Dec. 24, 2022 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the political test pool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, what a special honor it is to be with you each and every week, but especially this week.
It is Christmas Eve, our Christmas Eve broadcast, Saturday, December the 24th.
We appreciate you tuning in, whether you're listening live with your family tonight or you'll hear it in the broadcast archives after the fact.
We want to wish you once and for all in a final time a very Merry Christmas.
And I'll tell you what, to have Congressman Steve King on the program anytime is a treat, but tonight especially so he's back.
We opened the Christmas season with him the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, and we're closing it with him tonight.
And it truly is entirely, again, our honor to welcome him.
Steve, great to have you back, and Merry Christmas to you.
Well, thanks a lot, James.
It's my honor to be on here today and to be passing this Christmas message along to all your listeners across the country.
And it is, I have some optimism looking forward to the next year, of course, and I hope we get to that.
But I'd wish everyone a Merry Christmas to start this out.
And then hopefully we get to wrap this up with a similar message.
We absolutely will.
And before we go any further, it is going to be a little more comfortable laid-back program tonight in light of the special evening that we find ourselves gathered.
But Keith Alexander wasn't with you when we first had you on.
Your debut appearance last month, Congressman, and I know he wants to say hello.
Yes, Steve, it's great to have you on, and I'm glad to give you a platform to spread the good news that you have for Republicans.
And while we're on that topic, what can we do to improve the Republican Party?
Is there any way to get some of these old war horses out that are basically a fifth column for the Democrats that are in our party?
Well, Keith, the first thing comes to mind when I hear your question is, and it's impending here within the next couple of weeks, January 3rd would be the date that there's an election for Speaker of the House.
And if there's anybody that epitomizes a war horse that has made a deal with the devil, it's Kevin McCarthy.
And his deal is that give me the speaker's gavel and I'll suspend all other standards except whatever gets them to the speaker's chair.
And I have found that over my years in Congress, 18 of them to total them up, to be a poisonous element.
You need people that will stand on principle, that will sacrifice their career for a cause.
And the constitutional principles, the biblical principles.
And my prayer each morning is that God will raise up the people that are leaders and others to become leaders who are grounded in biblical values and in the Constitution.
And I'm hopeful on the leaderboard of January 3rd.
Yes.
This is one of the things we were going to talk about tonight.
So basically with Congressman King this evening, be sure, by the way, to check out steveking.com.
He writes about Kevin McCarthy and so many other things that will be of interest to you.
I've read the book.
It is fantastic.
SteveKing.com.
You can get it there.
You won't get it in time for Christmas, but you'll need something to carry you into the new year, right?
We're going to be talking about the best and worst of 2022 and also hopes for the new year.
Let's just start with hopes for the new year.
And that includes, I was specifically going to ask you about all of the news.
I believe it was a talking point on your last appearance a month ago, but even this week, as late as this week, I have seen Matt Gates and Lauren Boebert talking about the need to stop Kevin McCarthy.
It would appeared as though he had gained some momentum in moving back into that position.
But what could happen that would stop that, Congressman?
Well, as I'm analyzing this too, and of course I'm talking to people there that I've served with for years, and there's a level of professional trust.
But I can say some things, I think, within that, and that is that you've got five that have locked down hard on this thing that say there are going to be never McCarthy votes.
And then there are about seven to ten that are obviously undeclared.
And there's another, probably another 10 to 12 that we didn't hear much from.
And so I'd say the potential for no votes out there on the floor could be, it could be as many as 15 to 20 or maybe even 25.
And then, so, you know, what I think is the preparation is this, that Kevin McCarthy is likely to go to the Democrats and say, would if he has his votes counted, he'll probably ask the Democrats to have the requisite number of their members take a walk and just skip the vote.
That would change the majority number from 218 down to whatever it is in the number that take a walk.
And so that would mean that McCarthy might have enough votes if there's only five against him.
But if there's 10, 15, 20, or 25, it gets a lot harder.
So that's how I think this plays out.
There's going to be major drum rolls go on when this vote takes place on the floor.
I'm still toying with the idea of flying out there just to sit in one of those seats and watch the show.
Oh, man, that would be something.
I'll tell you what.
Well, and this will come to a resolution or a conclusion pretty soon, but it has been interesting to watch this.
And we will keep tabs on it.
Now, another thing, hopes for the new year.
I guess that would be one hope for the new year is that there'd be a new speaker there for the Republican majority.
