Speaker 1: Hey, this is Buck Sexton and you're listening to the
Speaker 1: Tutor Dixon Podcast, part of the Clay Travers and Buck
Speaker 1: Sexton podcast Network. Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tutor Dixon and it is great to have you tuning
Speaker 1: into the podcast. My guest today recently wrote a piece
Speaker 1: in The Federalists that caught my attention. Caught my attention
Speaker 1: obviously because of my recent election, but he wrote about
Speaker 1: the nonpartisan dark money groups Democrats are using to overtake
Speaker 1: Michigan elections. Now, I've been trying to tell people all
Speaker 1: about this, but conservatives don't seem to be hearing it,
Speaker 1: and they don't seem to be getting that elections have changed.
Speaker 1: We need to change with them if we're going to win.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say that again, we have to change
Speaker 1: what we're doing in elections if we're going to win,
Speaker 1: because Democrats have changed what they're doing. And so that's
Speaker 1: why I'm really excited to talk to my guest today.
Speaker 1: The same old groups that you support right now in
Speaker 1: the conservative movement, they're just not cutting it. They're not
Speaker 1: cutting edge. We're going to learn about that in this podcast.
Speaker 1: We're going to learn about what the Democrats are doing,
Speaker 1: and hopefully that means we're going to learn about what
Speaker 1: we need to be doing. So I would ask you,
Speaker 1: if you are donating to groups that say they are
Speaker 1: going to win elections, have them specifically tell you what
Speaker 1: is your plan to win that election. What will you
Speaker 1: do on the ground, what will you do to reach people?
Speaker 1: You need to fully understand what they're going to do,
Speaker 1: and I want you to fully understand what the other
Speaker 1: side is doing. And that's why I'm joined today by
Speaker 1: Sam Lair. He is a PhD student at Hillsdale College
Speaker 1: right here in the beautiful state of Michigan. He's studying
Speaker 1: political theory and statesmanship of the American Founding. Really, Sam,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you here today. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited to talk about this because I'm serious. It's been
Speaker 1: something that I've been trying to tell people we need
Speaker 1: to change the way we're doing elections. But you have
Speaker 1: the deep dive in to what Democrats are doing, specifically
Speaker 1: in Michigan, So I want to get right into that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2: So pleasure to be here. I'm excited to talk about it.
Speaker 1: So first off, I want to talk about this group
Speaker 1: voters not politicians, which I think we have to give
Speaker 1: credit where credit is due. I mean, that sounds really
Speaker 1: very focused on voters. This sounds very nonpartisan. It is
Speaker 1: just something that's going to come out and help people
Speaker 1: to figure out what they need to do. But they've
Speaker 1: actually become quite a large group, haven't they.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. I mean, like you said, one of the
Speaker 2: great things that the left is good at is marketing.
Speaker 2: You know, you hear something like voters not politicians, and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, yeah, I prefer a voter over that
Speaker 2: corrupt politician in Lansing or DC. But really they're they're
Speaker 2: not representing the interests that they say they are. You know,
Speaker 2: Voters not Politicians started after the twenty sixteen election, supposedly
Speaker 2: by this young recycling activist named Katie Fahey spellcheck on
Speaker 2: that name pronunciation, but you know, she supposedly sent out
Speaker 2: a Facebook post talking about how she wants to tackle
Speaker 2: jerrymandering in the state of Michigan. You know, she was
Speaker 2: distressed by the election results and supposedly went viral, and
Speaker 2: from there her star grew and other people lanched on
Speaker 2: to her, and they built this massive from the ground
Speaker 2: swell up of grassroots, you know, participation of the electorate,
Speaker 2: and they overturned the conservative tyranny that exists in Lansing.
Speaker 2: But if you dig a lot closer into what's going
Speaker 2: on there, some of the things are a little bit sketchier. Obviously.
Speaker 2: You know, they come off as nonpartisan, that's the thing
Speaker 2: they like to claim. But if you look at who
Speaker 2: their board is, you know, they're mostly Democrats. If you
Speaker 2: look at what their platform is, they only support a
Speaker 2: democratic platform. There's only one party in this country that
Speaker 2: wants direct democracy, whatever that means. If you look at
Speaker 2: their finances, that's what's really disturbing. You know, you mentioned
Speaker 2: the dark mund groups, you know, and you know, the
Speaker 2: first eye popping thing that came out to me about
Speaker 2: them is they we've received two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars from Eric Holder's National Democratic Tradition Group. You know,
Speaker 2: that's kind of a strange thing to accept from a
Speaker 2: non partisan organization. But even more disturbing me the fact
Speaker 2: that they've they're really funded and you know, propped up
Speaker 2: by these massive whales of dark money organizations like uh,
Speaker 2: these organizations tied with a group called REBELA Advisors. The
Speaker 2: rebelon network. It's what it's called. They have various networks
Speaker 2: and corporations that are tied to them.
