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Speaker 1: All right. Welcome to The Carl Jackson Show for your post-election analysis. Guys, listen, don't don't cry.
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Speaker 2: Don't cry.
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Speaker 1: We this is still America, but we've got a long haul ahead of us. Obviously, last night didn't turn out like any of us. I thought it would. I expected that we would probably lose in the House, but I thought it would be tight. I thought the polls were wrong. I thought in the Senate, at the very least, we'd have a 50-50 tie with VP Vance to be the deciding vote. Nothing could be further from the truth. Turns out this concept of a blue wave was completely correct. We're not even done with the shellacking as of yet right now as I look around. We're down 30 seats as of now. Jim down in the House, down seven seats in the in the Senate. Just I'm speaking to Jim Paff of the conservative caucus dot com. the conservative caucus.com, the conservative caucus.com. Uh, Jim, what the heck happened?
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Speaker 2: Well, you, you had the right word. It's a shellacking.
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Speaker 3: Um, I thought, I did not believe the blue wave was happening, but I thought that Republicans were going to have a, at least a relatively bad night. So I think the answer to the, what happened problem is twofold. Um, First of all, it was the gas prices in a big way. People weren't feeling it. I was watching Fox News last night amongst, I mean, as I'm flipping around, and I was watching them roll through their most recent poll and the results of what people were thinking about the economy. And it was just breathtaking. I think we all knew that people were feeling that. But we got a sense of how much that they were feeling it. And the Iran war plays into that. So had we not gone into the Iran war, gas prices were already, I mean, screaming low at the beginning of the year. Hardly anybody was paying over $ 2 a gallon unless you were in California or Oregon or Washington. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So that was a big part of the issue.
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Speaker 3: To a certain degree, Donald Trump had promised not to go to wars, to do forever wars. He would argue it's not, and I also would. But that doesn't mean it wasn't perceived that way. Remember, in politics, perception is reality. You can make all the arguments you want. If you can't change someone's perception, that's what they're going with. And I would also say, at the core of it, for a lot of people in.
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Speaker 2: The MAGA base.
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Speaker 3: The failure on the Epstein files really got to a lot of people, and their motivations went down because it was a promise that wasn't kept.
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Speaker 2: Now, I argued the Epstein files....
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Speaker 3: You get everything out there and it's not going to change Washington, D.C. That problem is of a spiritual nature and a moral nature that is rooted in all mankind. And as I say, 6,000 years of recorded human history proves the moral depravity of man. But nonetheless, he said he was going to do it. He was going to bring it wide open.
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Speaker 2: And he didn't. But But I do not blame Donald Trump. I'm going to.
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Speaker 3: He has some blame, but I'm not going to blame him. The real problem is a Republican Congress that didn't want to do anything that spent this year instead of doing things like passing another reconciliation bill, build a further cut government. And FYI, people do not vote for Democrats expanding government. They voted against a party that wouldn't reduce it fully. So instead of doing a reconciliation bill, they passed a housing bill that no one's talking about.
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Speaker 2: Republicans had to make the case.
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Speaker 3: Here's why you got to keep us in a typical off-year election that does not go well for the party in power typically.
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Speaker 1: You know, I will push back on you just a little bit. Listen, I, for one, was for the Iran war. I am for the Iran war. What I am not for is is dragging this thing along. And I I'm sorry. I blame Trump and I blame I blame the Republican Party. I don't I don't think that he can escape this, even though I love the man. I love his courage.
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Speaker 2: I listen.
