Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the 2022 midterms, critiquing US election delays in Arizona versus Brazil's single-day process while debating whether Roe v. Wade overturning or inflation drove GOP losses. They highlight Ron DeSantis's Florida dominance as a shift toward limited government, analyze Rand Paul's 10th Amendment advocacy, and argue libertarians withhold support from Republicans failing to champion sound money and constitutional carry. Ultimately, the episode suggests electoral inefficiencies and ideological misalignments erode public trust, urging parties to adopt principles that truly resonate with voters rather than blaming external factors for defeats. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Election Day Arguments00:14:23
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
What's up?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
What's up, my brother?
How you feeling?
I'm pretty good.
How are you, Dave Smith?
Very good.
Very good.
So I did a stream on YouTube the other day, but me and you have not spoken since the polls closed.
Kind of.
Polls are closed, but election day.
Election day isn't really election day anymore.
It's kind of election month, it seems like, for whatever reason.
You know, Rob, you can be super sure of our elections, and they just happen to take longer than they've ever taken.
And we're not really going to talk about that.
You're not supposed to ask any questions about that, but you know, you can be really confident that when we get this right, it will be 100% right.
Now we're being more careful.
We should question the historical ones that they were able to do with worse technology and quicker times.
So today's elections are great.
They take their time.
They're very meticulous.
You can't Donald Trump with that.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, it really depends because, you know, there's like they had these elections in Brazil.
I don't know if you read about this, but you're also not allowed to question those elections.
And they did the entire country in a day.
So those you can't, that's also reliable.
So sometimes it's a day and it's reliable.
Sometimes it's going to maybe take a month.
I don't know.
Who knows?
Maybe more, maybe a year.
It may not be until after the next Senate term has run out that we find out who was actually the senator, the senator for the previous six years.
But by that time, you could say it'll be too late, but at least we'll have the results.
We'll have the results, right?
Brazil doesn't have the same union problems that we do, but we need those unions.
But, you know, if we could go down to Brazil, get those workers at five bucks an hour, we can knock it out in a day too.
That is a fair point.
There are, we do have options.
You know, it's really something too, like, I don't know.
I'm sure they have like a reason, like what their official answer is for this.
And I don't even know.
But, you know, I'm following because I have a particular interest in some of the races out in Arizona.
And so I'm following it.
And they get on the night of election day, they get up to like, or by the next morning, at least, they're up to like 66% of the votes being counted.
And then since then, in the next two days, they've gotten it up to 70%.
So they got 66% basically within the first day.
And there's a delay of this, Dave.
Two days later, four more percent is coming in.
We're still 30% shy.
And of course, out there in that race, Blake Masters is down now by about 95,000 votes.
But with 30% still coming in, I mean, I don't know.
I've been looking to try to get some good reporting.
But it's very hard to like tell you like, okay, so where, what are the counties that are coming in?
You know, are they more red-leaning or blue-leaning counties?
It's just the whole thing just seems like such a shit show.
And at the very least, even again, as we kind of alluded to on the on our pre-election day episode, our last episode, even if you're going to say this is all on the up and up, these elections are completely secured and this is a completely accurate way to count votes and all of this stuff.
Wouldn't you have to admit that just to the layman, this does not generate a lot of confidence.
This is a weird way to do this that makes it seem like what the hell's going on here?
It's really, that's what you're talking about.
If you believe in democracy so much, you believe in government so much, you would think as a proponent of a democratic government that the most important thing, the most basic thing that they do is like count the votes, is do the elections.
And man, it is just, it's something how the system is.
You know, there's some old lady in a room right now and she's got stacks of papers from those boxes going, what the fuck am I supposed to do with all these?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's that same lady.
She goes, I promised people their votes would be counted.
I said there'd be a Democrat and a Republican there.
All right.
So let me, I've, I've talked a little bit about this on my stream that I did yesterday, but I'm curious.
I haven't spoken to you since the election day.
What were your big takeaways from the election?
You can, you can call me crazy on this one, but the whole red wave thing, from what I remember, and I read the news every day.
I don't really miss too many days.
I'm out there.
I'm really following shit.
Two, three days ago, I was reading about how they were expecting Democrats are going to win.
And I was like, that doesn't really add up.
I thought Republicans would flip something for sure.
And then I had to do more digging.
And then I was seeing polls that were a little bit more in line with, hey, they'll probably walk away with the victory.
This whole red wave talk seemed to happen two days before the election.
And I almost feel like it's like, you know, if the Patriots were going to win the Super Bowl and they said, well, they're going to blow them out.
They're going to win by 40, 50.
And then they won.
And they're like, well, they're a bunch of losers.
They didn't win by 40 points.
I don't remember there being that much red wave chatter.
Like, like there was, I remember before the fucking Supreme Court thing with abortion happened, they were talking about it.
But since then, I haven't heard a lot of talking about that, like that there was going to be major like.
Well, there was, there were basically what happened was somewhat consistent with the original polling.
There was polling, like the latest round of pollings that showed that it looked like Republicans were going to do a lot better than they ended up doing.
I got to say, my takeaway on all this is that I do think it's a real loss for Republicans.
That to me, I go, the fact that you can't have a giant red wave in this political climate really does say something.