Speaker 1: So that is something that I want to dig in.
Speaker 1: I've I've it's been called Arabella to me. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's the right pronunciation or not, but the
Speaker 1: Arabella network. So this is really this is a whole
Speaker 1: new way of doing elections. But this is this is
Speaker 1: what the Democrats have been focused on for years and
Speaker 1: we haven't really realized it. And I think the testing
Speaker 1: ground for this was really Colorado. And so they looked
Speaker 1: at Colorado and they said, this is a red state
Speaker 1: that we believe has has holes that we can pull
Speaker 1: punch into and then expand and take it to a
Speaker 1: blue state. And we need a donor network. So, if
Speaker 1: I'm right, Arabella is their donor network is filled with
Speaker 1: donors organizations. They kind of pool that money and decide
Speaker 1: where they're going to go to have the biggest impact.
Speaker 1: Is that how you interpret that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a few of these, you know organizations. Action
Speaker 2: Now Institute's another one that's ran by a you know,
Speaker 2: a big liberal donor couple in Texas. But a regular
Speaker 2: advisor seems to be that's a corporation, that's an actual
Speaker 2: company that exists in d C. And so it's how
Speaker 2: their structure work is so nebulous and strange. It's amazing
Speaker 2: to me that it's legal, and they probably have a
Speaker 2: good jillion lawyers, you know, to make sure that it is.
Speaker 2: But so they have this for profit company owned by
Speaker 2: this guy named Eric Kessler, former Clinton administration official and
Speaker 2: former field director for the Legal Conservation Voters. That one
Speaker 2: advises other major liberal donors and how to spend their money.
Speaker 2: At the same time, this corporation for profit corporation runs
Speaker 2: this conglomerate of nonprofit five to' one c fours that
Speaker 2: do all this lobbying an advocacy, like like I was saying,
Speaker 2: you know, sixteen thirty funds one of the big ones,
Speaker 2: but they've started to receive heat, so they've created a
Speaker 2: new one called North Fund, so that one's become popular
Speaker 2: as well, that they've been funding a lot of money into.
Speaker 2: And I think they have three or four other ones,
Speaker 2: and it's estimated, you know, it's hard to tell with
Speaker 2: current finance laws, but it's estimated that they have a
Speaker 2: war chest of about one point six billion, and really
Speaker 2: any it's a good chance that anytime you see a
Speaker 2: left wing bout initiative showing up in your state, whether
Speaker 2: it be Michigan or Colorado or Montana, this money is
Speaker 2: going to be behind it in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: So what people need to know is that a ballot
Speaker 1: initiative is very expensive and you can end up spending
Speaker 1: millions of dollars on a ballot initiative by people. The
Speaker 1: Democrats do it because it's effective. If you look at
Speaker 1: the state of Michigan, marijuana was a ballot initiative that
Speaker 1: brought out a lot of voters, but that also provides
Speaker 1: a starting point to go out and bring in grassroots
Speaker 1: to bring in people. And then you had in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two the abortion amendment, and so that was also
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful and bringing out people and voters. And they're
Speaker 1: picking these on purpose, so they're willing to spend the
Speaker 1: money to get the ballid initiative out there to make
Speaker 1: sure that they can do the campaign around that. And
Speaker 1: so I think what people need to understand if you
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out what Dems are doing in
Speaker 1: elections and why we are losing. When we talk about
Speaker 1: a C four organization This is a not for profit
Speaker 1: organization that is supposed to be essentially educating you on issues,
Speaker 1: but this can educate you on issues against someone or
Speaker 1: for someone. So they can be going out and putting
Speaker 1: out mailings that say so and so is going to
Speaker 1: protect your guns, or so and so is going to
Speaker 1: take your guns away, or so and so is going
Speaker 1: to put guns in your school. The all of these
Speaker 1: messages can be done through these organizations. And we're talking
Speaker 1: about one point six billion dollars. I think in the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two or in the twenty twenty election, the
Speaker 1: total spend across the political world was sixteen billion, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about one point six in just this one
Speaker 1: organization that can go out and turn votes. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're really These operations can go anywhere from just getting
Speaker 1: the message out, which could be text messaging, which could
Speaker 1: be ads, it could be TV ads, it could be
Speaker 1: YouTube ads, it could be ads on your websites, It
Speaker 1: can be mailings, but it can also be chasing ballants.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I Mean one of the other major things is
Speaker 2: where this is tied into is they do a lot
Speaker 2: of voter registration drives early on in a campaign cycle.
Speaker 2: I first discovered this and I worked for the Trump
Speaker 2: campaign in Nevada in twenty six sixteen and then for
Speaker 2: Senator Dean Heller in twenty eighteen. I was always running
Speaker 2: into this group called Next Gen America like who are
Speaker 2: these guys? I'm like this like and then I found
Speaker 2: out it was the brainchild of this liberal billionaire Tom
Speaker 2: Steyer and his kind of baby that he created. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's another one of those nonpartisan organizations. And
Speaker 2: there I was always competing with them for voter registrations.