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Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of blame to him. to go around. I think you're spot on when it comes to the Republican Party. I would say this about the Iran war. If you're going to start a fight, you got to win it. And frankly, I was reading that we could have bombed for another couple of weeks and we would have been in a much better position. By then, gas prices would have been low. The president and the world, quite frankly, would have had a victory. In comes Jay And I know no one wants to say it, but his wing of the party and says, listen, let's do this memorandum of understanding. It was too late then. You were already in a thicket. You bomb the snot out of these people. You unleash Israel. You let them kill the Basij. The White House drew Israel back from killing the Basij and the IRGC early on. This fight could have been over. So if you're not going to win it, don't start it. Or if you're going to start it, start it after the midterms. I agree with you when it came to gas prices. Republicans were elected to do something. And this year it's like, who the heck is in charge? I do give Trump credit because he was the only one seemingly responsible. running hard to save the country. So I want to give him that credit. But at the end of the day, he's at the top of the ticket. Frankly, I think if gas prices were down, Jim, nobody cares. Nobody cares about Epstein. I got to be honest with you. The Epstein thing. And I don't want to minimize anyone's anyone's frustrations with the Epstein files. But I think you got about as much as people are going to get out of that. Donald Trump isn't a pedophile. I know they want to go after some leftists. The problem is there were a lot of those ladies that took payouts and they didn't want they didn't want that information out. Some
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of that stuff is just never going to going to come out. So it's like I understand the frustration, but. We've just given the we've just given the country over to the communists and socialists. And I'm sorry for me. Epstein files socialists. It's not even I'm sorry. That is that is a hard pill to swallow. Probably right. You're here to cut. You're here to you're here. You're an expert in this field. You've been around Washington, D.C. I mean, you've been around the people. This is insane to me. You're welcome to respond, but I do want to ask you, what does this do? I know this is early. I was getting mad at people talking about 2028 so quickly. I felt like J.D. Vance was already running. That made me really upset, to be honest with you. But now... I don't think this looks good for J.D. Vance going forward. I don't think this is good for J.D. Vance going forward.
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Speaker 3: So before I get to the 2028 thing, let me address the two other issues. First of all, I'm not aware that had they actually changed some of their bombing strategy that they would have gotten any further than they did in Iran.
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Speaker 2: One.
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Speaker 3: Two, the reason that he didn't go two weeks longer is because, and this is something people that were against the war are not talking about, is Donald Trump was following the law. He's had 64 days of kinetic action, stopped at 60 days, which is what the War Powers Act gives him.
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Speaker 2: The levity to do.
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Speaker 3: And the subsequent four days came after specific strikes against America. American citizens, which also falls within the War Powers Act. So he was restraining himself to the law. Let's keep that in mind. But you should have still taken that into account.
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Speaker 2: Okay. Secondly, Epstein files.
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Speaker 3: Listen, I get what you're saying, but the reality is when that was all... really hitting the fan at the end of 2025 beginning of 2026 yeah it it really dispirited a lot of people that's what i'm saying too i'm not saying the epstein files themselves okay i get it that's what.
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Speaker 1: That's fair that that's that's fair there's no doubt it dispirited people the rollout was a complete and utter disaster uh there is no doubt about that so i mean so that's So that's fair. Actually, I did address I mean, an earlier podcast. And when I sat in for people, I did address the the War Powers Act. But I still felt like there were opportunity after that where there was nothing the Democrats could have done to stop them. But I a fair point. Fair point. OK, so listen, I'm not even.
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Speaker 2: How do you.
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Speaker 1: How do you come back from how do you come back from this, Jim? And how long does it take to come back from something like this?
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Speaker 2: It could whips.
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Speaker 3: When you when you see the posts of Democrats saying lawyer up like there were some significant Democrats are going to be chairing committees, government reform and oversight is one of them where they're already saying they're going to be bringing people in. Democrats don't understand yet, it doesn't seem, that what happened last night was not an affirmation of Democrats.
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Speaker 2: It was a repudiation of Republicans.
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Speaker 3: And just like there were missed opportunities this time around. donald trump did a lot of great things but he didn't do enough um when you don't when if they're going to think that they've got the the mandate they don't the american people are mad because of the economy that is literally what happened this time.
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Speaker 1: No, I think you're absolutely spot on. They are going to overreach You're right. Ultimately, it came down to the gas prices. Frankly, if the gas prices were as low as they were in earlier this year, the first quarter of this year, I don't think we're having this conversation. This conversation today, you know, and all of the Trump accomplishments and they are plentiful. The Republicans did a horrible job at messaging that. But even still, it came down to gas prices. So anyway, when we get back, Jim, I want to ask you, who do we fire in the White House? If anyone today who should Trump fire? This is the Carl Jackson show. This is Jim Paff. What the conservative caucus president of the conservative caucus will be right back. OK, welcome back, Jim. Listen, before we went to break here, I asked you who the who the presidential fire. I offer this and I want to see what you think here. And I know you're going to have your own take, but I do want to get your take on what am I about to say? I had E.J. Antonia, the Heritage Foundation on a couple of months ago. And he was adamantly against the Iran war. He and I disagreed on that, like you and I disagree on that. However, I'd agree with the timing. Frankly, I will say even though we have our differences, I would argue, yeah, you either start this thing after the midterms, I do believe that it could have been wrapped up quicker, but we'll never know. But E.J. Antoni said, listen, you can't fight two wars. He was a fan of the tariffs, even though there were some disagreements with the way that tariffs were being used. But he was a big fan of the tariffs. He actually convinced me when it came to the tariffs. But he said, we are going to pay the price now. If we are going into the midterms fighting two wars because people are going to be filling it at the gas pump and in other areas of their life. And if we don't stop this now, we're not going to be able to be able to roll it back in time for the midterms.
