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Nov. 29, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
52:09
What Happened in the Midterms? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep465
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Hey everyone, I'm Danielle D'Souza Gill.
I will be hosting Dinesh's podcast while he is away in Israel.
He's doing an amazing tour there.
He's speaking and traveling, perhaps with some of you listeners.
So while he's gone, you will get me, his mini-me.
You'll find that we agree on everything, but I may be...
Even more conservative.
You will see. But today we're going to be talking about what happened in the midterms.
We're also going to be talking about the Republican Party's desperate need for unity and vision.
We're in a bit of a pickle after the midterms as a party, and we haven't really recovered.
There's a big battle ahead of us, but we are up for the job, so let's get into it.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
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When we think back to when we were in power, when Trump was president, sure, there were some never-Trumpers, but for the most part, we all unified behind Trump.
And when I think back to the State of the Union speeches Trump gave, I can't think of a time when the Republican narrative was more clear.
And the Democrats, while clearly opposed, you remember Nancy Pelosi physically ripping up Trump's speech, our whole side was quite unified.
But ever since the midterm results of 2022, this unity has slowly disappeared.
Some of it started in 2020 and maybe even more in 2021.
But after November 8, 2022, very quickly, conversations began about what went wrong and why, and people immediately started pointing fingers.
There was a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on, as they say.
I know many of you have likely seen the infighting taking place.
And it's very disturbing.
Some say the midterms were great and maybe it wasn't a red wave, but hey, we control Congress.
This group has a very positive outlook on how things went.
And the party's recent expansion into the Black and Hispanic vote were unheard of years ago.
In fact, despite ballot shenanigans by the Democrat Party, the GOP won the popular vote in the midterms by six points.
Others say the midterms were far from a red wave.
We were expecting a bloodbath, a blowout election where we'd control the House and the Senate.
Many thought this would happen because Biden seemed so obviously bad, with his policies so obviously harming Americans, with record high inflation and people feeling it at the gas pump.
But alas, we missed the mark.
We overestimated our wins.
We counted our chickens before they hatched, maybe.
Others say, we could have gotten far more seats, but we didn't because of various reasons, whether it was candidate quality or it was lack of fundraising or mismanagement of funds, as McConnell backed Murkowski instead of Chewbacca and left Blake Masters out to dry.
There are many reasons why people feel this election did not turn out the way we had hoped.
But nevertheless, the point is they are disappointed and we are not unified.
So naturally, the finger-pointing continues.
The media has certainly run with a narrative of Trump versus DeSantis, despite the fact that DeSantis has not actually declared he's running for president.
The media has somehow dubbed him the next leader.
The Trump-DeSantis feud has also played up in the media, even though DeSantis has not actually spoken negatively about Trump.
Meanwhile, people who have spoken more directly on this subject aren't really worth discussing.
This includes others like Mike Pence.
He said he thinks we'll have better choices in the future than Trump and also says, big surprise, he's considering a run for president in 2024.
So by better choices, he means himself.
And don't even get me started on what a disaster of a candidate he is.
And by the way, he has no chance of winning the nomination or a general election.
So we'll have to see how all of this plays out.
But now it's okay for us all to debate and discuss and think about what happened in 2022.
We can even talk about 2024.
But ultimately, what we need is a coherent, unified plan.
2023 is going to be a time of influx for us because so much is uncertain and we aren't in power right now.
Who will be driving our agenda?
Kevin McCarthy? The midterms were still recent, and already we're seeing Republican infighting like no one has seen since the 2015 primaries.
Our lack of unity as a party isn't just about strength, though.
It's not just about the fact that we're a bit of a wounded soldier right now.
We're up against something big.
But we also are lacking a unified vision as a party, what we offer the American people specifically, and we are also lacking a unified plan of how to carry this out.
I know the word unity seems dumb because it's often used by the left as a weapon.
Unity, they say, but all they mean is unify with us or else.
But that's not what I mean here.
I mean genuinely unifying as conservatives, all of us who share the same values, who want to win, and we will have to do this if we want to win in 2024.
Unity has a deep and important root in the American fabric.
Until it was replaced with In God We Trust by Congress in 1956, the phrase E Pluribus Unum was widely considered the de facto motto of the United States.
Since July 4th, 1776, E Pluribus Unum was the official theme of the first seal of the United States.