Speaker 2: And this is something that voters, not politicians, and all
Speaker 2: these groups do as well. So when they have a
Speaker 2: bout initiative or a campaign or an electoral cycle that
Speaker 2: they're trying to deal with, they'll spend the first part
Speaker 2: of all of this just going out and registering voters
Speaker 2: in mass you know, in Michigan. You know, this is
Speaker 2: how effective this is is you know is questionable because
Speaker 2: of the automatic voter registration, right, but somewhere like Nevada
Speaker 2: where you don't have automatic voter registration, motor voter, you know,
Speaker 2: that could really swing an election.
Speaker 1: That is what I want to ask you about, because
Speaker 1: in Michigan that's not effective because essentially everybody is automatically
Speaker 1: registered to vote in this and I think it's easier now.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that you mentioned in
Speaker 1: your article is that the goal is to make it
Speaker 1: so that it is as easy for the Democrats to
Speaker 1: play this game as possible, and then you never get
Speaker 1: another Republican in and they ultimately have the system to win.
Speaker 1: We are so far behind in the system that we
Speaker 1: essentially can't catch them in time if we don't really
Speaker 1: start working on this. But I hear people all the
Speaker 1: time that are like, you know, look at this group.
Speaker 1: They're out registering voters. And that's the answer. That is
Speaker 1: just a tiny, tiny part of what we have to do,
Speaker 1: because the registering voters is simply the beginning, is it not.
Speaker 2: It's the beginning, because you know, you register the voters
Speaker 2: and then you have this base, you have this volunteer base.
Speaker 2: Then on top of that, you know, they have access
Speaker 2: to the absentee voter list role that every other campaign has,
Speaker 2: you know, so coincidentally, when all of the apps to
Speaker 2: the voter lists gets sent out, they have the ability
Speaker 2: because of their master volunteer, to go out and you know,
Speaker 2: be there and ensure that people turn in their absentee
Speaker 2: ballots and they know they can inform them about the
Speaker 2: issues at that very moment, which is an interesting loophole.
Speaker 2: You know, in every state, you're not allowed to electioneer,
Speaker 2: you know, at a certain distance from the polling you know, right,
Speaker 2: you have to be thirty feet or you know, fifty
Speaker 2: yards or whatever it is. But that's not a protection
Speaker 2: that we extend to absentee ballots.
Speaker 1: So, you know, whether it's interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 2: So whether it be a Democratic candidate you know, campaign,
Speaker 2: or whether it be voters not politicians, you know, they
Speaker 2: can find they find out who has these absentee ballots.
Speaker 2: They can go to their door, and they can do
Speaker 2: their civic duty to make sure that they're properly informed,
Speaker 2: you know, and they they can't fill legally, you know,
Speaker 2: they can't tell them who to fill out, you know,
Speaker 2: but if coincidentally they're there and they vote for that
Speaker 2: ballot initiative, or they vote for those candidates, or they
Speaker 2: receive a convincing piece of literature that helps sway their vote,
Speaker 2: then you know, they're just performing their duty. And these
Speaker 2: are the sort of things that we're encouraging now, especially
Speaker 2: after twenty twenty. You know, we view these non parts
Speaker 2: and organizations as these enlightened you know, people that just
Speaker 2: care about our sacred democracy. I want to make sure
Speaker 2: every vote gets counted, but they never talk about which
Speaker 2: of those votes are and that they're only ever from
Speaker 2: one side.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
Speaker 1: a Tutor Dixon podcast. So this is how you see
Speaker 1: something like a Pennsylvania happen, which I think people were
Speaker 1: shocked that John Fetterman won. They're like, this is not possible.
Speaker 1: This man is not even capable of putting a sentence together.
Speaker 1: How could he possibly win? This is what I hear
Speaker 1: over and over again, even when I'm listening to the news,
Speaker 1: the right of center news or even mainstream media. They're
Speaker 1: they're like, why do we not see democrats out there campaigning?
Speaker 1: You don't need to campaign as a democrat if you
Speaker 1: have these or organizations on the ground going door to door.
Speaker 1: But also, I mean they're not just going door to door.
Speaker 1: They use technology for this. They're getting them through text messages,
Speaker 1: they're getting them with little videos. Little videos are showing
Speaker 1: up on their phone. They have mailings going to their house.