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Speaker 3: E.J.
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Speaker 1: And Tony was spot on.
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Speaker 2: Listen, E.J. 's brilliant, and I.
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Speaker 3: Almost breathlessly read every post he puts up on X because he really does understand where these numbers are. He should have been made secretary of– Yes, he should have. He's fantastic, and I do agree with him.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: You know, war is a challenging thing, and you can never take it lightly, and you can't deal with it flippantly. And I'm not saying that Donald Trump was being flippant about it, about the war itself, but I do think he was almost flippant about the timing of it. But that having been said, so who needs to change? I will say this. It's going to seem shocking to a lot of people because I think she is a competent lady. But I think you've got to move on from Suzy Wiles. I heard that last night. That's a key factor here. Not because I think she's some horrible person. She had her cancer thing. I think she needs to go deal with that kind of stuff. And you need new blood in that central location. Where where everything's coming through and there are I guarantee you a lot of people maybe even like an E.J.
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Speaker 2: And Tony, but he's not the best choice.
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Speaker 3: But there are a lot of people who could be in that position to direct traffic and to drive the train. The chief of staff in the White House drives the train. And it's really critical because you've got a human being sitting in the Oval Office who can't.
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Speaker 2: Be aware of everything.
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Speaker 3: And someone's got to make decisions on what gets to him. And that doesn't always work so well. And I don't think it has worked well. There are a lot of decisions here that were poorly made in this election and poorly considered throughout the last two years. And you need a chief of staff to help you with that. When I was a chief of staff for a member of Congress, and it's different than being a White House chief of staff. I'm not trying to make a direct connection to it. But when I was a chief of staff, The guys I worked for were successful because I allow I shouldn't say allowed. I made sure that they were able to be them. And I took everything off their plate that they didn't need to have to deal with. But I never filtered out things that would that that have the. received it would have helped them be them. That chief of staff role is really critical. So that's where I go. I don't, I can't think of any cabinet member that I would change. Maybe Markway Mullen. I'm not a big fan, but there might be a couple others, but, but his, he's got a fantastic cabinet and I hope that they all stay because he's going to need their help over the next two years.
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Speaker 1: Okay. So I've heard a couple of names in the past and I, and I, I would, And I ask you this. Trump is a unique figure like like I've never seen before in politics. Not in my lifetime. I mean, it's not even close. I'm wondering he's kind of I'd imagine he's kind of his own own chief of staff. I mean, I'm not I'm not even sure anyone could come in and completely curtail that. What about Howard Lutnick and Peter Peter Navarro? Because I've heard those names. And I'm not sure. And I've heard those names from economists that as well. What do you what do you think about that?
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Speaker 3: Well, Peter Navarro is somewhat inconsequential in turn. I mean, he's not inconsequential as a person, but in terms of what would make a difference if you made changes.
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Speaker 2: I think that you.
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Speaker 1: Could take it or his influence on the president, Jim. I mean, not even his position, but his influence.
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Speaker 3: He's always going to have influence with him.
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Speaker 2: He'll always have influence with him.
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Speaker 3: Howard Lutnick is a little bit different because one of the things that I'm displeased with. And I don't dislike Howard Lutnick in a significant way, but one of the things I'm displeased with is that there has been no aggressive move to change this census thing. There has been nothing announced to fix our census problems, which centers around the fact that we're counting illegal aliens that positively benefit Democrats when it comes to apportionment of congressional seats. That's coming up in four years. We are going to be doing a census. If we don't completely fix that issue, that becomes a problem. And it is way problematic as it is now. So that I haven't seen. I also am not certain. If he handled the Canada thing properly, he claims that he didn't make that thing stir up. But as I consider it more and hear all the interactions, he very well may have been the person that made that so horrible.
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Speaker 2: Going into the election.
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Speaker 3: But again, listen, EJ's right. There's going to be a lot of discussion that the tariffs were a problem with affordability so-called this year. Sorry, I hit my camera. And that is, I don't think that's true at all. There have been some tariff effects in prices, but that has not been the pricing effect. It has truly been diesel fuel. But there's one other issue that no one's talking about. Listen, there's no doubt that there's been a modest rise in inflation since the Iran war.