I couldn't help but see the news here late this week about the, or rather earlier in the week it was the January 6th committee sending these criminal referral of criminal charges to the Department of Social Justice.
And I was thinking, I had to look it up.
And it took them less time to bring forward the charges, conduct the trial, and get to the hangings in Nuremberg than it has with this.
Is this just complete political theater, Congressman?
The fact that we are now two years off of January 6th, whatever happened there, and however you want to see it, and they are still just mulling this over.
I asked Keith how, you know, when will they ever get to the bottom of it?
And Keith, what was your answer?
There is no bottom.
What's going on here with this, in your opinion?
Well, that surprised me, Keith.
But it may well be true.
The swamp is deep, and maybe there's no bottom to it at all.
I would call January 6th, and I've just labeled it this from fairly early on, an incursion.
I don't buy into a lot of the other.
I remember there was a time when Barack Obama shut down the monuments.
We had a government shutdown.
And he took out the, do I still have you?
I just got a signal here.
Yes, yes.
We're here.
Okay, good, good.
Anyway, he shut down the monuments, the World War II monuments that were paid for by donors and World War II veterans.
He hired and rented barricades to put all the way around there so that people couldn't visit a monument because the government shut down.
He spent extra money to keep our warriors out.
And I went down there and opened that up.
But we did that for a week or more.
And Michelle Bachlan went with me to the Lincoln Memorial.
I did that every day, but one day it was a Saturday morning.
We went to the Lincoln Memorial and that was all barricaded.
No one had gone up there.
No one had opened that one.
And as we walked along those barricades, they're like cattle gates wired together.
And she said, well, they're all wired together.
And I said, well, there's one of them that isn't.
And it didn't matter because I had a set of wire cutters in my pocket and a pair of scissors, by the way.
And anyway, there were several hundred people out there looking up at the Lincoln Memorial.
They'd spent their money to fly or drive into Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials and they can't even set foot on them.
Hold on right there, Congressman.
I hate to take a break when you're in the middle of the story, but we will take one.
We'll reset, regroup, talking with Congressman Steve King about hopes for the coming year, the best moments of 2022 and the birth of this digital battle between truth and deceit.
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Isn't this great?
Just the two of us.
No work, no interruptions, no phone, no TV.
Finally, we have a chance to just talk.
I mean, how long has it been?
Well, first of all, we should talk about your schedule.
There are a few things that could use some adjusting, but overall, I think it's going all right.
Basically, I think we're doing a pretty good job of communicating, which is good.
You're doing a really good job of letting me know how you feel about things.
I just, I want to keep the lines open, if you know what I mean.
Jerry, it's four o'clock in the morning.
What are you doing?
Oh, I was just giving Emily a bottle.
Who are you talking to?
Emily.
She's only three weeks old and she's asleep.
I know.
I was just practicing.
Family, isn't it about time?
Isn't this great?
Just the three of us.
No work, no interruptions, no phone.
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Welcome back, everybody.
James Edwards, Keith Alexander, and Congressman Steve King.
Congressman, when we left off, we were talking with you.
You were sharing a story, and I'd love to have you finish it, but also the January 6th committee, their criminal referral to the DOJ regarding Trump.
How do you think all that plays out?
And with the Republicans taking the lead in the House, can they curtail any of this at all or derail it?
Okay, well, if I start back with that story, I'll get that to a conclusion here.
But as I was saying, that they had barricaded the Lincoln Memorial when Barack Obama shut them down during a government shutdown, October 2013.
And these are like cattle panels or cattle gates all the way across the front.
As Michelle Bachman and I walked along that with hundreds of people there visiting, watching and looking up, yearning to go up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial, as we walked along there, I said, she said, well, they're all wired together.
And I said, one of them is not, but I had wire cutters in my pocket along with scissors.
And so we walked back to that one that was unwired.
And I could see she was going to open that gate.
And she's kind of a little woman.
And I thought, that was going to really look bad.
So I grabbed the gate and swung it open.
And we walked up those steps.
And they had a police barricade yellow tape across halfway up those steps.
And I just said to her, don't look back.
We're going up to read Lincoln's second memorial address.
This is a people's monument here.
And so we walked up without looking back.
We got to the tape and I said, grab it with two hands.
I'm going to cut you out a souvenir.
So I clipped inside her hands and got about a three-foot piece of that tape.
We went on up into what they call the temple area right around Lincoln's feet.
And I had pretty soon there were just hundreds of people up there filled that place up.
And what had happened was two of my staff people had lost us and they panicked when they saw us up those steps.