That like, I mean, it's, it's, you have record high inflation.
You have, you know, the, all the like kind of results from the COVID years coming in.
You have the failed mandates.
You have crime really much, much higher than it's been in decades of just and a completely incompetent president.
I thought Republicans, it just, it seemed like with these, with, with these fundamentals, you should have a very successful election if you're the other side, more so than what they did.
But I'm becoming more and more surprised by people and that they're still like, people aren't angrier about what happened with COVID.
I mean, I actually, I did a without a country live the other day and I got into a pretty pretty good argument with the entire audience on the COVID stuff for the last 20 minutes, but I'm shocked to see that people are still disturbed by my opinion.
Oh, who'd you get in an argument with?
The entire audience.
Wait, so without a country, is that that's Corinne's podcast?
Oh, so it was a live podcast.
It was a live one and they brought a doctor on stage to debate me or someone who's like in a graduate program and I demolished that lady.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
I destroyed, I took her soul from her.
She's really walking around.
I don't know that I did like even the best job because I was trying not to, like, I'm still a comic and you're like, I'm losing the room.
Like you still have that energy where you're like, I'm not trying to run a press conference and debate 50 people in this room, but I'm shocked that people are still offended by my perspective and they're not matter about having been lied to.
People are still not awake to this.
Like, you literally got two years of your life stolen from you, and you're not even like, you don't even think, like, oh, I should take a look at this, see if any of this was legitimate.
So, wait, where was this?
Uh, it was in Brooklyn, so definitely not my people.
No, yeah, yeah, sure.
No, but that's cool that you did that.
No, but it's amazing to me that you wouldn't even look at the guy who never got vaccinated with all the information now and go, oh, what did he know that I didn't know?
That you would still think that I'm evil, even though I was right, and then be upset by the fact that I'm giving you alternate information that you should by now be aware of.
The point that I'm getting at is that it's it, I would have thought that that's the biggest thing people would have been upset with: is hey, the administration failed me on lying to me about staying in my house and looking at this inflation.
Uh, but sadly, people are a lot dumber than you and I realize.
Yeah, there is, there is some of that, man.
You know, I think a lot of the responsibility here, of course, also does have to fall on the Republicans.
The truth is that because the Republicans, by and large, were so bad on COVID, they really were bad.
I mean, okay, yes, the Democrats were rhetorically worse and the and they owned it a little bit more.
Um, and of, and, and like the three good Republicans, the, the people, the three good people were Republicans, but the vast majority of Republicans were really terrible on COVID too, totally like falling in line with all of the bullshit.
And I think this kind of like undercut their ability to really run on this, to really run on saying, Hey, we're the ones who bet on this, they bet on this, it robbed two years of your life from you, and they were wrong.
And I, and just to be honest, I think that they really just didn't, they really didn't make that case.
I mean, they ran against Biden and they ran against Biden failing.
And oh, look, there's inflation and crime, and isn't Biden failing?
And I think, and somewhat understandably, I think they thought that would be enough.
That would be enough to get them, but they couldn't go any deeper on any of these issues.
They also really can't go that much deeper on inflation because they are completely culpable for the same shit.
You know what I mean?
And so, they have to just say, like, almost like everything was going great until Joe Biden came in, but that's just not really true.
That's not really true.
So much of what we're feeling right now is from the year 2020.
A lot of it's from 2021, too.
But it's so any, I think that was a problem.
Look, the other thing you said that you touched on there that I think, I don't think I mentioned this on the live stream, maybe I did.
I'm not sure.
But if you're just analyzing this politically speaking, I really think there's no getting around the fact that abortion really hurt the Republicans.
It just, it really hurt them.
I saw there was one, I think it was a CNN exit poll that was had something 27% of voters said abortion was their number one issue.
And these were people coming out voting Democrats.
I think 80% of them voted Democrat.
You know, however, you feel.
Now, if you're pro-life, certainly that's not going to persuade you that it wasn't good to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I mean, listen, I understand the argument and agree with the argument that abortion is murder and you know what I mean, it's evil and all of that.
So I completely understand the argument, but you should also be aware of what the costs politically to that were.
And I remember thinking, I mean, we talked about this on the podcast when Roe versus Wade was overturned and the Dobbs decision there, that this handed political life to the Democrats.
They had something to run on.
And the truth is that almost certainly, I think if there was just a national referendum on overturning Roe v. Wade, I don't think it would have passed.
I don't think it would have been overturned.
And this is the issue you have when you have judicial systems and then Democratic elections following them.
However, you feel about either of those things, this is this, I think, gave a lot of energy to the Democratic base.
I think liberal women really turned out for the Democrats, and that hurt the Republicans.
I just think there's basically no question about that.
Do with that what you will.
Feel how you feel about abortion.
I don't think that's going to change anyone's mind on their stance on abortion, nor should it.
But that is just the political reality of the situation.
I think it really hurt them.
I think he even commented on that when the Supreme Court overruled it, that it's rare that Republicans get a victory like this, and you're going to see some anger.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that was that was a big theme of our show right after that happened.
Yeah, I mean, I think it was fairly obvious to see.
But look, there's just, there's, we'll, we'll see what's going to happen here.