The Latin phrase, which means one from many, was meant to underscore the fact that despite being formed from disparate groupings of English, Irish, Scottish, French, German, and Dutch settlers, the people of America would be united in the goal of achieving independence from the British royalty.
The phrase invokes the power of unity.
It is clear that without uniting around a single cause, the colonies would have never effectively beaten back the British and formed America as we know it today.
E Pluribus Unum is also a concise refutation of the British belief that the colonies were incapable of mounting a tactically coherent response to any clampdown on the colonials.
In this sense the motto serves as a taunt.
We are not as divided and weak as you would have us to be.
The motto marks something of a small miracle of the formation of our country.
Because in the normal course of things if you start with many you generally end up with many.
The idea of many from many is therefore completely unremarkable.
Outside of the offices of corporate chief diversity officers, you never see anyone lauding this principle of disunity.
And speaking of corporate diversity officers, their program to sow disunity across our nation's businesses is a disturbing sign that Americans have grown insensitive to the damaging effects of the destruction of the cultural values of unity and loyalty.
Sure, there are pockets of resistance in places like local school boards where CRT is being banned, but every other institution these days is being run by the treacherous self-saboteurs.
Take the churches, for instance.
Many are still struggling to recover the same attendance members they had before the pandemic.
This might have something to do with the fact that across the country, pastors, ministers, and priests arbitrarily nullified one of the Ten Commandments, to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Why did they do this?
In order to kowtow to secular regulators, the same regulators who kept movie theaters, Walmart, and liquor stores open throughout the pandemic.
Those faith leaders willingly collaborated with an obvious lie, turned their backs on their holy duties to forsake God Himself and bent their knees to secular power.
They put the world above God and therefore deserve far worse than just middling attendance in the pews today.
This twisted and non-traditional view of the church as a subordinate entity of the state is the direct result of the diminished importance of faith and religion in the lives of people across Western society generally.
After all, you cannot define the very word loyal without the word faith, a word dripping with religious connotations that has fallen out of favor as a remnant of outmoded and defunct old-school virtues.
And when even religious leaders no longer understand the meaning or importance of faith, you know we are in trouble.
You could say that the new virtue that's replaced that old virtue is better because it's modern, but it's hard to pin down exactly what the new virtue is.
Is it supporting child mutilation?
Is it supporting social justice?
Is it supporting the Democrat Party?
After all, these are all things which our new faith leaders, the corporations, virtue signal over.
But if you look closely, these supposed new virtues are little more than marketing ploys disguised as an excuse for customers to feel good about themselves.
They are tools for aggregating money and power through the tactical employment of self-gratification.
And if you think about it, this is the exact opposite of loyalty.
It is impossible to unify around anything unless you first enter some sort of shared agreement that a specific objective or principle is worth some degree of self-sacrifice.
The more important the object of shared unity, the greater the sacrifices that may be required to protect it.
The foundation of loyalty, unity, or faith in any form requires a degree of self-giving.
But the so-called new virtues today are just excuses to get a dopamine hit off of smug self-satisfaction.
And if you look around, it's not just churches and Wall Street where the values that inform faith, loyalty, and unity are crumbling.
It's even infected our pop culture.
Shows like the Lord of the Rings spinoff and the Witcher TV series have crumbled mostly because the very people in charge of those shows hated the popular source material upon which they were based.
Whoever heard of giving the reins of a tribute project to someone who hates the source?
It's unthinkably ill-advised, but there are only two recent examples of a slew of instances where this keeps happening.
We also have a disturbingly high prevalence of disloyalty at every level of our government.
It's so bad that you have to wonder if our bureaucrats are trying to actively destroy our country.
As just one small example, we have the DOJ covering up Hunter and Joe Biden and their clear connections to Chinese money.
Not to mention documented crimes like prostitution and drugs.
It's clear that in the absence of loyalty, especially in government, the more base motivators such as personal greed and lust for power become the guideposts by which our politicians make their decisions.
Look, it's very clear that the Democrats and media are going to try to foment as much conflict as possible within the GOP. It's also very clear that Republicans have, at the same time, utterly forsaken the concept of E Pluribus Uno.
But if we are to have any kind of success in 2024 and beyond, a more firm response to these antics is going to be required, and sooner rather than later.
But Democrats, with their hive mind mentality, understand the power of unity, at least when it comes to politics.
This is what allows them to bring together people who don't even like each other.
This is what allows them to support someone in their own party they may hate.
