Live from Music Row Thursday 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 recovering journalist and all-star panelist Clint Brewer in the studio to discuss the Republicans’ squandering of advantages since the party’s momentum in March polling.
Leahy: In the studio with us, our very good friend, recovering journalist, all-star panelist Clint Brewer. The two words of the day, Clint.
Brewer: We need a word of the day on this show.
Leahy: We have two words today. My word is nadir. N-A-D-I-R. Low point. Your word is squander.
Brewer: Squander.
Leahy: See, we are a squander nadir.
Brewer: We sound very negative today.
Leahy: (Laughs) Let’s talk about that. But actually, I’m positive, because, you see, seeing that there is a nadir means there is a low point.
Brewer: We are hitting the bottom.
Leahy: We are hitting the bottom, from which it will go back up. Now, as to squander, why don’t you elaborate on how the Republicans and the House Republican leadership have squandered what would have been probably a four- or five-point generic ballot advantage from back in March.
They dipped down to just, I think it was in some RealClearPolitics poll averages, I think about a month ago it was like D-plus one. Now it’s R-plus seven-tenths of a percent. What kind of squandering did the House Republicans do in that intervening period?
Brewer: It’s the House Republicans and Senate Republicans, and I’m not even sure putting it on Republican leadership is appropriate.
Leahy: But you know, it’s so much fun.
Brewer: Yes, I know you like it.
Leahy: Well, I don’t.
Brewer: Yes, you do.
Leahy: Okay. Actually, Republican congressional leadership.
Brewer: It’s a confluence of circumstances.
Leahy: It’s almost a third word: confluence. We have nadir, squandering, and confluence.
Brewer: It’s a very literate hour we do, Mike. (Leahy chuckles) We started off the cycle where most midterms start off, which is the party out of power has all the hope, has all the trajectory, has got big margins predicted.
And as we get closer and closer to it, unlike in many, many midterms past, it’s not proving true. What do you blame for that? Gas prices came down enough.
Leahy: Asterisk.
Brewer: Asterisk.
Leahy: They’re going back up.
Brewer: They are going back up.
Leahy: Oh, and did you see this in the news yesterday – OPEC?
Brewer: Yeah, I did.
Leahy: We’re cutting production by two million barrels a day. The Biden White House, which has no clue about anything having to do with free markets, says, oh, oh, what are we going to do? Oh yeah. Do you know that strategic petroleum reserve that’s supposed to be used for national emergencies? We’ve already taken it down from 80 percent full to 40 percent. We’re going to drive it down to 20 percent.
Brewer: And so we’ve had some ad hoc monkeying with the economy, whether it’s the Biden White House with what you just described. Now the Fed has been trying to just bomb interest-rate increases on the economy. It’s not working. It’s not driving down inflation.
But despite all that, the economy improved just enough, the gas prices improved just enough to maybe take some of the heat out of Republicans’ arguments. The Supreme Court ruling on abortion happened, driving engagement on the Democratic side up.
The titular head of the party in the country, former President Trump, has faced so many problems of his own, there’s not really a focused message coming from there.
Leahy: Well, hold it. In terms of messages, there was this commitment to America that Kevin McCarthy put out before the things that they talked about.
Brewer: Yes.
Leahy: It was not a contract with America, as the one that Newt Gingrich had.
Brewer: You’ve already had one of those.
Leahy: I know, 1994.
Brewer: It would be a rip-off.
Leahy: But by the way, that’s kind of boring. Commitment to America.
Brewer: Pledge to America, or something. There’s not a real focused message without the economic … the pandemic and the mask-wearing and the mandates seem to have subsided. The economy has approved just enough, apparently, so people aren’t so mad.
You had an issue that energized the Democrats. I mean, it’s been a sort of confluence of circumstances, to use that word again, to bring it all together, where this is going to be a lot closer than people thought. Now, you see things happening, like in Georgia, with Herschel Walker.
Leahy: And now you’ve flipped going to the Senate.
Brewer: I’m talking just midterms at large here.
Leahy: But let’s wrap up with the House. As of this moment, the Republicans are likely to take back the House, but it’s not going to be a red wave. It might be a red trickle. It might be maybe plus-10, plus-20.
Brewer: A win is a win, right?
Leahy: Okay, so now let’s go back – this is fascinating. You talk about an October surprise. I don’t know if it’s really a surprise. It was expected.
Brewer: It shouldn’t be a surprise.
Leahy: I expected something like this to happen. But I’m looking at right now, it’s 50-50 with Kamala Harris, the tiebreaker. Hence, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (chuckles) I have a hard time even saying that, but nonetheless, he is the majority leader.
Brewer: And he’s so bland, that it used to be people would campaign and say, well, if that Democrat gets elected, he’s just a rubber stamp for Chuck Schumer. I was listening to Fox talk about the Ohio race.
Leahy: JD Vance, endorsed by President Trump. Lots of money from Peter Thiel.
Brewer: Tim Ryan, the Democrat, they don’t even call Ryan a rubber stamp for Schumer, and he’s going to be in the Senate if he gets elected. They call him a rubber stamp for Biden/Pelosi, like Schumer has no bad liberal brand.
Leahy: We’ll get to Ohio in a moment. But I’m looking at the RealClearPolitics projections, and now it’s interesting. They think it’ll be a plus-2 pickup for the GOP. They believe they will hold Pennsylvania with Dr. Oz.
And it’s not that Dr. Oz is such a great candidate, it’s that John Fetterman, is, perhaps — has there been a worse United States Senate candidate from a major party in recent history?
Brewer: I’m sure there has been. But I can’t think of one. Not one who is actually expecting to compete.
Leahy: So they have two pickups on this: Nevada, Adam Laxalt.
Brewer: I think that absolutely happens.
Leahy: But they have Ohio as a hold. I’m not sure it’s going to be a hold, for the Republicans. And they have Arizona as a hold for Mark Kelly, the Democrat, versus another Peter Thiel guy, Blake Masters.
But here’s the one that I think is — well, talk about curveballs, if I mix my sports metaphors here, Herschel Walker is the …
Brewer: Fumble.
Leahy: Now, that’s very good. This is why we pay you the big bucks.
Brewer: From a guy who didn’t fumble the ball very much in his day.
Leahy: There is a loose ball.
Brewer: There is a loose ball.
Leahy: The ball is on the ground in Georgia. And the reason is that you’ve got Raphael Warnock, who barely won last time around, and he’s running again. He had a two-year term and now he’s running for a full six-year term.
He’s a far-left Democrat, and he’s running against Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker, great football player — not the most compelling speaker on the stump, shall we say.
And he’s very much a MAGA supporter. But he’s got this big story now, the allegation made by The Daily Beast that an anonymous woman has come forward and said he paid for an abortion.
Brewer: Well, it follows one of his children coming out and saying he abandoned them.
Leahy: In a vicious, nasty, narcissistic video on TikTok of 23-year-old Christian Walker, his son.
Brewer: I would say most videos on TikTok by 23-year-olds are narcissistic, but …
Leahy: By definition.
Brewer: By default.
Leahy: Words of the day, are confluence, narcissistic, squander and nadir.
Brewer: It’s like an English class.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
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.