Speaker 1: This message is reinforced constantly with these people. So the
Speaker 1: Democrats have figured out that it takes about nine times
Speaker 1: nine voter context is the average, to get somebody to
Speaker 1: agree with your issue, and then you have to get
Speaker 1: their ballot in. So in the state of Pennsylvania you
Speaker 1: have a lot of time to get a ballot. In
Speaker 1: now Michigan you can actually vote early, and you also
Speaker 1: have the absentee ballots. So how do we combat this
Speaker 1: if they have these organizations? I mean, we're talking about
Speaker 1: let me just put this into perspective, because when you
Speaker 1: talk about the voters, not politicians, this is a group
Speaker 1: that had in twenty the twenty eighteen election cycle, sixteen
Speaker 1: million dollars and in our entire campaign, I think we
Speaker 1: got to maybe a little over twenty. This is a
Speaker 1: group that can just do what they want in the
Speaker 1: entire state. We are looking at Michigan and I think
Speaker 1: about over ninety million dollars came in for Democrats in
Speaker 1: twenty two and less than thirty for Republicans. How how
Speaker 1: do you fight this when you have organizations that are
Speaker 1: so wealthy and this is not even we haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten to the organization up in Traverse City yet, because
Speaker 1: I know we we sent that to you and talked
Speaker 1: to you about the undocumented organizers up in Traverse City
Speaker 1: that they had nine million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a I mean, it's one of those things
Speaker 2: that it's gotten so large that it's hard to even
Speaker 2: you know, know when to begin to how to address it.
Speaker 2: You know, part of it has to do with, you know,
Speaker 2: the outcomes of Citizens United. You know, Conservatives been a
Speaker 2: really long time thinking that we're always going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, the party of big business and big money,
Speaker 2: and now we're not in a lot of ways, you know,
Speaker 2: with with woke capital becoming a thing. We have to
Speaker 2: deal with the bed we made. And but you know,
Speaker 2: beyond you know, the fascinating topic of a voter finance
Speaker 2: or electoral finance law, I think there's a really big
Speaker 2: issue in regards to how these people market, which we
Speaker 2: talked about earlier. You know, part of the reason why
Speaker 2: they have this bona fide that's able to be you know,
Speaker 2: persuasive to voters is because they get to market themselves
Speaker 2: as nonpartisan. We're not with the Democratic Party, we're not
Speaker 2: with the Republican Party. We're only here to support democracy,
Speaker 2: and we're only here to help this one issue, you know,
Speaker 2: And I think if you force transparency and you forced
Speaker 2: these people, you know, to really show their cards, and
Speaker 2: you can't hide around this you know, facade of you know,
Speaker 2: if this was a corporation, if this was a for
Speaker 2: private corporation, this is Coca Cola doing this saying that, oh,
Speaker 2: we don't have sugar in our Coca Cola, but clearly
Speaker 2: they have sugar in the Coca Cola. You know, they
Speaker 2: would get hit with, you know, a false advertising lawsuit.
Speaker 1: So are you saying that you think that c fours
Speaker 1: should have to be should have to disclose where they're
Speaker 1: getting their their money from.
Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, I think they're already governed
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways in the same way that
Speaker 2: normal corporations are, I mean a corporations. A corporation, whether
Speaker 2: it's a five H one, C three or four, or
Speaker 2: whether it's a for pfit corporation, you have to go
Speaker 2: through more or less the same process and in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways you're governed by the same laws. So
Speaker 2: we have to find a way to uniformly enforce laws
Speaker 2: to ensure that these loopholes for these social welfare organizations.
Speaker 2: That's their technical termament for the irs, where they're not
Speaker 2: able to leverage that and abuse the system and really
Speaker 2: subvert our constitutional process and really disrupt and forced reforms
Speaker 2: that wouldn't be possible in any other way.
Speaker 1: But we know that that's not going to happen before
Speaker 1: twenty four. This is going to be a huge problem
Speaker 1: in twenty four And I do not hear Republicans saying
Speaker 1: they're going to do this. I keep hearing people say
Speaker 1: we're going to do the same thing. We'll put money
Speaker 1: into the same organizationations that have not been winning elections
Speaker 1: for the past four years. And I do think that
Speaker 1: we got distracted after twenty twenty. I think twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: was shocking to the Democrats because Donald Trump truly did
Speaker 1: bring out people that had never voted before. There was
Speaker 1: an anomaly there that is not going to happen again.
Speaker 1: They've figured it out. After that. They doubled down on
Speaker 1: this in twenty eighteen, said it's never going to happen
Speaker 1: to us again. We were sitting back thinking everybody loves us,
Speaker 1: and then twenty twenty happened, and twenty twenty eighteen happened.
Speaker 1: People said, oh, it's a mid term. This always happens,
Speaker 1: it goes to the other side. Twenty twenty happened. There
Speaker 1: was all the rumbles. Oh you know that it wasn't fair,
Speaker 1: this was stolen. We got distracted away from actually seeing
Speaker 1: what was happening in twenty two. We weren't prepared because
Speaker 1: we were distracted by the rumblings of something that was
Speaker 1: not the real cause of why we lost twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: So how do you get Republicans and Republican donors to
Speaker 1: engage in the idea of doing an enlisting people in
Speaker 1: the ground game. They used to make fun of Obama
Speaker 1: for being a grassroots organizer. Turns out that was the key.
