, R35 district.
Okay, you're a political consultant.
We're going to get into that life story in a little bit.
But an R35 district, folks, let me just let you understand.
If it was a D35, there's not a Republican got a chance in Hootie to win that district.
And in my district, a Democrat had no chance to win these districts because they're so conservative.
Tea Party movement literally started really close to my district and in my district.
I think you won some of those elections by 40-50%, which is unheard of.
Best one was 80-20.
So we did a couple of 80-20s.
Holy heck, yeah.
So at one time, I kid you not, I never ever even met the guy I run against.
Never met him.
It didn't matter, but I didn't meet him.
But I went to a meeting one time.
It was a very conservative meeting.
I can't remember if it was a true Tea Party meeting or something.
And it was, we were talking conservative and somebody was asking about it.
But several of them had signs that says, keep your hands off my Social Security.
I love that.
It's like, you know, Keep government off my Medicare.
Exactly the same thing.
That is the government, folks.
It's amazing.
But I think she gets that.
And look, she was helpful for us in criminal justice reform.
I mean, when we did First Step Act, she did.
But I think it's just an interesting part.
Kevin, where we're at in politics right now.
And we're just coming off the race down here in Georgia with the Walker-Warnock race.
Warnock, of course, won again to get a full six-year term.
And there's a lot of people saying...
How happy are you not to see another ad from either of them on your TVs or in your mail?
I can't even imagine the money spent with how you're inundated constantly.
$400 million.
Incredible.
I want to say, if I'm not mistaken, that's just the Warnock side.
Yeah, incredible.
It's been amazing.
Yeah, I'm happy.
We don't want to see anything else right now.
Somebody said, are you ready for the 2024?
No.
It's like bad turkey at this point.
No.
It's just not there.
And again, I am also not an idealistic person who says, oh, if we just put all our sides together and we can do this.
Because I made a statement to a friend this morning.
I'd love to get your take on this.
I said, the problem we have is, in what we're seeing, because this person was indicating, I'm tired of parties.
I'm tired of the Democrats.
I'm tired of the Republicans.
Sort of mimicking Sinema a little bit.
And even injecting the...
The first president of the United States, George Washington, and his famous, you know, we need to be careful of factionalism, the parties.
Yeah, his farewell address, yeah.
But yet he was a part of one.
You know, it's a funny part of this.
But has it become too much that we've become a nation of elections and not governing?
I think that's absolutely right, right?
And I subscribe to that whole quote from Mario Cuomo, right?
You campaign in poetry and you govern in prose, right?
And especially in Georgia with these runoff elections, the fact that Warnock has now run, was it four times in two years?
For the Senate seat, the amount of money that you just pointed out that was raised, think of, you know, your former district, what $400 million could do in your district, right, in terms of education and things like that.
It's insane.
And it goes into the pockets like me in terms of media consultants.
So I'm not arguing against self-preservation here for my line of work.
But I think that's the case, that we get so focused on these campaigns.
And, I mean, you know this better than anyone, Doug.
When you first got elected, what do you have to do the next week?
Start calling people for money, right?
The incentive structure is such that you have to raise...
Hundreds of thousands of dollars every other month or something like that.
And you've got to give it back to the party on the Republican side, the Republican committees, the Democratic committees on my side.
And you don't get into the weeds of actually governing and building relationships.
And I credit you for actually building not just relationships within the Republican caucus, but folks like Sinema.
And you do have relationships with...
A lot of folks go to Washington and they don't build relationships at all.
Not even with their neighbors in the Cannon...
You know, Russell, whatever building you're in.
And, you know, I was a big believer.
I love, you know, folks like Tip O'Neill on my side and stuff like that, really relationship folks.
And I think when the House and Senate calendar changed in the 90s, where everybody, you know, the incentive structure was to get home as quickly as possible, vote and get home.
So you could go to your in-person events and stuff like that, and that's important, that relationship.
But when all the kids of members of Congress left, The DC schools, Maryland schools, Virginia schools, and that they went home, back to their home districts.
You weren't, you know, seeing each other on the weekends.
You weren't traveling together.
I'm a huge proponent and believer in CODELs, right?
Bipartisan CODELs across the world, right?
Where we're a united front, where the water ends.
And you can build those relationships, you know, and some of it's perfunctory, but some of it is, you know, I think Hillary Clinton and John McCain actually developed a semblance of a relationship on a lot of those Codells because they were both focused on the Armed Services Committee and on the Senate side.