For example, it's clear that Nancy Pelosi and AOC couldn't be further from each other in terms of personality.
One is a corrupt crony who's been in politics for decades and enjoys being a fat cat with power, while the other is newer to the scene, a full-blown believer in socialism and doesn't want to compromise on anything.
Yet they find ways to work together.
Does our side do the same?
Has our party figured out how to have different perspectives yet always fall in line when push comes to shove for the Republican Party?
I don't think so.
For all their love of the founders, the GOP leadership has so far failed to grasp the importance of this virtue of faith, loyalty, and unity.
It's time we get it back if we want to win.
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I'm delighted to welcome to the show Ryan Gerdeski.
He's the author of They're Not Listening, How the Elites Created the Populist Revolution.
Ryan, as you know, I am such a big fan of yours.
I love reading your newsletter.
It's so informative. So I'm so glad you're here today to share with us some of your insights.
But I want to begin by asking you to tell us a little bit about what you think happened in the midterms, because I know people have sort of been debating this the last month, you know, what happened, what we can do better next time.
And I think that we need to talk about it because that way we can have a better game plan moving forward into 2024 and future elections so that we aren't blindsided again.
I think that a lot of things happen.
I don't think there's any singular one lesson to be learned.
I think there's multiple lessons.
So let's start with the fact of turnout.
The media has created this narrative.
First of all, there was a quote-unquote youthquake that millions of young people angry about abortion came out and voted in masses to elect Democrats.
The data so far shows that that didn't happen at all.
Didn't happen whatsoever. Republican turnout was actually extremely good in this election, and minority turnout, especially among Democrats, was extremely poor.
That's why you're looking at Republicans probably getting over 40% of the Asian vote, somewhere in the high 30s of the Hispanic vote.
And the black vote remains basically stagnant at about 10%.
Where Republicans faltered was among white college-educated voters, especially independent voters.
They were really disenfranchised with the Republican Party, even though they agree with them on issues like crime and immigration.
And they don't approve of Joe Biden's performance in the White House.
They were very upset over two big issues.
One being abortion and the idea of a national abortion ban.
And secondly, the narrative over the fact that the 2020 election was stolen.
They didn't want to look backwards.
They wanted to look forwards.
And I think that on top of that, you had major Republican candidates and senators like Rick Scott and candidates like Blake Masters.
Talking about the idea of privatizing Social Security really, really irritated a lot of independent voters.
So take a state like Arizona.
Arizona had four Republicans win and four Republicans lose.
The four who lost ran.
It was Blake, Lake, Abbey, and then that one other guy.
They ran as a ticket on the 2020 election being stolen.
The four who won was Kimberly Yee.
Tom Thorne and then two other big Republicans and they won on conservative platform issues.
Tom Thorne defeated an incumbent.
Running against CRT, running against DEI, running against bilingual education.
Kimberly Lee is not a moderate Republican.
She's very conservative. But their message was looking forwards and not backwards, and they won.
And I think that in states and places where the issues were very quality of life conversations, like New York with crime, you saw a Republican surge.
And when the election really became about Donald Trump, you saw Republicans lose.
Hmm. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about the demographics question, because you mentioned that we actually did have turnout.
We actually did, you know, pick up some Hispanic voters.
We had pretty good turnout in terms of black voters, but we don't have those white college educated voters like we used to.
Is that a tradeoff that I guess can work?
Or do you feel like those voters are not located in the right swing districts?
Because in some locations, it just seemed like it was about where they were located.
We just... Unfortunately didn't pull through in some areas in certain states.
And so do you think it's about where they were placed or how would you kind of explain that?
So Republicans used to, on average, get around 25 to 30% of the Hispanic vote and about the same percentage of the Asian vote.
And now we're looking at about between 35 and 40% of both votes.
So we've gained significantly.
But remember, Latinos are only still 13 to 14% of the national vote.
Asians are about 2 to 3%.
White college-educated voters are about 25 to 30% on a given election.
So, no, the trade-off is not there.
And also, Latinos and Asians are very concentrated in major blue places.
You're looking at New York, you're looking at Florida, which is a red state, but Florida, Texas, Colorado, and California.
Many of those states are not competitive elections.
If you look at why Democrats have kept certain states within a swing area, it's because the black vote, which votes 90% Democrat, are concentrated in very important states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina. So the trade-off is not good, and I think that the college-educated white vote leaving at such a high rate is really detrimental to the Republican Party overall.
