Political Expert and Author Mark Weaver

Dougs talks to Mark Weaver, political expert and author.Show more

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Doug Truax: Welcome to the First Right podcast. Your weekly conservative news show brought to you by Restoration PAC. I'm Doug Truax, founder, and president of Restoration PAC. Today. We're happy to once again, to have Mark Weaver on,  a political consultant in Ohio who knows all about that state politics, and he's got great views on what's going on with the rest of the world. So we're super happy to have you back. Mark. Welcome.

Mark Weaver: Thank you, Doug. Great to be here. Well good.

Doug Truax: So before we get into the nationwide stuff, I just want to get your take on this Ohio Senate race. There's so much going on some big names, lots of people coming and going off of Fox and everything else. And so who better than you to give the rundown on what you think is going on in that race?

Mark Weaver: Yeah, our Senator, Rob Portman said he was not running for reelection and we have many different candidates. Who've announced our former state party chair, Jane Timkin, J D Vance. Some people know him from the book. He wrote Hillbilly Elegy, Josh Mandel, our former state treasurer, Mike Gibbons. There've been several people in the race and it's really unclear. Who's going to win because the race is getting very close and president Trump has not yet endorsed. And that could be a key factor in this race.

Doug Truax: So what do you think right now, as far as you can tell how you're handicapping this thing, how do you see a plan out? What's the timing on that?

Mark Weaver: Well, our primary is supposed to be May 3rd, but we're having a little fight with the Supreme court and the legislature through the lines. And so, although the Senate race doesn't really matter what the lines cause the state is the state. It may change the primary election day. So whether it's May 3rd or later, it's going to be sometime in the spring. And it's really too early to say, who's going to win. Josh Mandel had been in the lead, but his numbers have been T eight down like Gibbons. Who's a businessman has been making up. Jane Timken. The former state party chair was recently endorsed by Rob Portman. And that has given her campaign some momentum. So it's one to watch. And obviously we want to win this primary with a strong candidate. The Democrats pretty much are coming up behind Tim Ryan, Democrat congressmen from the Youngstown area. Right,.

Doug Truax: Right, right. I remember that guy from way back. I knew he was always angling at some point. So here's his chance and we'll see what happens there. But yeah, we definitely got to put up a strong candidate and what I think we've all been encouraged over the years to see Ohio trending more and more red, which is, which is great for everybody. So, so that's good. So turning to the national scene then, so here at Restoration PAC, we're always talking about the different issues. Obviously big ones around here and around the country, inflation, crime, you know, we've got the demonization of people based on their skin color. That's what we talked about a lot. There's a lot of other things going on the border. COVID still all that stuff. What do you think going forward now are going to be the big national issues that are going to be playing out?

Mark Weaver: Well, I've done a lot of over the years and most times people aren't paying much attention politics. This year's going to be different. People have  figured out in the last few years that bad government policy can get manually affect their everyday life. Though whether its mandates, where there shouldn't be mandates, shutdowns where there shouldn't be shut down or oh, government spending to the extreme, which creates inflation. People realize that when you elect the wrong people, you get bad policies. It's always been true, but it's more noticeable lately. As a result, we'll see a Republican red wave similar to what we saw in 2010. And if you're buying continues to make mistakes has been making, it might be the biggest wave in modern history.

Doug Truax: Right? And we're seeing that with the inflation piece by itself too. I mean, there's so much going on, but inflation, it hasn't been a real problem like it is now for a long time. And so it's one of those things that just touches everybody all the time. It's hurting your friends, it's hurting your family. It steals your dignity in certain ways. Cause you were going to do this and now you're not. And you gotta admit that you're not. And just the instability it creates in our whole economy and the, and the impact it has on people. It's just, it's just an escapable. So we'll see where that plays out. And you know, what do you see in the future with the inflation piece? I, I don't see it. I don't see it moderating much at all. I mean, print trillions of dollars and just the, the pent up demand that was there and what an incredible blunder they've made here.

