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[Music]
CENK: As Charles Barkley once famously said, the Republicans lost their minds. That's when
he stopped being a Republican, that's when I stopped being a Republican.
[Music]
My politics in some ways tremendously transform and in some interesting ways, pretty much
where it used to be. So let me explain. I used to be a Republican, so that trips people
out because now I'm considered, y'know, probably by Washington a very serious progressive,
seriously to the left of President Obama that's for sure. Now so how did that happen? Well,
I was a liberal Republican in the Northeast. I grew up in New Jersey and back then, I know
it's hard to remember this, but Republicans were not crazy. They were perfectly reasonable
people who believed in small government, we don't overregulation, less taxes. Now, here's
what people forget, back when I was growing up, the highest marginal tax rate was 70%.
So is 70% too high? Yes. Is 35% too low? Yes. Reasonable people should understand that.
It's an easy concept, but both sides are stuck in quicksand. Democrats say higher taxes,
but especially Republicans. Lower, lower! Never low enough! The question isn't how—whether
taxes should be cut or increased, the question is where is the proper level of taxes that
you get the maximum amount of benefit for society. Right? So that's point number one.
Point number two is that I thought they were going to balance the budget. Well, it turns
out they didn't. Reagan increased the deficit by 188%. Bush increased the deficit I think
in the 80% range. And so and who balanced the budget? The Democrats did, so and who
was for smaller government? Actually Clinton/Gore was. So I looked at the evidence and I thought,
well I guess those guys care more about the stuff that I care about. And then, as Charles
Barkley once famously said, the Republicans lost their minds and that's when he stopped
being a Republican, that's when I stopped being a Republican. I thought that they were
in favor of balanced budgets and smaller government, but it turned out that wasn't true. They never
balanced the budget and not only that, they're not even in favor of smaller government. If
you think about it, pro-life position is gigantic government. That's government saying I'm gonna
tell you exactly what you're going to do with your body, and then you go down the list.
Smoking pot. Nope. I'm gonna tell you what you can and can't put into your body. Y'know,
contraception. As long as they are intruding into your private life, they love big government.
So once you realize the gigantic hypocrisy of the current day Republican party—not
of conservative principled positions, but of the Republican party, it's just really
really hard to stay in that party.
[Music]
The original conservative position is to not have military adventurism and bring our army
to all different shores. It's to stay at home, protect the homeland, etc. so if you're a
conservative, you should think, okay, how can I decrease spending and I'm not gonna
just take it out of y'know the middle class and the poor, not just defense spending but
also the thing you should be most upset about it crony capitalism which they mention from
time to time, but unfortunately they've been massively diverted on that. Right now, you
get 4 billion dollars a year at a bare minimum in oil subsidies. Now why are we giving subsidies
to the most profitable companies in the world? That is anti-free market. It is not a conservative
position. Why don't we give subsidies to farmers, why don't we give subsidies to all these different
companies. I mean the bailouts of the banks were horrendous. That is the most anti-conservative
thing you can imagine brought to you by Republicans which to them should be maddening. If you're
a real conservative. If you're a real conservative and you're fiscally conservative and you wanna
balance the budget, from time to time you have to increase revenue depending on your
context, so—and Reagan brought down taxes because in his context, the 70% bracket was
way too high, but he also raised taxes 11 different times in his term because he thought,
y'know what, the budget is getting out of control. Which it was, that's why he raised
them that times. But the political spectrum in Washington DC has moved massively to the
right, so the point not only that Ronald Reagan could not get elected in a Republican primary
today, I think he would have no chance in being elected in a democratic primary. They'd
say oh that guy gave amnesty to illegal immigrants, which he did, right? First of all, your immediately
eliminated from a democratic primary let alone a Republican one. He negotiated with terrorists,
he gave arms to Iran. You go down the list. He ran from Lebanon. Okay, he is the exact
opposite of what the Republicans claim they want in a president today while they hoist
up this ghost of Reagan as a magical mythical conservative figure.
[Music]
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