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Speaker 2: And that has been very frustrating to people.
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Speaker 3: They're going to fill up their gas tank, their 17-gallon gas tank, for $ 45, $ 50. And it's just way too much. But I have to say.
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Speaker 3: There is a real, real need to– I even lost my train of thought there. But anyway, so the tariffs– they're going to say the tariffs are the problem, but the real problem is gas prices.
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Speaker 2: And the real problem– that has to be fixed.
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Speaker 3: And he's not going to be able to extract himself from the Iran war and fix it because the Strait of Hormuz is going to be a problem again.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I honestly this is I mean, it's going to be a complex situation. I honestly believe whatever is going to be done and needs to be done before before January. And it's going to have to be done in cohorts with with Israel. I will say this about the tariffs. I don't think the tariffs in and of themselves are are an issue. I recall what E.J. Antoni said was the
issue that he had is you want to make sure he loved the tariffs. He's a big fan of tariffs. Again, he talked to he convinced me on on the tariffs. He thought it was a good thing. I thought it was a good thing. And I do believe they are a good thing. But I do have a problem with Lutnick's ability to be able to be able to bring them home. I mean, you've been arguing for this. It's just a compounding effect. It was the gas prices. I want to be clear. But there is a compounding effect. And his argument was you can't have two two wars. going on at the same time because you have that compounding effect. People see it at the gas pump. and then they start looking for it in other places. And I feel like Lutnick, frankly, has done a horrible job of, hey, we got this trade war. These people want to make deals and then they're not making deals. And then instead of three months, six months later, we're talking about this stuff into the midterms. And I'm like, no, you use these things to bring back manufacturing and you use them to get to a free trade policy with our friends. And I just think he's been, frankly, horrible at it. And honestly, I'm sold on tariffs now. I don't think they're a major issue, but I don't think he's given the president the best advice.
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Speaker 3: That's. They're an easy target because people keep saying that they drive inflation. By the way, inflation is created by the Federal Reserve. It's not created by tariffs. It's not created by gas prices. That's price inflation. That's not base inflation. But let me just say this. There are going to be many things on the back end of this administration that people are going to be glad that Donald Trump did. The tariff thing, not because of tariffs themselves, but because it has reset our trade relationships.
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Speaker 1: I'm in agreement with you there.
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Speaker 2: I'm in agreement with you.
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Speaker 3: And we needed to get out of these internationalist organizations like the WTO, NAFTA, which became USC.
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Speaker 2: Those are wrong.
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Speaker 3: We need unilateral trade agreements with nations. We also needed to reset the numbers between nations. That's going to be helpful. What he's done in the Middle East is going to be remembered forever. And he's radically transformed in a positive way the structure of how we trade oil around the nation, the world that benefits our nation. These and other things are going to be remembered. He has been a positive and consequential president. He just chose the wrong time to do a war. And a couple other things that are frustrating.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And let me say for the record here, I mean, I agree with you. I love the way he used tariffs. I was against them at first. Love the way he used them. I'd argue there should be someone else in his ear besides Howard Lutnick, like E.J. and Tony.
00:21:47
Speaker 2: To close these close these deals. But you're right.
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Speaker 1: He's going to go down, in
my opinion, as one of the best foreign policy presidents ever, as well as bringing policy manufacturing back to the U.S. That I surely appreciate. Can you stick with us?
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Okay. All right.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the program. We're speaking with Jim Paff of the Conservative Caucus. The conservative caucus dot com is where you can go to find him. And Jim has a lot of experience in politics and on the Hill working on working as a staffer, working as a chief of staff to people like Thomas Massey, as a matter of fact. So Jim knows how the sausage is made inside of D.C. And it is not a it's a pretty disgusting, disgusting place. You need people like like Jim that can navigate through that. And now he's taken his talents and he's he's created this the conservative caucus. And so we rely on him for information. And when it comes to Washington, D.C., these elections, the polls, all this kind of all this kind of good stuff. OK, so. So, Jim, let me offer this. There was a bit of a silver lining in my state of Florida, although the numbers weren't it wasn't a blowout.
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Speaker 3: I mean.