Speaker 2: This isn't the best thing to say for as soon
Speaker 2: to be person on the job market. You know, but
Speaker 2: conservatives have to realize that Conservative inc. They're old men
Speaker 2: and young men's game. You know, they're not they're not hitpon.
Speaker 2: You know, all of the new things that are going on.
Speaker 2: Uh and and actually, you know, let me qualify. You know,
Speaker 2: five to one c fours are not new. You know,
Speaker 2: legal conservation voters and legal women voters and you know,
Speaker 2: all these organizations have existed for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's what they're doing yeah, but they.
Speaker 2: Know, you know, they know how to organize. I mean,
Speaker 2: the Left, at the end of the day, since nineteen
Speaker 2: hundred has been a party of activism. They were the
Speaker 2: Party of Unions. Then they were the Party of civil rights.
Speaker 2: Now they're the party of you know, LGBT rights and
Speaker 2: so on and so forth. You know, So they have
Speaker 2: grassroots or organization in their blood.
Speaker 1: But now they have technology behind that. And that's what
Speaker 1: I think people are missing, and that's what I want
Speaker 1: to dig down a little deeper into this. Because these
Speaker 1: groups they have apps that will tell them Okay, these
Speaker 1: are all the people that will be getting their absentee
Speaker 1: ballot today. And then they send out people that are
Speaker 1: very well organized to these people's homes and they say
Speaker 1: you can turn your ballot in today right around this corner.
Speaker 1: And the person says, I'll have it in on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Their app on Friday morning tells them to go to
Speaker 1: that person's house, check to seat. They keep going back
Speaker 1: until they get that ballot. They also continue to use
Speaker 1: AI to drill down and micro target these people. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're going to accept this message, and that's going to
Speaker 1: get them to get their ballot back. They are really
Speaker 1: into the business of elections. We are still running elections
Speaker 1: like this is a popularity contest and you're going to
Speaker 1: come to our rally and then go vote.
Speaker 2: That's one hundred percent right, you know, I having worked
Speaker 2: for the r and C, you know, to the rnc's credit,
Speaker 2: you know, they have their data, and they have you know,
Speaker 2: the technology, and they you know, they're trying to create
Speaker 2: these grassroots stuff, but we haven't been able to replicate it.
Speaker 2: You know that this is the hard point hard part.
Speaker 2: Like I said, the left and the Democrats have been
Speaker 2: the party of grass roots organization for you know, one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty years, so they have a leg up,
Speaker 2: and so we can't just look out their homework and
Speaker 2: copy it word for word, right, because we don't have
Speaker 2: the same voter base. We don't have unions, we don't
Speaker 2: have the a fl CIO and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So you have to find a way to mobilize the
Speaker 2: voter base in a conservative way. And I think Trump,
Speaker 2: to his credit, found a way to do that, you know,
Speaker 2: and a lot of candidates have, you know, and finding
Speaker 2: that mix in between borrowing the tools of our opponents
Speaker 2: while at the same time retooling it to a way
Speaker 2: that's effective for conservatives is really the question that is
Speaker 2: moving forward. But we also need to keep in mind
Speaker 2: that we have to find a way to cut the
Speaker 2: knees out of these organizations that are forcing us to lose. Now,
Speaker 2: so you you know, conservatives think it's usually one or like, oh,
Speaker 2: we just organize or we just fight these organizations. Now
Speaker 2: you need to do both of them simultaneously, and you
Speaker 2: need to put you know, you really need to be
Speaker 2: you know, in two places at once, putting your all
Speaker 2: in both of these fights.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the rn C fight, because we
Speaker 1: obviously had an election at the RNC and this was
Speaker 1: mostly between Harmei Dylon and Ron McDaniel, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were very emotional about this.
Speaker 1: If you're in the political world. If you're outside the
Speaker 1: political world, you may not have heard much about it,
Speaker 1: But if you are inside the political world, there was
Speaker 1: quite a bit of controversy over what is going to
Speaker 1: happen and why, you know, a lot of blaming the RNC.
Speaker 1: But when I look at your article and when I
Speaker 1: look at the groups that are effective on the Democrat side,
Speaker 1: I do not see the DNC. I see these organizations
Speaker 1: that are supportive and coming around, and I think people
Speaker 1: forget that the RNC is not going to be in
Speaker 1: your local state house election. They have their own lane
Speaker 1: is a federal lane. So I think that there is
Speaker 1: also some confusion or maybe passivity of sitting back and saying, well,
Speaker 1: we've always you know, the RNC should pick up everything,
Speaker 1: but that's not possible. We're and we're a very large country,
Speaker 1: and we have many states that look at a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways. The Democrats, I think, are good at
Speaker 1: saying this state will accept this, and this organization can
Speaker 1: thrive here. We need support organizations as well, don't you think?
Speaker 1: Or am I crazy?