It looks that like on the best, uh, the best like upside here is that Republicans are going to have a slim lead, uh, a slim majority in the House, and perhaps a majority by one in the Senate.
But that's not even clear yet.
Uh, there's some big races that still haven't been decided.
Of course, uh, in Arizona, there's the Senate race out there with Blake Masters and Mark Kelly.
There's the Senate race in Georgia, which is going to a runoff.
Uh, so depending on the results of these elections, we don't know.
The Democrats could still come out of this with control of the Senate.
All right, let's take a second and thank our sponsor for today's show, yokratom.com, home of the $60 kilo.
If you are a fan of Kratom and you're over the age of 21, go check out yokratom.com.
They've got great Kratom.
It's lab tested.
It's delivered right to your door, and it is the best deal you will find in Kratom, $60 for a kilo.
YoKratom.com, longtime supporter of this show, Gas Digital Network, all my podcasts, SkankFest, all of it.
They're a great group of people who run this company.
If you're over 21 and you're into Kratom, definitely get it from yokratom.com.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Some of these are surprising to me.
I'm surprised that Herschel Walker made it as far as he did.
And I'm shocked that Fetterman was able to win.
That's the most surprising one to me.
Florida And Texas Shifts00:15:29
I just, I guess in somewhere inside of me, I did not realize that we, I thought we were living in something close to idiocracy.
I did not realize we were actually living in idiocracy, that that is, we are there.
And you actually could have you, if you could probably have a Congress full of Federmans if they put up those candidates.
It's really, I really did believe that even as much as the media was trying to carry him over, that just too many people would look at that and just be like, no, no, I'm sorry.
We can't vote for this guy.
If he can't speak and form coherent sentences, and this isn't even like a, like we've made fun of other presidents and politicians who are like, you know, are not the most articulate.
This is literally like, oh, he's got a brain injury and cannot speak.
I just thought there was no way, but I was wrong.
And Pennsylvania is not like super Democrat that they're just like, we need a Democrat at all costs, right?
No, it's kind of a, it's a swing state.
You know what I mean?
It goes, it's gone for Republicans.
It's gone for Democrats.
They just really hate Muslims.
That's what it comes down to.
I think it might be people from New Jersey even more than Muslims.
Why did they hate Dr. Oz so much?
What made Dr. Oz so unlikable to the people of Pennsylvania?
You know, I don't know.
I did not follow that race closely enough, but something, man, that's that's got to hurt if you're him.
That's got to be a real tough blow to lose.
You know, you can say, uh, you could certainly say that like losing a race has got to be hard, but losing to that guy has got to really sting.
And if you're beta origin, you must be looking at him like, how did that guy win?
That guy?
Really?
I've over three and that guy's winning races.
Well, this was this was another uh, you know, interesting thing.
So there were some bright spots for Republicans.
Um, and there's an interesting, there, there's, there was an interesting like shift that's happened here that that will we probably won't fully understand for for years to come.
But there are things that you would have thought were hard to predict that have changed a lot.
And they've, I think they've changed in large part as a result of the COVID years and particularly of the relocation of many people.
There's this has been one of the most underreported seismic changes in America over the last three years or so, is that there's been a lot of people who have relocated to different areas.
And this was done specifically because of the local policies in these areas.
And that's something that as a libertarian and someone who believes in decentralization, I find to be very interesting and very encouraging.
You know, this is kind of the idea of federalism was something like this, right?
That people, you would kind of have this like loose national government and you'd have kind of the idea would basically be that the national government would enforce free movement and free trade amongst all of these different states, but different states could have different policies.
And then if people preferred one policy, they could vote with their feet and kind of move a whole nother way of like having more real tangible democratic process, if you want to think of it like that.
So a lot of people moved to Florida and Texas over the last two and a half, three years.
And me and you had talked about this on the show quite a bit.
There was a really interesting question there.
And there was a lot of concern of people who lived in those areas that, like, well, these people are coming in from blue states.
Are they going to bring their voting habits with them?
And kind of now, you could see one way where this could take something like Florida, which was a swing state and make it a blue state.
If all of these people from New York and New Jersey and all over are coming in there, and you can see the same with Texas.
And in Texas, the gap had really been closing quite dramatically over the last five, 10 years to the point that it was like, whoa, Texas is, you know, Abbott won by a very slim victory last year.
Ted Cruz almost lost his Senate seat in the last election, if you remember.
But what happened, which I think me and you were more betting on, is that, no, look, if people were moving from blue states to go live in Florida or Texas because they had open economies, because they weren't doing the COVID insanity, the odds are that they were going to support the governor who had those policies.
And in fact, I think they probably pulled a lot of the red people out of those blue states.
And even the blue people they pulled out of those blue states were probably really disgusted with the blue policies.
So the biggest one was in Florida, where it's not only that DeSantis won, it's that he smacked down Charlie Christ.
It seems that Ron DeSantis has really taken Florida from being a swing state to being a deep red state.
That's very interesting.
You think that's going to be true of the, I guess, presidential election as well?
Yeah, I think so.
I think Florida has changed.
I mean, we'll see to, you know, be sure, but yeah, I think so.
I mean, Miami-Dade was that that county went for Hillary Clinton by 30 points.
