Broken Potholes featuring Erick Erickson
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Welcome to Broken Potholes, the show that crashes head-on into the disastrous, progressive policies destroying our greatest cities. And now, the host of Broken Potholes, Sam Stone.

Welcome, everybody, to the inaugural episode of Broken Potholes. My name is Sam Stone. I'm here in the studio with my very good friend and one of the smartest people I know, certainly the smartest people I know in politics, which sometimes isn't saying that much. But Chuck Warren, who has worked 20, 30 years in this industry, he's seen it all, watched the dissolution of

America that is happening today all across this country and has graciously agreed to join us in studio and talk about it and talk about some of the ways we're going to fix this stuff and start moving forward. We're going to patch those potholes. Well, thank you for having me, Sam. My mother will love that introduction and she'll share it with many of her friends. I think my mother's going to have this one on tape too, although she's still ticked at me over COVID and my recklessness.

So I'm not sure I will be able to have that conversation until maybe this time next year. She realizes you have not had COVID, though, right? You know, I actually did have it back at the very start of March. And they were out here and I didn't get the chance to visit them. They've been locked down since that time because they're in their 90s. So they are really kind of suffering the most. It's really been awful to watch what's going on there. Well, and they're in New York, too, right? So it's extra...

Sky is falling. Yeah, the sky is falling. You're hearing it every day. And what's really amazing to me is the disconnect between the reality of COVID, which is it's real, it's bad, but it's not the overriding life challenge.

destroying thing that is being made out in the press. And if you're in New York or these big cities, you're getting it 24-7. It's really painful. And they're locking you down at every opportunity. Yeah, we just seem have not been able to find a balance on it. There's the...

Those on the right who act like this is some made-up conspiracy and, you know, life goes on as it is and they don't understand the alterations have to be made. And then there are those on the left that just believe death is imminent for everybody. And speaking of a lack of balance, normally we're going to be doing this show on Saturdays, but we're taping a little early today. We're taping on Thursday right after we had all the drama. We had a person killed, people storming the U.S. Capitol.

It is a really strange time in America when you add all this stuff up. It's not a time I thought I'd ever see. You know, I saw a meme yesterday and it said, well played December 27th, 2020 or December 37th, 2020. I just think yesterday I have not seen the reaction yesterday that was comparable except for 9-11. When you talk to people after 9-11, they were awestruck.

They were shocked by it. I think for those who are conservative, we're horrified that there's an element on our side that would do such a thing. And being law and order, as the party has always been, we're not going to tolerate it when there's riots in cities, and we're definitely not going to tolerate it when they're storming the Capitol. This isn't a Les Mis musical production.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, for those of you who don't know me, believe it or not, this radio gig does not pay my bills. I have a day job as the chief of staff for Phoenix City Councilman Sal DeCiccio. One of the things we've talked about for the last year plus with everything that's going on is how proud we were of Republicans, of conservatives, of Trump supporters for their conduct throughout this. You know, you go out to a conservative protest and

And you drive by half an hour after it's over, you don't know there was anything there. It's cleaner than when the protest started. And everything is fine. There's no damage. There's no destruction until yesterday. Yeah. And yesterday we just gave up the moral high ground. That's exactly what we did. And that's what's so appalling about it. As a matter of fact, I think over the last couple of years, we've lost the moral high ground on many issues. And it's going to take a while to rebuild that.

that reputation that had been earned before. It's tough to earn that reputation. It takes a long time. We're going to spend a long time rebuilding it. I completely agree. But worse yet, when you look at this, we're fighting a culture war. I think left and right would both admit that now. Absolutely. You know, no question. We're in the midst of a real differentiation in culture between two parts of this country. And it does no good to anybody.

when our side steps out and engages in the tactics that we have seen from others? Well, what has to happen is for those who are the conservative persuasion, they have to be adamant that those who did what happened yesterday have to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, no leniency. What they did was just incomprehensible. It was a horrible sight. It embarrasses us not only

here in the nation, but it was an embarrassment in the world. I never thought I'd see the day as a person who's traveled to 64 countries where I have countries sending out press releases and statements worried about America, who's been this beacon of democracy in the world. And we have a bunch of foolish people who somehow thought

This was a good idea. It was not only not a good idea, it was maybe the worst idea we've seen in a very long time. You're right. America, I don't think most people realize, we have the oldest standing government on the planet. Britain was a monarchy. France was in the midst of a revolution. Every other country, every other government has come and gone over the last 240 plus years except us. And this is the first time there have been real holes in that wall.