Speaker 2: You're one hundred pcent right, you're preaching to the choir
Speaker 2: right now. Not to get you know, too academic about it,
Speaker 2: you know, but you know, parties are a relic of
Speaker 2: a time where we still had party conventions, and we
Speaker 2: still had nominating conventions, and we still had you know,
Speaker 2: all of these things that made parties work. Patronage, party dues,
Speaker 2: you know, all of these things. You don't really have
Speaker 2: those anymore in a political party. You know, no one
Speaker 2: is going over you know, very few people are going
Speaker 2: to their local Republican meeting, and the people that do
Speaker 2: go are you usually not. You know, the most mainstream
Speaker 2: conservatives or the people that are really going to donate
Speaker 2: are the people that really have nothing else to do,
Speaker 2: and so you don't have the incentive base for it.
Speaker 2: You know, the carrots and sticks that makes a political
Speaker 2: organization effective and the way you do. Five to one
Speaker 2: C fours five O one C s fours in my opinion,
Speaker 2: are the political party of the future. You know, they
Speaker 2: do the gay out to vote drives for the DNC.
Speaker 2: As we mentioned, they have patronage. They can hire you
Speaker 2: as their door knocker. You know, they can get you.
Speaker 2: You go work for one of these organizations. And there's
Speaker 2: a billion other organizations that exist out there for people
Speaker 2: amongst the left, you know, to run their careers. You know,
Speaker 2: there's the backbench of leftist organizations, you know, not even
Speaker 2: just you know, think of starting naming all the mainstream
Speaker 2: ones that you can think of off the top of
Speaker 2: your head, and you can go on for thirty minutes
Speaker 2: and now go on and start throughout every single one
Speaker 2: of those local groups or state level groups, and you'd
Speaker 2: be counting for you know, the rest of the week.
Speaker 1: Well, you said something key here. You said they can
Speaker 1: hire you for a door knocker. And I think that's
Speaker 1: something that we have also on our side not caught
Speaker 1: up to. They're really paying people. The reason they're raising
Speaker 1: all this money, they're paying to get the job done
Speaker 1: because they see it as a business expense. So when
Speaker 1: it comes time to get door knockers, they're paid, and
Speaker 1: they're actually in many cases paid based on performance. We
Speaker 1: have door knockers. I know in Michigan, our door knocking
Speaker 1: operation was not robust. Our door knockers were sometimes knocking
Speaker 1: on the same doors. They were just getting a list.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a way to get feedback back. They weren't
Speaker 1: getting paid. They were all volunteers. The C four organization,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have some information. We have something to
Speaker 1: learn here, because I think it is our responsibility to say,
Speaker 1: the RNC can only do so much. What am I
Speaker 1: going to do to raise the funds and to create
Speaker 1: the organization that can stand on maybe just one issue
Speaker 1: but still stand well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is a major debate point that
Speaker 2: goes on in the RNC. Now, you know whether we
Speaker 2: need to focus on and you know what's called the
Speaker 2: neighborhood team leader model, which the Obama campaign used in
Speaker 2: eight in twenty twelve to a lot of efficacy or
Speaker 2: whether we need to focus more on paid people, you know,
Speaker 2: and there's issues with those, you know, with both of
Speaker 2: those models. But you know, as you intimated, I think
Speaker 2: the keys is the paid door knockers, you know. And
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean you go, you know, pick up a
Speaker 2: homeless guy off the street and then you know, pay
Speaker 2: him twenty bucks to go harass your neighbors. You know.
Speaker 2: It means you get a young, smart conservative that lives
Speaker 2: in that goes to college, who's aware of the issues,
Speaker 2: who understands what time it is, and you can you know,
Speaker 2: talk them up on what the issues are, you know,
Speaker 2: polish them intellectually and hone their skills, you know, and
Speaker 2: then train that person to go and be an effective
Speaker 2: door knocker. The thing that I think the left is
Speaker 2: good at, which helps them, is that they're passionate about
Speaker 2: these issues. They really do believe they're saving democracy by
Speaker 2: taking down jerrymandering, and you don't always see that sort
Speaker 2: of enthusiasm amongst the right.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
Speaker 1: the tutor Dixon podcast. We've done a lot of research
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have told me recently that
Speaker 1: this current generation coming out of college today, their passion
Speaker 1: is to be a part of something, to be an
Speaker 1: activist in some way, to feel like there's some calling
Speaker 1: that they have, and oftentimes it doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: it's something that they have historically been passionate about. They
Speaker 1: can get sucked into something to have that excitement of
Speaker 1: being an activist, and we're not doing a great job
Speaker 1: of meeting those people, finding them and having them come
Speaker 1: out on our side. But I think that we have
Speaker 1: so many really smart issues to tackle right now. Right now.
Speaker 1: The fact that we could go after safe communities. Let's
Speaker 1: have safe communities such a common sense idea. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a fundamental government that we're going to provide safe communities,
Speaker 1: and we have missed with young people on that. That
Speaker 1: says a lot about what we're not doing. I mean
Speaker 1: even family values, economy, these issues that are so common sense.
