Welcome to the Crystal Clear podcast with Weekly Standard founder and editor at large Bill Crystal. Bill, you were lost in translation last week. We had Michael Warren filling in for you. You've made it back, but you sounded a little worse from the way from being in Japan.
Being in Japan was great. I'm not sure the 14 hour plane rides back or great for your. The city of regular developing head goals and which is now progressed through various stages, but I'm getting better into one. I'm just trying to make tears for me.
I'm just trying to get my words a great job. I really thought this is that you know why we just have Warren clearance. I'm still clear. At least maybe we'll make Warren pinch it more often.
I think that is. We have some more in peace. Well that's good. I like that Warren piece.
Yeah, but at least we can get some good underground before anyone's going on the White House when I was watching for 10,000 miles away. But to be back, I'm not a little bit this week in New York Chicago. It's interesting. We can talk.
I'm told there was an election Tuesday. I noticed that I was a big way. I brought Chicago. I was like, oh, I'm flying out of mid way delayed.
I shot. Yeah, I know. I'm going to be going. I think about it.
I was so much better than I've been here. I think. But there's a lot of like, 40 minutes of the deal. I'm not allowed to stay online.
Just to make sure that Joe said one. I mean, it was progressing that way. It was a little bit clearer. The original warning time that once I got delayed, I was able to do it.
I was shocked. I tweeted this at the airport. There I was, you know, intensely looking at my computer going back and forth from different websites that were checking the vote, projecting the vote, and where's the outstanding vote from? What's our mobile economic on-rese, what's like Joe's, what's the little window of the overcome more setter setter and look around.
And no one else is like doing something. Anything like what I'm doing. Every normal person at that airport is having a beer. It's got a bit of time.
It's not like a night. You know, chatting with their family, talking to friends on their cell phones and their iPhones, meeting some novels and paper back or whatever. Looking at movies on their right-by-by-pads. Maybe it's a good reminder that not everyone is following the number of, you know, what's happening with precincts and suburbs and Montgomery and how much outstanding voters there there.
And will it overcome more's lead at that point? Well, those listening to these podcasts can be assumed, however, to have such interests. So let me ask you why did Roy Moore lose? Well, I think these actual predation stuff, put them over the top in terms of defeat.
There are a lot of other things that made them less than ideal candidate. And obviously it's good. I think it has been a bad year of 2016 for Republicans, even outside of Alabama. That probably foretells them easily bad year.
Less than change a lot in 2018 for Republicans across the country. Trump's not a great popular president. Republican Congress isn't a fore of this despite the fact that the economy is strong markets are up. And if, in fact, if Trump and the Congress had sort of run on a more standard of quarreled agenda and just said, look, put us in charge.
There are some regulations. We won't mess with things. We won't have a pretty decent economy in a pretty decent country. And, anyway, then they can say, so if we have passed on, we help to pass.
But, in a weird way, Trump is so much an agent of change. Everything has to be fixed. The way you don't get the big change legislation passed, people take it out on you. Maybe the tax bill will pass, it will change things a little bit.
But I'm pretty doubtful that that's going to have such great positive effects that will really change the difference between the president or the Congress. In terms of Alabama, that obviously has some dynamic and pretty unusual race and remarkable race. But it will be the next year as a practical matter of 51 Republicans 49 Democrats, which does make them larger even less than terms of preserving that Republican majority. Maybe it invites Trump to think about some bipartisan legislation, or maybe just means we have more success with the less and more sort of error of Republicans.
Well, what's interesting is, you know, there's always the talk of turnout and turnout mattered in the election. But what's interesting about the election is enough Republican voters turned out that if they had voted, the Republican ticket, Roy Moore would have won. Democrats stuck with the Democrat vote. Republicans, some 10% of them, either voted for the Democrat or for a right-handed of their choice.
Yeah, when the person fell off every close, the number said, the only thing that is Democrat is that when Trump was off, certainly African American, it was higher than a normal, off-year special election without an African American candidate, and it was at a lot of levels. So that was really striking. So that got him, you might say, into like a ballpark, you know, of contesting a state that's not normally at all close. And then there was a Republican two aspects of Republican turnout, maybe some like 7% of Republicans who showed up voted either four Jones mostly, or was 1.5% of Republican other candidates.
And that was enough for making margin. And a certain chunk of Republicans didn't vote. So Republican turnout was down or at least flat compared to the Democratic turnout. So not not often compared to Democratic turnout.