And I think it did shock and scare people. And for the Republicans out there that are justifying this by saying this is similar to what we saw from Antifa and the city's burning all summer long, I want to be clear. Their actions were totally unacceptable. I will never accept political violence. It has no place in America. There is a difference between that and storming the Capitol.

when Congress is certifying the election of a new president. Those are two fundamentally different things. The acts are similar. The import is very, very different. I agree 100%. Real damage was done yesterday. Fortunately, we're going to have another very smart guy on here shortly, Eric Erickson. Eric, for those of you who are not familiar with him, former CNN Fox News contributor. He has the number one show in the state of Georgia.

The evening news with Eric Erickson. We were really looking forward to having him on here to discuss everything happening in Georgia with the Georgia election, the new impact on the Senate, the House. All of a sudden now we have Democrats in control of all three bodies.

That was going to be a heck of a show, frankly, and yet we've gotten derailed and frankly have to talk about what went on here this week and what we've seen because it's so radical. It's so different than what we have had in the past. So we're bringing Eric on right now. Hello, Eric. Chuck Warren here and Sam Stone. How are you? I'm doing good, my friend. How are you doing? Doing well. How's your family?

They're doing fantastic just trying to do homeschooling right now. The new routine, same as the old routine, I guess, and working just as badly. Now, has the homeschool teacher threatened to quit yet or go out on strike? Well, trying to avoid having to go to AA is where we are right now.

Keep the faith, keep the faith. We never thought we'd all become schoolteachers. Yeah, never, never. My kids may never know what 2 plus 2 is, but they'll be able to make a great tree kiss bartender. So, Eric, let's first talk about Georgia. What are your perceptions after what has happened there?

And maybe let's delve a little bit into that about the Stacey Abrams effect, how long she's been working. I think it's something that's getting noticed, it gets talked about, but being a person on the ground, you probably realize the extent how long she's been doing this and for how long she's been doing this and the consistency in which she's been doing it. Sure.

So, you know, she hasn't done it very well for a while, and it almost seems like there were a series of experimentations. For example, in 2018, they went out and found 989,000 new voters.

and less than 100,000 of them showed up to vote. And that got missed by the media. Well, clearly through trial and error they have figured something out because they did increase, particularly the black vote around the state, working with black pastors associations. And then in the metro Atlanta area, I have had

At least two dozen people tell me that they had knocks on their door from Democratic activists looking to get them to vote, and the most they got from the Republicans was, would you like to buy Trump Christmas wallpaper or wrapping paper? That it really was that bad. They got –

emails and they got text messages about give money to Mitch McConnell, buy Trump Christmas wrapping paper, and they never got knocks at the door. And they're nontraditional independent voters. The Republicans went to Republicans. The Democrats went to Democrats and non-affiliated Republicans.

voters and it worked in the metro area but what's bigger and what is missing is that it's simply the Republicans didn't turn up I mean the reality is in Georgia there are more Republicans than Democrats and to prove that let me explain to you the legislative vote in Georgia

If you add up all the votes cast in congressional races in the general election, Republicans got 51%. All the state House races added together, 53%. All the state Senate races together, 54%. And yet the Republicans in the runoff

turned out at a rate 30% less than the general election, and Democrats only turned out at a rate 10% less than the general election. It did not help that, frankly, the chairman of the state party, the president of the United States, and multiple congressmen campaigned around the state for two months saying the Democrats stole it and they're going to steal it again, and the governor and the secretary of state aren't doing anything about it. So when you tell people, show up, it's going to be stolen from you,

that doesn't really give people an incentive to show up, and they didn't. Hey, Eric, this is Sam. I think that's a great point. We're going to go to break here in just a couple of minutes, so I'll have to cut you off, but I want to bring you back immediately after the break and talk a little bit more about this, because there's a lot of talk about voter fraud.

And one of the things that I want I wish people had done is separate the issues with the electoral changes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and those states which were done by the secretary of states or by judges. Those are legitimate electoral issues. They're not fraud. But but those are something that Republicans should be aware of and should look at versus what's happened in Georgia, what happened, frankly, here in Arizona, where

where you have a Stacey Abrams, where here you have a number of groups, Poder, Puente, a number of others that have organized in the field and done exactly the same thing. That is not fraud. And I would love to discuss a little bit more about what you've seen in Georgia and how they've done that. What are they doing that's so effective? And we're going to go to break here in just a moment, but we will be right back with Eric Erickson. And I know everyone's looking forward to that answer.

