Jonah Goldberg

And that's a vicious cycle.

But the way you need to do that, right?

The only way I know of how to do that is to get back to the system that you and I kind of grew up under, right?

You remember, I probably talked about this last time I was here.

It's like, you know, when we were growing up,

Republicans ran a little bit to the right in the primaries to get a little bit of the base, right?

And then they ran back to the center once they got the nomination and focused on the median voter, the swing voter, the independent, whatever.

Same thing with the Democrats.

They ran a little bit to the left of the base in the primaries.

And then once they got the nomination, they ran to the center.

The problem is, is that structurally the threat to incumbency or election is

in our system now is in the primaries.

It is not in general elections.

Something like 80% of districts and states, if you get the nomination in a very blue state, you're going to win.

And if you get the nomination in a very red state, you're going to win.

And so this has created a sociology within both parties where they think they are there to represent the base of their own party rather than try to be a majority party.

Well, I want to be really clear.

I think the problems with the Republican Party are much worse for the country than the problems with the Democratic Party.

Well, I mean, so to answer the first part of your question, yeah, they're basically symmetrical.

The two big mistakes we made as a country politically was one, moving to primaries in the first place.