Speaker 1: We've missed on these issues, and we've let the left
Speaker 1: just move into this place. So I think that what
Speaker 1: you said was key that we have to be fighting
Speaker 1: back against their machine and seeing if there's a way
Speaker 1: to recap their machine. But that doesn't mean we don't
Speaker 1: have our own machine.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly. You need to find a way to
Speaker 2: replicate what these people are doing and use it for
Speaker 2: conservative causes like you intimated, you know, the nuclear family,
Speaker 2: family values. You know, we're quickly becoming the party of
Speaker 2: the middle class and blue collar workers. You know, how
Speaker 2: are we going to do that? You know, how do
Speaker 2: we get into those places and into those electorates. And
Speaker 2: the only way you do that is through organizing. You know,
Speaker 2: you need to go and talk to your neighbors, and
Speaker 2: you need someone to make the case intelligently. And you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, you need nine voter contacts, you know,
Speaker 2: to make your point to someone. And you know one
Speaker 2: of those has to be you see, you know, the
Speaker 2: sign on your neighbor's porch, and then you know, you
Speaker 2: get the text message, and then you see the commercial
Speaker 2: and then you make gets you thinking about it, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, you know, you get a
Speaker 2: knock on your door on Sunday morning and you see,
Speaker 2: hopefully a well dressed, intelligent young man or woman who
Speaker 2: can articulate the issue to you and make you go
Speaker 2: oh wow. You know, that's I didn't think about it
Speaker 2: that way, you know, And that's the cherry on the top.
Speaker 2: And then you have that voter if I can talk
Speaker 2: to one thing really quick. You know, the R and
Speaker 2: C part of the issue of how the right does
Speaker 2: grassroots organization is they're really compare concerned with just blanket numbers.
Speaker 2: You know, there's like you need to go knock you know,
Speaker 2: a gajillion doors. And for someone who worked for the
Speaker 2: rn C, you know, you get tired. You know, you're
Speaker 2: working sixty hour weeks, and they're so focused on just
Speaker 2: the number of contacts and just making that contact. They're
Speaker 2: not concerned with actually making convincing that voter about the issue.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that we really need to be
Speaker 2: focusing on, is how to defeat the advantage that the
Speaker 2: left has in marketing and show the people what these
Speaker 2: things are. Take abortion for example, So what.
Speaker 1: Would you say, yeah, yeah, go through what you would
Speaker 1: do at from a marketing standpoint.
Speaker 2: So take abortion for Example's that's one that we've lost
Speaker 2: on in Michigan and a couple other places, you know,
Speaker 2: and you can't do you know, in a really extreme position.
Speaker 2: But if you go and you market to people. You know,
Speaker 2: if you ask what's your opinion on abortion in five
Speaker 2: different ways? Do you support Roe v Wade? Most people
Speaker 2: say yes. But then if you ask do you support
Speaker 2: a heartbeat bill, They'll be like, no, I don't support
Speaker 2: a heartbeat bill. Then you ask them be a weeks,
Speaker 2: do you support abortion after twelve weeks? And the majority
Speaker 2: of people say no, And they have no idea that
Speaker 2: all three of those things, like the heartbeat thing and
Speaker 2: the twelve weeks are actually the same position. Being for
Speaker 2: Roe v. Wade and being for against abortion after twelve
Speaker 2: weeks are antithetical positions, right, So you have to find,
Speaker 2: you know, and you can do this on a number
Speaker 2: of myriad of issues. You know, I personally think that
Speaker 2: the nuclear family, restoring and educating about constitutional government, being
Speaker 2: the party of the middle class or are major winning issues.
Speaker 2: And like I said, educating a smart, young, you know,
Speaker 2: outfit that can go out there and make that case
Speaker 2: the voters nationwide at the local level is the key
Speaker 2: to win. You know. You have to take these tools
Speaker 2: and we have to retool them. It's pretty simple, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, easier said than done, you know, but the
Speaker 2: playbook is sitting right there in front of us, and
Speaker 2: we're being defeated by every single election cycle.
Speaker 1: What do you say, just really quick, I don't want
Speaker 1: to take too much of your time, but for the
Speaker 1: people who are still stuck on, we have to go
Speaker 1: back to voting one day and then we'll win, and
Speaker 1: we have to stop them from bringing in ballots and
Speaker 1: all of that. What is your response to that, because
Speaker 1: I think that that's living in a dream land.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, one thing I always like to tell
Speaker 2: people is that we need to get out of the
Speaker 2: infomercial idea of politics. You know, this one quick fix
Speaker 2: is going to solve all of democracy's problem, you know.