So, you know, again, I think if we focus more on those relationships and less the campaigning, and I'm not an altruistic guy, you know, I don't think it's all, you know, It's going to be puppies and everything like that.
But I think we've got to return to some semblance of that.
And hopefully, maybe more actions like this that we're seeing out of Arizona will encourage that.
Well, we'll see how it goes.
I think it's...
But, you know, the interesting part, one last note on sentiment, and I want to come back to the issue of what we were just talking about, but you just brought back up sentiment.
The interesting thing is people are saying, well, how will this...
It really is not going to fix the Senate because what she...
And as the Senate said, you know, she doesn't go to the Democrat luncheon anyway.
She has never a part.
But she's not...
I'm going to be with the Republicans.
So in essence, they're going to get their 51 power exchange.
It's almost like in some way she knows, or she at least is attempting to cut the baby in half, so to speak, and say, I'm going to keep all the perks of being a Democrat, but I'm not going to be a Democrat.
Exactly right.
And you saw that in her interview today that she is hopeful she'll keep all of her committee assignments and her seniority and stuff like that.
So she is totally splitting the baby on that.
And she gets the press back in Arizona saying, okay, well, she's an independent.
No, she's still going to remain in power with the Democratic majority.
And Schumer can't afford to kick her off committees.
No.
She will hop right over that luncheon in the Republican side in about two seconds.
Exactly right.
And the Republicans, McConnell would be smart to try and entice her.
And that happens all the time behind the scenes, I think, on the Senate side where it's this evenly split.
And I know there were entries to Joe Manchin by McConnell too.
We'll make you chairman of all this kind of stuff.
She's a smart political operator for sure.
Well, that is it.
Back to the politics here in Georgia.
There was a funny thing come out.
And again, I love postmortems written by media, you know, journalists who've not been in politics.
They report on politics.
They've not been in it.
And don't know anything about Georgia either.
Most likely, yeah.
I've loved that.
That's great.
And then you always get into the...
And here's the thing.
And again, this is why I love this podcast.
Because people listen to my podcast.
I'm just going to shoot straight to you.
There are now consultants who are going to backbite other consultants because the next cycle is coming up.
And they'll say, we'll see what they did on the Walker campaign.
I would have never done that.
Exactly.
Funniest one I saw, though.
And I'm not going to name the name.
I'm just going to be...
I'm being kind today.
We're taping this on a Friday.
It's Friday fun day.
There was a young consultant down here in Georgia.
He's been in politics for a while.
Put out a post last night.
I don't get this.
Basically, the post consisted of this.
It's time to fire all the consultants.
It's time just to listen to the people.
Hashtag fire all consultants.
Okay, Kevin, I can't make this up.
He just was a consultant on a race in Georgia.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
I mean, all you gotta do is go look at the financial disclosures and here's this person's campaign, his title.
It's extraordinary.
Extraordinary.
Oh, but I want to go back to something that's not talked about.
I'm asked about this a lot.
Codell's, it's amazing.
Um, It's amazing what people think, and I say this in a sort of tongue-in-cheek kind of way, it's amazing what people think that a politician can be bought for.
And, you know, when I was in a Georgia legislature, you know, the lobbies would go to dinners and lobbies pay for, and it was different than it is in Congress, which you can't even buy a cup of coffee.
But down here you could.
And somebody said, well, you just went to that lobby.
That's why you voted.
I said, if I could be bought for a steak, I could be bought for less, and I'm not going to be bought for a steak.
Amen.
Yeah.
Depends on how good the steak is on my side, though.
Kevin Wallen can be bought with a steak if it's medium rare.
I had one last night.
Really good.
My son's birthday.
But the thing about it is, in looking at that, the situations...
How we view a lot of this is in a point now to where you go back to the 90s.
You brought it up.
I'm glad you brought it up.
And I'm saying this because I get asked all the time, what's wrong with Washington?
I say two things.
One, you've already hit it.
I just want to add something to it.
I will add that it was Newt Gingrich who started this.
And I love Newt.
I've known Newt forever.
And I jokingly say Newt has a thousand ideas and a few of them you can actually put into play.
Especially on the moon.
Especially on the moon.
Really well.
With his moon bases that he wants to build.
The great thing about Newt Gingrich is like some others.
He makes you at least...
Okay, let's think about that one a minute.
Okay, I can't do that.
That's impractical.
It's like building the ark on a tiny pond.
But okay, let's get it.