The police had Capitol Hill, Capitol Security, had closed the gate behind us.
And one of my guys had played football for MS SMU and he swung that gate back open again.
And he kind of essentially gave the arm-like charge like an infantry commander.
And all those people went up the steps.
And they were all breaking the law in the same way.
Many of those people went into the Capitol is my point.
And there you go.
When you're in a heavy crowd like that, you don't know what's going on in the front of that.
You don't know who's leading, but you know, it's kind of like a dam breaks.
And you're going to go with the flow or you might get run over.
And especially if you've had Capitol Hill police standing, they're inside the door, stepping back on the side of the hallway, welcoming them in, saying, don't damage the place.
So many of them, I think, were convicted that had no idea that there was going to be a law that could be brought against them walking into the people's house with a flow of people.
That's how I think about J6.
And this, it's a very, very, it's a completely partisan committee.
When Kevin McCarthy did the right thing by pulling everybody off that panel, when Nancy Pelosi rejected, was it Jim Banks and Jim Jordan, I believe?
And then when Nancy Pelosi recruited Liz Cheney and Adam Kensinger, that was clear.
They were tools.
They were willing tools and eager tools, and they should have known what they were doing.
But the Republican Conference and Kevin McCarthy should have known also that they had forsaken their Republican credentials.
They were not appointed by Republicans.
And they should have simply just rejected them from the Republican conference and taken the label Republican off of them.
That would have taken at least some of the leverage away that they've used.
But this couldn't be more of a kangaroo court.
There would have been no evidence allowed that defended the people that are being targeted here.
And Donald Trump is their primary target.
And I think now there's a reasonable chance they're going to try to get an indictment against him.
And maybe they'll go down to Mar-a-Lago and do another raid and take Donald Trump this time instead of some archives.
Wow.
Well, you know, and that just, again, further exacerbates this divide that we have.
As I've said before, we are really have become two different people.
There are two nations, well, really more than that living within two blocks, the red and the blue.
Keith, Steve, I'm 71 years old, so I have a few on you.
But as long as I can remember, the Republicans have always had a problem with defectors in their own rights.
For example, I remember all of the Supreme Court justice nominees that were supposedly Republican and supposedly conservative, and they turned out to be, you know, a fifth column of liberals on the Supreme Court.
Until we've had Joe Manchin and Christian Sinema, I can't, you know, the Democrats seem to be able to police their troops a lot better than we do ours.
And we have Liz Cheney's, Adam Kissinger's, people like this.
Why is that happening?
Why has that happened throughout my lifetime?
Do you have any insights on that?
Well, I have a bit, but I haven't written any book on this part.
It's a curious question.
I've watched this.
I'll say principled people get elected to office.
It happens in the state legislature.
I was in the Iowa Senate for six years.
And of course, I watch what's going on in this state now.
And it happens in Congress, too.
They come in.
They know what they believe in.
They represented those principles to their constituents.
And they're ready to charge when they hit the ground.
And I went through it as the rest of them do.
There were 11 days.
They called it all orientation.
But it was about four days of orientation and seven days of indoctrination.
And first they say, your job is to get reelected.
You can't do that unless you raise money.
So you go over and raise money, and we'll take care of telling you how to vote and where to be.
And some of those members will go over there and pick up the phone and spend almost their entire career raising money because then they can buy themselves a committee chair.
But once you compromise with leadership, once you give them a vote, they just come back for a bigger vote and a bigger vote and a bigger contribution.
And so slowly they might just say, well, this is only a small little deal.
So I'm going to sacrifice a piece of principle here because it's good for the cause and helps me get along.
It'll help my career.
And over time, that grows into a big snowball, and they're no longer their own man or woman any longer.
That's what I see happen in the legislative arena.
In the courts, I don't know if I quite understand that.
We've had some justices I had great hope for.
One of them was Chief Justice Roberts, and he's turned out to be a fellow that's with us part of the time, even most of the time, but he looks to be a centrist rather than a principled constitutionalist.
So I think people go through a transformation.
I didn't go through that myself.
Anyways, I began to, as the years went by, I understood the principles we need to defend more and more, more and more.
And I stood on them stronger because my political foundation was strong enough I could do that.
And I would say this to anybody that's a representative elect or a senator elect, whether it's at the national level or it's Tennessee, whether it's Iowa or any other state.
If you want to have an independent voice so that leadership doesn't tell you what to do and you can tell leadership that you're going to represent your constituents and you owe them your best efforts and your best judgment.