And DeSantis and Rubio won it.
Like, they really came out to support the Republicans.
This is a huge change.
And then in Texas, whereas it seemed like there have been all these people making these predictions for years and years, that because of demographic changes, Texas was just going to get bluer and bluer and bluer until it flipped blue.
And then forever, it's blue, much like California, you know, has, if you look at the history of California over the last 40, 50 years or something, this is a state that had Richard Nixon as its governor.
This was a state that had Ronald Reagan as its governor.
And now the idea of California going red is just, it's impossible.
It's as impossible as Brooklyn going red or something like that, you know?
But that's not what happened in Texas.
Now in Texas, it took a step back.
Beta O'Rourke did substantially worse than he's done in previous runs.
So that was interesting.
Also, Stacey Abrams losing was very interesting.
Beta O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams were both kind of these anointed young stars by the Democratic establishment and the corporate press.
And it's, you know, as you're pointing out, after a while, I think you can only lose so many elections before people go, yeah, no, you're not actually that star that you were telling everyone you are.
You don't have popular support here.
So nothing else.
That's a nice little silver lining.
Those, I think Beta O'Rourke and Stacey Abrams are going to have to go away.
And then I'll choose the storyline because I've seen it in Democratic elections where the primary extreme socialists that you know don't have much of a chance outside of like, you know, that was, it comes up a little bit more in the presidential elections where are they actually going to back like a Bernie Sanders?
But now they're talking about that I think Donald Trump's endorsed picks didn't actually do all that well.
So while they did well with the party, they're not doing well in the general, you know, elections.
Well, there's, well, look, I think some of this, because it's Donald Trump and the, you know, Donald Trump is such a, I don't know, he's a figure that generates such an emotional response from all sides.
So you have all of the people who hate Donald Trump kind of pouncing on this moment and then all of the people who love Donald Trump completely denying it.
I think that, look, Barack Obama learned this in 2010 and in 2014 when Democrats had very bad elections.
Even though Obama was at the time the most successful politician ever and got the most votes of any presidential candidate ever at the time, and even though he was this incredibly charismatic guy, he did not have this transitive property that let like his support did not make you him.
It did not like that it didn't, it just didn't work that way.
And Donald Trump has also figured this out.
He figured this out in the 2018 midterm elections.
And I think he figured this out again in these midterm elections that it doesn't just because people love Donald Trump and Donald Trump endorses you doesn't mean they love you.
That being said, I don't think there's any getting around the fact that, yeah, Trump was not able to get his team to where they should have been.
And I think I said this on the stream the other day, but I think one of the biggest dynamics to come out of this midterm election is that this, the Republican Party is now Ron DeSantis' party.
I think that Donald Trump lost the position as de facto leader, and I think it's now Ron DeSantis.
I mean, what Ron DeSantis was able to do to, let me just see what the final results were.
How much?
Ron DeSantis won by, he became governor by less than 100,000 votes.
I think it was something like maybe it was tens of thousands of votes, but it was not much more than that.
Ron DeSantis won by 20 points.
I mean, he runs 60 to 40.
This was, I mean, as big a blowout as you see in modern politics.
Think about this, right?
60% to 40%.
He won by 20 points in what has historically been a swing state.
That is like an unbelievable just smackdown.
And for him to do that, and look, I think it's fairly obvious why, right?
He kept Florida freer than just about any other state in the Union throughout the most totalitarian point in modern American history.
The people of Florida just, he won their support.
Brian, if you can pull up while we're talking about this, his acceptance speech or his victory speech, I should say, was, I thought, very interesting.
Actually, yeah, Brian, if you get that up, let me know and we'll take a look at that.
But this was, there was no question that this was a big moment for the future of the Republican Party.
And I think that it, I think it makes it a lot more likely that Ron DeSantis is going to run for president this year.
I think that there's going to be an interesting dynamic of how this all plays out.
And I'm not sure exactly how it's going to.
So I'm interested to see it.
But Ron DeSantis, just the fact that he is the only credible Republican challenger to Donald Trump.
I mean, I think like Liz Cheney might run for president now because I think, well, I think she'll run.
I don't think she'll do well, but I think she might run.
No, she'll get stomped.
But there's the people, these, a lot of the never Trumpers are very delusional and they'll convince themselves, ah, this is the sign.
Trump was rejected.
We can come take back over.
But it's going to become apparent to them very clear, very soon that DeSantis is the only one who can actually do it.
And I think a lot of these never Trumpers are going to get behind DeSantis.
The issue is that DeSantis hasn't, he hasn't governed or communicated like a never Trumper.
He's been like a MAGA guy, basically.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm an opponent to the whole regime and all of this stuff.
So anyway, that's the job.
Here was Ron DeSantis' victory speech.
Take a look at this.
Well, thank you so much.
You know, over these past four years, we've seen major challenges for the people of our state, for the citizens of the United States, and above all, for the cause of freedom.
We saw freedom in our very way of life and so many other jurisdictions in this country wither on the vine.
Florida held the line.
We chose facts over fear.
We chose education over indoctrination.
We chose law and order over rioting and disorder.
Florida was a refuge of sanity when the world went mad.
