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 One America News national political correspondent Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to discuss the state of the broken Republican Party.
Leahy: On our newsmaker line right now, the great Neil W. McCabe. He’s a national political correspondent for One American News on the web at oann.com We call him Top Gov Tracker because he reports on all things Ron DeSantis. Good morning, Neil. W. McCabe.
McCabe: Hey, good morning, Michael. Good morning, Crom. Very good to be with you, sir.
Leahy: Yesterday, late last night, as pretty much everybody in the world thought would happen, Raphael Warnock, one of the most far-left progressive, left-wing members of the United States Senate, was re-elected in a runoff election.
It wasn’t really that close. It was 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent. I think it was a 2.8 percent margin of victory over Herschel Walker. Besides Herschel Walker, who was the loser? And besides Raphael Warnock, who were the winners?
McCabe: I thought it was interesting the way they sort of played cat and mouse. You know how like everyone has seen those videos of a cat playing with a mouse before they actually do him in. And so all night they’re like, oh, Walker’s ahead. Oh, Warnock’s ahead. At one point, it was a 3,000 vote difference with, say, 88 percent in. Like a lot of people, last night I’m hitting refresh, refresh.
And then it’s like 100,000 votes. Basically, I admire the fact that the Democrats put the effort in to make it interesting for people before they sort of said, okay, let’s just end this thing. Then it went from like 30,000 to 50,000, 100,000 votes, and everybody can go to bed. So what are you going to do? There’s no such thing as elections anymore.
Leahy: What are these things that were once called elections? What are they now? Ballot harvesting adventures?
McCabe: It’s called pallets of ballots. And it’s like, what’s the point of even doing a poll, right? We have a billion-dollar polling infrastructure and industry. What is the point?
Leahy: They were actually pretty good on the last week of polling, showed Warnock up by two points, plus or minus. I think the polling industry in the last week of this race was actually pretty spot on, for the most part, having disgraced themselves in the midterm elections, in essence.
McCabe: I think what we’re going to see is this marks the end of Donald Trump as a fixture in the Republican Party.
Leahy: Let me just stop for a moment. Crom Carmichael is exuberantly shaking his head.
Carmichael: Not exuberantly.
Leahy: You’re shaking your head.
Carmichael: I’m just acknowledging.
McCabe:Â The leaders, consultants, and staffers who run the Republican Party are just disgusted by the unwashed, no-shoes vagrants that Trump and his people are. It’s like they wander in here, and they don’t know what fork to use. (Leahy laughs) They don’t put a napkin into their lap.
And basically, what they want is they want to go back to the good old days of K Street Republicanism, where everybody had a good time, and everybody’s wife became a lobbyist for some airline, and Trump would have stopped all that. The problem that Trump made for the Republican leadership and guys like Crom is that he campaigned and governed the same way.
Guys like Crom, they are like, that’s foolishness. Yes, you campaign as a conservative, but we’re not really going to protect gun rights. We’re not really going to cut the budget. We’re not really going to try to end abortion. That’s silly because all we care about is getting re-elected and staying elected. We’re not trying to move an agenda. We’re trying to hold on to power. (Inaudible crosstalk)
Carmichael: Neil, you don’t know me. You really don’t know me. We talk 15 minutes once a week.
Leahy: Crom is actually the exact opposite.
Carmichael: Yes, I’m actually a lot stronger than you are.
McCabe: Listen, why do you support the Chamber of Commerce position? Crom. Trump has to go, and we have to bring in (Inadubile crosstalk)
Carmichael: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Leahy: We’re at cross purposes here.
Carmichael: Yes, we really are. What I’m saying is let me say this. I’ll just be real straight with you. I think Ron DeSantis is a more likely candidate to win the election and then do the right things as president, because I think he’s more likely to win. Now, what do I think those things are? I think Ron DeSantis, when he fired the prosecutor in Tampa, he did something that no other Republican has ever done.
He fired a prosecutor who was elected to office when he sent the 48 immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. He was doing that to make a point, and no other Republican would do something like that to make a point. So I like Ron DeSantis. But if you’re going to ascribe certain policy points to me, it would be a good idea if you and I talked first so that you didn’t confuse the audience.
McCabe: I didn’t say Crom doesn’t have these positions. Yes, you have those positions. I’m just saying there was a guy named Trump who tried to actually do it.
Carmichael: No, Trump didn’t do it. That’s part of the problem.
McCabe: He took fire. He took fire every day.
Leahy: Neil, let’s kind of get to this part. Where do the losing Republicans go next? That’s really kind of where we’re going on this.
McCabe: The party’s broken. The party’s broken up because what you have is you have two factions. It’s a bad marriage. You have two spouses who hate each other, and they argue in public. And it’s like when all these Republicans lost November 8, right?
All the leaders, consultants, and staffers were, like, ecstatic. They were thrilled. They were exuberant. And it’s like they take joy when conservatives lose. So what are we doing here? Why are we with these people?
Carmichael: Neil, I was distressed when Herschel Walker lost, so I don’t know if that helps at all. Let me just mention something to you and then get your thoughts on it.
McCabe: Sure.
Carmichael: I like Glenn Beck. I enjoy a show. But Glenn Beck the other day played some sound bites from Senator John Kennedy. Senator Kennedy with his pithy way of attacking wokeness. And it was funny. But then Glenn Beck and his studio people said, man, I love this guy.
I just love this guy. And it caused me to think Senator Kennedy has been in Washington for probably 12 years, maybe longer, and I can’t think of a single thing that he’s done to shrink the size of Washington. Now here Glenn Beck is taken with Senator Kennedy because of his pithy comments on wokeness. So what do you do?
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.
Photo “Republican Party Logo” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
No new news here. One of the major broken parts is Mitch McConnell who only cares for his own power and dumps on true conservatives. The Senate GOP needs a new leader but I suspect that the senators fear severe repercussions if they speak out against him. He has enough money. He should just go home and count it.
I have seen the enemy and we are them.