That's all you owe your constituents, but that's a lot.
And so you need three things.
You need to have first voters that will support you, a network of them, which means serve them and serve their interests.
The second thing is you need a fundraising network out there that's independent.
It's broad.
It's low-dollar stuff.
It's supporters through a broad distance so that they can't target your donors and shut your money off.
And the third thing is you need a media voice that when leadership decides they're going to throttle you or knock you down or control you, you need to be able to go to the media and tell them the truth.
Leadership fears that.
And that would be why was it John Boehner went to, if I remember now, Roger Ailes and asked Roger Ailes, don't put Steve King, Michelle Bachman, or Louie Gombert on Fox anymore because we don't like what they're saying.
Well, that's an example.
Those three things.
That's how it works.
And then we saw John Boehner crying at some Nancy Pelosi event where they're honoring her for her service.
Well, let me just tell you, folks, if you're interested, I'm sure.
I've got to begin to say that.
You lit me up here.
Go ahead, Congressman, please.
You and John would hit it off.
I'm telling you, I could see things between you two.
I just, you know, I've seen him cry a number of times, and you can see it coming.
And he would get his handkerchief out before he started to speak.
And you'd think he'd be tougher than that growing up in a family.
Did he have a raw onion in his handkerchief?
That must have been it.
But there's another audio that bothers me even more.
The audio of him crying and watching it and the video of it is worse probably than the audio of that.
But when John Boehner handed the speaker's gavel to Nancy Pelosi in January of 2007, first time that the woman had been speaker of the house, that was part of it.
He stood up there on that rostrum and handed her that big gavel.
And he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek right by the microphone.
And I will tell you, that sound is in my ear today in my mind's ear.
And once it's been heard, it cannot be unheard.
Hey, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to hear more behind-the-scenes stuff about how the game has really played, the behind-the-scenes stuff, Steve King tells his side of the story.
SteveKing.com, you get the book.
You want to read this.
You'll know a lot better why the winds are few and far between for people of our political persuasion.
We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen.
Your daily Liberty Newswire.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio. USA News.
I'm Rich Johnson.
Winter storms happen like in winter, like now, but the big one moving across the USA this weekend is especially bad timing as millions of us are trying to travel for the Christmas weekend.
We probably could have 10,000 flights that may be canceled out of this whole situation here over the next few days.
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi of Weather Bell says if the system dips far enough south, it won't just impact holiday travel.
It gets under 28 degrees.
They have to shut the refineries down and we're going to have two, three, four nights where it's going to be there.
Right now, the main system's blasting the upper Midwest and will bring whiteout conditions to Nebraska and to the east by tomorrow.
At least two people have been hurt after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit early this morning off the coast of Northern California.
But trying to find out more is a chore.
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Authorities at the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office in Eureka, California say about 70,000 are without power right now.
There's also big damage to many roads and some bridges.
It's getting a little better at the gas pump every few days.
AAA now says the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas is $3.12, the lowest since July of last year.
While we're not worried about gas supplies right now, another issue is the supply chain and children's meds.
CBS and Walgreens are now limiting purchases of things like children's Tylenol because of skyrocketing demand because of the huge number of flu COVID and RSV cases.
House Republicans want to wait till January when they take control of the House.
But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell again says Congress should pass a full year spending bill this week.
Lawmakers unveiled a $1.7 trillion plan today.
McConnell says it's necessary to help Ukraine and keep Russia and China at bay.
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This is Congressman Steve King's second appearance on this program.
And like the first time, I was trying to figure out a way we could add more minutes.
And so we're going to actually take out our final commercial break of the hour.
We're going to go all the way to the top.
Yeah, top of the hour with Congressman King.
He's telling some stories about his time in Congress and how the situation works.
You know, 18 years in Congress, targeted with a well-orchestrated hit by the leftist media and the Republican establishment for the crime of warning his constituents and his colleagues that Western Civilization was under assault.
He's written a book about it.
You can get it at steveking.com.
So we've been talking mostly about some things, two things really, that we'd like to see happen in the coming year.
The demise of Kevin McCarthy's speakership and that the Republicans might in some way get us past the never-ending January 6th investigations.
And I share Congressman King's take on what that day was and what it wasn't.
It wasn't what we saw at any garden variety, a Black Lives Matter riot, for instance.
But let's talk about some good things.
Let's not even talk about the worst thing that happened.
You can turn on any other program and hear bad news.
Let's talk about good things, Congressman.
And I think last year and over the last two years, really, so maybe it's the last two-year thing and more so than just 2022.