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Speaker 1: I thought the gubernatorial race would be would be closer than a lot of other people thought, based upon things that I was hearing on the ground. Angie Nixon, when she first decided to run against Ashley Moody, I knew the support for her was bigger than people thought. However, however, as that race rolled on, I was like, oh, this may be a Val Demings, Marco Rubio situation, even in the midterms. because I just thought the lady was just too nutty, not that bright. But it turns out, and Hugh had made this great point when I was on with them last night. Basically, candidate quality didn't matter this election. We were going to get this shellacking because of the gas prices, I guess, regardless.
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Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to slightly disagree with you, whom I've known for many years. I mean, he's generally correct. This was going to be a shellacking. But candidate quality is what lost South Carolina to a Democrat senator, right?
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 3: And and and Nixon, who is, if you could believe it, worse than Val Demings, they called the Senate race before they called the governor's race in Florida, which I was surprised with.
00:24:32
Speaker 2: Because Byron was a known commodity.
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Speaker 3: Byron donalds is a known commodity ashley moody's kind of a little i mean she's she's known a little bit but even in for florida with what she had done before she was appointed to replace marco rubio she was not a largely known commodity and yet she was able to pull that off more quickly which speaks well to the people of florida who i think still are freedom loving and still anti-socialist anti-communist yeah and and perceive democrats to be that way now um you know i think to the candidate quality thing. I think there were a lot of candidate quality issues.
Ken Paxton was a candidate quality issue. And again, yeah, there was going to be a shellacking. I tell people regularly for the last few months, you know, if you think that Ken Paxton's a bad candidate, John Cornyn would have not been any better at all.
00:25:25
Speaker 1: I agree.
00:25:26
Speaker 3: He'd have lost that probably by as much and possibly more, maybe a little bit less. But I mean, it was going to be about the same.
00:25:33
Speaker 1: Well, let me say this. To Hugh's credit, he offered this caveat. I don't even think Jim Cornyn would have survived this. I think he would have got it shellacked, too. So to Hugh's credit, honestly, when he said that, I was surprised. And that's when he said, listen, this was about gas prices. And so Jim Cornyn would not have survived this. So I would, to his credit, and that kind of took me aback. But I was glad that he said it. Go ahead.
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Speaker 3: But in South Carolina, where Ralph Norman could have gotten that nomination and Alan Wilson won as governor. Yeah, I guarantee I was watching Fox News and Trey Gowdy. I'm acquainted with Trey. I worked on the Hill when he was there. But Trey just doesn't get it sometimes. Because he said Ralph Norman would have lost worse. And that is just absurd. Alan Wilson won not by as much as he should have, but definitely relatively comfortable. I guarantee you Ralph Norman would have done as well or better than that. There's no doubt about it. And that was a bad pick. That was a candidate problem. And there were a few of those. But yes, it was a shellacking. We might have done better in certain areas with better candidate choice, but it wouldn't have made a huge difference based upon what the result was.
00:26:55
Speaker 1: Okay, Jim, as quickly as we can, I want to go down the gamut with you first. Texas. Texas is blue. I mean, you get you get Tallarico. You get I forget the lady's name, but this lady is a left wing nut that that defeated Greg Abbott handily. I mean, the state legislature. Honestly, that is I mean, it wasn't just a shellacking. It's a shellacking that's going to have major consequences. So I want to take you down some of these senatorial races, but also Texas as a whole. Talk to us about Texas. I mean, you're talking about the 2030 2030 census. How is this going to look? How long is it going to take, you know, theoretically for Republicans to be able to recover from this if we can't?
00:27:43
Speaker 3: They're going to have to connect with Hispanic voters again. Donald Trump was able to bring them in. You have had a fight between the rhino faction of Texas and the conservative faction. I think one of the great discredits of the night goes to Karl Rove and John Cornyn and the establishment wing of the Republican Party saying, including the Bushes in Texas. They could have gone all in for Kim Paxton and Greg Abbott, and they did not. They did not go all in. They didn't try to raise money. John Cornyn could have used what is still a bankroll
that he has to directly support from his campaign fund, Ken Paxton directly. He could have done that. He didn't do it. He could have gone out and raised money for him. He could have told people, listen, yes, we disagreed and this was a horrible fight, but we could win this. They didn't do that. So this is a repudiation of RINO Republicans and establishment Republicans.
00:28:45
Speaker 2: So that's what happened in Texas. Is it totally realigned? I don't think so. But we do know that it is still going to be a question.
00:28:55
Speaker 3: And so you're going to have to figure out the Hispanic vote again and what made them happy with Donald Trump. And you're going to have to do that. I don't have a lot of confidence Republicans will want to. And I don't think that fight's going away in Texas. But if it did, it would help.
