The Reason.tv Talk Show, Episode 15, featuring Michael Barone and Reihan Salam

Reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan and Nick Gillespie sit down with Reihan Salam, an associate editor at The Atlantic and co-author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, and Michael Barone, a senior writer for US News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics, talk about the future of the Republican Party, the influence of Rush Limbaugh on the conservative movement, and how the right can win again.

Approximately 25 minutes. Shot and edited by Dan Hayes.

For a podcast of this video, click here. For embed code and downloadable versions of this video, click here.

Click here for an archive of previous episodes of the Reason.tv talkshow.

Comments

[Jeffersonian]

Nick Gillespie in this video says "I don't think Rush Limbaugh has any libertarian tendencies. At Reason we try to frame the issue as choice versus control."

Michael Barone responds: "Yes but Rush would be for choice on many issues such as lower taxes..."

Gillespie "Yes he may say he is for those things but he is not actually a political figure so we shouldn't even talk about him."

What the fuck? So according to Gillespie in order to be considered a "true libertarian" you either have to A. be involved in making actual public policy or B. write for Reason.

Fuck you and your leather coat Gillespie. I think anyone who reads the philosophical literature of libertarians (Rand, Smith, Hayek, etc.) can easily see that Limbaugh at least partially draws on those ideas at least far more than almost anyone in the mainstream media (Fox included.)

[/]

But Jeffersonian, you don't want reason to alienate the remaining Leftist audience, now that they've unceremoniously driven joe away with the senseless Obama criticism. They need to give somewhere, or else they're no better than those free-market, capitalist, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, communist-executing, France-invading Nazis. If they can't capitulate on economics, they can always capitulate on rhetoric.

Who cares if Rush is right, or even in the Right? He's fat and abuses drugs! (NTTAWRT), and it's important to have someone to demonize who hasn't legal authority over me.

Seriously, dude. Would you have progressives progress to overthrow the traditional order in favor of progressing toward *mumble* without using what we learned from Huxley and Orwell? Get real.

[shecky]

Partially drawing from the fountain of libertarianism does not a libertarian make. If only the Republicans could afford to ignore Limbaugh...

[mari dupont]

While both these guys desperately need to hone their elevator pitches, compared to most of the would-be GOP saviors (i.e. the deadly dull David Frum) Reihan's ideas seem quite fresh. I'd be interested in watching a future show with just him yaking.

[George]

Great episode! Reihan and Michael are two of the wiser men you've had on the show. Please don't invite back David Frum he has enough venues for self promotion. Why did you get rid of the comment feature on the reason.tv inbed of the show?

[shecky]

Funny, I got the feeling that Barone and Salam are mostly perplexed about how to deal with the likes of Obama and would just as soon go back to 2000-style battle lines if they thought it would bring better numbers on the GOP side. To their credit, both seem to be on Limbaugh's shit list and not all that interested in kissing his ass to get back into favor of the nutty side he speaks for. That's definitely a start in the right direction.

[Arthur Fonzarelli]

Nick "Libertarian Fonzie" Gillespie sez: Ayyyyyyyyyyy!!

[between the lines]

Nick Gillespie in this video says "I don't think Rush Limbaugh has any libertarian (open borders) tendencies. At Reason we try to frame the issue as choice (gay marriage) versus control."

[Taktix?]

I can't watch the video at work, but is that Dave Chappelle?

"I'm an antiquated party, bitches!"

[Justen]

When it comes to libertarianism, Limbaugh doesn't even qualify as a carpetbagger. He only gives nod to the vaguest of libertarian ideals when it serves his rhetoric, and I think more by coincidence than intent. His morbid, cynical hypocrisies serve more than anything to discredit any idea he attaches himself to in the realm of the semi-literate public. They are completely lost on his target audience, except to the extent that they advocate hate and violence.

Forget resurrecting the republican party. It's a festering, gangrenous limb that serves only to make democrats look good by comparison. As long as they are around the politically disinterested are presented with a false dichotomy of the blatantly evil vs. the seductively evil, and it's no wonder they're driven to choose the latter. People who care about choice and freedom should spend at least equal time actively undermining their lies and hypocrisy as they spend pointing out the fallacy and injustice of socialist policies.

[Jeffersonian]

Simply put, libertarianism in my view is not just Reason's ideology. If we mean by libertarianism Classical Liberalism (freedom from statism) then Rush Limbaugh day in and day out talks about ideas that the rest of the media (including many other talk radio hosts)never touch on. Just because he doesn't toe the line on specific libertarian issues (maybe abortion, definitely gay marriage, immigration, and drugs) doesn't mean as a whole that he is "not a libertarian at all".

Mainstream Conservatives at least rhetorically open their minds to the idea of a big tent (ie a winning coalition)that includes libertarians as a big part of it. But libertarians seem to want to remain purist and define themselves by criticizing Conservatives when in fact conservatives are the only ones willing to even pay lip service to their ideas.