But when he came in, he was following that very populist thought, the contract with America, get back home, see your, you know, don't get the Potomac fever, you know, the whole thing.
And what that did is, like what you just said, which is really, I don't think most Americans don't see it, hopefully they'll hear this in this podcast, is they moved the families back home.
Because what they did was all of a sudden made Delta, America, and United very much more money because they go back and forth all the time.
But the other thing it did And this is the part that I think as we go forward, not only took committees, you know, you didn't see each other, you didn't see them on weekends at ball games.
A good friend of mine down here named Kevin Levitas.
Kevin was the son of Elliot Levitas.
Elliot was a Democrat congressman down here in the early 80s, mid 80s.
And they moved to, he went to school around D.C. He knew a lot of the other kids.
And so they would see each other, barbecues and everything.
But here's where it also gets interesting, and the coming out of that Gingrich style that I think has been the other thing.
You couldn't have anticipated in the early 90s, but after 2000, you had two things.
You had basically what we'll say branded news, and you had the social media.
You all of a sudden had the internet and social media.
Those two things have caused members to have to be responsive back to the election base more than they do the ones that they govern with.
Because in my case, it would have been easy.
I could have been the easiest firebrand no on everything, and my district would have reelected me at 80%, period.
You could have had that seat for 70 years.
Could have still been there.
Even with what I did, we could have.
But here's the funny thing.
My district staff, I love them to death.
One has passed away.
His name was Bill Coakley.
God bless Bill.
He was old master sergeant in the Air Force, did all my stuff.
But he was at all the Republican meetings, all the Tea Party meetings.
They knew him better than some of their own members.
And another gentleman, Joel Capps, was my district director.
And they would call up, especially before like, you know, debt ceiling votes, before like omnibus votes.
My mates love the omnibus votes.
And, you know, speaker votes, which I want to get into in a little bit.
Speaker votes.
And it was like they had these passionate opinions about people they had never met before.
And so if I voted for, say, John Boehner for Speaker, I voted for the omnibus bill when it had stuff in here protecting my lakes and everything else, they said, boss, really?
And I said, yes.
He said, all right, we understand.
We get it.
But I'm just waiting for the vote.
We got to go defend it out there in the community.
The phone is getting ready to start ringing.
So that's the balance here, Kevin.
And Democrats have the same thing.
I mean, it's becoming more and more.
Y'all got to retrieve, I think, up until about 16. The AOC movement brought that into your side more than it had been.
Well, I think, you know, you look at AOC and others in the squad, and I'm no fan of the squad.
You know, I'm as moderate as they come.
But when it's performative, right, where, you know, you had a young guy in Congress who lost re-election on the Republican side who said, I'm not interested in legislative staff.
We're a comms office, right?
We're a communications office.
And you see that on the Democratic side, too, where it's all about, okay, this tweet is going to get more likes than voting for an important bipartisan bill.
That's problematic.
And that's the incentive structure is, and Doug, to your point, it's the rise of social media.
When these members of Congress now are more interested in their social media following, And the hits that they get online and how that fuels their TV appearances and stuff like that.
Nobody knew in the 90s rank and file members, right?
They were able to go about their business, get things done, and didn't care about their social media cred and their following.
I think social media is good in some ways in terms of personal connections and knowledge sharing and stuff like that, and it certainly has to get reined in, and we can talk about that in 230 and stuff like that.
But my God, when the incentive structure is your social media following and not your ability to get things done for your district, not just your country, that's hugely problematic.
Well, for me, before we get back into it, we always had, and I had five core values that we always did, and constituent services were going to be the first.
We had working with other offices, no matter who called, they got But it's also, what were we doing in the district?
And I always had, like for me, it was Corps of Engineers.
I've got two of the larger Corps of Engineer Lakes, and I live on one, and they had always been in trouble down here.
It was broadband access.
We had an issue down here with a company called Windstream.
My wars with them are famous.
We had pharmaceutical.
We had the pharmacy, small pharmaceuticals.
I still have the mom and pop pharmacies, which are getting killed by the PBMs, which are just blood-sucking them to death.
And, you know, so we always focused on that.
And that gave me the ability to deal with my district and then bring in the national on top of it.
But when you get into it, like I said, if all I was was a comm shop, it's not there.
I made a statement.
I'd love to get your reaction.
I made this statement.
And I don't know if it was on when you and I were on the other day, but I did on another show.
They were breaking this and, you know, the problems with Congress or problems with, you know, Kevin McCarthy is Speaker.