And so the Republican Republicans just stayed home. Democrats surged and turnout, some Republicans switched altogether. That perfect storm still, mainly meant 1.5% of Democrats judged what Republicans say out of amides and how I feel it was for Jones. But if you replicate that, anything like that, anything like that, I was more essentially backhand.
But you replicate even two thirds of that in, let's say, a normal state in the Virginia, or Pennsylvania, or Colorado, or Tennessee, and start rejecting a kind of very energized Democratic vote. Republican vote has some defections to the Democratic vote. And probably more importantly, more likely, some number of people just staying home out of happiness with the Trump-winning Congress. You can get to a pretty awful year for Republicans pretty fast.
It doesn't only be Alabama scale of change, of defection. But you need even half or two thirds of that scale, as I say, guess you do, I think Democrats winning the house and have a quite good shot to win Senate. And a lot of mainstream voters are at a loss to figure out what this administration and what the Republican Party is all about. At times, there are things that seem sort of normal, judicial appointments, tax cutting efforts.
And then there's things that are just sort of nutty and chaotic. And when you take, and you add to it, a cookie candidate, that sort of answers the question for the voter. What is the Republican Party stand for? Well, here's the manifestation of the party in front of us that we have to pull the lever for.
And he's a cookie. I think that's a point. I mean, it's bad enough. It doesn't have it if you got, let's say, quote, a normal presidential candidate, and a competent reason to be the lower-sparked, perhaps, leaders in Congress.
And then you're just going to get a lot of primary and someone's back. And it wins. Usually, it doesn't have a state, but actually the studies to show an experience that shows that that's not much spillover effect. Having that cookie woman in Delaware in 2010, because she's not a rich.
Yeah, right. It didn't really change. Patumus was able to win a neighborhood in Pennsylvania, even though Christina Donald got the Harvard in Delaware in 2010. Why was that?
Because voters didn't look at Patumus and say, well, he's part of the same party as Christina Donald. Just like Christina Donald was kind of one off. I'd probably be a choice by the Republican dollar. So the price you pay for an oddball nominee is going to find that state.
If the president himself has sort of touches about extremism and oddness and sort of the decisive race in his office, or former South Bay and South Bay and race, and how this oddball candidate, and if they have huge rallies with all these people who are associated with Trump, they're showing up with more. Suddenly it's like, gee, that's sort of like what this Republican party is becoming like. And that's where I think people were terrified from one that it would hurt Republicans everywhere, but even more losing just as high as the Biden nominee in such a high visibility race. I think as more detrimental effects on Republicans elsewhere than what in the case they say with the Latino Donald.
Now, Steve Bannon had declared that this was going to be the year of his picking all of the nominees and not off the establishment Republicans in the Senate. It's the Roy Moore defeat, which he championed Roy Moore. Does the defeat of Roy Moore blunt Bannon's efforts to unseat the establishment Republicans? I don't know what I'm thinking about it, but it might also be the case that his kind of people are just voting for those candidates.
They care what Biden would nominee is, whether they're not winning the general election. They want to send a message and maybe they think that more of a real personal problems with sexual predation, which is irrelevant, you might say, or not anticipated by Biden and other populous types, Trump, he types won't have that problem, so I'm less confident that a lot of Republicans in Washington that, oh, this is a decisive defeat for Steve Bannon. He's discredited. He's discredited.
His candidates are going to win. I don't really buy that. I think Bannon to discredit. I mean, as a hard-charging guy, he's getting up to his candidate loss one of the base by one and a half points.
He's going to continue to try to fight people to run in these primaries, and the mood of Republican primaries might still be sufficiently sufficiently anti-establishment, so he's a pro-Trump that will nominate people who might think will be bad general election candidates. But could, as we were just saying before, could color the perception of the Republican Party in a way that will damage all Republican candidates' cross-station? Let's jump to Capitol Hill hearings this week about the FBI, and there were revealed some private communications that were ill-advised by some FBI agents, which has been leading to, if not calls, at least suggestions that the FBI needs investigating itself, and you tweeted on Wednesday that the call for a second special counsel is silly and a distraction. The point of the coordinated remarks by House Republicans that today's Rosenstein hearing is to lay the groundwork to justify Trump's firing of Mueller.
