 This is Just Asking Questions, a show for inquiring minds, one reason. Today, Liz Wolfe and I are joined by Peter Meyer, a former Republican representative for Michigan's third congressional district, which is a position once held by Justin Amash, the Republican turned libertarian congressman. Meyer is now running for an open Senate seat in Michigan, soon to be vacated by Democrat Debbie Stabenow. And we want to talk with him about his run since he was one of several Republicans ousted after voting to impeach Trump. And we want to know what it's like running as that kind of Republican in the year 2024, among other things. Peter, thank you for joining us. I appreciate you guys having me on. Sure. You know, we'll start with your campaign announcement where you say that we're in dark and uncertain times, but that we need bold leaders to usher in another great American century. Tell us more about what you see as the darkness of this moment and what you think it will take to escape that. Yeah, I mean, I think if we look around the world, we look at our, the, not necessarily the effects of US foreign policy, but the effects of United States that seems to have receded and, you know, the, I mean, terrorists and authoritarians that have kind of seized that moment, the barbarism that we saw that Hamas, you know, conducted against Israeli civilians and military personnel on October 7th. We have, you know, the continuing grinding conflict in the Ukraine. We have the Houthis threatening to shut down and succeeding and at least discouraging a lot of international maritime transit. I mean, even Pakistan bombing Iran, right? Like we're in a position where everything seems far less certain, where we don't know what's going to happen, where events could easily spiral out of control. And then you look at a home front where, I mean, some of the economic indicators are more positive than they were a year ago. But in the minds of average Americans, they're still thinking back to where their expectations were for how much they were going to pay for their mortgage, right? And if you have an adjustable rate mortgage, interest rate increases have led that to double, you know, the effects of inflation and some supply chain uncertainties have continued to see elevated grocery prices. That's something that's very near to my heart coming from a family grocery chain and our family's background. And that's before you get to those, you know, significant drivers of cost of living challenges that have remained elevated, you know, housing, healthcare, education, you know, it feels like in all of those indicators, American families that I talked to families in Michigan, they just they feel uncertain about what the future is going to bring. Younger families are those who want to start one are nervous about how they're going to be able to make ends meet and also support, you know, raising children. And so that when I say dark and uncertain times, it's just a feeling that the stability, the foundation that many people had relied upon that maybe they've grown up feeling that that isn't there anymore. Right. When I talk about, you know, a new, a second great American century, you know, how do we get to a point where by 2050, we again feel that the United States, you know, is not just a superpower on paper, but we feel that sense of forward momentum that we have policies at the federal level and we have government officials that care a lot more about what the results of their policies are going to be, you know, then just the simple fact of claiming credit. And again, to be able to look at, you know, objective demonstrable policy outcomes in a clear and rational way, rather than, you know, we're in the week after the Senate supplemental, which included this kind of grand, you know, border slash immigration reform compromise, you know, feel like there's an ability for our governing officials to get down to brass tax, but also be held accountable for the outcomes of their policy, rather than everything becoming a blame game perpetually. I mean, I spent two years in Washington. That is not a lot of time, but it was enough time for me to realize and understand that all the problems I saw from the outside, I wasn't wrong in recognizing those problems, but so many problems are the consequence of other problems that you need to, you know, kind of peel back the layers of the onion of dysfunction in Washington in order to figure out how do we get down to some core governing principles? How do we not just get in the position of playing whack-a-mole when we have all these events that come up and make us feel like we're lurching from crisis to crisis? You know, there's always going to be areas of disagreement. There's always going to be division. That's reality of politics. But my God, we should be able to agree that, you know, crime is bad. So what are the policies that promote, you know, safer communities? We want to have a strong national defense. You know, how do we do that in the most cost-effective way? And what should our international engagements be that play to our strengths rather than promote weaknesses as I think a lot of our post-911 kind of military adventurism ended up ultimately doing? And what is it that we want to see the U.S. role in the world be? And how do we make sure that, you know, we're continuing to build on the areas of kind of core agreement? So I'm running for Senate because of that desire to not only put, you know, family concerns first, you know, an outcome-oriented mentality, but also to make sure that that is not just a flash in the pan idea. It's not just, oh, this is an easy talking point. But let's have a real conversation about the systemic ways that we can address this because I'm someone who enjoys the difficult art of understanding complex systems and how to improve them, not somebody who, you know, feels a high going on, you know, a cable news show or having a tweet, you know, go viral. I mean, the dopamine addiction that I think has permeated our society has permeated our politics and that's how we are left in those dark and uncertain times. That's a good way of putting it, the dopamine addiction permeating our politics. I think that that's pretty true. The thing that I do want to push back on is like, are we actually in exceptionally bad times? You just talked about the post-911 period and our military adventurism then and the sort of uncertain foreign policy situation of the early and mid-auts. And then I'm also thinking about the late 70s and early 80s as a time of extraordinary inflation where many of the same things you were talking about in terms of it being very difficult to afford a decent life today. I mean, families dealt with that then too. So are we really in uniquely bad times right now? I would say for the modern moment, I think there's a feeling of uncertainty that we probably haven't experienced this millennium since maybe the 2008 financial crisis. You know, just that the amount of sectors that have been that are struggling and the amount of uncertainty going forward. Now, to your point, and this is where especially on the political violence front, I am quick to emphasize in the 1970s, you had hundreds of pipe bombs going off a year. You had domestic violence coming from groups across the political spectrum. The 1960s saw periods of intense social upheaval and unrest, assassination of a sitting president, of a leading presidential figure, the leading civil rights figure of our time. This is not the worst time that the United States has been in, right? I don't want to be a Cassandra around that. It's the fact that a lot of our challenges we're dealing with, in my view, are far more manageable. And so if they're more manageable, then we don't have a good excuse to just shrug away from them or take a path of minimal discomfort, you know, rather than being disciplined and diligent and focusing on them. So I don't want to come across as pessimistic, but at the same time, the feeling I get when I talk to people, the concern, that sense of unease, again, it's not fear. It's not paranoia. It's not, you know, terror. We've had moments of extreme, profound, you know, fear in this country, that immediate post-911 moment. You know, it's just a sense of, I want to feel hope again that we're on a good trajectory and it feels like everywhere I look, I don't see something that gives me a reason to hope. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I do want to pivot a little bit and ask you just before we get any deeper into this interview, is it weird running against Justin Amash? I mean, I think to a lot of libertarians, it feels like mom and dad are fighting, or very well may soon be fighting. How are you looking at this? Because let's be clear, he has not announced he's officially running for Senate, but he's launching an exploratory committee, which sort of sounds like... He's launching an exploratory committee, yes. Yeah, is it weird? I certainly, you know, for the reader's awareness, or listener's awareness, I followed or succeeded Justin Amash. He was in Congress. He had left the Republican Party. He was officially independent slash libertarian during his final term, or the latter half of his final term in office. You know, I've known Justin for a while. I solicited his kind of feedback and thoughts on legislation, because I think he's a very thoughtful individual. Again, that doesn't mean I, you know, agreed with every kind of comment or suggestion, but I think he's somebody who thinks deeply about issues, and that is very much a rarity in our political process. I'm not sure what he's going to do, whether or not that exploratory committee will turn into an actual filing. But generally speaking, I think the more folks who are engaged in our politics and putting forward thoughtful, principled ideas is a good one. Did he give you a heads up in advance though? Like were you shocked by this, or were you sort of aware that this was happening? I don't want to get into any kind of private conversations apart from just, you know, the way in which a former member of Congress and a current one in the same district might, you know, kind of look at overall. I mean, you both held that same district seat and you both are kind of out of step, maybe in slightly different ways with the modern Republican Party. Is there something strange or about the district to which you were elected that made it possible for both you and Amash to hold that seat? I think a lot of people commented, you know, there must be something, you know, in the water and in West Michigan, we have a fantastic water filtration facility that takes it directly from Lake Michigan near Grand Haven. You know, this was a district. We were the first day to chlorinate our water supply in 1946. Used to be a fantastic level. Tooth statue and Grand Rapids, they moved it to its location. But, you know, Gerald R. Ford represented this district, you know, prior to being elevated to the vice presidency, you know, before Justin, it was, you know, vernalers. Paul Henry, there were a number of officials who represented it who, you know, I think were independent minded in their own way. And so I think it's, you know, very much a close-knit community in West Michigan, you know, it can be accused on the outside of being a little insular, but it's also, you know, it's a wonderful place, it's home. So perhaps there's something in the water, but I think it's, you know, better to have members who are in office through not just following the crowd. I mean, that's the easiest thing to do in Washington is to look up at the board and say, where's everyone else in my party going? And, you know, I'll just follow their lead. I can say from experience, and I'm sure, you know, Justin would say the same thing. It is far more difficult to say, okay, how do I approach this issue in a consistent way that can be defensible, you know, rather than the inherent, you know, reactionary polarization that you'll usually see. You were, you know, thinking that approach, you were unceremoniously booted out of your congressional seat after Trump's ceremony to it. Okay, okay. Semi-ceremoniously booted out after Trump backed your primary challenger in 2022, seemingly as retribution for your vote against him in the impeachment proceedings, which we'll talk more about later. But you gave a really interesting farewell speech in the House today, a little bit of, because it lays out some of what you were alluding to earlier about your view of the current state of our government. And I also think it raises what I consider to be one of the most important political issues of our time. So let's roll that excerpt from your 2022 farewell address to Congress. I rise today for the last time as a member of the 117th Congress. I do not seek to dwell of my departure, although it does bring to mind a few lines from Yates' second coming. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Perhaps it takes a cataclysm like World War I to capture the naked and malevolent cynicism of our politics. Yates also well captured the harrowing consequence of elite ineptitude that precipitated the slaughter of tens of millions. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. I read and reread those words while flying out of Hamid Karzai International Airport last August during the shameful end to 20 years of America's war in Afghanistan. What I saw on the ground during that waking nightmare exemplified some of the best of the American men and women in uniform, but it also reflected the haplessness and incompetency of American policymaking. For the failure of our war in Afghanistan, a failure abetted by decades of Congress's lax oversight of the President and his Department of Defense. To solve this, I pushed for Congress to take back its war powers, to take back that constitutional responsibility, but even when it comes to Congress asserting its own prerogative, this body has shown itself unwilling to do its job. The current budget negotiations taking on the other side of the rotunda also show a Congress unwilling to confront the very basic task of passing a budget on time. The last time we had a budget passed before the fiscal year started, I was in second grade. When Congress is incapable of solving problems of its own making, how can the American people have any faith that we can tackle the problems arising from the broader world? What do we have of out competing China of winning this coming century if we can't even get out of a mess of our own making? We need the best to regain their convictions. To set an example of what clear-eyed leadership looks like both at home and abroad. We need to hold the worst to account and reprise the moral resolve that has led us through dark times in this country many, many times before. Too many have sacrificed too much for us to squander the opportunity before us, the opportunity to rise to the challenge of this moment to set aside petty squabbles the opportunity to build on the promise of limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty. The promise that underpins the American dream. So the more power stuff I've not seen that in close to two years. How do you feel are you watching it? Do you feel like it all rings totally true today? Do you wish you'd hit any different points? Those were the moments where I was still aggressively campaigning and petitioning and spending a lot of time on the Senate side to get the Afghan Adjustment Act passed to try to get that into the NDAA or into that omnibus that was being worked on. Because that was a deeply personal kind of issue and it was something that we were so close to being able to get ironically enough and it got zero attention is that Afghan Adjustment Act which would offer some stability and certainty for the folks that had supported US forces in Afghanistan that we had evacuated some of whom were still in the process of kind of evacuating and resettling to give them some permanence as opposed to the kind of temporary status many of them were on and it's an unholy mess of a kind of bureaucratic conundrum they're in and so that that was I would say my kind of main focus I don't know and I hadn't even kind of thought about it. My campaign launch video hit a lot of those same themes just by I probably should have done some of my research and look back at those words but things I clearly and deeply believe and think are still very much ring true. You know I think if you don't have you know again a good balance of power between the executive and the legislative branch I think well if I can just kind of step back there's a lot of folks who think our chaos in our system right now is a product of political chaos that because of how chaotic our politics