We'll deal with that a little bit.
He's in my prayers.
He's in my prayers, Kevin.
God love him.
God love him.
Somebody's going to catch that car.
He's caught the car.
Now we'll see what he does with it.
But here's what I said.
I said my party, and frankly the other party as well, but I think Pelosi did a good job.
We'll see if Hakeem can keep that up.
222 to 213, that is such a narrow margin.
But if my party doesn't understand Yes, you can do the investigations.
Yes, you can do that.
But if at the end of the day, you can't get 218 on pieces of legislation, then you're simply giving speeches.
And that's what we've got to understand.
Do you see that becoming more and more of a problem in the Congress?
Absolutely, I do.
And I think I was with you, Doug, maybe when I made this argument.
I got a lot of grief from my side a few weeks ago before the election, but I said, you know, if Republicans are going to win the House, and it's likely that they will, I want Kevin McCarthy to actually win more seats so that he can have an actual governing majority, and he's not going to have with 222. And I think that's a problem when it comes to issues of the debt ceiling funding government,
let alone anything that doesn't have to do with the operations fundamentally basic of government and governing.
And I think it's going to be a huge problem for him.
It'll be any question if he can cobble together the votes on the floor.
And that's such an interesting process, too, that it's the whole, obviously, you know this many, many years serving there.
It's a whole house that votes on this.
And if he actually has...
Is it Paul Gosar?
Who announced that he's actually running?
Andy Biggs is actually running.
Andy Biggs is going to run, and he challenged him in the conference, got, I think, 33 votes.
You saw that on Pelosi's side, and she actually lost more votes the time she came back to Tim Ryan from Ohio.
Within committee, but then after that vote, no one else ran against her and she had the votes on the floor.
Now, I think this is a whole new ballgame with Biggs continuing that challenge onto the floor come January, and it'll be anyone's guess if he can cobble that together.
I'm a huge fan of Steve Scalise, actually, as a Democrat, so we'll see.
He's been relatively silent on that front, saying he supports Kevin and stuff like that, but I think he's biding his time, as others are, too, that Kevin won't be able to do this.
Well, it's interesting.
And let's just lay the last hand fact out today, and this is going to be a few days old, but for the podcasters to realize sort of timeframe, Doug Collins' podcast has dropped today.
And you can go back, and if you've not already subscribed, how you don't miss it, and you should subscribe to the podcast so you get it delivered to your inbox every morning.
I did one today, Kevin.
It actually broke that down.
The real what goes on behind the scenes of a broke.
Here's what's interesting, even since I taped that just a couple of days ago.
You have five who have basically said, we're not voting for you, and a couple of them have actually doubled down even more.
We're not voting for you anyway at all.
There's nothing you can say, nothing you can do.
We are, yeah, this is it.
We're done.
Then, today, was it yesterday, or in this week, six...
I believe it are seven members wrote a letter from the Freedom Caucus saying, here's what you've got to do that we want to see in the next speaker.
And there was stuff on there that is just not probably going to be agreed to, mainly because if he agrees to it, he's going to lose some others in the House Caucus on the other side.
This is a balancing act.
So you got 12 that at least give indication we're not there, okay?
I know personally from conversations, and as you well know, Kevin, it's not money, it's not real estate.
The most important information in that little square hill area is information.
It's information and who you get it from.
And I've already had information just by conversations that wasn't even about this, that there are other members out there contemplating voting no.
There are other members who are being told by their staff, you've got to vote no on Kevin.
Vote for somebody else.
I'm not sure how he does it.
But this is the part where you mentioned a minute ago, and I bring this up simply to say nobody knew who these members were.
I bet you they wasn't 20, I'm being facetious here, but they wasn't 20% of the population in the 1980s or 90s that could name you the Speaker of the House.
100%.
Let alone their own member, too.
Who's my member?
I don't remember.
Because the mail was how you communicated.
You know, literal mail mail.
Exactly right.
Back in 87, I was an intern in the U.S. House for a man named Ed Jenkins.
He was my congressman, a Democrat from North Georgia, an old prosecutor.
He actually was the lead questioner in the Iran-Contra of Ali North.
Oh, wow.
I was up there during that time.
It was pretty cool.
But anyway, I remember one of the things we did earlier was get the mail.
And the mail was massive.
Sometimes you get the bingo cards now, but for the most part, it's email.
Everybody just emails you to death.
But they don't know this.
And it's interesting to me.
I've just been amazed by this race.
Kevin McCarthy...
I know him.
He's a personal friend.
Not as conservative as I or others in the conference, but has been a good friend.
He's helped a lot of Republicans get elected.
Okay?
Sure.
Huge fundraiser.
My God.
Huge fundraiser.
The amount of money he's raised for the caucus.
He can play that circuit well.
He's done that forever.
Good friend.
And so he's taken the ire of a lot of conservatives, hardline conservatives in the media and the social media.
And it's funny now how all of a sudden they're supporting Kevin.
I thought...
Okay, this is interesting.
But yet you have some of the more hard members of the electorate not.
But I see this as a symptom that we've got to get over because, again, right now, I get it.
You don't like Kevin.
You don't think it's going to change.
I'll ask a Democrat who Pelosi handled this fairly well.
I mean, she ended up...
I think there's still more...
You know, get together in the Democratic Party than there is in the Republican Party.
I still think there's more all in line.
But, you know, you've got to get to a governing majority.
I don't think this bodes well, at least until we get it straight in our heads, what is the governing principle in this?
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
And I think, you know, you bring up Hakeem Jeffries, and this might just be a reflection of, you know, Pelosi being the last of that generation, and Steny Hoyer, too, and Jim Clyburn to some degree, where they knew how to exercise raw power, where you had, you know, the pork barrel spending, where you had the committee structures that they really dictated.
And, you know, And I think the Democrats sticking together is more of a reflection on Speaker Pelosi and her abilities, and does that go away with a Hakeem and a Catherine Clark and that, as opposed to Democrats actually feeling this overall commitment to unity?
I think that was more a reflection of Nancy Pelosi and her capabilities as that last generation That was experienced and knowledgeable about exercising raw power within a caucus, you know, that you don't see with, you know, Kevin McCarthy on our side or on your side, and maybe we won't see with Hakeem Jeffries, where, again, the incentive structure is just so different from what it was.
With these members in the 80s, 90s, and even the early 2000s, Newt Gingrich, you know, ran the caucus in the 90s with a fairly iron fist, you know, in terms of, you know, recognizing folks and elevating folks.
And then that all came undone with electoral defeats in those midterms in 98. So it'll be anyone's guess what Kevin McCarthy can do.
And maybe the House isn't, with a 222 majority, that governable.
And hopefully we can just do the basics of what we need to do in terms of keeping the government open and operating and functioning.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting.
I mean, because like I said, you got to have the numbers.
It really is where it comes into.
And let me go back to something, because I had a lot of people, because I've dealt with NDAA and there's some issues that we would like, didn't get in, kind of thing.
But at the end of the day, some of the bigger stuff will pass with Republican and Democrat votes.
I mean, there's just going to be some in both sides.
It'll vote to keep things going.
The problem comes in when...
You put up a bill that is basically...
And we saw this...
Again, when you can do it, you can do it.
Put up that just have nothing in it for the other side, for the most part.
And then when the other side locks down, you've got to have all your membership there.
That's where this is going to become a problem.
And it proved problematic for Pelosi, even up until the last minute on NDAA. And then she did a...
I thought it was an interesting political move.
She put it on suspension.
She got 60 votes more than she needed.
As opposed to if she'd have put it on the floor in a straight-up majority vote, she could have had problems with her side.
So it was an interesting way to put that, and I think we've got to do, you know, it's going to be interesting.
One of my favorite stories of Pelosi, and I'll say this, Republicans have watched and said, how do Democrats get stuff done?
And they don't like my answer.
Okay, because what you just said, that sort of old school, I'm old school.
I may only be 57, but I'm old school.
And, you know, I look at this and it goes back to a story that I have heard.
I've heard it confirmed.
So I'll just take it as true.
You may know more about it.
Back in 2010, a Democrat from Florida, very liberal Democrat from Florida, didn't like Obamacare because it wasn't liberal enough.
Went to the floor of the House, told Pelosi, I'm not voting for this.
I'm a liberal.
I'm a progressive.
We got to have better.
And Pelosi said, you will vote for it.
He said, no, I won't.
She said, yes, you will.
He said, no.
She said, I've been here a lot longer than you have.
I've done this for years.
This is what we're going to get, and you're going to fall in line and do it.
He said, no, I'm not, and you can't do anything about it.
She said, well, what I can do is assure next year you will have a primary opponent very well, and I will make sure that they're held, and you won't be coming back.
Guess who got the vote?
She did.