00:29:09
Speaker 1: Well, I do think this gives as bad as it is. I think this gives us a great opportunity, the Republican Party, to find some diamonds in the rough. Although I would I would say this about the Henson lady in Iowa. I thought I thought she stood a real chance. She seemed like a really good, good candidate. Your take real quickly there. No, definitely a good candidate.
00:29:31
Speaker 3: I actually was very surprised by that outcome. I was not surprised about Kansas because Roger Marshall is a horrible candidate.
00:29:38
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:29:38
Speaker 2: Kind of weak.
00:29:39
Speaker 1: Let me, let me, let me pause for just a second. Cause I was going to go there next. That race was so frustrating to me, and nobody's talking about this. They got the Tallarico in Kansas. In Kansas, Jim. That one, based on our conversation the other day, that is the only reason that it didn't shock me as much, given the information that you had shared with us here on the Carl Jackson show. So I do appreciate that. But I got to tell you, no one's talking about Kansas that much. And I think that is a huge, a huge concern. You got Tallarico in Kansas for six years. Another Tallarico.
00:30:22
Speaker 2: No, that's right. And by the way, though, and I'm I'm slightly biased.
00:30:26
Speaker 3: OK, so I was chief of staff for my still very close friend, Tim Heals Camp, who represented the first district of Kansas after the Tea Party wave that rhinos. Put Roger Marshall up to take Tim out. And they actually said in their commercials that Tim was an establishment Republican because he had served by that time for six terms. How absurd that was or three terms.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: Sorry. But anyway, Roger Marshall was always weak.
00:30:58
Speaker 3: He was rolling on a red tide in Kansas for a long period of time.
00:31:03
Speaker 1: Was he just a horrible campaigner? I don't understand that title.
00:31:07
Speaker 2: He didn't campaign at all.
00:31:08
Speaker 3: They thought they had it locked up. He didn't raise any money. He didn't put any effort into it. This was totally on Roger Marshall. This is another candidate choice, although
it wasn't a choice. He was a sitting senator. But this is another candidate problem that is real for last night because there's no way that Kansas should have been lost.
00:31:24
Speaker 2: And it was lost because Roger Marshall, was not smart.
00:31:29
Speaker 3: And Adam Hamilton's campaign was very smart to get their oppo research in. They made him out to be someone who threw women, women and men that he served as a doctor into jail because he went after them for medical bills.
00:31:42
Speaker 1: Right.
00:31:42
Speaker 3: And they were successful at putting that on Marshall.
00:31:46
Speaker 2: And that's why I lost.
00:31:47
Speaker 1: And by the way, I know the story behind that. That is a total sham. I mean, the way that story they put him on the defense. And the guy just seemingly could never recover for it.
00:31:58
Speaker 3: Carl, I'm going to tell you what, I believe the story to be true, but that that goes into a lot of detail.
00:32:03
Speaker 1: OK, OK, well, I'm man, I'm willing to talk about Roger Marshall's very weak, very weak. What can you stay with us for one more segment or do you need to go?
00:32:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can do it for another segment. Yeah. OK.
00:32:18
Speaker 1: All right. All right. More with Jim Paff of the Conservative Caucus. Gabe, how much time do we have? Because I want to I just want to go. OK, I want to go through as quickly as we can. The rest of these senatorial races that we lost that that I thought could have been one or at least where we should have kept it closed. I want to get Jim Jim Paff's take on this with the Conservative Caucus. This is a guy that knows the inner workings of D.C. He has connections there. Again, he was chief of staff at one point for Thomas Massey. So he knows how this stuff works. So I just honestly, we got to figure this thing out. We got to get this thing turned around. It's going to take some time, but we got to do it. And I do think we have to find better conservative candidates going forward. OK, bottom line with Roger Marshall is the guy should have done better campaigning. I heard him give interviews and explain exactly what was happening with the building. So it wasn't everything the left had made it out to be. But by the time that he had to explain it. He looked completely he just looked like a mean guy, a mean doctor, if you will. And this was a guy that, to my knowledge, was going around and helping people. But, you know, he gave he gave people with no money, you know, free service and then the lower income people opportunity to pay a minimal price. And then after three times or something like that, that they didn't pay anything. There was a collection service that would automatically. Anyway, it's a long convoluted story. It wasn't everything that it was cracked up to be, but he did a horrible job campaigning. He got on the defense and now we've lost Kansas. And my concern is I don't think it's going to be as easy to win red areas, given what we saw last night. With a place like Kansas. And am I am I taking that too far, Jim? Does a better candidate solve the issue in a place like Kansas?