The Republican Party worked very hard from the party of the working class, which is good, but working class voters have very poor voting attendance rates, especially compared to college educated voters.
And you can't so heavily concentrate on one and leave the others to their own devices and just hope that they still show up for you after you've kind of abandoned them in certain ways.
So I think that that's why you're seeing some districts that were swing districts really go Democrat in a surprising manner, you know, in Ohio and in North Carolina and in Washington.
I think that that hurts.
But look, in two of the bluest states in New York and California, Republicans did really well.
Why?
Because in New York, the conversation was crime, crime, crime, crime, crime.
And in California, the Republicans became very aware and very capable when it came to ballot harvesting.
You know, they were able to keep every incumbent seat, win the 13th congressional district, and keep two other seats within a two-point margin of victory.
So California, certain districts that were considered gone-gone are still up for contention going into 2024 and 2026.
And hopefully other states will pick up on that idea.
Yeah, I think Californians knew, you know, this is something the Democrats have been doing, so we have to do the same thing, of course, within what's legal, because California's laws are different.
All the states have their own laws with this.
But I do think that's a big problem if we're not getting smart and realizing that we need to actually employ some legal tactics as well, because then, like you said, how do we get voters to turn out only on one day if, unfortunately, something happens, they're not able to vote, there's some kind of problem.
But I wanted to ask you about the abortion ban.
That's so important is we've romanticized this idea of voting on Election Day.
And listen, I like voting on Election Day too.
This year I voted early because I wasn't going to be in my home district on Election Day.
So I voted early.
It was easy. It was capable.
If you have a fear that the Election Day machines won't work, if you have children or elderly parents or it's raining or snowing outside or whatever have you...
And Election Day becomes a hassle.
Go vote early. I don't like a month of early voting, but I play with them the laws that are available to me.
I don't sit there and complain as Democrats turn out in huge numbers.
And that's what we're seeing in Georgia right now.
Democrats are turning up in gigantic numbers because in Democrat counties in Georgia, you can vote on Saturdays and in Republican counties, you cannot.
And Democrats did not make that law, Republicans did.
It makes literally no sense and it could cost Berkshire Walker the election.
Right, because we always want to tighten things.
We want voter idea. We do want people to vote on Election Day.
But then we realize, wait, it's actually only our side that's doing this.
The other side isn't doing this.
So then our people are the ones that, like you said, maybe in their areas don't have laws that allow them to vote on the weekend and so on.
Which is crazy. So I think we're gonna have to start playing by their rules because that's the only way we can keep up.
Even if we run a really good candidate, even if we fix every single thing, it's not gonna work if they're the ones who are turning in the ballots and our people are not.
But I wanted to ask you about the abortion ban issue because I really do wonder if Lindsey Graham brought that up just to hurt us because we didn't have the votes.
There was no way it could have worked.
It didn't make any sense.
The issue was going back to the states.
So it kind of seemed like it was just used as a talking point that the left could run on to say, hey, here's some fear mongering.
Here's a way that we can get you guys to make sure you vote Democrat because everything's coming to an end.
And in reality, there was just no point to it.
So what do you think was the purpose behind him doing that?
Right. In realistic terms, the only fight we're going to have on the federal level for the foreseeable future is overfunding of abortion clinics.
And that's literally all the fight's going to be.
We're not going to get a national abortion ban, and we're very likely not going to get Roe back.
So we're going to have an argument at the state level.
I think that forever, national polling showed that a majority of Americans supported a 15-week We're good to go.
So rather than even focusing on that, I just think that Lindsey Graham saw polling and said, oh, look, let's have this conversation now because it's been popular in past polls.
And rather than having some candidates like the Doug Mastrianos, who was the worst candidate of 2020 running statewide...
The Doug Mastrianos who said we need to imprison women who get abortions and try them for murder, which really turned off independent voters.
I'll make it so, well, this will be the new placeholder.
So I think he tried in his head he was going to actually help Republicans and instead he actually hurt them.
Yeah. I don't think it was a matter of fact.
Right. Yeah, it does make me wonder, though, because I do think there there was just literally no way like we didn't even have the majority.
So I don't even know how Lindsey Graham could even think that that could possibly help us.
It's not like we said, oh, you know what, we can do this.
But like you said, maybe we won't right now.
It's like, no, we literally never had a chance at that.
So I just think that that was literally a gift to the Democrats because it made no sense.