We stood as a citadel of freedom for people across this country and indeed across the world.
We faced attacks.
We took the hits.
We weathered the storms, but we stood our ground.
We did not back down.
We had the conviction to guide us and we had the courage to lead.
We made promises.
We made promises to the people of Florida and we have delivered on those promises.
And so today, after four years, the people have delivered their verdict.
Freedom is here to stay.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You can leave it there.
So anyway, you get kind of a taste of it.
I got to say, I think a very compelling speech.
I think that this is, look, it kind of proves the point, or at least supports the point that I was trying to make before, where I go, look, like Republicans, this is the problem, is that you weren't good enough on COVID.
And so you kind of couldn't run on it.
And here's a guy who is able to really run on it and say, look, here's what we did.
We chose freedom when everyone else chose fear over facts.
I think that, look, just sitting there and being like, we didn't riot here.
We didn't do lockdowns here.
I mean, okay, they did a little bit, but they cut it out pretty soon.
Yeah, it turns out that this whole freedom message that he's running on is a fairly compelling one.
Freedom Message Compelling00:03:52
I wonder if Trump is starting to look like Conor McGregor post-Nate Diaz, taking a couple losses, and you're just like, I think it's over, bud.
Yeah, well, you certainly don't have that kind of air of invincibility anymore, you know?
And then here's this guy comes out now and is just having a dominant victory.
DeSantis is DeSantis has several advantages over Donald Trump.
I think while Donald Trump is, obviously Donald Trump has some advantages too.
And Donald Trump is, you know, he's more famous.
He's a larger than life character.
He's got more money.
He's got, you know, more screen time experience and all of this.
DeSantis is smarter.
I think he's not as he's not as limited by his own issues.
Donald Trump is Donald Trump is aided, but also harmed by his massive ego.
And so something like that, like with Operation Warp Speed, I think Donald Trump is unable to pivot away from bragging about how wonderful he is for doing Operation Warp Speed.
And you see him just being a little bit out of touch with his own audience.
You know, it's like DeSantis is his signature issues are right now, I think, very in line with the Republican base.
His signature issues are: I'm the guy who fought the lockdowns.
I'm the guy who fought the masked man, who fought the vaccine mandates.
I'm the guy who made sure that your life wasn't going to be ruined over COVID.
I'm the guy who's fighting against the woke craziness being taught to your kids.
I'm the guy, you know what I mean?
And like, he's like right on those topics.
So, I think I don't know.
It's still going to be very interesting to see what decisions end up being made.
But as of right now, look, I mean, the audience erupted in the chance of two more years.
We're chanting two more years.
Like, you're going to go be president after these two years of being governor.
We'll see.
We'll see what happens with that.
All right, guys, let's take a quick moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear.
As you guys know, Sheath makes the most comfortable boxer briefs I've ever worn.
If you're sick of boxers that are too loose or briefs that are too tight, you have to check out Sheath.
I'm wearing a pair of sheath underwear right now, as I speak to you.
I'm always wearing sheath underwear.
It is literally, if you open my underwear drawer, there is nothing else in it.
I've gotten rid of all my other boxers at this point.
All I wear is sheath underwear boxer briefs.
The stretchy fabric is made out of a moisture-wicking technology.
They are soft, they are comfortable, they keep everything right in place, particularly useful if you're working out or you're in a hot environment, nice and breathable, keep everything cool.
And of course, they have the dual pouches.
I was a little skeptical about these, but let me tell you, it is a game changer.
And by the way, if you're not into the idea of these dual pouches that separate your man parts, you don't have to use them.
You can just wear them like a regular pair of underwear, and they'll be the most comfortable boxer briefs you've ever worn.
But I recommend give those dual pouches a shot.
Go to sheathunderwear.com, get the most comfortable underwear you'll ever wear.
And if you use the promo code problem20, you'll also get 20% off your entire order.
That's sheathunderwear.com, promo code problem20 for 20% off your order.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Two more years, Chan is funny because that's part of what they try giving them shit for: hey, why are you running for governor if you might have to leave the job?
But it could very well be that people love that.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, it's certainly, I'm sure a lot of them do.
Choosing A Different Direction00:06:59
So, yeah, again, we'll see.
It's just very interesting the way this thing shaped up.
I do think that one of my, you know, one of my bigger takeaways from all of this is that I think like I'm no fan of Republicans generally.
I think the Republican Party is, in general, just trash.
The vast majority of Republican politicians are trash.
I do think currently the Democrats are worse, but it doesn't, you know, it doesn't bother me that like Republicans didn't win more seats.
It bothers me to some degree that Democrats weren't rejected more.
There's something, there's something sad about that.
Like just after what the Democrats did, they kind of deserve to lose in the same sense that like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deserved to lose.
I don't really like the Democrats who are running against them, but they deserved to lose and not get reelected.
You know, like they, there's just something disappointing about them not being rejected in 2004.
Not to say anything good about John Kerry.
But that being said, what you're seeing is Republicans not doing as well as they should do across the nation, but doing better than was expected in these kind of Republican strongholds.
And I think that maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Maybe there's something good about this, that it's like, this is what the realization has to be, that the way to fight off DC tyranny is not going to be to go take over DC because that's just not going to happen.