Now, if the same thing, and I relay that message to some of my Republican friends.
I said, folks, not every hill is a hill to die on.
You got to understand that.
There are some that are, but this is not.
I said, so in spending, I said, you get the best you can.
And I said, but could you imagine?
I mean, John Boehner.
I mean, when Boehner demoted two or three, and look, I'm not saying it was right, wrong, but when he did, I mean, you would have thought the world ended.
I've never heard the media report these stories in the Democratic Party, which I know were there.
But we don't like that.
And I think that's why Kevin's going to have problems.
And I think Pelosi, and we've talked about this too in green rooms and stuff like that, she knows power is fleeting, right?
Democrats won't be in control for decades and Republicans won't.
It'll go back and forth.
And that's a good thing for this country.
So she uses the time that she has, I think, effectively more than Republicans have in recent memory, right?
She knows that power is fleeting and she's going to do whatever she can and make her members take tough votes, whether it be on the ACA, on Obamacare.
And a lot of those members, they voted and they didn't come back the next year.
But what good is, in her estimation, I think in a lot of Democrats' estimation, that seat if you're not going to do anything with it?
And I think she has fundamentally understood that.
I think that's an old school value set.
And we'll see if this new class coming in of leaders are just worried about self-preservation and not doing anything with the majority that they have in the short time that they're in power.
Yeah, I think you agree.
What is it?
92 to 2002. We're looking at, you know, 30 years here.
The last 30 years.
Democrats have only had the majority in the House for eight of those years.
That's it.
But think of some of the most...
And again, I know there's things Republicans have done.
Don't get me wrong.
There's a lot of bigger...
And sometimes people say, well, what about some of the things that they don't like today?
No Child Left Behind, which I personally believe was a mistake.
There's a lot of other things.
But when you get to the real things that are affecting us today...
Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, some of the energy issues.
Just in the past year, you've had the transportation issues, bills.
They came from a slim majority, this time, in a Democrat and then back in 2010. And I said it this way, and I think this one you were talking about in the green room.
She's willing to give up position and power for policy.
She's one of those who understands you just can't take this stuff out quickly.
Once it gets in, it's in.
And you saw that with Obamacare, right?
And how many times to reverse it and stuff like that?
And it's still there because of that mentality.
And I think, you know, to your point, the last two years on my side, you know, we got...
Mostly everything that we wanted, right?
Through infrastructure, we got a reasonable gun legislation.
We got some semblance of this Build Back Better agenda that was so silly to call it the Inflation Reduction Act.
But all of our priorities have gotten done to that point, and power is fleeting.
And I think that two years of legislating will have ramifications for the next 20 years in terms of innovation, competition with China, things like that.
I think you see that.
You know, look, you and I, and we'll go on another episode, maybe this.
I have to admit, and there was some Republicans, you know, support on this.
This is what was very frustrating.
But I do not believe, especially from more of the Second Amendment side, more of the gun, what that bill actually did was from a perspective of what I can see happening with it.
Democrats have, I mean, for all of the Democrats who say we need to do more, I mean, look, you've already, if you go back and read the language, and I was on my podcast talking about it, I had an op-ed that Fox wouldn't publish.
When I pointed out the language issue, I said, there's a language issue in here that basically opens up, you know, the registration, it opens up, I said, it's there.
It's not theoretical.
It is literally in the bill.
But it came, you know, with some Republican help there.
But yeah, that's the policy's implication that will last for a long time.
And from my side of the aisle, we got to think about that a little bit more.
Interesting point.
And I hope this will be, like I said, we'll have a running series here.
I would love that.
Later on, I want people to get to know you.
And then we'll take some more topics and we'll go at it a little bit.
But Kevin, background, we had an interesting background, some of faith background, different faiths, but different background.
You came up, Catholic background, studied politics.
Tell us a little bit about Kevin.
Tell me, I want to know about you for a second.
Yeah, so I grew up in New Jersey.
I'm a Yankee.
And came down to school at Catholic University.
And grew up Catholic, Irish Catholic, my whole life.
And really deepened my faith at Catholic U in D.C., I spent some time working, and we've talked about this, with the endorsing agent for our military chaplains, our Catholic chaplains, which is the Archdiocese for the military services.
I spent time studying theology, wanted to become a Navy chaplain, go down that route as a Catholic priest, and for many, many reasons decided against that.
But faith has played an important part in my life, and Intertwined is that love and support of the military.