We couldn't have even won.
But I do think one day, maybe the country will become much more pro-life.
Maybe that will happen. It's just that, like, we didn't have the votes, and so it was so ridiculous to me.
But I want to ask you about the...
Never overemphasize the idea of malice when incompetence is usually the ruling factor of why we do stupid things.
It's mostly incompetence.
I mean, sometimes it's malice, but most times it's just incompetence.
And probably a consultant told him that, and he was like, oh, this is a great idea.
Right. Yes. I guess it's the Occam's razor.
Probably just the most obvious explanation there.
Lindsey Graham. Sorry.
But I wanted to ask you about, like we were talking about, this race between Warnock and Herschel Walker.
Yeah. It's just crazy because it seems like we kind of got a heads up saying, hey, we need to get our people out for early voting, yet our people are not showing up for early voting yet.
So we still have some time, but what do you think is kind of the GOP's plan there as far as this runoff?
I mean, if I was, I'm not in Georgia right now, I know that Kemp has made his campaign available for the Walker campaign.
If I was them, I would be in the northern, I would be in MTG's district every single day pulling out voters like it was a presidential election.
I mean, there are two districts that are R plus 30, R plus 40 in the northern part, they're district every single day pulling out voters like it was a presidential election.
I mean, there are two districts that are R plus 30, R plus 40 in the northern part, they're white working class overwhelmingly.
And those are the districts that need this massive turnout.
And that haven't been so far.
And by doing things like saying, hey, you can't vote on Saturdays in this area or Sundays, but Sundays is statewide, but Saturdays specifically in this area, I think is extremely detrimental.
And they're suing over it and fighting a court case rather than fighting an election.
Is it possible to maintain?
Sure, it's still possible.
And the very high turnout among Black voters could just be a sugar high.
Basically, everyone who was going to go vote did already.
You know, there's no evidence that mass high early voting means a foregone conclusion on an election.
But a lot needs to happen, and they really need to get their acting here and start making their way to retirement communities, getting them to go vote early for a partial vote.
And making their way throughout into their rural areas and making sure they have this gigantic turnout and identifying suburbanites who voted for Kim, make sure they turn out.
I mean, he basically needs almost the same number of voters as he got a month ago.
And he can get there.
It's just it's very, very difficult.
Yeah, and I do think that it seems like our side almost feels like they've given up.
It's like the left is probably going all out because they know that even if this isn't necessarily going to change everything, this is still a longer term seat.
It's not just about the next two years.
They're still going to have this person in office.
Well, you also remember, one more thing.
I mean, you have to remember that. So Democrats back during, I guess it was out, it wasn't outcore, it was John Kerry.
When John Kerry ran, they created an organization called Act Blue.
And that's how a lot of these Republicans really just got buried in negative advertising and why Republicans are so far behind it.
Republicans didn't create Wind Red until I think it was 2018.
And Democrats have been working with Black Blue for 2004, 2003.
So they had a 15-year head start in a massive fundraising deal because of this.
So that's also really working against Herschel Walker's favor.
And do you think, though, it's the platform?
It's like the way that they're fundraising?
It's the fact that they have that?
Or is it also just that our voters are not able to spend money donating to campaigns and so on?
And they're kind of, you know, able to fundraise more because it seems like this is a big pattern.
They keep out fundraising us.
And maybe it's because they have really big donors and we have small dollar donations.
But do you think that they just have more, you know, wealthy Democrats that are able to fundraise?
So they certainly have more high-income people who are able to sit there and donate.
But remember, there is a cap on donations for office to begin with.
It's still $2,800. So yeah, they have a lot of millionaires in the Democratic Party.
There's also a lot of millionaires in the Republican Party, I think.
And yes, inflation. It's definitely hurting our voters more than their voters.
And we also had Trump take $100 million in donations that didn't go down ballot, which I'm sure hurt some people a little bit.
But I think that overall, the bigger problem is the fact that they have ActBlue.
blue next. Every person who's donated to Democratic candidates over the last 15, 16 years, two different causes and different candidates. And we just don't that apparatus for us hasn't been created as substantial. And I just think maybe we'll get there one day, but that we're playing behind the eight ball because we have so long to create our own act.
Well, which is when. Right. And I want to ask you a little bit about kind of just things moving forward, because I really do think our party needs to have some kind of cohesiveness in terms of not just tactics, but also some kind of vision, because right now it seems like things are a little confused, maybe because we don't have a clear a clear plan.