But you are seeing the Republican base move further to the right and be more vocal about it.
Let's just use the adjective muscular, more muscular in their opinions.
And we've cited some polls and some other anecdotal evidence.
Now, of course, that's a good thing, but they're not yet organized and there's not yet a plan put to action on the best used.
Excuse me.
Will it be a case of when all is said and done, more will be said than done.
Well, here's what you've got to work with.
You've got, and again, we're using some system polling here.
These aren't our polls.
89% of Trump voters believe Christianity is under attack.
87% believe that Christianity is an essential part of American greatness.
This is the Republican base we're talking about.
87% of Trump voters are worried about anti-white discrimination, as are we, as am I. 80% of Trump voters reject white privilege.
79% of Trump voters believe that Christianity is important to their identity.
63% believe that race and ethnicity is important to their identity.
So I think we're seeing some good trends here, Steve, that would put us on a level playing field with the opposition.
Would you agree with that?
And how can these people be mobilized?
Because if you're talking about 60, 70, 80% of tens of millions of people, you've got numbers you can win with, but they still just aren't quite being deployed.
Well, those are good numbers, and a lot of us have felt this in our guts and in our bones for a few decades now and watched this anti-white thing move up.
And as that happened, we want to be open.
We want to respect everybody.
We're all God's children.
We should be able to work together and get along.
And we should be able to respect each other's cultures.
But we are Western civilization.
And it is the very definition of Western civilization is the first world.
And when you attack the first world, you are tearing it down.
And you're moving either to the second world, the Marxist, socialist, communist, or you're going to the third world, which is survivalism.
So we should be proud of who we are and what we've accomplished here.
And we don't lock anybody out of it.
If you want to have a good work ethic and a solid faith and strong families and rule of law and respect order, and by the way, work and get an education and work intelligently, we're all for that.
That makes the world a better place.
But we're being attacked for our skin color now.
And that's pretty obvious to everybody.
And they've just more or less declared, if you're born white, you're a racist.
Well, if you're conceived white, then you must be a racist if you're truly pro-life.
And that means we all, or anybody that's a Caucasian is a racist.
And that has really put a mark down in this society and divided us.
And it has been always the left and the Democrats that have been dividing.
And now, let's say, for example, affirmative action was initiated by John F. Kennedy in January of 1963 in an executive order where he recommended it after he was assassinated.
And then in 1965, LBJ initiated an executive order that commanded the beginning of affirmative action.
So that was really pre King's strongest part of the movement.
And now it's grown into this thing where you have the president of the United States could care less about what qualifications he has with his appointments.
If they meet the proper intersectionality points, whether we've got what I better not go too far with this, but look at the Supreme Court justice, Tatanji Brown Jackson.
And so everywhere they move, and you're seeing this happen in business now.
You're seeing it happen in universities.
Everywhere in our society, you have to look at the quota of your hires and even the commercials.
There is an hour rule that half the commercials have to have a black in them.
Well, so if you're going to sell chopsticks to the Chinese, do you need to have an African-American on the commercial?
Well, by goodness, are you not onto something?
Yes, you watch any sort of commercial media.
And the advertising agencies are all hard left.
Well, here is one thing, Congressman, as I was listening to you talk, this came to mind.
This has been something that happened in 2022 almost exclusively, or at least in terms of the media's coverage of it.
And they, of course, use this as a term of derision, but Christian nationalism.
Now, according to the numbers that I've got here, eight out of ten Republican voters are white Christians.
And so they call Christian nationalism if it's a dirty thing.
And I guess they want you to be an atheist globalist instead.
But you have seen a shift there with people being more outspoken.
I mean, really, the things that you took so much fire on six years ago are commonplace now.
You see it out of members of Congress now using the term anti-white.
I mean, Tucker Carlson, I know there's a difference between a commentator and a congressman, but really, even conservative, establishment, conservative media is starting to speak much more strongly than even the comments you were so savage for making.
And that has been something that has been an observable shift, I think.
And then this.
Now, I'm reading a paragraph from Salon.
And I'll let this be the last question on this.
And we'll talk for a moment and then we'll get to the real reason for the season and what we're talking about, the birth of Jesus Christ.
But this is Salon.
And they wrote, this was back from the summer.
Last week in Houston, Texas, Republicans got a taste of just how far right their party has become.
At the state's GOP convention, delegates officially declared Joe Biden an illegitimate president, proposed repealing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and voted for a platform calling on schools to teach that life begins at conception and to avoid discussion of gender, identity, or sexuality.