Yeah, Trump wants to fire Mueller against pretty clear, and I do think Republicans on Wednesday and House Republicans' reading statements, saying, hold investigations and call into question, which don't think is too unconnected. I mean, if that's true, then you need to end the investigation or fundamentally change the direction of the investigation. Look, these FBI agents, their texts are just no context, seriously, they're just like, no, it's hard to even know why we're reading people's private text in a sense. But at the end of the day, the Mueller investigation and the co-media investigation when he was at the FBI investigation, they found what they found, they found what they found, they found what they found, and whatever individual views of FBI agents just like these individuals are cops, assuming it's going to be presented to the public, assuming that they can't railroad people, which they can.
Some of the other judges are just like, here, when the cases get brought. We'll learn what happened or what didn't happen. So it's worth raising questions about these agents' texts, of course, Mueller just mended the agent in fact, where the agents were questioned. So he thought it was concerning enough to maybe better backwards and just move them from the case.
It's worth having the IG look into what was happening. But the notion that the Trump Justice Department, the Trump AG and Deputy AG are sort of not being strong enough and making sure the investigation is fair. The strikes me as a little odd as an argument. These comments were all popping off without having any knowledge of what's really happening in the Mueller investigation.
They've been zero. I mean, Mueller hired some people contributed Hillary basically, but they've been no argument of impropriety in the Mueller investigation itself. No one said Michael Flynn shouldn't have played guilty itself. He wasn't guilty of them.
No one's really saying, well, man, if it's charges, look like they're not based on good evidence. No one said, I know no defense lawyer that I heard in assembly has said, the way Mueller's team is treating us is inappropriate horrible. The White House counsel says, the revelation of the special prosecutor's team and they're people having interviews all the time. So I'm not giving a lot of light check or other defense.
I think there's questions that are fair enough about the FBI agents. But to start talking about how the whole thing is legitimate, it has to be ended. That really just gets covered to Trump who wants to end it. And not for good reasons, I think not because it's unfair, because he's scared of what they're going to find.
And I think Trump wants to do that. I don't think it's at all, I don't know if it's likely, but I think the odds are not zero. Certainly, the trouble is trying to find a way to end it in the next month or so. That would be a genuine political and constitutional moment.
Yeah, you say that the president may be looking for this to give him cover to end the probe. But isn't it kind of a fantasy to think that there would be anything that really resembled cover out of this kind of investigation? No, that's a good point. Not political support that he wouldn't be left allowed.
It wouldn't be an excuse situation. He would have a majority of other conferences saying, you know what, but there's a lot of people that have to use in the computer. And we only get to do detailed discussion of exactly what was appropriate, exactly how whatever they get from the text that the year and a half ago is it's about the actual investigation that's gone on. And what really happened in these different Trump meetings and Trump targeting discussions with Leno.
That's all terrible and it dropped to the right thing. That's what Trump's hoping that he holds three quarters of the public conference in the house. And the House kind of becomes a normal party showdown instead of hemorrhaging of Republican and service support. I think maybe fantasy is just like that you can do that.
Maybe you'll do that. Maybe you'll decide to do this. But clearly it's all the attacks on the FBI which are very unseemly and appropriate for president. And so we have a lot of people who are not working on the police department.
And we have a moment for one policy question. We'll do it in a glock on style. Prediction does tax reform tax cuts does it pass? Everyone thinks yes.
I remain much more equivocal about it. I still think there's a real obstacles. If you want to go ahead and say yes, but I'm going to leave open the possibility that we can decide this next week. We want to actually know the answer.
Absolutely. That's all. You do it all along. Bill Crystal, thanks so much for joining us on the Crystal Clear podcast.
Thanks, Eric. Support for the Crystal Clear podcast comes from tripping.com. Did you know that the average family does its five websites before booking a vacation rental? You can spend less time planning your next trip and more time relaxing with tripping.com, the world's number one site for vacation rentals.
Whether you're looking for a cabin to get away from New Year's Eve, planning your next beach vacation in Hawaii, or that vacation in Europe where you'll live like a local, tripping.com can help you find the perfect place to stay. Vacation rentals offer flexibility, perks and amenities that hotels don't, like multiple bedrooms, backyards, hot tubs, free Wi-Fi, and even fully stocked kitchens. With tripping.com, one search lets you filter, compare and sort over 10 million available properties on trusted sites like VRBO, TripAdvisor, booking.com, and more. Don't wonder if you're getting the best deal.
You'll save an average of 18% per night by booking your vacation with tripping.com. So don't forget if you want to save time and money while booking the perfect vacation rental for your next trip, head to tripping.com slash standard today. That's tripping.com slash standard. That's it for today's Crystal Clear podcast.
I'm Eric Bellson, catch you next time.