All right. Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone, in the studio with my co-host, Chuck Warren. And on the line with us, Eric Erickson of Evening News with Eric Erickson, the number one show in Georgia. He also runs the blog The Resurgent. If you are not reading that, you should be. It is some of the best writing and information out there in the political world today. And welcome back, Eric. We were just talking about Stacey Abrams and her efforts—

And you've had a close-up view. How are they getting down? Let's get down to the technical details of this. How did they put the funding together for this? What are they doing that is effective? Because it is. They essentially did what Republicans did in the late 90s and early 2000s to turn a lot of Southern Democratic states Republican. They used money from large nonprofits to

that are sympathetic to the left to do massive voter registration drives. They set up separate organizations that were political that instead of getting the nonprofit money in, they could pay themselves reduced salaries and work for the actual nonprofit, so they didn't violate tax laws. And then from the one voter registration drive, they used the other to target

the most likely voters to come out, and they worked over a series of years slowly. They did this not thinking we're going to flip this overnight. They did it thinking they're going to flip it in a decade. They started actually in 2012.

And they've been working since 2012 to do this, identifying voters, finding ways to persuade them to come vote. They would take an election. They would say, OK, this persuaded voters to come out. This did not. Let's drop that. Let's do this. Now let's come up with another way and let's A-B test it essentially. Which would work best? OK, this one works and this one works. Let's do best. What do these people have in common where this one works? OK, let's find everybody who has this in common.

and we'll persuade all of them to vote in this way because we know it works. And now this group of people are persuadable in a different way. Let's do that. They focused on not just urban areas but suburban areas that are typically Republican, and they did not find that they didn't waste their time with people who show up in Republican primaries. They got lists of everybody who's moving into an area who's never voted here before. They were the first people to show up at the door and say, hey, you should register to vote. And then they started –

focus grouping and testing and is this person Republican or Democrat? Are they non-committed? Okay, they're non-committed. What persuades them to vote for our side? And they've literally been doing this for a decade to get to this point, and really in the run-up to 2022. Stacey Abrams in 2014 gave an interview to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and said she did not think Georgia would go blue until 2022. And she's been running...

And her first run was a trial run to see what worked and what didn't. They registered a million people. A hundred thousand of them showed up. Well, guess what? In 2020, they went through those those nine hundred thousand people who didn't show up to try to figure out what would motivate them. And they got a lot of them turn out. One of the things that you're alluding to here, and it's something, Chuck, you've worked in Florida very extensively on the Republican side on this.

is that they're not going out of the field, right? This is not something they do for six months every two years. - They stay engaged constantly. It is a constant level of engagement. They don't do it. They field test it. They A/B test it. They run their numbers. They do their data. And frankly, what they've done is they've built outside organizations that have success metrics.

And that's something a lot of Republicans used to do, and then they got so successful at it that the grift, frankly, started working in. And people get paid just because, oh, well, I registered 500,000 people. Pay me money. The Democrats don't get paid unless those 500,000 people actually show up and vote. So they have a real incentive to make sure they're doing it right and get these people out to vote. And they've done it. Eric, what did the Republican Party spend $500 million on in Georgia for these Senate elections?

Uh, mail. Mail and TV. Now, they had volunteers who came in, and they did have some paid people come in. The president's team hired every college Republican who wanted a job to do door-to-door for the general. When the runoff came, the president's team had abandoned the field, and it was a volunteer-based effort.

They focused on getting Republicans out to vote. They didn't really spend a lot of time looking at non-Republicans who might come vote for him, while the Democrats only focused on that for the first month. You know, when you talk about that, I find that personally very disheartening because I know Chuck and I have spent a lot of time working on these kind of campaigns in the field. And, you know, one of the things that we always say is,

Eric, you know this, is when you see a campaign that's all TV and all mail, you know it's going to be a really good deal for the consultants and the people working on it. They're going to make a ton of money. But those campaigns are not effective in this era, are they? No.

No, they're not. And, you know, Republicans used to do the ground game stuff in in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty in Georgia. The governor's team did a brilliant job with ground game. In fact, in the runoff, the governor's team stepped up and they worked South Georgia, but they were outworked. They were underfunded.