Additional planks, they use the word attacked because if you're not in favor of child genital mutilation, which is so-called trans rights, they said that they attack trans rights and gender-affirming medical care as actionable malpractice and declared homosexuality an abnormal lifestyle choice.
Now, that is the things that were voted on, and I believe voted into the platform of the Republican Party of Texas by its delegates at the convention.
So that Christian nationalism, some of those polls I mentioned, are you seeing this?
Now, you have a very different perspective as a former congressman who has dealt with voters in the flesh and in person and in real time.
We are observing these things as commentators and pundits.
Are you seeing this shift within the Republican Party?
And if so, why aren't more people standing up to speak for this particular audience?
I mean, it's as Keith said before, could you imagine a black candidate running for office afraid to say that I'm standing up for my constituents?
I'm standing up for black voters.
I mean, it would never happen.
And rightly so, Steve.
Well, the first thing that makes me think is early on in this Congress when Margaret Taylor Greene arrived, there was some discussion about forming, you know, you've got the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Democrat Women's Caucus, and there's nothing there for the majority.
And so they decided, at least they made some moves in that direction, to form a white caucus.
I believe that was Paul Gothar and Margaret Taylor Greene, if you would Google that.
I'm only 95% sure of that.
And it lasted about a day until leadership shut that thing down.
But I thought in the beginning when they formed the Congressional Black Caucus, how can they get away with that?
If we're going to have an integration here and get rid of segregation, why would they, and by the way, I often stood on the floor of the House of Representatives speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus, and I called them the self-segregating caucus.
And they never stood up to rebut that, never.
So now what you're seeing happen, I think, in Texas is they've brought their platform forward, and it's a solid conservative fiscal and social agenda platform.
And they are defending that and taking votes on that and getting some press on it.
It's happening at the grassroots level, not at the leadership level like it should be, but it's driven from the bottom up.
So here in Iowa, for example, we had that horrible vote on what they call it, the Respect for Marriage Act, which is really the destruction of marriage act.
And we had to, yeah, and so we had 12 Republican senators that vote to break closure on that.
And one of them was my senator here, Joni Ernst, who I helped move up through the process into the Senate.
And she voted for the gay marriage legislation that they call the Respect for Marriage Act.
And it is an awful piece of legislation.
But somewhere between five and ten county Republican organizations in Iowa voted to censure her.
And that's the first time I've ever seen that in my years here.
So that says to me the grassroots are pushing back.
They get it.
And this movement that's coming up through, you know, we used to have establishment Republicans, the Rockefeller Republicans ruled about 1988.
We started getting the social conservatives.
And now that is the foundation for the party.
And I think these social conservatives are stepping forward now.
And they're going to take their party back one county at a time, one state at a time.
It's going to take some time.
But all of this rebuilding of our society that we have has to take place at the families, at the churches, in the communities, and from grassroots up because politics is downstream from the culture.
We must reform the culture in order to get politics reformed.
I agree with that.
And if the base can move in a certain direction and vocally so and with some authority, you are already seeing some tremors of the politicians.
And let's face it, I mean, you know this much better than we do.
A lot of people will shift.
A lot of so-called leaders will shift with the prevailing tide.
That's human nature.
That's just the way it is.
If our people can exert more leverage and pressure than the opposition, then you will start seeing more elected officials.
I hope, I hope, begin to speak our language, Keith.
Well, Steve, Hamlet.
Please, I'd just like to add this, that the offset to the grassroots, to the real we, the people in the grassroots, the offset of that is a number of billionaires that are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into power to own their leadership and get them to do what they want them to do that enhances their business interests or their particular social bias.
And that's that we have to offset that by taking the power back.
And right now, there's way too much power in leadership, especially in the House of Representatives.
And I fought to take that back away from them 2010 and 11 and came up short.
Leadership jealously guards the power they have and they will seek to expand it.
And so we need the strong grassroots.
And that's where it is.
And that's where I'm working here at the state level and any place I can to help this cause.
Well, you're right.
It's hard to top that money.
That's what costs Blake Masters.
If McConnell and the party donors had supported him more, he'd be a senator right now.
Keith.
Well, I remember some years ago, Steve, when there is a proposal to, I don't know if it was to amend the Constitution or to amend voting laws generally to say that federal campaigns would be financed from one source, the U.S. government.
If you were the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate for a particular race, you would have the same funding.
Were we mistaken to fight that?