Um...
I think you mentioned crime did really well because people in California and New York probably experienced crazy crime, especially in cities.
But I wonder if people who live in Iowa, who live in other places in the country, do they respond to a lot of that?
Or do you think those candidates need to be speaking about things that really affect the people who live there, how they can make their lives better?
Oh, absolutely. I think you're right.
I think that, listen, crime is up not only in cities, but they're also up in rural communities.
That is a misnomer that people really haven't picked up on.
I think crime is up 20 or 30% in rural areas.
And they're also up in suburban areas.
So I think crime is the issue you bring suburban voters in on.
And I just think they got distracted on some of these, I don't want to say culture war things, because it's not culture war.
Certainly crime is a culture issue, but I wish that the focus was more on quality of life than it was necessarily esoteric conversations on abortion bans that couldn't happen even if we wanted them to.
Like even if every Republican senator, which they're not all diehard pro-lifers, but even if they were, the votes weren't there.
So rather than getting lost in the middle, and by the way, pro-life governors all won re-election.
It wasn't that they were against regulation It's that the idea of a nationwide ban freaked them out more than a statewide ban.
Because Ohio is a statewide ban.
They have a heartbeat bill.
Their governor, DeWine, won by 26 points.
I think that that really, really...
The idea of a nationwide ban freaked them out in a way that their state regulations...
Because let's face it, most people do not have an abortion.
They just don't. Most people don't.
Most half are men, and then apparently men have abortions now.
But half are men, and then of the women who get abortions, it's a minuscule percentage of the population.
So it's not about the realistic aspects of actually getting an abortion where you can find one.
It's the overarching idea of having this taken away nationwide.
I think that freaked them out more than the actual, you know, things.
Because we were... Mm-hmm.
And yeah, I mean, again, like you said, you know, Governor DeWine, like he ran as pro-life and he won.
But maybe in other places, it didn't make sense that the candidate was talking about that when that wasn't something that could be accomplished in that state or didn't really match the people in that state.
And I think sometimes the left does pick candidates that are more centrist in a swing location.
And something I wonder is...
Yeah. Oh, I was just going to say something I wonder is when I see these really are plus districts are plus 30 districts, it'll have someone representing them who's like conservative, but they're sort of moderate, like they didn't always vote with Trump and so on.
And then some other district that's a swing district has a super MAGA candidate.
And I'm like, dang it, we really need to be switching these two because it's not that I don't like either of them.
It's just that I want to see both of them win and be there long term.
Right. And there are very conservative people who are very capable campaigners.
I'm thinking of Mike Garcia.
Mike Garcia is not a moderator at all.
Mike Garcia is a very conservative person who has very hard votes.
And he's a representative in Los Angeles in a Biden plus eight district.
And he's able to win.
I think that how you approach things is very, very important.
Like my mom used to say when I was in trouble, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.
Yeah, I mean, and a big part of our problem is in very conservative states, I'm thinking like the Deep South, for example, or I'm thinking parts of the Midwest.
We have old boys, good old boys system, where we reward people for just being part of the party rather than being the best person for the job.
And that's why... Matt Gaetz are the rare exceptions rather than the rule.
And the line in these R-plus-30 districts is basically who's appeased party bosses the most.
And that's really where Trump could be and should be the most useful, is in these super red, red, red areas, finding the most amazing anti-war, anti-mass immigration, pro-good trade deal candidates that there are, rather than trying to find people who agree with him on the election in a state like Pennsylvania.
We needed a Pat Toomey, but he's conservative, he's right-center right, for sure.
But Pennsylvania is also a state with 300,000 more Democrats than it does Republicans.
So I think that's really where, if we have any influence over a future Trump endorsement, or a dissenters endorsement, or a Kemp endorsement, or, you know, Abbott endorsement, whatever, whatever the case may be, it could be finding the most conservative future icon in these districts where we basically can't lose a bottle of water with an R next to him.
Right. Absolutely.
And my last question, Ryan, is what are we going to do moving forward if, let's say, we have McConnell again, we have McCarthy again, maybe it'll be Trump again.
I don't know. But if we have a lot of the same things again, how are we going to fix our strategies?
Maybe it's Rona McDaniel again.
I don't know. But...
I worry about whether or not we're going to get smart as the times are changing and as we need to be having some better tactics in terms of fixing these things, because the left is very on top of things, and we are very slow in the uptake, I think.