are our government can't function and that's what I thought going in today a big believer gets the causality backwards that the more our government screws up that the more you know the American people feel the consequences of the neft policymaking the more they reach for you know replacements for alternatives you know for explanations for why that individual when they got into office couldn't do the things they promised to be able to do so you know you this guy didn't get the job done so we're gonna vote him out and send in somebody who's even more emphatic that they'll do it and so much of the challenge though is the power has been stripped from many of those offices in congress you know either congress has let the executive take it has given it to the executive or the executive is just you know taking that over and so the basic kind of mechanical function of our government is broken and that's where then you know you have that promotion of extreme you know in ever more chaotic politics if there were fewer things the government was screwing up there would always be people who were dissatisfied but you know it would find less purchase you wouldn't be fertilizing the same ground you know that those kind of seeds of mistrust you know can be planted and so I'm I think it's a it's a complicated things you start talking about legislative supremacy and notions of subsidiarity and you know generic concepts they're it's challenging to get that done not impossible challenging to get it done in Washington because so many there's every legislator will look at a policy and want need to see a very concrete upside because the downside is always theoretically exponential you know if it's not broke don't fix it or if it is broke you know try not to fix it because no matter what you do if your fingerprints on it you know you might be held to blame even if your efforts were all well and good and pure of heart and that's when I you know it's easy to throw up your hands at that challenge but to me the art of government is trying to say okay politics is the art of the possible you know how do you find ways in which you can make a concrete lasting effort it's a lot easier to do that if you're getting at some of the structures underpinning responses to issues then if you're just getting distracted by the issues at hand you need to deal with and react to those issues but you also have to be able to get out of that reactive mindset to be able to put forward you know a vision and also backwards plan you know how do you get from that vision how do you get to that vision from where we are you know what is that pathway could you talk about that the structural issue as it pertains to foreign policy and the balance of powers because I know it's something you have been very focused on that the something you raise there is an attempt to make Congress exercise its war powers and sort of rebalance between legislative and executive branches which I think is extremely important when we're talking about the federal government what are you hoping to accomplish on that front if you make it back to DC I think you need I approach a lot of these with sort of a policy agnostic process obsessive mindset if you think about war powers often times it's within the context of we need to end this war and that's why we need to repeal it I mentioned the example of the war on terror 2001 thereafter had that authorization for the use of military force that was passed shortly after 9-11 had that had a sunset every two years or four years or six years probably six is too high but two years five years something within that band it's not necessarily saying that nothing would happen after that five year period it's saying that there would have to be far more frequent engagement by the Department of Defense by the national security community with Congress and Congress would because they have to cast a vote you know senators and representatives would have to be casting an affirmative vote either in favor of continuing or in opposition to continuing military efforts they would be asking better questions they would feel more of a sense of ownership they would have to articulate and defend but in the process of asking those more difficult questions the Department of Defense would also have to sharpen its pencils our policy makers on the national security side would have to more firmly articulate and align their efforts with what they were saying this notion that if we're just going to be hands off everything will be fine I think is so detrimental and so ruinous because you have sort of a defense policy establishment that essentially looks at Congress as a body to avoid there were a couple of times where I would be getting a classified briefing and I would say thank God we're finally getting a briefing on issue X we've been waiting for a while and then it turned around and realized it was a word of you realize they're trying to sell you a time share you know like it was we need your support on this bill or this authorization and so we're telling you how big of a problem is going on in this region not because you should be aware not because it should be informing how you're approaching something but because we're going to have to ask you for something and so if the executive had to ask Congress for more the amount of transparency would be higher the feeling of responsibility among members would be higher and I think things would just function better again would that lead to less or more I think there's arguments to be made in either direction but if we look at the strikes that the president has just conducted recently against the Houthis, against Iranian back groups in Iraq and Syria both are picking from a variety of different authorizations coming from the Constitution whether it's Article 2 kind of defense powers of the president in a self-defense capacity or Article 1 authorities from authorizations through use of military force that were passed in 2001 or 2002 again it just is doing an end run it is failing to engage and I think it allows the American people to check out because their representatives are checked out and that type of lack of transparency of lack of attention of lack of concern I think ultimately only dooms those projects to failure because then when people start to do pay attention after something that happens you know they catch themselves up on 20 years in the span of a two-minute TikTok video and that's probably not going to be conveying an accurate view. I could tell from that speech that your experience serving overseas you brought a certain sense of you had a you're almost like personally insulted by the way that these wars have been conducted over the past couple of decades like what is it that this sort of I don't know half hazard or just like rubber stamping type approach why is that particularly insulting and damaging to the people who serve in the military I think by way of background I was in Iraq as a soldier doing intelligence operations in 2010 and 2011 and then I was in Afghanistan as an NGO conflict analyst of the humanitarian aid community no uniform, no weapons neutral living on the economy from 2013 to 2015 and I think in both of those conflicts we found ourselves with allies of convenience that just looked at the US as an entity to exploit we didn't necessarily have any specific strategy or objective or goal we were going towards or if we did it would change frequently enough that you know what we were doing was never aligned towards any specific intent you know that notion of a self-licking ice cream cone and the reality is that the entire time you're there I mean there's a risk that you're undertaking and I think it's important to make sure that you know that you know when you're in an American service members are dying you know again I don't reflexively say oh you got to bring everyone home or there's no scenario in which we should be in some of those areas but our policy makers sure as hell need to articulate why those risks are being undertaken to what end you know what are those terms and how often would those be re-evaluated because I think the majority of those are going to have a sense of engagement where it's like okay we're either going to maybe some sanctions then we're going to have some airstrikes maybe a special forces raid maybe you know the Marines would go in and be you