The outside groups didn't want to give money to this organization because they thought, oh, well, the governor will just be using it in 2022 and won't really use it now. They were the only ones who were really out there knocking. I've got a friend of mine. He's got a great door-to-door program. That's the other missing aspect here is that the national Republicans came in and said, oh, don't use this consultant. Use our consultant who got great commissions, but his product didn't.

had not been in Georgia while the other guy's product had been there for four years. You know, that brings up another point, something that I've talked about with the RNC folks, with numerous candidates over the years, and there's sort of two views of consulting and races. There's the D.C. view that all races are the same and you end up with these sort of campaign-in-a-box packages, right?

And then there's the locals. And I think one of the most important lessons of this election, this election cycle, is how hyper-local all of these races in every state are and how much they're driven by local politics.

Oh, so much so. I'll put it to you this way. There was a third race in the runoff that no one paid attention to. It was the chairman of the State Public Service Commission. That's the regulator for the public utility. That guy was a huge Trump supporter, was at every Trump rally, spoke at every Trump rally.

But in his campaign literature and ads, you have never known he was a Trump supporter. All he focused on was Georgia Power's got a nuclear power plant coming. It's the first one in the nation in decades. It's going to lower your power bills. It's going to do clean energy. We're going to make sure they don't raise your taxes or raise your rates. We're going to keep your power low and keep your power turned on. And that guy got more votes than Warnock, Ossoff, Perdue, or Loeffler. Ha ha ha!

You know, that is literally just for perspective for those who don't understand. The entire Republican ad campaign was John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock want to eat your children for breakfast and make you learn Chinese. That was the entire campaign. It helps a little bit if you have an actual plan, an idea, maybe an agenda to put out there for the future, doesn't it?

It really does. And they dropped the ball. And by the way, to their credit, in the general election, Perdue and Loeffler did that. Loeffler was a little bit different because she had to fight Doug Collins, who should have never gotten into the race. Okay, Eric, I have to cut you off here for just a moment. When we come back, we're going to keep you on, if you'll allow, and talk about what happened in D.C. next. Obviously, lots of fun for everyone coming up here in the next segment. So hold on just for a minute. We'll be right back.

All right. Welcome back to Broken Potholes. My name is Sam Stone. I'm your host in the studio with Chuck Warren on the line and graciously joining us for yet another segment, Eric Erickson. Eric is in Georgia. For those of you who don't know him, fantastic, fantastic voice in the Republican Party, runs the blog The Resurgent. Definitely need to read that. Eric, as we come back,

Chuck and I opened this program talking about everything that happened at the Capitol in D.C. yesterday. I think I've seen some of the stuff you put out about it, and Chuck and I are certainly on the same page. We thought that was interesting.

Something neither of us had ever hoped or wanted or thought would be possible to see in this country. And so I just want to get a little bit of your reaction there also. Yeah, look, I was appalled by it. It is one thing to say I understand the grievances involved.

But I also understand that those grievances are based on a whole lot of lies and misstatements about what happened in November. And a lot of people got duped and taken advantage of. One lady lost her life because of it.

And it's unfortunate that people would think in really the greatest democracy on the planet, they would decide that they're about to lose power. They're not supposed to lose power. It's been stolen from them. So we're going to go storm the Capitol and build the actual gallows, put up a noose.

and and say they're going to find mike pitts and demand that he do what he constitutionally can't uh... i understand people are losing faith in institutions and i understand the institutions are giving them reason to lose faith in them but i also understand we've got the greatest constitutional system on the planet and and uh... two months ago everybody loved it

And then an election didn't go their way. You know, I've lost a lot of elections in my life. It sucks. But you don't go storm the U.S. Capitol because of it. I think it's important people understand the system is more important than any one person, even Donald Trump. For those who are big fans of his, I've been a fan not so much of his personality or demeanor, but of the policy that has come. Yeah.

out of the administration has not been out of line for conservatives or Republicans. In fact, it's been a very much kind of standard issue and, if anything, pushed ahead some of our most important principles.

On the other hand, his personal handling of these things and the following that he has and the power that he has to influence them is very different than we've seen from other presidents in recent history. Well, it's become cultish to a degree. It's remarkable the level of – it is to a degree a cult personality. I think you could say that. The president came to Georgia on Monday night.