So what do we do?
I think we're going to see a new kind of left.
I mean, who knows if Joaquin, Nancy Pelosi, for as much as Republicans did not like her, was an incredibly capable politician who got a lot of her items done. So I don't know if Joaquin Jeffries will be able to fill in her very, very sizable shoes. But the reason that McConnell and the reason McCarthy are not going anywhere right now is because they have the money that candidates need to win reelections. So until that money dries up or
there is somebody who can offer an alternative, somebody who's able to sit there and say, I will give $20 million to X, Y, or Z candidates to make sure they win and they're not dependent on McConnell, then that's the only way that he's going to see a formidable challenge. I would say about McCarthy.
I don't hate Kevin McCarthy.
Unlike John Boehner and unlike Paul Ryan, he genuinely did not like the right wing parts of their party.
I don't think Kevin McCarthy minds the right wing.
I just think he doesn't have an ideology.
He's up for sale, kind of.
And he's willing to work on anybody who's there.
McConnell is a man of a particular age.
Mitch McConnell will probably retire in four years.
He says he's running for re-election.
It's very hard to see that happen.
And the people he has placed to fill his shoes are not Mitch McConnell.
John Thune and John Cornyn and Barrasso are not McConnell.
Right, and I'm so scared for Rick Scott because I think McConnell is going to punish him because he ran against him.
It's like... I don't know.
It's just, I feel like they kind of use that.
I think Rick Scott could have done something if someone who's smart was in his ear.
But remember, he ran on raising taxes and cutting Social Security.
Not brilliant strategy.
So I just think that he ran very, very poorly.
But I don't know if he's going to punish... You know, how do you punish somebody when you have 49 or 50 members?
If you have 55, you can really punish somebody.
But 49 or 50, I think it'd be very, very difficult.
And Rick Scott's a man of a certain means.
He's got a lot of money. I don't think financial challenges are going to be hard for him.
I mean, we'll wait and see.
The good thing is that going to 2024, it's the Republicans' year.
There are about a dozen Democrats in very purple and red districts who have to fight for their own life.
And that's the time we're going to win back the Senate.
Wow. Well, it's going to be exciting.
I am looking forward to it.
2023 will be a crazy year.
Ryan, thanks so much for joining and offering your insights.
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I am delighted to welcome to the show Myra Flores.
Myra has represented Texas' 34th Congressional District.
Myra, thanks for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, Myra, I'm so excited to have you here.
I love being your friend, following you on social media, and you ran such a great campaign.
But I wanted to ask you a little bit about what you think kind of went on in the midterms, because I know you tweeted at the time that the red wave unfortunately didn't occur.
So what do you think are some things that kind of didn't happen in 2022?
Well, I can speak only for South Texas.
I am very, very proud of the work that we did here in South Texas.
I won the special on June 14th, and we became, yeah, I became the first Mexican-born congresswoman ever elected in Congress.
but that district was a Biden plus four district.
It was still a Biden district, a competitive district, and was very proud of winning that special election, but we were redistricted, and that district became a Biden plus 16, which made it four times harder.
But we didn't wanna give up.
We wanted to continue pushing the conservative message because we know South Texas is very conservative.
We're all about God, family, and country.
And we're very proud of the work that we did here because it's no longer a Biden plus 16 anymore.
Now it's a D8, which makes it a lot more competitive than before.
So it's all about Winning ground.
And that's what we did here in South Texas.
We won ground.
We won hearts and souls.
And that's what it's all about. But yes, you're right.
I didn't see this red wave.
And I think that it's so important that we get the conservative message out there, but also that we get Republicans to know the importance of getting out to vote as well.
Just like Democrats. It's important that we all, all Americans, go out and vote.
And we saw that in my district, 60% of the voters went out to vote compared to 2020.
And we need to do better than that.
And not just in South Texas, but nationwide.
We need to be able to get people to go out to vote.
Their voice matters. We want them to trust the process.
So it's very important that we improve the election process.
Absolutely.
And I think it's so important to like you mentioned so much progress was made even just for the future even just for bringing more people over to the conservative side of things and Sometimes maybe it's about the long-term battle involved Yeah opposed to you know Just this one time because over time and it'll take time to continue to to reach a lot of people in South, Texas but do you find that many people are kind of leaving the Democrat Party as they realize the Crime and so many of the bad policies coming from there
have been affecting them Latinos are and that's a fact Latinos are leaving the Democrat Party.