Speaker 2: And if we just do this one thing and then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, we're going to win, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna be Reagan shining City on a hill, and we'll
Speaker 2: go back to the nineteen eighties or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no such thing as a quick fix
Speaker 2: in politics. You know, these are systemic organizations. I have
Speaker 2: a professor, Kevin Slack, who talks a lot about the
Speaker 2: long march of the through the institutions of the left.
Speaker 2: You know, this has been burgeoning on below the surface.
Speaker 2: It has just been now starting to spill up for
Speaker 2: the past sixty years, if not more than that. So
Speaker 2: it's going to take time. That doesn't mean that we're defeated,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean there's not wins to be made, but
Speaker 2: it does mean that we need to reorientate ourselves to
Speaker 2: a modern idea about politics and focus on ways that
Speaker 2: we can actually win. You know, yes we need elect Republicans,
Speaker 2: Yes we need to point out blatant voter fraud where
Speaker 2: it exists. But you know, let's not put all our
Speaker 2: eggs in one basket and then when the court case
Speaker 2: falls through, you know, sitting there with our hands in
Speaker 2: our pockets, been like, oh, well, the court case didn't win.
Speaker 2: You know, guess there's nothing else we can do.
Speaker 1: I think that we have to remind people that I
Speaker 1: don't think there's ever been an election, a big election,
Speaker 1: that the court has said, yeah, I'm going to overturn
Speaker 1: the will of the people. The court wants the will
Speaker 1: of the people to go through, and so we have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to win at election time. On
Speaker 1: election day, you know, we need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to win and not try to go back and fight
Speaker 1: those battles because that's simply not going to work. I
Speaker 1: had so many people afterwards say, why aren't you saying
Speaker 1: you want a legal battle and you want this and
Speaker 1: that I mean that just is it's not something the
Speaker 1: court wants to do, is to overturn an election.
Speaker 2: No, it's not. You know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: the court is going to maintain status quo, especially amongst
Speaker 2: the right, you know, you have you know, unfortunately the
Speaker 2: activist judges are mostly on the left. You know, you
Speaker 2: have in Wisconsin this past time a judge running on
Speaker 2: overturning abortion or overturning abortion you know, restrictions in the state,
Speaker 2: which I think is obscene, you know, But we just
Speaker 2: we have to accept that we don't have those sort
Speaker 2: of judges on the right, you know, And so the
Speaker 2: only way we're going to win is in the ballot box.
Speaker 2: And we have to accept that we're fighting in a
Speaker 2: system that is structurally positioned against us. We need to
Speaker 2: find ways to be creative, you know, to be competitive,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't and that means getting out of the
Speaker 2: framework that this is still the nineteen nineties or the
Speaker 2: two thousands. Things have changed. Do we need to adapt
Speaker 2: with time?
Speaker 1: Well, I love talking to you and I could probably
Speaker 1: talk about this for another hour. I would love to
Speaker 1: have you back on sometime as we get closer to
Speaker 1: the election and we see some of this happening. I
Speaker 1: think the message that I want people to know is
Speaker 1: all is not lost. I mean, I know this sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit dark because we're saying we've got to
Speaker 1: change what we're doing. That's the opportunity. We now know
Speaker 1: that we did something wrong in twenty twenty and twenty two.
Speaker 1: We have an opportunity in twenty four to change that.
Speaker 1: So talk to the folks that you know are activist,
Speaker 1: our activists, or are are putting together a C four.
Speaker 1: Give to those organizations if you feel like they're going
Speaker 1: to do the work on the ground, but ask them
Speaker 1: what they're going to do to get there. I think
Speaker 1: that's been something we've been blindly giving to groups that
Speaker 1: haven't necessarily been doing that on the ground, and I
Speaker 1: want to see people really doing that. Sam Lair, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being on the podcast today. Really
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It was a real pleasure. I'm glad that people are
Speaker 2: starting to become aware of this issue. Although I sound pessimistic,
Speaker 2: I am actually truly optimistic. I think that you know
Speaker 2: once you identify the problem. We have the ability to
Speaker 2: make actual, effectual change in this country. And so I
Speaker 2: hope that people, you know, hear this message and think
Speaker 2: about really the way that they can be participate in,
Speaker 2: you know, our republic and help to get in the
Speaker 2: good fight and push the ball a little bit more
Speaker 2: further for you know, the values that this country was
Speaker 2: founded on.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I thought all Hillsdale grads are optimists. I thought
Speaker 1: that's like a requirement. It is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's a although it's kind of hard.
Speaker 2: You know, once you read a you know, Aristotle psycho
Speaker 2: regime you hear about, you know, you compare that to
Speaker 2: where we are now. It's sometimes it's hard to be optimistic,
Speaker 2: but you know, I'm doing my best.
Speaker 1: Well. Thank you, Thank you again for coming on, and
Speaker 1: thank all of you for joining us on the Tutor
Speaker 1: Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go to Tutor
Speaker 1: dixonpodcast dot com. You can subscribe right there, or check
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Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and make sure you always join
Speaker 1: us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have an awesome day,