Mark Weaver: Yeah. We all watched the video of his wife, President Biden Jr. And he acknowledged this errors in overspending and some supply that might've been the right direction to see some of the pooling, but he doubled down on the same kind of rock where we are he's demonized business, because it made them think that they be out there running their business prop businesses do, which allows them to create jobs and products and help us help us in America. Don't standardly, president Biden has doubled down on the sink kinds of policies. They gave us this information and I don't think anything short of an election is going to pay.

Doug Truax: Right. Right. So that's where I am too. So I kind of know your answer a little bit to this next question. I just want to see if there's any outliers here. Is there anything they can do to salvage this in terms of where this is going? I mean, I don't want us to sound like overly optimistic, obviously about our chances. It's terrible that our chances are getting so great relative to the poor condition of the economy and everything else around the world. But from an election standpoint, that's the way this works out. But is there anything that, any advice that you'd give to the Democrats at this point, other than, you know, Hey, stop doing that piece with the inflation, for sure. Is there anything else that could salvage this in any way for them?

Mark Weaver: Well, they are backpedaling away from whose policies they backpedaled. The markets might notice that, and that could think the markets and it could theme the inflation as well, but I don't think that's going to happen. The Democrat party is adaptive to it's far left. It's an anti corporate basis that anti middle class base, it's more interested in things like global than it is in investing in American domestic energy, like natural gas and fracking and oil brought from our own country or from North America. And so the more we see that done, the more we see attacks on the very people who could affect inflation and can inflect gas prices, the worst that's going to get, which is why I think only an election can solve the problem.

Doug Truax: Right? The leftist took over all the policies from the universities. And let's just go ahead and just start rolling this stuff out and see what happens. And boy, are we ever seeing what happens? And this is, this is how it goes, like you said, it's going to happen an election. So the flip side of that though, is, you know, we want to make sure as conservatives and Republicans, we get this thing done and we don't want to blow it. So what, what advice would you give to our party that take, keep an eye on this. Don't overextend over here. You know, anything like that, that you have in mind at this point?

Mark Weaver: Well, the best thing is you have to talk about what voters care about and what they care about mostly is economic issues. Our party must make the case for why Republican and conservative principles bring about better economics for everybody. So it brings about more jobs, more growth, lower taxes, lower inflation, lower gas prices. These are all Republican strong suits. Now, of course the culture wars are important, but that's not going to win this election. We need to win based on pocketbook issues. And along the way we can correct some of the far overreach that's affecting the culture.

Doug Truax: Yeah, that's right. It's a good time to make some ground up on these things and show people what we're really about, because I think we really needed the country right now. That's for sure. So last question for you then. So as far as the Democrats go and their leadership over there, you know, to me, it looks like total disarray and chaos and not a lot of great people, you know, able to step up. And I think this is a function of, you know, the hyper leftist overtake of their party. But so anybody that you see on that side that could be a future leader for them that would, nobody's talking about right now.

Mark Weaver: Well, sadly their most likely future leader is AOC. And I don't say that happily. She has millions of followers on social media. She, she has an attractive persona. She's particularly weak on policy. Logic is not something that's familiar to her, but for some voters that doesn't matter. And she speaks to a lot of younger voters. If she were to, for example, primary Chuck Schumer for Senate, it's entirely possible. She could win that primary. And it's entirely possible that AOC could be in the United States Senate. And from there, we all saw Barack Obama leap from being junior Senator of Illinois to, to president. So I'm not predicting that, but I'm saying she has a bit of the formula that Democrats need to pay attention. And for those of us who care about good governance, it's a scary thought.

Doug Truax: Yeah, that's terrifying. But the upside right now, like we were just talking about is there is an outcome to all these policies that they've been advocating and we're feeling it as a country. And hopefully we get to a place where people just say, wow, AOC. She's just like the next version of that same stuff that we all hated for awhile. And we got rid of, so, you know, maybe we'll end up there. Who knows, but yeah,l we'll see what happens to keep an eye on that, but Mark really appreciate your insights. So it's super great to have you on, a super smart guy that we like here in front of, and appreciate you coming on the show today.

Mark Weaver: Thank you, Doug.

Doug Truax: All right. That's our show for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time!

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