And the truth is that even if Republicans won the presidency and the House and the Senate, it's still not going to happen.
We've seen Republicans win the presidency, the House, and the Senate in the year 2000, in the year 2016.
And nothing good came of it, or very little good, and a whole lot of bad came of it.
That shouldn't be the strategy going forward.
What the strategy should be going forward is to take over areas of the country and do your absolute best to defy federal overreach, push for nullification, localization, things like that.
I just think it's a much better strategy for the prospects for liberty than this kind of like, let's take over Washington, D.C., which I got to say, I mean, like to your point that you were kind of talking about in arguing with these crazy Brooklyn people the other day on this podcast, like there are some areas where you're almost like, yeah, we might just have to salt the ground here.
I don't know what to tell you.
Like there's that if people can't be convinced after this, then maybe there is just no convincing them.
Maybe that's just the way things are.
I don't know.
You think Rand Paul is going to actually go after Fauci?
Well, I guess what is it?
He's going to be that if the Republicans take control of the Senate, he's in charge of some.
I think, oh, maybe we could pull that up next.
Let's pull up Rand Paul's victory speech.
We could play that one next.
Yeah, I don't know.
It'll be interesting to see.
That's another race we should talk about, I guess, a little bit.
Rand Paul won in dominant fashion very easily.
I think if there's someone who's actually going to lead the charge going against Fauci, who else would it be?
Who else would it be, Rob?
All right, let's hear.
Let's hear from Rand Paul.
Thanks for coming out to Dr. Fauci's retirement party.
What a great crowd.
In this hour of our victory, as a red wave sweeps across the country, just pause it real quick.
Just so you guys understand, Rand Paul won early in the night.
So he was still a little overconfident about what was going to happen in the rest of the night.
But anyway, someone's got to iron that flag.
That's like my shirt when I gig.
When America chooses a different direction, we need to remember that we don't come together to celebrate the concentration of power.
We come together to rejoice in the dissipation of power.
We come together to reaffirm that we are the party of the 10th Amendment, that the powers not explicitly given to the federal government are left and kept and retained by us, the states and the people.
We come together under the belief that government is instituted among men and women to preserve our God-given freedom, period.
Our desire is not to rule over others, but to largely leave people alone.
It is this system of constitutional checks on power that has allowed America to become the freest nation ever known.
With freedom has come great prosperity, but we do not choose freedom because it makes us rich.
We choose freedom because it's a part of our very nature.
America is not only the richest country in the world, but we are also the most generous.
Private charity in America is unrivaled worldwide.
Why?
Because we truly believe we are our brother's keeper.
It is my hope that as our nation moves forward, the anger, the vitriol, and even the death rates will abate.
Surely there is common cause in the concept that a limited constitutional government allows people from all walks of life to live peacefully together, as long as they don't commit aggression against others.
Surely the concept of local rule can allow cities and states to express their social mores in a varied fashion.
The genius of federalism is that while we are bound together as one nation, we are still free to express ourselves and our significant differences state by state and city by city.
Stop Blaming Libertarians00:13:22
All right, please apply.
So there's Ron Paul, you know, talking to Rand Paul, talking his somewhat, you know, libertarian stuff after a big victory.
It's good that we're going to have him back in the Senate.
The best part of Republicans taking control of the Senate is, if they do, will be his ability to really go after Fauci.
Don't get it twisted.
There's not going to be enough political will to actually, you know, charge or prosecute Fauci or anything like that.
But if we can't have that, the second best thing is just watching Rand Paul humiliate him a bunch.
And it's such a shame because we really need some people to get in trouble in order for people to learn just how bad they were lied to.
We can't have what we had with like the Afghanistan and Iraq wars where it's like 10 years later or 12 and 15 years later, you start getting these movies made about how we were torturing people and it's like no one cares anymore.
Dick Cheney's dead.
We're not getting anyone in trouble.
I mean, he's alive, but I get your point.
I thought he's dead.
No, he's alive.
Dick Cheney's still alive?
Dick Cheney's alive.
Oh, I'm an idiot.
I don't know why anyone listens to me on anything.
But anyways, all right.
I guess.
You sure on that?
Yeah, I'm sure.
Okay.
John McCain, you're thinking?
Maybe, whatever.
Anyways, I was trying to make a point that I think was good.
No, it was a good point, though.
It is a good point that it's you can't look, people, in many cases, not only are not punished, but are rewarded for these, you know, categories.
Bernanke just got a Nobel Peace Prize for spending money.
I mean, for every prediction the guy made was wrong, every policy he made, you know, failed.
And yeah, he gets a Nobel Peace Prize in economics.
Yeah, we can look forward to that like every month seeing Fauci getting some other award, like the celebration of humanities, the science of American, whatever, blah, blah, blah, just constant noble science.
And again, to your point, it's not just that punishing these people is the just thing to do, but it's that at least there to be something to make the next tyrant think twice about doing it, that there actually can be consequences for these actions.
And yeah, I think that, you know, in many ways, the people who support criminal prosecution of Fauci are the best, you know, friends of liberty of any, you know, politicians out there, even if maybe they're not as good on some other policies.
It's just like, yeah, that's a pretty big one.