But I think it's important that we also focus on issues that are important.
You know, the economy border isn't important, but there was also a lot of misinformation.
For example, the Democrat Party here was telling the elderly community that the Republican Party was going to take away their Social Security, when in fact, it's their policies that are killing Social Security and their retirement benefits.
That's what the Democrat Party is doing.
They're killing their Social Security, hard-earned money.
They're killing their retirement benefits with their policies, sending billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine with this crazy overspending.
They are killing Social Security.
They are killing their retirement benefits.
But instead, they spread this lies in all over South Texas that Republicans, it might have floated, was going to be taking away their Social Security.
They spread this message that we were extremists.
And when it comes to abortion, yes, I'm pro-life, but I stand with women victims of abuse, victims of rape, incest, when their life is at risk.
Of course we stand with those women, but yet they spread these lies that we did not stand with these women when in fact they're the extremists when they support abortion up to nine months.
My opponent voted for abortion up to nine months with no restrictions.
So a lot of misinformation, a lot of lies were spread in South Texas and I'm sure throughout the country as well.
So it's so important that we fight back.
It's so important. Yes, let's talk about the economy.
Yes, let's talk about inflation.
Let's talk about the border.
But let's fight back these attacks.
Let's not allow them to destroy our image when they're the ones that are destroying our country.
Right. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about this term Latinx because the left has gotten very into using that term, though I don't find that a lot of people actually use the term.
And I saw you tweeted about that.
So what's kind of your reaction to the Latinx term?
Honestly... Latinos don't use that.
So these are people that are honestly not Latinos or not Hispanics, don't understand our culture.
That is not who we are.
We've always been Latinos.
We will continue to be Latinos.
It's not going to change.
But, I mean, it's just nonsense.
And they want us to focus on the nonsense and not focus on the real issues that are impacting our everyday Americans.
Yeah. And I do think that many people want actual solutions.
They actually want their life to be better.
Like you mentioned, talking about the economy, also talking about crime, talking about God.
Those things really influences people.
But when you start to make it about really silly terms like Latinx, it's just it doesn't really resonate.
And so maybe over time, a lot of people in that area will continue to move in the conservative direction.
Do you find that the strategies there are generally working well, or do you feel like we still have a lot of issues we need to overcome there?
Well, there is a lot of issues that we have to overcome, but I think that it's all about growing and making us better every election, and we have come wiser.
I'm not the same person that I was in 2018, 2020.
We grow every year, every day, and that's what it's all about, learning and being better and also learning from our mistakes and Just moving forward.
That's all it's about. For me, I think what I learned in this election is...
To defend myself more, you know, that it's so important that not to allow them to spread this misinformation constantly.
Yes, let's focus on the issues that matter, but also stand up.
Let's stand up for ourselves, for the party, for the people, because when we stand up for ourselves, we're standing for the hardworking American people.
So it's so important that we are not afraid that we stand up And that we call it for what it is.
They're the extremists.
They're really dangerous to this country.
The party, not the people.
The Democrat Party.
Because there's a big difference.
I believe that the people here in South Texas, regardless of their political affiliation, we're good people.
We're people of God. We're people of family and hard work.
That is who we are. But the party itself is destroying our country.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.
And at least you also got Elon Musk's vote.
So he was smart and voted for you.
What is some advice you would maybe give to some people who were elected and whether it's a swing district or maybe somewhere in South Texas?
I think I can't remember the name, but someone else from the triple threat was elected.
What is something you would say to them as they go forward?
Monica de la Cruz.
No one is really talking about this win, and we need to talk about it more.
Monica de la Cruz is the first Latina to ever get elected in District 15.
She made history. She's the first Republican over 100 years.
I'm very proud of her and the work that she's done.
We didn't lose a voice in South Texas.
Monica De La Cruz is our voice in Washington and we're very proud of her.
And all I can say is look, she knows what she's doing.
She's amazing. And my advice to all members of Congress is to focus on their district and the people that they represent.
Not so much what's going on on Twitter or what's happening on Twitter.
To run their districts, you know, based on the people that they represent.
To talk to the people.
That's what's reality.
That's what's truth. When you talk to the people that elected you to be in the position that you're in.
Regardless of what their political affiliation.
It's so important to hear all sides.
It's going to make us better. Great.
Thank you, Myra. I appreciate it.
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