00:34:14
Speaker 2: Well, certainly it does. I think Roger Marshall is just a horrible candidate.
00:34:18
Speaker 3: And he's just been, like I said before, riding the red tide that has been in Kansas for some time.
00:34:25
Speaker 2: But, you know.
00:34:30
Speaker 3: It is really important to understanding about Kansas. They elect Democrat governors. Remember Kathleen Sebelius, who worked in the Obama administration?
00:34:38
Speaker 1: Oh, right, right.
00:34:39
Speaker 3: She has been governor of the state. They were attempting to replace a Republican governor or a Democrat governor, Laura Kelly, who's been serving for the last eight years. So so it's not like this is the kind of surprise that should throw everybody onto the floor. They do elect Democrats statewide. The problem in in Roger Marshall is if you are explaining you're losing, that is really a hard fact.
00:35:09
Speaker 2: Of politics.
00:35:10
Speaker 3: And if he had not, when you are a can, when you're a candidate, you definitely need to do opposition research on your opponent. You also need to have an opposition research person do opposition research on you without you directing it. So you can actually know, because a lot of times you can have a blind.
00:35:28
Speaker 2: Spot to that. He didn't realize this.
00:35:31
Speaker 3: Listen, is there a reasonable explanation about the whole billing issue? There probably is, and he attempted to make it on Sean Hannity. But I got to tell you, we have doctors run for political office in a lot of places, and many of them have done similar things to what Roger Marshall has done, and this didn't come out with them. That's why I suspect there's probably a little bit more to it that's true than even he's willing to admit. Now, is that disqualifying? No, I don't know that it is. What the real problem here was that Adam Hamilton got the research. Roger Marshall wasn't doing any fundraising leading up to this. He should have been spending the last six years raising 20 million dollars, which he could have done.
00:36:17
Speaker 2: And he didn't do it.
00:36:18
Speaker 3: He got outspent and outsmarted by a Democrat candidate who, though. Definitely a Talafrico is still like Talarico competent as speaking on the trail and that can move voters.
00:36:33
Speaker 1: OK, I want to go through several more races. I want to go as quickly as we possibly can. And I do want you to speak to this because this is a. This is a general problem. And this is what I do appreciate about President Trump as well. The man he threw, I mean, he laid everything on the table. These rallies, I mean, from rally to rally, his age, his energy. It was absolutely phenomenal. But I have a problem in general. And I know this is Washington, D.C. Midterms are bad. I'm like, why accept the narrative? Make the people happy. Deregulate. Make sure
people are getting more money in their pockets and fight like heck to make Americans lives better instead of accepting the narrative. I feel like President Trump is the only one that got that. It drives me insane that we just accept that. Now, having said that, obviously, we got to go on to go on to some of these other senatorial races. And I want to pack in as many as possible with the short time we have remaining here. Jim Elsaid, Michigan.
00:37:30
Speaker 2: Your take.
00:37:33
Speaker 3: Blue Wave caused Mike Rogers to lose that, not El-Sayed. Now, there was a massive turnout in Dearborn County there, which is where a lot of this Muslim population lives in the Detroit area. So that did help him. But honestly, I'm convinced that Mike Rogers would have won that if it had not been for this Blue Wave turnout. that we saw emerging. And I just want to say this. I did not call it. I did not know it. But Mark Mitchell and Oh, gosh, Barris. I forgot his first name suddenly. They had been saying for a long period of time that they did see a very real blue wave happening. Mark was formerly of Rasmus and now of Honest Poll. And he was getting waylaid by people on the right, but he was doing the polling. He was calling this for a long time. I didn't even believe him, or at least not the extent of it. I knew we were going to have something negative happen, but I didn't realize it would be this big.
00:38:38
Speaker 2: He called it.
00:38:39
Speaker 3: Rich Barris, that's who I want to say of Big Data Poll. They were calling this for weeks and weeks and people have been haranguing them and they got it right. They got the sentiment right.
00:38:50
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow.
00:38:51
Speaker 1: I got to say this. I got to give them give them credit. I know a lot of conservatives don't like them now, but Eric Erickson, I paid attention to a couple of things he said, and he said he had to get information in the from a White House, White House sources that they were very concerned about. about where the races seem to be trending and thought they had enough time to turn it around and it would be gas prices. I know a lot of conservatives don't seem to like him today, but he turned out to be right as well.