Who supports who supports criminally prosecuting this guy?
That's a question I'm interested in.
All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Yo Delta.
If you are a responsible adult over the age of 21, living in states where Delta 8 is legal, go stock up at yo delta.com.
Delta 8, much like CBD, is naturally found in hemp.
It can be legally shipped to various states.
However, unlike CBD, Delta 8 does get you high, very high, from what I've heard.
They have a mix of gummies and vapes for all your needs.
If you like Delta 8 or if you want to try it, go check out yo Delta.com, the official Delta 8 sponsor of the Gas Digital Network.
Use the promo code GAS.
That'll get you 25% off your entire order.
One more time, yoDelta.com, promo code GAS for 25% off YoDelta, home of the Delta 8, the official Delta 8 sponsor of the Gas Digital Network.
All right, let's get back into the show.
So, yeah, look, there's not going to be enough.
This was going to be true no matter how Republicans did these days.
There might be some hearings or something like that, and there'll be some potentially embarrassing moments for some of these guys, but that's about the best you're going to do.
Okay, check one more time if any results have changed.
Nothing new coming in here.
Any other thoughts on what happened the other day, Rob?
Any other races stick out to you?
Happy to see Ron Johnson sticking around.
Hopefully, he does some more Hunter Biden work.
He's been good on that topic.
Sure.
Looks like that lake lady might win, and she's pretty hot and spunky.
So that's one out in the governor and gubernatorial candidate out in Arizona.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's not a done deal, though.
No, it's not at all.
It's Arizona.
You know, like we were covering on our last show, Arizona is a shit show with these elections.
So we'll see what I hope they promote Ferrarman fast and we get to see a lot of him.
You know, if he's already going to be there, let's make him spokesperson of the party.
Let's really see him get out there.
Well, did you see they were talking on MSNBC?
They were throwing out the possibility of him being a presidential candidate.
Well, with, you know, Biden managed to win being as bad as he was.
And so maybe, maybe that's what voters like at this point is a guy who can't talk coherently and just kind of wins you over like in a, in a, like in a baby type fashion, where you almost feel bad for them.
It's like the sympathy vote is what wins now.
We don't want, we don't want competence.
We want to uplift the downtrodden.
Yeah, it's, I don't even know what to say.
It's going to be fucking entertaining as shit having that guy around, I guess.
I mean, kind of sad, but almost somewhat entertaining, I can't say.
There were some ones that were very disappointing.
Whitmer was re-elected in Michigan there.
Some of the worst of the lockdown governors did get their, did get re-elected.
And when you survive a FBI kidnapping plot, you know, it drums up some support.
Yeah, I suppose so.
But it just does, it does show you, you know, where we are as a country that there still are a lot of people who are bought in.
And, you know, I'll say for, you know, because I know I can kind of hear there's the right wingers.
I hear their voices in the back of my head saying, like, well, it's all rigged again or the elections are all unfair or something like that.
Look, I kind of have this, like, my feeling on all of this is, as I've said many times before on the show, I'm kind of agnostic when it comes to all of this stuff.
Like, I don't really know.
I don't know how much election fraud there is.
I don't know if there's conspiracies going on.
Like, if I found out there was, I wouldn't be like, my God, my worldview is shocked.
I'd be like, okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
If I found out there wasn't, my worldview wouldn't be shocked.
I would also kind of feel like, yeah, no, this was, there was never really any evidence to back this up.
But if it is the case that there's lots of cheating going on in these elections, at the end of the day, that's just what it is.
That's that's what we've got.
You know, I think it was Curtis Yarvin who said about Joe Biden with the Trump election, where he said, well, if he cheated, he cheated fair and square.
And that's, that's kind of how I feel about it too.
Like, well, then that's the game, I guess.
And you're like, oh, well, is that unfair and corrupt?
It's like, yeah, this is this is politics.
This is the government.
Everything's unfair and corrupt.
And half of the policies that you probably support are unfair and corrupt.
That's to the non-libertarians listening.
But, you know, yeah, that's the game.
So, okay, if they're committing fraud and you can't stop them from committing fraud, then guess what?
Account for that fraud in your calculations going forward.
Then that's what it is.
Either find a way to stop it or account for it.
And if you're saying, well, we can never take back, you know, huge majorities in Congress and in the Senate and all this because of the fraud, okay.
Well, then you can't take back huge majorities.
That's just that.
You still got to figure out what your strategy is going to be.
I don't understand.
At some point, prove it.
I mean, if you're expecting these things and you got the money that you got, you tell me you can't hire some ex-CIA, some ex-FBI, some like there's really no investigative research that you can do and actually come up with proof.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
Either work on a plan to expose it and prove it, or work on a plan to stop it, or work on a plan to work around it.
One way or the other, that's got to happen.
I will say the other point that I wanted to make is that there have been a lot of, which is, you know, fairly typical in this political environment, but there have been a lot of people blaming the Libertarian Party for costing Republicans elections.
I put out a little Twitter thread about this earlier today.
I'll read it quickly and then we can kind of talk about this, but I wanted to address this, this idea.
So I said, here's my thoughts on the GOP claims that libertarians are, quote, stealing votes.
