Podcast 465

A Jeb Bush Event. Live from Sumter, South Carolina The Bob Davis Podcasts joins the Bush campaign for a Jeb Bush Event featuring Senator Lindsay Graham and Governor Bush. Originally planned for a local diner, the campaign had to move the event to the University of South Carolina, which was a shame since the potato soup at Baker’s Sweets in Sumter is amazing. Another feature of this podcast is to set the record straight regarding Jason Lewis’ appearance in Bob Davis Podcast 404, in which he stated he generally supported the President’s Iran deal with caveats. Lewis’ campaign for Congress in Minnesota’s Second District is apparently scaring his opponents so much, they’re excerpting liner notes about his foreign policy views, rather than actually listening to what he said in the podcast. There will be a new editorial note on podcast 404 which everyone can read, clarifying what Jason said. What is amazing about the current controversy surrounding Jason’s view that the country cannot have limited government at home and big government abroad is that when you’re on the campaign trail you hear republican candidates walking right up to the line advocating another war, and apparently Republicans love it. Maybe the 2nd District’s Republican candidate for congress is correct to question this impulse among all the GOP candidates? (You’ll hear it in this podcast too.) How can talk show hosts and commentators compare the current crop of bellicose campaigners with Ronald Reagan who negotiated, and kept the United States out of major military commitments and war for 8 years. Thus, a local congressional district issue dovetails beautifully with what a candidate says on the hustings in South Carolina. In any case, the Reagan era is over and is not coming back. The challenges of our current time are multi-polar, not bi-polar. Even the economic challenges are different. All these challenges will require new and different solutions that can only come from people who are able to consider opinions that might be unorthodox. Also in this podcast, a flavor of night life in Charleston, and some good bluegrass music. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Hydrus.

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Podcast 461

All About Iowa. Do you want the Iowa Caucuses to determine which presidential candidates are ‘viable’? In a state of slightly more than three million people, party leaders expect one hundred fifty thousand to show up to caucus, slightly more than in the 2012 cycle. Over the last year Iowans have been sliced and diced by pollsters, pundits, political psychologists, and sociologists. Anyone who attends political events – and there have been hundreds of them since last year – will see famous candidates, film stars, and national TV stars. It’s a spectacle, a circus, and a show being put on for one state. As the hours are counting down to the caucus Monday, February 1st, the Bob Davis Podcasts attends a Marco Rubio rally. One side of the room is reserved for the stage, the other for media. In between, are the Iowans, ready to comment when reporters approach them. Of course reporters will approach, like fish feeding at the water’s surface. ‘Who will you caucus for?’, ‘What do you think of Donald Trump?’. The answers to these and many other scintillating questions will be filed, dissected, and added to the national story line. All About Iowa. Fasten your seat belts. A rural backwater, albiet a very nice one with very nice people, is about to decide which candidates are the most viable. At least that’s how they see this process. After Monday’s caucus, the story lines will change, predictions will be adjusted, and some campaigns will never recover. Is this how we want to elect a president? While there is much to celebrate in the American political system, as I attend events and cover the caucus and the events leading up to it, what comes through louder and clearer is the dark and potentially dangerous relationship between big government, big media, politicians, pollsters and the population of a single state that has insinuated itself into the political process in an unprecedented way. All about Iowa? Indeed. Sponsored by X Government Cars and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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PODCAST 423

Republican Crack Up. A Republican Majority struggles to nominate a successor to Speaker Boehner. Moderate leadership is losing its grip because 40 ‘insurgent’ ‘freedom caucus’ Republicans refused to support top candidate Kevin McCarthy. Amid controversy over McCarthy’s Benghazi Hearing comments, and allegations of an affair, the collapse of order in the election of a new speaker, the candidacy of Donald Trump and the terrible performance of moderate candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Jeb Bush, one must wonder whether the moderate leadership is finally losing its grip. They have no one to blame but themselves. The moderate leadership of the Republican Party seems more and more out of touch with an increasingly frustrated and angry base. ‘Going along to get along’ seems to be the wrong course of action. What does the base want? Can the Freedom Caucus lead the house? Those are turning out to be much more complex questions. In a free wheeling stream-of-consciousness podcast, we discuss the underpinnings of Republican rank and file political philosophy and find … none. Senator Ted Cruz recently suggested what is needed to change America is a ‘grassroots’ movement, only without organization, there is no movement. Without philosophical underpinnings, there is no organization. Republicans, tea partiers and others on the right might suggest a ‘freedom caucus speaker’ might lead them out of the wilderness. Lead them where? To What? How? Uh….yeah. Thus, the best opportunity to elect a Republican President in years begins to fade, with a moderate leadership that can’t even run an election for speaker of a house it controls, and a rank and file that wouldn’t recognize, or vote for Ronald Reagan today. With this kind of comedy in progress, Democrats never had it so good. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Pride of Homes.

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