know temporary or maybe we're going to hold and build with kind of large conventional forces and it's like okay well to what end what's our goal and have our efforts helped achieve whatever that goal is but you can't even measure if they've been effective if you don't have a consistent goal and the civilian lives are lost military service members lives are lost and the taxpayer is footing the bill for all of that Yeah it's been catastrophic on so many different levels I I do want to bring us to a couple of your other policy the other policy priorities that you seem to have in this campaign and to kick off a conversation about that I've got I did pull a couple clips from your campaign announcement that I think can give your viewers a sense of the issues you're running on in this first one you talk about the importance of babies of making more babies let's roll that clip I'm Peter Meyer and I'm running for U.S. Senate and I want to let you in on a secret most politicians are terrified of the media of saying what they actually think of proposing things that are big and bold we should be making it easier for people to get married buy a house and just have more babies my wife and I just had a son and I can tell you babies need to be the vision for our future and when those babies go to school parents should never have to worry if their children are guinea pigs in someone's social experiment parents deserve a say and choice that's why we need a regime change in education we need to expel the anti-semites and activists who are poisoning young minds with hate we need to hold universities accountable when they swindle students by hitting them in their tax-free endowments so you're talking to a couple of young parents with young kids right now and you know neither of us are voting in the Michigan Republican Senate primary but we're in the age stage of life demo that you're kind of speaking to there what is why is making life better for parents top of mind for you you can obviously look at our demographic issues that we're facing as a country but a lot of this I just boiled down to the simple question how are what is our government doing to make the American dream within reach what are they doing to you know further complicate things and I will start off by saying the number one frustration I have is when every policy maker your legislator or politician reacts to a problem with you know a new set of legislation or a new law as opposed to from the get go saying what are we currently doing that is either helping or that is hurting and if it's helping maybe do more of it if it's hurting let's stop it because the easiest thing for the government to do is to stop doing things that are being you know demonstrably ineffective or that are making the problem worse that's a lot easier to do than proposing something new that's uncertain you know so in my mind you know when it comes down to our role as you know as lawmakers the role of our legislature and specifically the role of our federal government it's to be able to get out of the way you know to resist that urge to always tinker and fiddle you know when you look at our housing policy in particular you know that is where a thousand good intentions you know have been the individual bricks in a road that has led state straight to an unaffordable hell in our current market that is geographically dependent but all across the board that is a massive major strain so you have more folks who are unable to afford to buy a home you know are kind of locked into renting aren't building up you know a base of assets or postponing having families for financial reasons and I'm very skeptical of what the government can do in an affirmative sense but starting with getting the government out of the way I've yet to have anyone who's pushed back and said oh that won't work you know reducing the regulatory burden making sure that you know on the educational side again this is largely a state and local issue but at the federal level there are all of these strings attached there are these compliance and reporting incentives that both raise costs but also can be used to tweak in a way our education system away from sort of again demonstrable objective outcomes that we can come to an agreement on and turn something into at an inflection around a socially benevolent or you know a socially tinged policy that you know you kind of wake up and look at that San Francisco school district that gave a quarter million dollars of taxpayer funds to you know quote-unquote woke kindergarten from just a parent standpoint they step back and say I you know maybe there's a conversation there that you know should have taken place with those parents you know but the idea of of again removing so much individual consent or individual notion from every single dynamic of a government that continues I think oftentimes not in a malevolent way but just out of a sense of hubris and arrogance to presume they know better and and drive or incentivize outcomes that again stray from objective standards and into the realm of you know I called it in that kind of someone's social experiment I'm very much in respect the libertarian non-aggression principle you know you should be very very humble in understanding you know who can do what our technocrats need to be humble our government policymakers need to be very humble and appreciating what the unexpected outcomes of something may be because if you don't and you are reckless and arrogant you know there's going to be a reckoning and that will be socially challenging not only reckoning in a sincere like you know catastrophic sense but have a Dutch background I mean reckoning in Dutch the reckoning that's the bill the bills come and do you know we're going to have to pay for one way or the other so let's have some humility on the front end so we're not surprised on the back end well so a few months ago reason ran a cover story by one of our colleagues that throws a little bit of cold water on the concerns about fertility rates I think that this is an interesting area that we've actually engaged with a fair bit on this show because there's a lot of disagreement among libertarians libertarians tend to support by and large government being as values neutral as possible many libertarians support the removal of any sort of tax advantage for married couples a lot of libertarians tend to basically say government needs to get out of the way and frankly not be concerned with how people are living their lives or whether or not they're forming families or on what timeline there are some libertarians and I would probably count myself among them that are a little bit more concerned about what our fertility rate looks like over time and whether or not we're going to be emulating Japan with their sort of grand population and like inverted pyramid how do you look at these thorny questions like how would you convince a skeptical libertarian or a libertarian who's antagonistic to your idea that babymaking is important what would you say to them if you had you know 30 or 60 seconds to make your case I would certainly agree that the government shouldn't be in the position of promoting a specific agenda and again that's where I come back to policymakers also being very humble because a lot of well-intentioned policies especially including the pronatalist camp can lead to outcomes that are far from intended so a again boiling down to that affordability question you don't achieve higher affordability you don't achieve that through you know subsidies that can have a temporary impact but eventually the market will adjust and it becomes a dependency you get kind of bommals cost disease that will come into play very quickly you know the fact I would say is there are some things that I think are relatively objective social goods that if the government is maybe not in a position to be able to affirmatively promote or where they're promoting a policy could have negative effects on everything it can to make sure that it is not operating contrary to that social good but why does it matter at all in the first place like why does it matter that we have children running around and attending schools and on the playgrounds that we pass by versus you know a situation like Korea or Japan like who cares I mean if you anyone who's interested in the long term fiscal sustainability the