He spent more time attacking the Republicans than the Democrats. And I watched it, and I saw two people I know well who have Brian Kemp stickers on their trucks, who were Brian Kemp field operators, volunteers, and supporters even before the president endorsed Brian Kemp in 2018. And they were cheering on the president when he said he was coming back to campaign against Brian Kemp in a year and a half. And I just found that remarkable. Does Brian Kemp run again?

Oh, yeah. I actually think he comes out of this looking very well, particularly after what happened yesterday. He had a press conference last night. He got the Speaker of the Georgia House, who he and the Speaker don't like each other, along with the Lieutenant Governor, who he's got a very good relationship with. They held a united front press conference. They've got the National Guard. Don't you try this in Atlanta.

They don't care about the lies. The election wasn't stolen. And the legislature comes in next week. And don't you dare attempt to do in Atlanta what you did in Washington. Mike Pence. What's going on? Mike Pence. You know, I woke up feeling bad for a lot of people. Mike Pence was one this morning. Where does Mike Pence go? Who is he? Yeah, I mean, Mike Pence could never have seen this coming. He's a man of faith and values and has stood for those throughout his entire career and stood very loyally by Trump.

How does he go? I mean, he's going to retirement. I don't think he runs for president in four years. He is the man in the moment that we needed, though. People have really attacked Pence for standing by the president and being loyal to the president. And when the time arrived where that loyalty was tested, he chose the Constitution and deserves a lot of applause for that. I mean, he's a longtime friend of mine. I'm such a big fan of his. And

And he is the man with character that we needed. And I think you can see from what he did yesterday that all along behind the scenes, he's been doing his best to steer the president in a good direction. And at the moment that he could not, he chose the Constitution. Yeah, I think history will look back very kindly on Mike Pence and his term as vice president.

because of those actions specifically, obviously. But I think he's served awfully well throughout this term. Eric Erickson, we're going to be right back with you here on Broken Potholes for our final segment coming up. And then Chuck and I will close it out. Thank you, folks, for tuning in today. And thank you, Eric, for giving us all of your time. Very appreciated. Thank you.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone, in the studio with my co-host, Chuck Moran. And on the line, we have former CNN Fox News contributor, Eric Erickson. Eric is the host of the Evening News with Eric Erickson, number one radio show in Georgia. And he's going to be talking about the

Runs the blog Resurgent. We have to thank Eric for sticking with us throughout this entire hour here today. But there's just so much to talk about with everything that's gone on. And Chuck, you had a question specifically. Eric, discuss for a minute. And we want to get on just talking about 2022. Tell us about what was the effect of Lin Wood? I mean, I understand he was a registered Democrat. Then he came and did this. And I mean, you know, I'm just sort of startled.

The attention grabbing he did and just the threats he made, the rumors he spread. I mean, I felt like, you know, this is some drunk at the bar at 2 a.m. Yeah. Notice Twitter didn't turn off his account until after the Democrats won the runoff. Right. Even though he hasn't changed in the last two months, including asking people to go go track down and arrest the vice president so he could be shot. Right.

Lin Wood came to fame with Richard Jewell in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing, where he had been falsely accused, sued a number of media outlets, was mostly successful with that, became a First Amendment lawyer, has always had a reputation in Georgia among his legal colleagues of being a deeply unpleasant person. In the past year, Representative Nicholas Sandeman, the student from Kentucky who was slandered by the press,

successfully, and his law partners have sued him, claiming there's clearly something going on with the guy. He's become really nasty. He's done all sorts of offensive things to his law associates. They've all quit. They've sued him. They're demanding money. Clearly there's some issue going on with him and his behavior has changed dramatically. Well, now he's come out and embraced the QAnon conspiracy theorists,

claims that Jesus Christ has set him up for this, that this is his moment ordained by God, and saying all sorts of crazy conspiracy stuff up until Twitter shut his account off yesterday. And people in the QAnon community gravitated to him, believed he was one of them, and people believed what he was saying. And it took him months to realize the guy was nuts, and some of them still believe him.

