What's more important than the media, there's this thing called ObamaCare, which was President Obama's signature domestic achievement. It won Republicans the House in 2014 - 2010. It won Republicans the Senate in 2014.
I think [Donald Trump] will do something on immigration.
[Donald Trump] will try to renegotiate the trade deals a little bit.
There are a few things [Donald Trump] has been pretty clear he'll do. A big infrastructure program that he'll get bipartisan support for.
Republican Congressmen and senators will be in a very interesting place, where they have to support the president-elect - president - what will be President [Donald] Trump when they - when they agree with him, try to guide him in certain ways, I think oppose him on some things.
It will be an unusual dynamic [in Congress]. It won't be like the rallying behind President [Barack] Obama in 2009 or behind President [George W.] Bush, even at the beginning of his presidency, or even [Bill] Clinton in '93, when he got his budget through on a partisan vote.
It's been an unusual election [2016].
I was "Never Trump." But it turned out never republican was really the theme of this election.
Donald Trump beat Jeb Bush and beat Hillary Clinton. And when everyone thinks of Donald Trump that's pretty impressive.
You all would be really shocked, if you were dropped back down into when I went to college, by the narrowness of the opinions you could get just by reading newspapers and magazines and watching TV.
My sense from talking to college students is that you have a healthier sense of the diversity of opinions or arguments or analysis about issues. In our day it was just sort of, "Well gee, this is what the news says so that's the way it is." It didn't really get challenged that much.
I still would say generally that more people have access [to] and take advantage of more diversity of opinion than was once .
I'm happy to have interns at The Weekly Standard and happy to have readers of The Weekly Standard, but if you all tell me that you were busy reading Plato and [Lev] Tolstoy and playing violin in the orchestra, I'd say that was great. I wouldn't tell you to take time out from that to get involved in political journalism.
Obviously I think politics is interesting and important and educational.
I am on the whole a defender of the current, despite being a conservative. I mean, I think things are better than when I was younger.
I like [ Rick] Santorum personally and respect him, but you wouldn't say that he was really that strong of an opponent. At the end of the day it wasn't like [Ronald] Reagan running against [George] Bush, or [George W.] Bush against [John] McCain, even. It's sort of surprising that Romney had as much trouble as he did, and I think it shows a weakness in appeal to those voters.
At the end of the day,[Mitt] Romney was pro-life, but [Rick] Santorum was more fervently pro-life, and had been for longer. They're all going to repeal Obamacare, but Romney has once endorsed something like it. In the old days, there really were differences on fundamental issues, even on foreign policy, [for which] [Newt] Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum were pretty similar.
If you look at the polls - the conservatives are fine.I think there will be a fair amount of enthusiasm, or at least motivation. They very much want to remove President [Barack] Obama.
Going from three TV channels to broadcast TV to cable to talk radio; obviously the online explosion has changed things.
Conservatism as an "ism" is always going to be somewhat in tension with a political party.
Of course there are different forms of conservatism. I would say just analytically that the Republican Party is more thoroughly conservative and the Democratic Party is more thoroughly liberal today than has been the case for most of modern history.
People used to complain in the 50s and 60s and even in the 70s when I was in school, studying political science, that "if only we could have two political parties that presented a choice, but there were all these liberal Republicans and there were all these southern Democrats who are conservative so people just don't have a clear choice."
I don't think you want political parties that are entirely driven by some extremely doctrinal ideology.
Actually, not because of anyone's intention but just because of some sociological and some other things that have happened over 25, 30 years, the parties have sorted themselves out much more ideologically, which has some benefits and some costs.
I think there was a moment in the middle part of the century into the 60s, 70s when at least elite journalism claimed to be non-partisan. You can go back and look at it and wonder about how non-partisan it was.