US should care anybody who wants you know the US to continue to be a growing and thriving country should care you know our social security system was set up when there were 2.1 workers sorry 14 workers for every retiree and now the ratio is 2.1 to 1 at some point the math just kind of runs out I think again I'm very skeptical of the heavy handed role of the government what it could do in terms of affirming those policies and where I say the number one thing is this is good we should be able to agree that the government shouldn't be doing anything to prevent that so the more we peel back those layers to me that should be a place where you can reach both bipartisan consensus and where it's aligned with just general limited government principles I find myself generally torn on this issue so I definitely appreciate the ability to in a sense play devil's advocate and promote the libertarian side that's maybe more antagonistic to your thesis though I mean I have a 16 month old right like I am extremely soft on the issue of babies and think that we should probably all have as many of them as possible Zach you are going to jump in there's just one other policy issue I wanted to touch on with you something that jumped one other thing that jumped out to me from that ad which is an issue that's very important to Michigan voters I presume where you're talking about manufacturing and competition with China so let's roll that clip do you know that China is graduating ten engineers for every American engineer this is not a time where we can afford to play nice I'm a free market guy but if corporations want favors from our government then they better be investing here if we're going to have to pay for electric cars then we better be building them in Michigan not Mexico and we should be using supply chains that are American Chinese so what I heard there was I'm a free market guy but but what Peter but what could you just explain that a little bit further for us yeah I mean the reality of our current economic climate is you know we are we are free market with a heavy asterisk around so many different areas where you know either from you know heavy handed federal policy or regulatory job boning or you know just objective pieces of legislation that have been passed you know Washington is picking winners and losers we are making determinations plenty of companies come to DC for handouts the ideal world is to peel that back and to get away from it if we have this world and I want to deal with the world as we have it I would like to see us get to a world where we do have you know far less federal policies that are creating more challenging business environment especially those that are not readily defensible on grounds of safety or objective environmental components but are around more nebulous you know goals you know strings attached to dollars that again then distort what should be a very simple profit or loss you know business equation and become one where there are you know regulatory capture of a sector where as we see in my state of Michigan right now we have made so many parts of our state regulatory apparatus burdensome that the only companies who are coming here are those that were forking over hundreds of millions of dollars to incentivize them to come and at that point they're oftentimes only the companies that don't want to locate or won't be received well anywhere else so many of them end up having you know Chinese economic ties so I think this this is where untangling that web is essential but where we have that web having some very clear understandings of what is our where are we opening up liabilities with our dependence on Chinese supply chains I'm certainly not somebody who has any issue if our pool floaties are made in China but you know if the majority of our prescription pharmaceuticals are coming from outside the country and in the event of you know a disruption to global trade or international shipping or anything we saw along the lines of covid now we're in real trouble right I think it's about reducing those vulnerabilities appreciating those vulnerabilities and not just having a reflexive what I think we've seen all too often a reflexive notion and even incorporated into American policy that ends up hurting our own ability we can go from by American policies to the Jones act to a handful of other places where you can just align what the stated intent of the policy was and demonstratively show that the policy is not reaching it and there's an in curiosity legislatively to address it you know that worries me and that's where I'm highly suspect of affirmative policies but when we're looking at how our system is being managed at the moment being very clear that we should not be getting or accepting taxpayer dollars that maybe shouldn't be going there in the first place but if they are then those should be focused domestically if we have these policies then we should be promoted in such a way that is doing minimal damage while we still have them I think you win the reason drinking game anytime Jones act is brought up we all have to take a shot this is like a huge pet issue of pretty much everybody on staff at Reason over here and I think it's a little bit of this libertarian bat signal that we sort of give out to each other but again just connect a policy with an outcome right yeah absolutely tent was to support the domestic maritime industry and specifically the construction industry then why do we have the lowest tonnage you know of ships built in the US then you know we had an over a century right so I'm yeah I agree but you're completely you know you're known as one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his behavior on January 6th in fact this is the way that the New York Times is characterizing your Senate run Peter Meyer a Republican who voted to impeach Trump is running for Senate you know given what the GOP has become though we've seen this glide path to the nomination that Trump is on how big a problem is that for you in terms of being viable in a Republican primary I frankly don't think it's much of a problem I think there's I was just having this conversation earlier there's an interesting dynamic where from and I'm not labeling Reason as sort of media you are obviously a media organization but in look the broader media narrative everything can be reduced down to these you know these kind of polar dynamics right you're either pro or anti or on one side or the other you know I never called myself somebody who was anti-Trump or never Trump I took serious issue up to including obviously voting to impeach the former president for his actions on January 6th I thought that that was worthy of both condemnation and also worthy of a adjudication in the Senate because that was a dark and shameful day in the American people deserve to hear the facts presented and for the president and then former president to make his case you know the reality I think of so well the reality that escapes so much of our politics and where it becomes challenging is you know I don't accept that you have to be all one thing or all the other that you know you're in either the black box over here or the white box over here I try to call bulls and strikes I try to be as honest a broker as I can of not excusing something that I would have condemned had it been somebody of the opposite party doing and I think that's something I grew up you know despising politicians for watching John Stuart back when he was actually funny and seeing you know him playing clips of a member of Congress arguing against you know the two year prior version of themselves on the same issue with the only difference being you know who was the president and they supported it when their guy did it and they opposed it when the other guy's you know other person's guy did it I think that leads to the cynicism we have and so that's who I try not to be I try to have that consistent approach try to call bulls and strikes being honest broker and you know at the end of the day I can honestly say I would vastly prefer even you know maybe my least favorite Republican candidate to a second Joe Biden administration why were so many of your colleagues such cowards when it comes to the impeachment vote there were certainly plenty of folks who had but I would say are kind of sincere and reasonable objections vast majority of folks will just and this is not this is not limited to to that vote on almost everything it would say well you know their safety in numbers where's everybody else going I'll just follow suit but to me that's just the definition of like moral cowardice right like when push comes to shove they're not willing to actually be leaders in any way and say and and assess the evidence in front of them and say you know a lot the stolen election claims are fairly bogus they can be adjudicated via the court system in many way in many cases they ultimately were and judges consistently ruled that they were not very credible and the actual actions that people took on January 6th were pretty abominable really an attempt to impede the ability to appropriately register you know people's political preferences I'm sorry but like I just am I missing anything or is that a pretty clear cut situation where there's just an extraordinary moral cowardice problem among Republicans right now I mean you never I mean the sort of line is you never have to explain why you voted no on something but you know if you vote yes somebody will always find something to take fault you know again I had some colleagues who would agree with everything you said but would say well they read the article of impeachment and they were uncomfortable that it was alleging a criminal action again not a criminal process but that it didn't have a kind of broader dereliction of duty there were actually Republicans who were trying to work with Nancy Pelosi on having a more limited article who had committed to voting in favor of it but she said no we're going with what we drafted because her goal was to have as few Republicans in support as possible it I'm going to save a lot of that for for a memoir but I mean the reality is and again the way I look at things um change the party you know change the person who's doing it from somebody who's you know on my side to oppose or somebody who's opposed to me to being on my side if that changes how I view the action then my ethics are clearly only situational and and I should find something that I can be consistent about you know there's going to be votes that are shirts and skins right there's going to be things that you know what is a sticking point to you in the minority you might be comfortable with if you're in the majority or vice versa um but the the sort of just reflexive approach where it doesn't seem like anybody actually believes anything um yeah I don't I don't abide that I don't like that I saw plenty of it it disgusted me I enjoyed quietly being like no no you voted this way in the effort to hold you know Eric hold during contempt but how are you making the distinction between this and to some of my colleagues credit they would say okay honestly like I can find you know two or three distinctions but I don't really believe in it like some of this just comes down to shirts and skins I don't want to glide over the what you said earlier which is that you say that you would support even your most disliked Republican over the you know a second Joe Biden least favorite least favorite Republican um so we can possibly put Donald Trump into that category I don't want to put words in your mouth but what why is that you know given your sincere kind of principled and moral objections to what went down around the election what have you know the behavior on January 6 and post January 6 and just these ongoing legal cases hanging over his head what is it that you know still makes that more appealing than a second Biden term I would say to me the two most pivotal days in my time in Congress were you know January 6 of 2021 and August 15 of 2021 when Afghanistan collapsed and my you know both were moments where I a lot of folks that I had thought better of or systems I had thought you know had some competency you know were really shown the shine was totally off you know both of those respective apples you know one on the domestic political side the other you know in our national security apparatus and the unwillingness of a lot of people to you know gauge and react to appropriate risks when but is it fair to lay the disaster of the Afghanistan withdrawal completely at Biden's feet I mean there was wasn't there a certain inevitability that you know we were to pull back there was going to be a collapse of the government there very clear you know I think there was we could spend an hour on this my specific way in which I felt you know very much betrayed and felt like that was sort of a betrayal by proxy of a lot of folks who you know hinged on us when Biden announced that he was going to withdraw you know by then said September 11 and then it was moved up to September 1 that was in April of 2021 and I was supportive of that I was supportive of Trump's effort to withdraw we immediately had a bipartisan group of us working in Congress saying okay we still got a lot of folks who supported us this special visa program what can we do to you know now that we have a time frame now that we have sort of a final clock should light a bit of a fire to go and process all of this it was roadblock after roadblock those flights only started leaving I think the first one was on July 29 and it was 200 people a day not every day and then within two weeks the entire you know kind of country collapsed and we were left with the mass evacuation that we had we when I say we encountered roadblock after roadblock some of it was just bureaucratic and competency making sure everything goes through the interagency process yada yada yada and there was also I think a great fear on behalf of the Biden administration that the evacuation of you know Afghans which was supported in a bipartisan way this was very much not a controversial issue that that would end up getting compared or draw light to the problems that we were having on the southern border which even at that time the Biden administration was aware of and were paranoid of that becoming a larger media focus because they thought it would be so politically damaging to them or raise uncomfortable questions now that fear that led to basically the evacuation of Afghans who had supported the United States forces that we had a commitment to that ultimately was really the inflection point that tanked his approval rating and so I both have a deep feeling of kind of personal betrayal from that and just it's still kind of a knife in my gut that I still feel is very sharp combined with my overall long-term view of what is going to be better for the country I think that overall where the root of so much social chaos and disorders going to come from what will be the number one exacerbating factor that will certainly be capitalized to expand the size scale and scope of federal government to turn a ratchet in ways that we can't ratchet back is if we encounter significant and severe and persistent economic uncertainty and unrest that will make everything worse I think the that's where I come down to and Biden is more likely to deliver that in your opinion I would be very open to someone making the counter argument what I saw in Congress in terms of the administration ramming through policies that even some of my Democratic colleagues knew would be economically harmful but they didn't feel like they could stop or have a voice to say no the the insane like post-COVID the American rescue plan was probably consensus estimates at least three to four points or at least two and a half to three points of the inflation that we saw could be solely attributed to the 1.9 trillion coming out of that we're always going to have some inflation just with COVID I think there were some well intended policies that I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt on and then when you're passing policies when there's very clearly no economic imperative to do so and it's just all sort of a partisan grab bag you know that buck stops at the president's office but the broader challenge and issue that we have I mentioned sort of legislative supremacy our executive branch is far too powerful the fact that we feel like if you elect the wrong president the country is going to take a nosedive a lot of that problem is because of the office that the president is one of the most dangerous institutions in the western world right now because of how much power both through Supreme Court decisions and through you know legislative ineptitude incompetence or inattention has ultimately accrued into that office and that has that to me is far more important than who the individual office holder is and what their policies are I sincerely appreciate the argument that you're making with the pragmatism that you're talking about with regard to you know how Joe Biden has actively made the inflationary situation so much worse in a way that harms people's budgets and then that incubates a certain amount of you know political unrest that stems from that I'm very sympathetic to all of that but I'm still struggling with this fundamental idea that you know if push came to shove you would feel more comfortable supporting Trump than Biden in seeking another term I mean are you concerned about Trump's co-opting of the Republican the degree to which the Republican Party has been totally co-opted and corrupted under Trump as well as you know I mean you have been such an ardent voice against a lot of the election conspiracy theory stuff how do we know that that's not going to get worse in a way that fundamentally threatens American democracy and our institutions and this is where I always try to be you know understand you know okay well what let me try to have a consistent standard again that notion of being consistent understanding the components and depths of a problem you know the numbers of Democratic voters who viewed the 2016 election as illegitimate or the mirror image of Republican voters who viewed 2020 as illegitimate that doesn't excuse you know Republicans doing that and obviously the post 2020 election period was dramatically different than the post you know 2016 election period but to me it says this is a the problem that's underlying this is more widespread right the violence on January 6th and the violence that we saw over the summer of 2020 again neither excuses or should allow anyone to condone one while condemning the other I think both are worthy of condemnation and you know both may have degrees of difference in various attributes but the common thread is it was a large group of people expressing a frustration that they felt could not be resolved within the system so they engage in activities that were you know attacking the system from without rather than working from within so again my point of view is while not you know condoning you know either is to say well let's look at what is underpinning some of this what is the problem beneath the problem because that if we don't address it if we don't get at some of those issues of institutional trust if we don't have you know a government that feels like it is representing everybody that there are minimal incompetent moments that are going to be highlighted because with social media and the internet is a lot easier to highlight them and reduce the amount of times where someone looks at the government and says what are these trying to swear less but you know insert your profanity of choice guys doing then maybe we can get to the point where that temperature is kind of boiled down the challenge is you know from one partisan position to the other it's well let me condemn all the things that I can on the other side and then find convenient ways of rationalizing my own it's a really important point that there's a lot of the degradation of the norms and the institutions is coming from the other side and it happens in a more perhaps more subtle way than you know trumps blatant claims of election fraud and conspiracy like one thing I'm continually fascinated and horrified by is the extent to which Democrats and some of the hardcore anti-Trump Republicans who constantly sermonize about how our hallowed democracy is in trouble if the MAGA movement gains ground are actually willing to prop up MAGA candidates in fact you know we know from the WikiLeaks email yeah I know what happened to you and I want to talk about that in a second but like on the biggest scale it happened the WikiLeaks dump showed that that was a strategy of the Hillary Clinton campaign to push as much media attention as they could towards Trump they called it the Pied Piper strategy and yeah it happened in your election race let me just pull up the New York Times article on it Democrats aid far right candidate against Republican who backed impeachment that being you and they note that $425,000 of advertising went from Democratic groups went to your basically it was an ad that was kind of pretending to attack your opponent but really was just like highlighting all the attributes that would be appealing to a hardcore conservative so it's this kind of like sneaky advertising in favor of your opponent because they thought he would be easier to beat in the general and turned out they did beat him in the general so their political calculation might have been right but the moral calculation is what's more troubling and interesting to me and what I'd like you to comment on yeah I mean to me just for the record so I lost by my primary by three points it was not exactly you know a blowout you know ultimately I take responsibility for that loss but you know it was I thought it was very rich the way that I would hear the Democrats rail against you know what a threat these guys are and you know at the same time doing everything to boost right and that's where I am very much a kind of on all houses mentality I think it's there's a sort of I think both sides something gets a bum rap because it's often well it's fine if we do this because they do it too and the other point is no everyone here has blood on their hands in terms of producing the moment that we're in there may be degrees of difference in terms of who's done more in this case or more in that case but ultimately both parties and all folks are living in glass houses on this so just you know as a Republican I want to be able to condemn when you know mobs try to intimidate attackers and that can become a hard thing if I spent the whole time condoning or making excuses for you know January 6th right like because consistency matters to me and that's not going to say that I'm you know there aren't places where I look back and say oh well I probably should have done this or how do I find that thread you know I'm not going to pretend to be perfect in that but that is my aspiration that is my goal and that stands in contrast to a political system who's I mean the amount of times I've seen the post and I've or somebody's comment and I'm like I cannot tell sincerely if you were being sarcastic or not because I could find the rationalization for you know a sincere interpretation of this tweet or for it to be entirely tongue in cheek because you know like it's all unmoored right and again getting back to the beginning of this conversation that feeling of like you know what actually matters who actually believe something where we actually going or we just you know all these whirling dervishes you know spinning around and staying in the same place I would just like to be able to affirmatively you know government officials you know folks making policy affirmatively outlining a position and consistently defending it as opposed to you know well you're going to forget about what I said last week so I'm just going to you know adopt whatever the flavor of the day is because you know or again our attention spans may not be long enough for anyone to recall it and anybody who points out that inconsistency you know I'll just call them a nerd and somebody who you know is you know if you're explaining you're losing or whatever and just drive forward I'm sure there's some happy topics we can kind of wrap up on but that broader trend and you know this week and the Supreme Court there'll be the case about whether or not Donald Trump can be thrown off the Colorado states of the Colorado ballot, the main ballot. It's an amendment argument that we've covered a little bit before on this show yeah and I mean the thing I just I want to grab some of the folks who are advocating for this and saying like well so what would you what would your defense be if that same argument was applied to you you know and it's always this is different or Trump is unique or X or Y or Z it's like okay but you know that's a value judgment you're saying that you're setting a precedent how would you like it if that was you know used against you or what what would you say and