00:39:23
Speaker 2: I've known Eric.
00:39:24
Speaker 3: Erickson since at least 2002, I believe, is when we first met. met, when he was starting Red State. He actually helped me through this a lot. Listen, I don't count on Eric Erickson to have the best analysis of where the Republican Party needs to go, but he is right on this particular point. I think it's really important to know what the gas prices did. And again, as and I said on your show prior to this, when people are walking up to that pump once or twice a week, it.
00:39:56
Speaker 2: Was just haranguing them. What can you do? I got forty five bucks for my tiny little car. I can't do it.
00:40:05
Speaker 1: Honestly, listen, I got to say it. I mean, I'm I'm feeling it. I'm a blue collar guy. I'm feeling it.
And every time I went. To fill up, I'm thinking, okay, I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm like, I'm feeling it. Poor people have to fill up. It's like this is this is this is painful and it does impact everything else.
00:40:32
Speaker 2: It's just true.
00:40:33
Speaker 1: And frankly, what's frustrating is conservatives and Republicans are the only ones that want to solve this issue. So even if you're mad at Trump over this is what frustrated me. Sorry, I just got to vent for a second. Even if you're mad about the Iran war, this is temporary. I mean, I've listed on this podcast 25 policy issues Democrats passed under Biden to intentionally increase gas prices. Just insane.
00:40:59
Speaker 3: OK.
00:41:01
Speaker 1: OK, moving on, moving on. You had Susan Collins in Maine that went down. I got to admit, I thought even with a blue wave, she would survive. Your take.
00:41:13
Speaker 3: I was equally shocked. And Troy Jackson is a weirdo, by the way. Consider the weirdos that won last night. James Tallarico, Adam Hamilton, and Troy Jackson. They are weird people. And I'd say Adam Hamilton is actually evil. And two of them.
00:41:32
Speaker 1: I would agree with you.
00:41:33
Speaker 3: Two of them, Tallarico and Hamilton... Literally speak against the Christian faith. And by the way, before we close, I do have something theological that I'd like to say to you.
00:41:44
Speaker 2: But this is what's even weirder about it.
00:41:46
Speaker 3: Because both of those states have a lot of folks of evangelical and Catholic faith that are very conservative. And they did not push back against those guys. That was actually surprising. But Susan Collins really did surprise me. When Paula Page is winning, FYI.
00:42:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:42:08
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a shocker to me. Another race, just real quickly, I thought would upset the apple cart. Michelle Tafoya in Minnesota. I mean, she ran, I thought, a fabulous campaign. Obviously, I don't know the inner workings. But I thought she would fare better, even possibly pull off and upset. Your thoughts?
00:42:30
Speaker 3: If she's going to continue living in Minnesota, she needs to run in the next election cycle.
00:42:34
Speaker 2: Period. She's a fantastic candidate.
00:42:37
Speaker 3: My only problem with her is she came out as a pro-abort, and that does bother me.
00:42:42
Speaker 2: I did not know that.
00:42:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, she said I'm a pro-choice candidate, and et cetera, et cetera. And listen, she's trying to appeal to people in Minnesota, and she actually may really believe that. That's my only negative with her. In terms of winning Minnesota, she just needs another cycle. That's all she needs, because she's going to become a congressman or senator from there.
00:43:04
Speaker 2: Hmm. OK.
00:43:05
Speaker 1: All right. Well, that's that's good to know. All right. Less than a minute. Jim, closing arguments here. The conservative caucus dot com. Jim Papp.
00:43:12
Speaker 3: Well, I was just considering this morning as I was thinking through this. We got to remember. There are basic factors that come into play. And there's going to be a real kerfuffle after this. People getting upset, blaming people. But let's remember these things. And I'm saying this to Christians and Jews who know the Old Testament. David, Hezekiah, Josiah all followed God. but made major mistakes in their lives that they paid a price for. But also, so people reacted to this. But I'm telling you, voters, keep this in mind, too. The children of Israel in the desert, they rebelled against God, too. We need to take into account what we need to do for our futures and how to secure it. There are lots of consequences of these elections, and we need to get our hearts and minds right so.
00:44:11
Speaker 2: That we can do good things in the future. Okay.
00:44:14
Speaker 3: All right.
00:44:15
Speaker 1: Jim Paff, the Conservative Caucus, thank you so much.
00:44:18
Speaker 2: Thanks, Carl.