Because, see, I'm a Southerner, and I remember all through my life, Southerners have been, you know, they were Democrats, and they were ignored by the power structure there.
So they became Republicans, you know, with the Southern strategy and Richard Nixon's election.
But again, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
We're still trying to actually have some power in setting the agenda for the Republican Party.
Southerners have brought tons of votes, first to the Democrats, now to the Republicans.
And, you know, we get like Rodney Dangerfield, we get no respect.
What can we do to is it all just money talks and BS walks?
Or is there something else that we're missing that is going to help us actually translate our polling numbers on particular issues into actual governmental action?
Well, you bring up a case that's drifted back in my memory quite a ways about the proposal that there be a cap on the spending for these national campaigns, these presidential campaigns, and that would be funded out of the taxpayers rather than out of the donors.
It seems dangerous to go into that.
I don't know how it, I haven't looked into it to see how I think it might break out.
But also, we had a Supreme Court decision since that time that the Citizens United decision, which said that money is speech, and we may have trouble moving a piece of legislation like that if that constitutional principle might stand in the way.
They also, so, but how do we break this is the bigger question.
And, you know, we need lots more people involved, people that are better informed.
But I really think that the best place to do this is right at the local level.
I'm seeing now that there is the Freedom Caucus is starting to get some people into the states and to help organize in the states.
And I really applaud that.
I think that's a good and courageous leadership idea, visionary.
I didn't think of it.
I was impressed when I heard about it.
But to put some of their people, their staff people into states and Louisiana is one.
Arizona is another.
I don't know how many states altogether.
They're looking at around 30, as I recall.
And so if that happens and they're working with these state legislators, they will be able to recruit strong candidates, move strong candidates forward, identify them in the state level and get them then to move on into Congress to pick the cream of the crop of the principled conservatives.
And if we're helping those kind of projects, that's one way of taking this thing back.
But another is support them and deny a guy like Kevin McCarthy, the speakership, put somebody in there that already believes like we believe, and that will take on the Joe Bidens and take on the left and drain the swamp and move towards a balanced budget and restore some of our culture.
But we have been under a bombarded attack from executive orders to Joe Biden since the first day.
And that does offset the stronger polling numbers that we're seeing here.
Of course, Obama was the first one that decided that he didn't need Congress to govern.
He would just do things by executive order.
Yes, and it reminds me in August of 2008, he was asked by Reverend Warren at the Saddleback Church, when does life begin?
And he said, well, that's beyond my pay grade.
And, well, it didn't stay beyond his pay grade.
And he was for marriage.
He was for marriage between a man and a woman at the same time.
And he lit up the White House with rainbow colors when Obergefell came down.
I mean, that's a 180, two 180s on the part of Barack Obama.
Well, not surprising at all.
What's wrong with our kind of love?
Well, I was about to make an egregious oversight.
And so I'm glad you brought that up because that was certainly one of the best of 2022 was SCOTUS' decision on Roe versus Wade, kicking that back to the states, which so many of these issues, that should be where they're at.
Let the states decide what they're going to do on these issues.
And it was interesting that the left has always allowed the Supreme Court to legislate.
But now that the court has ruled in favor of the good guys on something, they put forth this disrespect.
They're trying to stop them from doing that now because they're afraid that they have codified so-called homosexual marriage now.
Very quick, because we've got to talk about this.
And they were just saying that why has it been that we always wind up, the kid at the candy store with his nose on the window trying to get something from the government?
I've dealt in politics here before, and the problem is the Chamber of Commerce type Republicans, and that's about the mildest way I can describe them, always tend to get the financing, and they wind up being the people running.
The people that really resonate with the grassroots, they always come in second place.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, you know, it is hard to have the numbers to offset those big checks.
And so that's something that's going to have to be, going to have to come to a head.
But Congressman, let me ask you this.
I'll ask a two-part question.
And I hate to do that, but I want to get an answer on both.
Do you foresee anything coming from the Supreme Court that we could perhaps invest a little hope in coming up in the coming year?
And then answer if there can be any victory for us ultimately if we are a nation apart from Christ.
This is Christmas.
We're celebrating his birth.
And of course, that's all under attack as well.
Well, I'd say first, Supreme Court, I hadn't really looked at what's on their docket and looked very much at what's coming.
I would say there's one thing that I'm working on up here in Iowa that hopefully we get it to the Supreme Court.
We've got at least three and maybe more carbon capture and sequestration pipelines 2,000 miles under one of these entities.
