Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed recovering journalist Clint Brewer in the studio to predict that Republican candidates will have somewhere between a heavy trickle and a wave in the upcoming midterm elections for both the House and the Senate.
Leahy: In the studio, all-star panelist, recovering journalist Clint Brewer. Clint, it’s time. This is it. It’s time for your call. It’s your call in terms of the midterm outcomes. Do you agree with the sentiment out there that Republicans are likely to take over the House of Representatives?
Brewer: Absolutely. No, I think that’s going to happen.
Leahy: It’s totally going to happen. The question is, how big is it? Is it a red trickle, a red wave, or a red tsunami for the House?
Brewer: I don’t know what the difference between trickle and wave is.
Leahy: Trickle is you pick up less than 10 seats.
Brewer: Oh, no. Wave is you pick up 40 seats. A tsunami is you pick up 70 seats.
Brewer: I think it’s going to be somewhere between a heavy trickle and a wave. I think it will be somewhere between 30, 40.
Leahy: A heavy trickle and a wave.
Brewer: But let me just preface this by saying when I was in the media, I completely stopped predicting elections because I’m terrible at it. (Laughs)
Leahy: That’s a very good point. It’s a losing proposition. But I do think Republicans take the House. I do think they take it with enough of a margin to be comfortable.
Leahy: How about the Senate?
Brewer: I think they eke it out. I think it’s going to be a seat or two. I think they win. I think we win. I think it’s going to be close.
Leahy: You do?
Brewer: And I think there’s probably going to be some challenges across the country on both sides of the aisle. I don’t think we’re going to know on the Senate until December exactly where we are.
Leahy: RealClearPolitics, they do the average of polls. They have a whole slew of them out today. We’ll kind of cover those. But what they’re saying is the pickups, the Senate, they’re projecting a 54-46 Senate that Republicans hold all the seats, and they pick up Arizona’s Blake Masters, Nevada’s Adam Laxalt.
Brewer: Definitely.
Leahy: Now they’re projecting New Hampshire with Don Bolduc taking Hassan. And then dragging across the goal line in Georgia is Herschel Walker.
Brewer: That sounds about right.
Leahy: Sounds about right?
Brewer: Yes.
Leahy: 54-46. And so we’re looking at Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
Brewer: Who I know you have a lot of personal affection for.
Leahy: I don’t dislike him.
Brewer: But you’ve been critical.
Leahy: He’s not Newt Gingrich.
Brewer: Well, nobody’s going to be Newt Gingrich. Is Newt Gingrich still even Newt Gingrich? I’m not sure.
Leahy: That was the thought formulating in my mind, but I didn’t articulate that. We’ve got a little telepathy going on here. (Chuckles)
Brewer: That’s right. That’s right.
Leahy: That’s a good one. And then Mitch McConnell will become the majority leader.
Brewer: Absolutely right. Looking forward to that.
Leahy: Yes, we are looking forward to that. In terms of our summarizing what the world is going to look like in January of 2023, we’re going to have a Republican majority in the House.
We’re going to have a Republican majority, likely in the Senate. We’ll have Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and we’ll have Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. That’s what it’s going to look like.
Brewer: It sounds good to me.
Leahy: What’s the first thing they’re going to do?
Brewer: I don’t know about the first thing they’re going to do, but the main thing they ought to do is do what the American people want, which is to focus on the economy. We’ve got to figure out inflation.
We’ve got to get people to the point where they can buy a new home if they want to, remodel their home if they want to, or get into a first home if they want to. And we’ve got to get to the point where a trip to the grocery store isn’t so burdensome for the average working family.
Leahy: You don’t have to take out a mortgage on your house to go to the grocery store.
Brewer: Yes. Look, I think that’s what’s on people’s minds. I know there are other things. I know people who are very locked into the political system and read a lot and listen a lot.
They have diverse interests. But for the majority of Americans, this election is about the country not going in the right direction.
Leahy: Here’s the thing. I don’t know. For a couple of months, it seems like endlessly, I’ve been describing November 8th as the nadir. Nadir. The low point of our constitutional republic.
Brewer: Constantly pushing on people’s vocabulary on this show.
Leahy: Expanding vocabulary. We’re here to help expand the vocabulary of people. But what we’re going to see, I think, is because the commander in chief, the legal but not legitimate Joe Biden, will veto any good bills that come out.
What’s going to happen, I think, over the next two years is a Republican House and a Republican Senate will just stop all the stupid things that Biden is doing and there’s not going to be a lot of forward progress, but there’s going to be not quite as much damage.
Brewer: I agree. I think there’ll be a lot of regulatory items and other things that are going to be rolled back. But again, don’t forget why you’re there. Don’t forget why this election happened. Both parties are guilty of this.
They get in the midterm or they get it in a big wave and they believe that what got them there was all of these sort of insider baseball or big ideas that they had, and it’s not. It’s very simple things. And if they want to be heroes of the American people, address those very simple things.
Leahy: Will Kevin McCarthy be as disappointing a Speaker of the House in 2023 as John Boehner was in 2011?
Brewer: I don’t know. I think McCarthy’s going to have to really step up and control a new caucus that’s going to have a lot of new members. (Leahy chuckles)
Being the Speaker of the House might be the most thankless job in America, and it’s definitely one of the hardest. Those poor folks have to run so frequently so they don’t have a lot of latitudes to make decisions outside.
Leahy: People think, by the way, that being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is like a fantastic job. It is nonstop work, it seems to me.
Brewer: It’s a grind.
Leahy: And you have to have two households and you don’t see your family very much. I think it’s a very hard job.
Brewer: It’s a remarkably hard job.
Leahy: Especially for our friends who are in the minority right now. Oh, my goodness. But they are ready for the top.
Brewer: We need to remember there’s another battle between good and evil that’s going to take place very soon.
Leahy: Yes, Tennessee and Georgia.
Brewer: Yes, go Vols.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