Yeah, I think that's one of the most dangerous and pernicious things we've seen recently is not just Lin Wood and some of the folks like him making these claims. Because, Chuck, you had reached out to some of the folks in a couple of states and said, hey, give us those lists of potentially fraudulent votes or illegal votes. We will track them down.

we'll use our field organizations to do that. They could never produce a list. No, not one list. I mean, you know, you heard there are 60,000 people who voted who are underage, 40,000 out of state, went to people directly. Look, I have a funder. Give it to us. We'll do background checks. If we find it, you know, that they're literally out of state or they're under 18, we'll hire a former county attorney in each county, go take it to the county clerk. I mean, we'll get them off the ballots, right? And stress to them when this was pushed and

early December, that this would be the best way for you to actually show that your claims of fraud are real. You know, you can show it in Georgia, get real names, take real people off the rolls. Right. To this day, I still wait for those names. They don't exist. No. And, you know, I think to worse, and Eric, I want to get your take on this also, but to me, what was worse was not the individuals like Lin Wood, who is clearly an opportunist, right? But

But all the individuals, the leaders within our own party who have continued down this road, when frankly if you're in this business and you didn't know that this narrative was false, I've got serious questions about your IQ insanity.

Yeah, I mean, and here's part of the problem as well. This just frustrates me in particular with the Republican Party chairman in Georgia. You're now saying that all these people were on the voter rolls that voted. And in Georgia, you have an opportunity to challenge them all up until the day before the election, and you didn't.

That's political malpractice if it really happened and you didn't challenge. And so they've had to invent elaborate conspiracies in some cases to escape blame for their own dereliction of duty. But in other cases, because they're making a lot of money off of it too. Right, right. So what happens in the next two years do you see – where does the party go from here?

You know, listen, I think they're going to do well with redistricting in 2022. And so they'll probably take back the House, preserve their state legislatures in a lot of cases. The problem, though, is that I'm afraid they'll look at that and say, success, we've solved the problem. And they've got a really deeper problem. It is with Donald Trump not on the ballot. Suburban voters in Georgia had a six point shift back to the GOP.

But the president's core supporters stayed home. These two groups don't like each other, and the Republicans can't win without both of them. They're going to have to figure out how to get these people all engaged and marching in the same direction without killing each other. Well, and that takes – look, real progress takes asking the right questions. And I don't think we ever feel like on the Republican side, conservative side, they're asking the right questions. If we're amazing for a party that believes in meritocracy, hard work –

We don't want to do the hard work, the actual brain work to figure out how to make this right. They're not doing what Stacey Abrams is doing, the ABs, what works for these voters, what issues work there and don't work there, right? Correct. And it's beyond frustrating. Yeah, Chuck, you've gone in in Florida into Miami-Dade and done a lot of work in that area going into Hispanic communities. And one of the things I've always said here in Arizona is,

is we have to stop looking at Hispanics as some sort of other, as the Republican Party. We need to embrace them in a big, big way because if you look at the values of the community, family first, hard work, education, they really match up with our values very well. When we go in and we sell that message –

I think we've been effective, but we don't go in year after year. We don't engage. When we show up, it's for six months ahead of an election.

In a minority community, in any low-income community, you cannot do that with any legitimacy. Yeah. You know, we found this in Georgia that the Republicans have done a very good job of staying engaged in those communities, better than the Democrats actually. But they just – they've got to keep doing it. And frankly, we're seeing with the Democrats now –

And they're duplicating Republican successes of the early 2000s of state-engaged communities where the GOP is looking at a financial rate of return on doing so and where the Democrats are looking at an ideological rate of return. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. One of the things, these elections take money. Field operations, really good field operations year over year. You've got to pay people right. You've got to offer them actual benefits and everything else. You have to treat them like they're members of your family and not just hired guns. Absolutely. Eric, as we conclude here, I have a question. You're a former city councilman in Georgia.

What does the party need to start doing? I feel – Sam and I have talked about this a lot. The party needs to start getting engaged again on city elections.

Yeah, we we you know, I think what's happened is as Republicans, we get very excited about judges. This is what really turns our boat. Right. Right. But could you imagine the results in 2020 if Republicans have been engaged in city elections and organizing, if you just pick up three percent more in Milwaukee, Atlanta, you know, Charlotte's.