[R C Dean]

Nick Gillespie in this video says "I don't think Rush Limbaugh has any libertarian tendencies.

Oh, for God's sake. Rush is very much a limited government, low tax, individual responsibility and initiative guy.

Sure, he doesn't toe the cosmo line on social issues, but I guess the libertarian movement is so pervasive and powerful that it can afford to throw national figures overboard if they don't adhere to every jot and tittle of orthodoxy.

It's a festering, gangrenous limb that serves only to make democrats look good by comparison.

Oh, I dunno. The current crop of Dems don't look good in comparison to anybody.

[Anonymous]

R C Dean, that's not enough for some people.

Those people don't see the ideology of libertarianism (if I may dress it up to that for a moment) as ultimately accepting risk voluntarily; and perhaps it really isn't, even if I want it to be. The rhetoric of non-coercian is a good one, but is vague enough to be treated the way "liberalism" is in America: instead of classical liberalism, where people are free to take risks, it has been turned into progressive fascism, where people are free from taking risks.

This is why you see the crosstalk between the Left and the Right about the role of freedom and government in charitable causes: there is an authoritarian mindset that is convinced government's role is to reduce or equalize risks (I'm reminded of Harrison Bergeron here). The fact that the trend of globalism causes certain liberals to consider domestic economic and social risks bigger than those the nation was chartered to defend against, namely foreign aggression on our soil, only demonstrates that elimination of risk -- otherwise known as opportunity -- is those "neo-liberals" goal, to the exclusion of general prosperity and liberty.

Which isn't to say that I've studied reason staff well enough to pigeon hole them in this interpretation of the political spectrum. But I think it serves to explain why someone honestly attracted to the idea of non-coercive government would still be slightly damp from Leftist rhetoric. It's unthinking, reactive nonsense; it's a social game of acceptance. After all, if all the other Leftists are unthinking morons, bowing at the altar of the zero-sum game, who plan to shrink the economy and eliminate liberties so they can enrich and secure themselves... then what other techniques do you have to attract them but to appeal to the vanity of arguments so empty they haven't even heard the man they're criticizing speak?

Am I arguing from a perspective that is wholly libertarian? I think so, but I don't know; and I don't really care. I'm begginning to understand the distress over not assembling a big tent of libertarianism, and there's more to it than liberty being orthogonal to prevalent politics (though that is a major factor). It's most important to argue from principles and agreed-upon premises. Without that, nothing special holds us together.

[will]

Rush supports: low taxes and supposedly limited government.

Also supports: demagoguery, the PATRIOT act, war on terror, regard for abuses at Guantanamo as humorous, aaaaaaand no changes in defense spending.

Reason is hardly outing their hypocracy by excluding some closet libertarian in Rush.

[Anonymous]

Isn't "limited government" linked to the inability to carry out certain usurpations in that laundry list?

Furthermore, isn't that the point?

The Constitution isn't sufficient -- society has to want limited government -- but I'd go so far to say it's necessary.

[Justen]

The thing about the conservative movement is that it makes extensive use of doubletalk. Conservatives do far more damage to libertarianism by discrediting it than any amount of uplifting socialist rhetoric could ever hope to. The product of conservatism is clear to any outside observer; every time a conservative government is put in power extreme authoritarianism follows swiftly. The war on terror, like the war on drugs and other massive authoritarian power grabs, were put into place by administrations that ran on libertarian platforms of small government and laissez-faire economy. It doesn't matter in the least bit that the policies have nothing to do with the rhetoric; what people see is a decade of prosperity in Clinton and a decade of disaster in Bush. Nevermind that Clinton's government implemented many libertarian policies while Bush implemented socialist-authoritarian monstrosities; Clinton didn't talk about libertarianism, Bush did. So in the minds of the rational but uninformed population, libertarianism is the road to nightmare while socialism is a road to a pleasant mediocrity. Individualist, educated, progressive people join with the democrats due to a case of mistaken identity while libertarians shut themselves in a dark room full of religious fundamentalists, militants, racists, thugs and con-men who are willing to speak in libertarian language. This is why we fail.

[Anonymous]

The product of conservatism is clear to any outside observer; every time a conservative government is put in power

George Bush sure was conservative. And compassionate! Actually, no. Who's the one engaging in double talk?

The difference between Democrats and Republicans seems to be closer to the difference between global and domestic socialism to me.

[Justen]

@Anon: that's basically my point. Sorry if I belabored it. Fundamentalists and political thugs have hijacked the idea of conservatism effectively; the word belongs to them now even though they have nothing to do with what it means. They try to latch on to libertarianism, which has a lot in common with conservatism (though IMO, mostly by coincidence), and thereby discredit it as well.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, funamentalists like the Amish! Fucking fascists.

If you're talking about faithful Muslims, just say so. Don't engage in NWO talking points.