And they want to take the CO2 that is a byproduct from ethanol plants and compress that to 2,100 pounds per inch, about like the hydraulic pressure in your backhoe, and put it in a pipeline for 2,000 miles up to the oil fields in North Dakota.
And it's private sector.
And so because of the Kilo decision that came down in 2005 by the Supreme Court, then they can confiscate private property for private use.
And that's what they're poised to do with hundreds of miles of independent property, mostly farmland, all the way up to North Dakota.
And that will be, Justice Scalia told me at the end of this Kilo decision, it's eye to eye.
He said that will be reversed someday.
That's something that I'm hopeful we're able to do, whether we get it done in this coming year or not.
But that's something the Supreme Court needs to restore property rights.
And that North Show private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
And the Kilo decision took that for public use clause out of there.
Now it effectively just says North Shore private property be taken unless you pay for it.
So that's one thing.
On the Christmas side of this, I had something going through my mind.
It's a level of optimism.
And it came from an experience that I just, many times I review it in my thoughts.
I went into visit in Cologne, Germany, the Cathedral of the Dome.
And through that visit, and I've gone to Mass there too, the historian for the cathedral told us a lot of stuff that was going on there.
But it boils down to this.
They built that church on the banks of the Rhine in 332 AD.
And that would be under Roman domination.
And that church was, I guess, fairly respectable.
And they went to church there for several centuries throughout the Dark Ages.
And then in 1050 AD, they'd been raising money for a new church and to expand it into a Gothic cathedral.
So in 1050, the architects' plans were finished and they started building, putting stone on stone.
And they built to the mid-1250 or so.
For about 200 years, they built.
And then in 1250 or thereabouts, they ran out of money.
And so here sat this partially finished Gothic cathedral, 1250 AD.
So they were persistent Christians.
They continued their fundraising drive for, get this, 600 years, 600 years.
And they got into the 19th century and decided we've got enough money to finish this Gothic cathedral.
And so they began building and finishing that cathedral.
By 1888, they had finished it.
And then shortly thereafter, the Wright brothers invented the airplane.
And we had bombers buzzing over the Cathedral of the Dome, flying around it in the First World War, but bombing around it in the Second World War.
They used it as a bomb site, and they did not trip their bombs until they cleared the steeples of the Cathedral of the Dome.
And I stand there and I think, why should we despair?
For all of this persistence from 332 AD until today, that cathedral stands as a monument to Jesus Christ and a monument to the faith that comes from the promise that is given on this Christmas Day, this tomorrow morning.
That promise, that promise has been the foundation for Western civilization, for what is truth, justice in the American way, for what's noble and right, for the rule of law, for the Protestant work ethic, which as a Catholic, I'm very grateful for, and I think we compete pretty well.
And the good things in this world, including the first world, grow from our faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and we cannot lose faith.
And no matter when this end comes, no matter when he calls the end of this, it's up to what we need to do.
We need to give our best effort, our best judgment every day.
And I ask them this, loan me the measure of your wisdom.
You would have me use this day to go forth and glorify you, Jesus.
And by the way, if you have room for an extra blessing, let me do so with joy.
And therefore, we're not bound to the result.
It's his victory in his time.
But we are called to glorify him and take the gifts he's given us, develop them to the maximum amount, and again, use them to glorify him.
So do not despair.
The Cathedral of the Dome stands.
It barely was nicked in the Second World War.
And that tells us that the endurance of our Christian faith will go beyond us until the day that he calls us all home.
Congressman King, that was absolutely inspiring.
I really appreciate you wording it the way that you did and telling that story.
I was not familiar with that story and how long the Cathedral of the Dome had been there.
And so I've been to Germany as well.
There are so many beautiful, beautiful cathedrals throughout Europe, and it's just an amazing testament to the faith of our fathers.
And they do hate Jesus Christ.
They do hate Christianity.
They want to separate us from it.
And why do they?
Well, of course, Christ told us that because they hate him, they would also hate us.
That's in John chapter 15.
But most immediately, because the faith of our fathers, Christianity, makes us effective opponents of those who desire to enslave people to debt and to governance, which does not produce societies fostering industry accomplishment, justice, safety, and courage, all of which are hallmarks of Christian and Western culture.
And Congressman King, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas again.
Thank you so much for coming on with us and being a champion of that culture and that faith.
I hope to talk to you again in the coming year and in short order.
I do too.
Thanks so much.
God bless you all and Merry Christmas, James.
Thank you so much.
We will talk to you again and Merry Christmas.
We'll be back with the second hour right after this.