Obviously, the term stealing doesn't make sense, but let's leave that aside and really think about this.
There are definitely some libertarians who just won't support you unless you are a libertarian.
I think they are pretty small in number, but regardless, those votes weren't taken from you because they never would have supported you anyway.
The claim would only make sense to the libertarian-leaning voter who would support Republicans if there were no libertarian running.
These people could be won over, and that's on you.
Be good on some things, and you can get them.
Paul and Massey had no problem winning them.
That was the other race we didn't mention, but Thomas Massey was also re-elected, and we're very happy about that.
If Republicans, in a serious way, supported sound money, defend the guard, constitutional carry, and cutting spending, they would get massive amounts of support from little L and Big L libertarians.
It's your call.
So that was my thoughts more or less on this issue.
I just wanted to also read that on the podcast.
So I'm kind of on record for, you know, my podcast audience as well as my Twitter audience and seeing this.
I don't know what to tell you for all the people complaining that libertarians are running and taking votes away from you.
This is your fault.
And if the Republican Party in general represented any clear vision that was moving us in the direction of liberty, the vast majority of us libertarians would just get on board.
The reason why we can't in good conscience do that is because the vast majority of your candidates are trash.
So there you go.
There is no controversy amongst libertarians supporting Rand Paul and Thomas Massey.
In fact, I also and many libertarians, including the candidate running for Senate in Arizona, threw our support behind Blake Masters, who's probably, at least rhetorically, not as libertarian as Rand Paul and Thomas Massey, but at least said a lot of things that us libertarians wanted to hear and has been pretty immersed in our literature and our world.
So he got a lot of support from libertarians.
If these other Republican candidates are complaining that they didn't get support from libertarians, well, what are they running on?
What are they talking about?
Are they running on anything that libertarians would be behind?
Because if not, then don't expect our support.
But again, the reason also that I picked these issues was that I wasn't, I didn't want to pick issues.
I wanted to be practical here.
Look, I obviously, I'm a pure libertarian ideologically, but when it comes to political action, I try my best to be a pragmatist, you know, radical pragmatism.
That's what I'm all about and what I've always been about.
I understand that you can't ask Republicans who are trying to win elections after all to take positions and be good on issues that are going to completely alienate their base.
All right.
I understand that.
I understand they're not going to run on like hating the police and legalizing heroin.
Okay.
But sound money, constitutional carry, defend the guard, cutting spending.
These are all things that are wildly popular amongst the Republican base.
All I'm telling you to do is be better on these issues and you will get a lot of libertarian support.
But until then, you won't.
So those are the terms.
And if not, find the vote somewhere else, but stop complaining about us.
Stop complaining about us.
We didn't take anything away from you.
The truth is, if you guys couldn't route the Democrats in the current incarnation of the Democrats, if you're telling me that the party of lockdowns and inflation and teaching your six-year-old boy that he's a girl, you're telling me you couldn't beat that party.
Maybe you got to look in the mirror at what the fuck you guys are campaigning on.
Show Tickets Selling Out00:02:21
That would be my thoughts on it.
All right.
Anything else to add, Rob?
I think we covered it.
At least for now, I'm sure there'll be some more results coming in.
I don't know if they'll be in by the next podcast.
I heard that people in Arizona were saying that they're prepared to work through Thanksgiving and maybe even Christmas.
So it might be quite a while.
How is that possible?
Yep.
It does beg that question or lead to that question.
Yeah.
Is there any other state that's that much?
I know Georgia's got its runoff thing.
So that takes time.
Georgia has a runoff coming.
That'll be a few weeks, I think, before that's all set up.
Runoff seems so annoying.
So it's like a round two now.
So they got to do the whole thing again.
Everyone's got to show up and vote again.
Yeah, I guess if no one gets over 50%, then they go to a runoff vote.
Yeah.
Seems a little bit weird.
Seems really stupid.
Because so now it's a whole nother, I don't know.
It's like in a basketball game, if you go to overtime, so it's like a new game, kind of, because you can score points that you didn't otherwise score.
Little different, because in the basketball game they were tied right.
They don't go.
If you didn't win by 15, you go to an automatic overtime game and it starts at zero.
Zero because I guess they're looking at it that if it's only 15, there was probably some fraud there, so you didn't really win.
Like guys, these things, there's a plus minus 10 on all these things, so we can't declare you a victor with just 10 more.
Yeah right, something like that.
Um, all right, that's our episode for today.
Uh, catch you guys soon.
Don't forget, come out.
See uh, me and Robbie The Fire Bernstein on the 25th.
A few tickets still left.
If you want to come out to that, go buy tickets now, because these shows are going to sell out.
Ticket links are up at Comicdave Smith.com.
That is in Poughkeepsie, New York, on the 25th.
And then, of course, i'll be out in Los Angeles uh, at the Comedy Store new year's eve with my brother, Louis J Gomez.
Um, that's going to be a really fantastic show, so make sure you guys come out.
If you're in Los Angeles, come ring in the new year with me.
Um, me and Rob will be all over the Place on the road coming up in the next GR.
Ticket links will always be up at comicdavesmith.com.
What do you got coming up, Rob?
Narlins is next.
And then, I don't know, go to the link in the episode description.