Phoenix. Michigan, you would have turned. Different races. Arizona, you would have turned. And it's your future farm team as well. Right. Republicans have done a very bad job of this because they've said, oh, the city's called Democrat. Well, yeah, maybe so, but there are two or three seats you could flip in some cities.

and slow some things down or maybe capture some city councils. They have abandoned that. I tell people all the time, you know, my favorite verse in scriptures from Jeremiah 29, seek the welfare of the city, which you're in exile, there you'll find welfare. Republicans are so focused on Washington right now, they've forgotten their own backyard and they need to get re-engaged there, not just in city government, but boards of education, nonprofits,

be seen in their community because they'll start persuading people to go their way. Well, it's amazing. Here in Arizona, we had meetings on what's called the East Side. It's a more conservative area. It's LDS. It's Evangelical Christian. It's where a lot of the families are. And one day we had a meeting. Jason Chaffetz was here, and we had a group of 100 people in the middle of the day at home, at a home. And they were coming up, bringing up

Right. Right.

It is. It's been just absolutely crazy to me how even local political Republican parties get so focused on their state legislative and congressional and federal elections. You've got a city council in most cases, a county commission. You've got a school board. You've got a local water authority, and everybody's focused on other stuff.

That's fantastic. Eric, thank you so much for all your time today. Really appreciate having you on there. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. We'll see you soon, my friend. Appreciate it. Wonderful conversation. So, Chuck, that was that was a fantastic conversation. I love Eric. He's one of the smartest people in politics. And one of the things I've really not enjoyed during the Trump era is watching us eat our own over slight differences with the president.

Well, it's the old Reagan saying, I'm paraphrasing, you know, because someone votes with me, someone votes in the 80 percent of the time. They're my friend. Right. And I don't think it's just this is just not a Republican issue. I think you're going to see this with Joe Biden now. You're going to see a bunch of progressives say you've got to be with me 100 percent on this or you're an apostate. You're you're you're just you're just an establishment milquetoast leader who.

And I don't think either side realizes that there is a great happy 60% middle.

Absolutely. It doesn't mean they're moderates because I think the word moderate is a horrible term because there's no such thing. It's like when people say I'm an independent. No, you're not an independent. You just didn't want to put a party on and you want to act snobby about it. Yes. You're one or the other in this country. You're a Republican or you're a Democrat. There's not much in between. You know where you lean. Unless you're a libertarian, in which case –

You're going to lose a lot of elections, but, you know, stand on your values. You'll feel good about yourself. So I think that's the one thing that's been really, that's been happening a lot in America, American communities. And look, we have got to find a way not only across the aisle, but with people in our own party realizing, look, we have more in common than we do not. And until that changes, this anchor, I mean, I'm on a board for a

a club and there's a helpline and we had a board meeting this week and they were saying that this helpline is like you call in and say I have this complaint or this recommendation. It's just something they did for members.

And they were talking about taking it down because the calls had become so angry. And I said, well, how many calls you get a week? And they said, well, it's just two to five. I said, well, how many are angry? Two to five. They just said the tone of people the past year or two has become so bad that they find themselves a lot of time just trying to solve disputes or

or have them apologize to staff because people are so angry and they can't seem to control themselves. They're like a 13-year-old kid. You know, I got to tell you, Chuck, and I understand that completely because I've been making, and I know you're kind of the same way, I have been making a really conscious effort to go around when I go into a store or restaurant or anything to treat the employees, to treat everyone around with respect because you're seeing this anger seep out

Obviously, I think a lot of it has to do with COVID, the anxieties, the lockdowns, the restrictions. I think people are just getting at the end of their rope and have been for a while. But we are letting that fray and fracture society in some really, really serious ways. It's not healthy and it's not good for our country. It's not good for communities. People should not – I had a friend –

Went to a doctor and the doctor gave her three things to do. And number two is don't watch Fox or CNN. I mean, how bad is that? Your doctor's saying don't watch the news anymore. It's damaging your health. That's a pretty sad place to be at. That's a horrible place to be. And, you know, we're going to be talking next week. We're going to have another guest on the show we're looking forward to. At this point, we believe it's going to be Bill Scheer. Should be fantastic. He can give us a little bit of a perspective from the other side. He primarily talks to Democrats.

And so I always like to get those points of view. Right. And hopefully this show week after week is going to help bring some of that. And our really focus here is on looking at how do we move forward?

How do we fill those potholes? How do we fill all the breaks that are forming in our society, the cracks? And so I thank you, Chuck, for being on here today. Thank you, Sam. Appreciate it. And to our guest, Eric Erickson, again, fantastic having him on here. Folks, this is Sam Stone. This has been Broken Potholes. Make sure you tune in again next week. We're going to have more to talk about. Thank you. No colors anymore. I want them to turn. By dressed in this.

You turn my head, darkness goes