And that's why I adore you so much, Doug, in terms of your work as an Air Force chaplain, because that's where the rubber hits the road.
And that's oftentimes the most difficult charisms, the most difficult assignments is priests, ministers, Rabbis, imams meet people in the most difficult parts of their life, in the throes of disease, death, birth, marriage.
And to be witness to that is something that's super incredible.
And it's often magnified with the chaplain corps.
And That's what, you know, we just need more good people.
You know, we had a huge gap in terms of Catholics, in terms of the Catholic numbers and the need for chaplains and not being able to meet those needs because all of our bishops said, you know, we don't want to give you any guys because we're struggling at home to fill these parishes and churches and schools and stuff like that.
But there was such a real need.
And that's why, you know, as soon as we started debating on TV and stuff like that, to come from that basic level of love of Christ and love of humanity, I always knew we were going to be connected on that front.
And I still, you know, will give you grief for leaving the Navy to join the Air Force.
But, you know...
Lieutenant Curl, you're doing pretty well.
I'm hoping so.
Maybe get on a little bit further.
But this weekend, I will have to say, it will be Go Navy Beat Army.
Hey, all right.
We'll take it.
But I will have to remind both parties that it is the Air Force.
It is the Commander-in-Chief trophy again.
That's true.
That's true.
Back at it again.
My first Rose Garden experience ever was the 2017, like in January, February, Air Force coming to get the Commander-in-Chief trophy in the Rose Garden with Trump.
I love that.
I love that.
It was pretty cool.
Yeah, you're right.
And I think this is it.
And look, for all of those out there who said, oh my Lord, Doug and Kevin, they've gone off the wall.
No, I'm still a Republican.
He's still a Democrat.
We're going to disagree on guns.
We're going to disagree on abortion.
We're going to disagree on equality.
We'll get into those later on.
But folks, I wanted you to see today...
We can have similar understandings of government, how it should work.
At the end of the day, Republicans, I believe, should want to see policy put into place.
Democrats should want to see policy put into place.
That means you're going to have to do a lot of things.
And what I said earlier, Kevin...
Sort of wrap up with this thought, because like I said, we could go for hours.
We could make Joe Rogan look slow.
But with these topics, we'll take up later time.
But that idea that I presented just a few minutes ago, that every hill is not a hill to die on.
Why has that gotten so...
And I've made this comment before.
I'd love to hear a Democrat perspective.
And you may disagree with me.
I believe that...
We have gotten to the place in which we have divorced real life from politics.
For the same businessmen and women who go to work and cut deals for their businesses, they find the best opportunities for their business, won't accept that in the political realm.
Now, I understand it in an issue like life.
I understand that in an issue that are heels to die on for many people.
I get that.
But you get people calling in saying, I don't want to shut the government down, no CR, no Cronus.
I mean, have we gotten to that point?
You know, in reality, One of the reasons why there's so much problems in our political realm is that we've divorced reality and we view politics almost as a reality TV show.
I think that's absolutely right.
And I think, to some degree, elected folks have stopped trusting the public.
I think the American people are smart.
For the most part.
I think they are engaged.
You look at Ronald Reagan, his famous quote, if I can get 80%, I'm going to do it.
He had operators like Jim Baker and others, his chief of staff, and George H.W. Bush, my hero.
I'm looking at pictures of him on my wall.
As a Democrat, we've got to return to trust in the people.
And return to that semblance that Ronald Reagan put out there.
If I can get 80%, I'm going to go for it.
And I think elected officials have stopped that level of trust in the American people that if I can come to you and argue why it is I signed on to that omnibus, the amount of money it brings back to this district, the amount of jobs this is going to fund, they've already made the decision that the American people and their district won't trust them or believe them.
And it's all about base plays, and I think that's problematic.
But I'm hopeful with conversations like this.
We're going to mix it up on television as much as we can.
I'm going to take the fight to you, but I'm still, at the end of the day, going to adore you and think the world of you.
And sometimes you'll win, and sometimes I'll win.
Well, the other day, like good...
Boxing, and I've always viewed politics as more like boxing.
I grew up with my dad.
God love my daddy.
He's still with me.
I have him with me.
I get to have breakfast with him on the weekends, and he just lives right up the corner.
But he instilled in me what was the old sweets boxing, the sweet science of boxing.
Back from the 70s, 80s, Leonard, Holmes, all the big, Duran, everybody.
I just loved boxing.
Boxing is not just a science to it.
Exactly.
Give and take.
You knew when to give and you watched for the opening and you took it.
