Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line.
During the third hour, McCabe weighed in on Republicans’ complacent behavior to mail-in voting but noted that they might have a good chance of retaking the House with only 18 votes needed. He somberly admitted that a Biden presidency would result in a restructuring of police departments and that the Democrats would continue to go after former Trump administration officials.
Leahy: Our Washington and National Correspondent for The Tennessee Star and our related newspapers, good friend, long time colleague, Neil McCabe is on the line. Good morning Neil.
McCabe: Michael, very good to be with you.
Leahy: Neil, we’re starting the second half of 2020 and I’ll ask you the same question I asked Crom earlier. Is the second half of 2020 going to be as crazy as the first half?
McCabe: (Laughs) Do you know the old line? All that’s left now is the tears. (Chuckles) I will tell you this. We have only begun to see the insanity in this country. And remember not only is there election day but we’re going to have to watch as all 50 states have different dates where they validate the election.
Leahy: Yes!
McCabe: Where they are going to fight over the electoral college. I covered for Breitbart the formal processing and election of the president with the electoral college with Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the Senate where literally when every state came forward with their tally to have the Democratic congressmen and congresswomen objecting. At one point Joe Biden yelled at one of them saying “Hey! It’s over!”(Leahy laughs) But it’s never over Michael.
Leahy: It’s never over.
McCabe: It wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Or that famous line from Animal House. Well, I think that’s a good comparison isn’t Neil? Is the Washington, D.C. basically Animal House on steroids now? Or is the country like Animal House?
McCabe: All those kids in Animal House grew up to be congressmen and senators.
Leahy: Well, Senator Blutarsky, right?
McCabe: Exactly. It’s a very scary thing when speaking of a movement conservative. To see how quickly the police reform bills make it to the Senate floor. To think that for gun owners which have been a backbone of the Republican post-Watergate resurgence of the Republican Party. Gun owners are very much a part of that.
There’s no denying. Every two years John Cornyn the Texas Senator will file his national conceal carry bill and it doesn’t even make it to the Judiciary Committee. Everyone’s buying guns and that the one act that the gun owners want is a national concealed carry. It doesn’t’ move. Look at the pro-life movement.
Paul Ryan personally blocked the Heartbeat Bill from coming to the floor in the last session. Not because it was going to lose. Paul Ryan blocked it because it would pass. And yet I just saw the House voting on the big infrastructure bill. Whenever the Left wants something on the floor it goes to the floor.
And a lot of times the Republicans give it to them. This is the phrase they use on Capitol Hill. We just want to get it off the table. It’s a distraction. We’ll just give it to them so we can talk about what we want. And what we want never comes Mike.
Leahy: Let me ask you this. In the event that Joe Biden is elected president and in the event the Democrats keep the House and in the event, the Democrats take the Senate, what will be the first two or three bills passed by that Congress?
McCabe: Well I think there’s definitely going to be a bill to make Washington, D.C. a state. I think there is definitely going to be some of this, they call it defunding police. It’s not really defunding the police. What they are going to do is they are going to rebuild the police forces into more cronyism. It’s sort of like they get more a part of their machine politics. And I think you are going to see an effort to go after former members of the Trump administration certainly.
Leahy: Oh yes. Absolutely.
McCabe: Because they accuse President Trump of using law enforcement and the criminal justice system for political purposes and I’m thinking oh really? It’s going to be scary. But I will say again there’s a very good chance that the Republicans retake the House. And that the polls are wrong.
Leahy: Ah!
McCabe: If you compare the House popular votes for House candidates 2016-2018 there was a drop off at 20 percent for Republican candidates in 2018. And there was only a two percent drop for Democrats. If you consider that the Democrats maxed out their turnout for Hillary and then maxed it out again in 2018 I don’t know how where their new votes are going to come from.
But there will be all those Republican voters who did not show up. If you have 12 million born Republican voters showing up for these House candidates, that’s going to pick up all the Senate candidates as well. And so the margins for the Democrats in the House are very close. It’s basically 18 to 19 votes with retirements and deaths and things. I’m not sure exactly what the number is today.
You basically have 200 Republicans and you need 218 to take over, well that’s really doable. Especially in a presidential year. You and I both know that people lie when they are asked if they support the president or not. What they want to see if the president has any fight left in him. If the president feels he has a fight left in him people will back him. But if he just sort of caves and says your right the police are the problem people are going to stay home.
Carmichael: Neil this is Crom Carmichael. Question for you. In Kentucky, we finally got the results of an election that was held over a week ago because of all of the mail-in ballots, not absentee ballots. Mail-in. Where they mailed the ballot out to people who did not request an absentee ballot. I think there is going to be massive voter fraud. How do you account for that?
McCabe: That should be a big problem. One of the issues is that the Republican National Committee has ignored the movement by former President Barack Obama and his former Attorney General Eric Holder to redistrict everything. The reason that Mark Meadows resigned from his House seat and is now working at the White House is because they redistricted him and he didn’t want to fight in that new district. Same thing.
Absentee ballot. Mail-in ballot. The Republican National Committee has done nothing to meet the challenge. The Democrats invented this mail-in and early voting because 15 years ago the Republican Party had so-called tiger teams that would come in and they would come in three days before an election and they would just ramp up very quickly get out the vote.
They’d do media. All of sudden you have some guy running and all of a sudden these guys would show up and they would just super energize the campaign for the last three days. And it was very effective. So the Democrats to counter this Republican tactic during this 72 tiger team they invented the early voting.
They literally, the Republican Party just sort of watches it as it happens. They practiced it in Alabama for that special election in 2017. Look at what happened in the off elections of Virginia in 2017 and 2019. The Republicans just watch it. It’s a very scary thing. It’s a very good point.
Leahy: Last question for you Neil. You mentioned if President Trump has any fight in him that the Republicans will follow him. Does the president still have a fight in him?
McCabe: Not really.
Leahy: Not really? How can you tell? And why does he not have a fight in him?
McCabe: There is no new agenda for a second term. Where is it? If you look at it, where have been the fights on Capitol Hill? Where was the fight over immigration? Where was that big vote where you’re not sure how it’s going to go? The president has never gone to Capitol Hill with a vote that he thought he was going to lose or he could possibly lose. He’s never been one to lose on principle which is something Reagan and Nixon did. And that creates an emotional bond with your supporters.
Leahy: Exactly.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Neil McCabe” by One America News Network.
