Jay Cost discusses the frustration in Washington leadership in light of Obama and Boehner’s budget deal on today’s Federalist Radio Hour. Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and author of the book What’s So Bad About Cronyism?
Cost said he thinks the strategy that Republicans are employing is to make as little noise as possible between now and the presidential election. “They want to give people confidence that they can vote for a Republican presidential candidate and put Republicans completely in charge of the government without things going crazy,” he said.
Cost also offers his insight on the 2016 campaigns and their candidates, SuperPACs, and the Carson/Trump fight for poll numbers. He said that Donald Trump should be wary of attacking Ben Carson’s religiosity. “I think that he has not the first clue of how religiosity works among conservative Christians in Western Iowa,” he said. “That is a very dangerous play, to go after Carson for being a Seventh-day Adventist.”
Tim Carney, senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner, joins the conversation on the budget deal, adding that Republican leadership hasn’t figured out to deal with Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Tea Party in a balancing way that works.
Reactions are going to differ between Capitol Hill and the rest of the country. “You’re going to have the military-industrial complex caring a lot more about breaking the budget caps than you are going to have average grassroots Americans care about keeping the budget caps,” he said.
Carney later suggests that the party has suffered on its foreign policy front and this plays out in the 2016 race. “The fact is there just isn’t a foreign policy infrastructure on the right that really puts forward the arguments of restraint,” he said. “I think the way presidents campaign when it comes to foreign policy, there is such little correlation to how to they end up governing on foreign policy.”
Regarding the CNBC GOP debate, Ben explains how Reince Priebus’ promise to improve this year’s debates is being faulted on by tonight’s moderator, John Harwood. Ben said that Harwood is a typical liberal, insulated reporter who has nothing to offer.
“We have lots of liberals on this show. We have lots of liberal reporters on this show,” he said. “But they are aware enough of their own personal biases to set that aside and offer fair reporting. We wouldn’t be interesting in having people on if they were just hacks.”
Click here to subscribe or listen here:
