CLAY: We talk about how this show is a bastion of sanity in an insane world, and one reason we’re continuing to grow is because so many people in the media are crazy — 1.7 million people, Buck, have changed their party affiliation in the past year, over a million of those people are becoming Republican. Two thirds of that number. These are people who are making the choice to define themselves as either Republicans or Democrats. Two-thirds of the people in the last year have overwhelmingly moved into the Republican camp.
Did this surprise you? This has been, the AP has a huge story up on it, came out this morning, being much talked about as a potential sign of the Red Wave that is coming because the numbers here, suburban very often driving this change, the Republican Party is adding massive numbers of adherents, and Democrats are getting left behind. Two-thirds, a big number, 66% to roughly 33%. Did this surprise you?
BUCK: What would be the counterargument to people doing this, right? If we were to play out a little thought experiment here, you’re walking down the street, you’re talking to your neighbor Phil, he’s walking his Belgian Malinois.
BUCK: Let’s just say, by the way, the Malinois is actually used by Special Forces guys.
CLAY: My bad. It sounds too fancy. You got too much of an accent on that dog.
BUCK: A lot of SF guys. Uh, we put titanium inserts on their teeth.
CLAY: My bad. I apologize. Don’t beat me up when you see me out. You guys are way tougher than me. So the accent on the dog.
BUCK: If I’d said like a chow-chow or something a little more froufrou. Anyway. But walking down the street, you’re talking to your neighbor, Phil, and he’s saying, “Hey, man, I’m really politically activated right now and I think I’m gonna vote for a Republican for the first time.” If you were trying to convince him based on… Now, this is now somebody who’s open-minded enough that they’re even thinking about it.
CLAY: That’s right.
BUCK: If your job, if you’re a Democrat, and your job was to convince him to vote for Biden and try to help destroy the country in the process, how would you actually do it at this phase? You would be talking about the January 6th insurrection, you’d be saying, women’s right to choose is gone, right? You’d be… I don’t think Phil cares that much. You go down this list of things, and then imagine you’re on the other side and you’re saying, “You know what? Phil? This is brilliant. You should definitely vote Republican because of the following:
“Look at what they’ve done to the price of gas, look at what they’ve done to inflation, look at what they’ve done to the border, look at the Democrat policies on crime and police and prosecutions in cities and towns and counties all across America.” You just have a fuselage at your disposal for at least vote as a rebuke of the Democrat insanity. And yet people say, “Oh, what will Republicans do?” They’ll stop the bleeding, and then they’ll come up with, when they’re in the majority, a plan to enact because we know they can’t enact it while Biden’s president in two years and continue to push and continue to be a break on the lunacy. And I just think we know who wins this argument at this point. If you’re talking about a persuadable, Phil’s going, he’s voting Republican straight down the ticket, Clay.
CLAY: I’ll give you an example of something I did recently that I’ve any done before and I think it’s directly tied to Democrat policies. My wife is working downtown right now in Nashville during the summer, and I told her, “Do not stop for gas after dark anywhere before you get on the interstate.” We stopped for gas recently coming out of a restaurant in Nashville, and I was driving. And I got out of the gas station, and I felt like I was in a Third World country in Nashville, my hometown. Like, it did not feel safe. There was, like, sort of…
And you’re talking to somebody who has lived in downtown Nashville for years, not like I’m somebody who’s always lived in the suburbs. There was a sense of lawlessness. It was a Friday or Saturday night, and I told my wife, and I think there are lots of people having these conversations right now. You might be having it with your kids if you’re a dad, if you’re a granddad, I said, “Make sure the gas tank is full,” and that’s tough in and of itself ’cause you know what it cost me to fill up yesterday, Buck?
BUCK: 120 bucks?
CLAY: $150.
BUCK: Wow.
CLAY: Now, I drive an SUV.
BUCK: You do drive Clay Force One. You’re not messing around.
BUCK: The thing Clay about the scooter is you can always go Flintstone style and go to foot power when you need it.
CLAY: That’s right. I do not have that option in the SUV, but I took it. I filled it, $150 to fill up. So, one, that’s in and of itself its own problem. But I told her, I said, I don’t feel comfortable one of by yourself after dark right now stopping and filling up your gas tank on your way out of town. And I’ve never said that to her in my entire life. And you know my wife. She’s a boxer. For 110 pounds, pound per pound, she would kick my ass but it’s not like she’s unable to defend herself in some way, but I don’t feel comfortable with the lawlessness that I’m seeing. And, by the way, that’s backed up by stats on crime that are occurring in Nashville and many other places.
BUCK: For years, Clay, my job for so many people — and this includes I’ve had many listeners over the years who have said, “I’ve never been in New York before, I’m finally willing to go,” and they’ll say, “Is it safe?” and also, they’ll ask me — and I love it. I give them some restaurant recommendations.
CLAY: You put us in a great Italian place, my wife and I. We were up there two weeks ago.
BUCK: I do know. I spend way too much time in money over the last 20 years eating food in New York City. So anyway.
CLAY: And what was the steakhouse we went to that was so —
BUCK: Keens. A true institution in New York City.
CLAY: Oh, so good.
BUCK: A great spot. But I used to be the one who would always tell people, “It’s fine, it’s safe, you’ll be fine,” and I had total comfort in that. I’d say, “Go walk around Central Park, the Reservoir,” which is like a pond, basically, in the middle of the park, and it has a running track around it. You know, Bloomberg administration, even into the de Blasio administration, you’d see women jogging alone at 10, 11 o’clock at night around there. And that has dissipated. There’s a lot less of it.
The subways are much more seedy and dangerous. I used to tell people, “The subway’s fine! I take the subway all the time.” I spent so many… I can’t even… I took probably hundreds, thousands of subway trips over a span of a few years. And I sit here and I say the subway is not the place of safety where I could say it’s fine for you to come here; don’t worry. I have my own experience in Chicago as a tourist. I went to Chicago to play the tourist for a weekend.
CLAY: Right.
CLAY: I got sent the video.
BUCK: If I were loaded with cash and money were no object, Manhattan Beach is a beautiful place. It’s amazing place, right?
CLAY: For people who don’t know, it’s just south of downtown Los Angeles. You’re still in L.A. County, but you’re on the beach. It is absolutely fabulous.
BUCK: And you don’t really have the communist politics you get in Venice Beach and Santa Monica.
CLAY: Correct.
BUCK: So there’s a lot to recommend it. There was a broad daylight jewelry store snatch-and-grab robbery —
CLAY: It’s crazy.
BUCK: — with, it looked like, about eight people all with hooded sweatshirts, masks on, go in with hammers and things. They break. They loot everything in this jewelry store, brought daylight. There’s video of it. You could see people walking around.
CLAY: Three cars idling waiting to be able to jump into. I watched this video.
BUCK: There’s video footage you can see, you can see license plate of the cars that they’re actually fleeing in, by the way —
CLAY: Hopefully, they caught ’em.
BUCK: You would think.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: And yet you’ve seen this, and people say, “Oh, well, it’s jewelry store,” and you know what the left-wing response to this stuff is? “Let’s not overexaggerate this. They have insurance. Do people even need jewelry? Is a jewelry store even something that is important?” That is AOC, people like that, that is their response to these kinds of incidents. And the reality is for everybody on that block now, for every restaurant for every business for the next six months they’re gonna be like, uh, what the heck was that that just occurred? For people who live in that area there’s a psychological damage that also enables the criminality because the criminals feel freer to do this stuff and the law-abiding people go, “Who’s protecting us?”
They’re in disbelief that that could happen in Manhattan Beach. When crime is on such an upswing where it is right now that it could be occurring like that, it is a, “Holy crap!” moment for many different people and I think emblematic of why so many people are changing their registration from a party perspective to Republican. And this is, again, hard data, 1.7 million people, two-thirds have gone Republican in the last year, switching party affiliation.
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