if you would scream bloody murder if somebody would do to you what you're doing to them you know I mean every kindergartener is taught the concept of like the golden rule and doing unto others you know but within our political process you know it just becomes a you know a might and right you know if you have the power then you have the power to use it and that's all well and good but eventually you're going to be in the minority you know you're going to get good and hard whatever you gave to somebody else and I think the challenge is you know if you don't have folks who are thinking of that long term if they're not thinking past the end of the month or the year or this election cycle you know then there's no inherent disciplining mechanism to say well maybe don't pick up the thing that's just lying right in front of you because you know of what that effect will be on our broader system but when you don't have individuals who care about that when you know everything is short-sighted and well you know if you're run out of town run out of DC on a rail you can always pick up a nice you know kind of cable network gig or you know start your own company selling you know Sandra Day O'Connor bobbleheads or you know you know beat pills that's going to be a very different incentive structure than that oriented towards you know thoughtful long-term governing. When you first learned about Democrats backing on supporting you know the person who was trying to primary you and was ultimately successful in doing that who was very far to the right of you when you first learned about that A. did you feel like a conspiracy theorist like did that feel too crazy to be true and B. like how did you process that what did that feel like in that moment I mean I wasn't surprised I was surprised that it came through the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that was actually their first independent expenditure of the 2022 midterms it's pretty blatant right like they're not even trying to hide it it didn't come through some you know kind of like it was it was blunt pay for by DCCC and I have my own conspiracy theory behind that that they make a blunt to basically send the bat signal to you know Democratic voters in the district to say hey you know there's really no competitive Democratic primaries you can vote in either now I don't think that had a large impact but you know yeah it you know I think I called it sanctimony as bullshit on you know CNN of just again like what do you actually believe and what you believe be willing to be held consistent to it so it I should put it this way very few things that happen while I was in Congress came as a surprise to me in terms of me just objectively being like I can't believe this is happening so many times where I would look at you know the possible kind of decision trees and events and I was like you know what is probably the least inspiring or the dumbest or the the outcome that would make me say yeah that feels about right that ended up being the outcome nine times out of ten so a lot of my worst assumptions or worst predictions or just you know most my lowest estimation assumptions ended up being affirmed but I was rarely surprised you know it's still it's still happening and you that's probably the right approach is to just assume the you know adopt a sort of strategic cynicism because you will be proven right when it comes to electoral politics at this level like the latest example of that that struck me was our colleague Matt Welch wrote an article about kind of the third party challenges that are likely to appear this cycle between RFK and the Libertarian Party and the No Labels group there's very likely going to be a sizable percentage of voters that are voting for neither Trump or Biden possibly you know covering the spread and that's got these that's got the Democratic Party and probably the Republican Party to panicked and their surrogates are engaging in these kinds of behaviors they're trying to kind of he Matt describes a vicious level of interest in the No Labels party there's these tactics that third party watchers are very familiar with you know denying ballot access engaging in law fair the normal routes of political running political ads so it is more of this kind of undermining democracy to supposedly protect democracy I'm reading a book right now that was recommended by one of our listeners by Emily Finley about this concept she calls Democratism which is more of a romanticized version of democracy that isn't just a mechanism for selecting political leaders but is actually an ideology that leads to certain social outcomes so I guess my question for you is is there any antidote to that kind of establishment Tarianism that do you think that first of all I guess do you think that's real and be can it be contained are there any methods to counteract that no to me the strongest method is having having trusted objective folks who can look at a situation and just say Democrats are railing about gerrymandering and how you know it's you know the Republicans are being evil down in Texas so defend what you guys are doing in Illinois defending what you're doing in New York I think it needs to be called out it needs to be pointed out you know I it cracks me up the amount of times where again everything is the most important this time is different you know we we need to throw the rules out the window up and until the time where we want those ruled back because they protect us like up and until the next time is even worse and now trust us now I mean if you look at the way in which President Biden every single time he wants to blame Republicans for something it's always mega Republicans it's always extreme mega Republicans it could be Susan Collins and Mitt Romney you know and they are you know extreme mega Republicans and I think that is certainly not helpful it undercuts whatever argument and I think just drives us back into a cynical polarization where you know you don't feel like you're going to have a home but boy is it more comfortable to you know at least be in one shelter or the other than in the middle on the wilderness or yeah I mean it harkens back to the your farewell speech where you're quoting Yates and saying like the center is you know having trouble holding under those conditions I guess to wrap us up maybe you could give us an optimistic vision for escape from that like what is your vision of a GOP and maybe even a Democratic Party that is looks different from how it does right now like what is the GOP that Peter Meyer would like to see take us into you know really starting a new American century to me that party is one where you can look at a Republican run city you can look at a Republican run state and say gosh that kind of seems like a place I want to live right and where folks are moving and voting with their feet you know they're already doing that with the amount of outflows from California to Florida is telling you know but having more opportunities to see policies in action so we remove the rhetorical you know dependence on who can make an argument and get to well what has been demonstrated to work right I think by grounding our policy discussions within communities focusing on those outcomes you know it improves trust it improves confidence when you have subsidiary right you have lower levels of governance that folks can get engaged with they have a voice then they don't feel like what is happening is something happening to them but something that they are a part of that is it is a government of by and for the people but that requires the right structure that requires the right setup it requires you know conservatives getting back to a fundamental idea of conserving the values of the founding and conserving the principles of the Constitution right I think it's behind a lot of the fears a lot of the frustrations and a lot of the anger on the Republican Party today but it's all about giving it a direction you know that rocket fuel can take you to the moon with the right nozzle or you can blow up on the launch pad and so you know we have the fuel we need the nozzle and we can go far Peter Meyer thank you very much for talking with us today I appreciate the time it's been fun yeah it's been wonderful thank you thanks for listening to just asking questions 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