I have a funny one.
I couldn't believe you actually gave me this one the other day.
We were talking about...
Oh, it was the last one we did on Fox.
And it was something about Kamala Harris.
Oh, the 50-50 split.
And you said, yeah, then Kamala Harris will be able to go other places instead of having to stay near the hill to break the ties.
And I said, no, he just didn't give me that one.
I know.
I gave you that opening.
My next response was, maybe she'll finally go to the border.
But I gave you a couple as well.
You do.
It's a good give and take.
I got some grief from my side on that.
Again, if we get more stuff done in this country, and at the end of the day, faith perspective has taught me one thing, Kevin.
It's why I appreciate you so much and our friendship is that there is an understanding in our faith traditions, and that's the Christ, is that there's nobody we see today Anywhere you go, if you're listening to this podcast, you're driving along, you're working out in the gym, wherever you may be, there's nobody you're going to look at that my faith does not teach me that is not deeply loved by God.
Amen.
And made in His image.
In His image.
And it's just, they may not be doing what He would like.
There's issues of sin and gravity, and we can do that.
But the question is, for me, is do I love, as He told me, to love like He does?
And I think that's been the thing that even in politics, you can find those times and we've got to because I did a radio show, and I did it every day for a while, and I ended it about three weeks ago.
And I ended with this story, Kevin, and it goes back to what you've talked about, and that's why I appreciate you.
It's a reminder of who we work for.
It's a reminder of what politics is supposed to be about.
And there was this young couple who had a couple of kids in the Georgia legislature when I first went down there.
already adjourned for the day and they had brought the kids up and they were looking around and it was just pretty neat and I was I had a meeting later but I had nothing to do as well I was like my first term nobody cared what I did so I just walked around and was on the fourth floor and I saw them and they were looking at some of the statues and things and the little girl had a little camera she looked over at me and she said do you work here and I said well yeah I do I have my pen
I have my name tag on the panel and she said we came to see everybody but they were already gone I said really And her mom said, you know, her mom starts like, come back over here.
And I said, no, she's fine.
And we talked and I said, well, I'll tell you what, would you like to go down there and see where we normally, where they're supposed to be?
She said, really?
And she turned around and looked at her mom and her mom said, it's okay if you can.
I said, no, we're done.
I said, let me take, I said, if you got a minute, I'll take you, I'd be happy to take you to the floor of the house in Georgia.
So we walked down and she's talking up a storm, sweet as can be.
And I had a brother who kept sort of hitting her saying, quit talking.
And mom and dad were just there.
And they were nervous.
And they were homeschool parents.
And they had brought their kids.
And you could tell this was a big deal for them.
Okay?
Just from where they came from.
They told me where they were from and just what it was.
And so they came down and we went on the floor.
And I looked around and I saw the mom and the dad and the boy, but I didn't see the little girl.
And I turned around real quick saying, okay, where is she at?
And she had her little pink camera.
I'll never forget this, Kevin.
She had a little pink camera and she was taking a picture of the doorknob.
Of the door.
The doorknob has the seal of Georgia on it.
And she was taking a picture.
I still get emotional when I talk about this.
I open that door all the time and after maybe one time, forgot about it.
But there are hundreds of millions of people in this country who still believe that this country is the greatest country they've ever seen.
They have opportunities, even if they don't have the physical wealth that goes along with it.
And it is our job as those who've been entrusted with that gift of being either on TV, as we are now, or me, as I was in elected office, is to remember the little girl with the pink camera who took a picture of a doorknob Who all of her hopes and dreams were ahead when everything was still fresh.
I think that's where we got to be.
That's why I do this podcast.
That's why I have friends like you.
And I'm so thankful that you would come on.
Amen, Doug.
That's it.
I love that story.
And that sweet, sweet little girl.
All right, folks.
We're out.
You'll see Kevin and I on Fox a good bit.
Don't worry, but he'll be back on the podcast soon.
And we're going to do this.
I wanted you to get to know Kevin before we got into it some more, but we're going to take some issues out there that I hear from you on.
How can a Democrat believe this?
Well, I'm going to give you a chance to hear why a Democrat believes this.
And then you'll see me and I'm going to say, I don't know.
This is his stuff, not mine.
Okay.
And he'll ask me why I'm a Republican and why I believe that.
But we'll do it.
But Kevin, thanks for being a part of the Doug Collins podcast.
We will see you again soon, my friend.
Thank you, brother.
Great to join you.
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