Episode 975: John Tillman on “The Political Vise”

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: Newt’s World — Episode 975: John Tillman on “The Political Vise”

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Main Theme & Purpose

In this episode, Newt Gingrich welcomes John Tillman, CEO of the American Culture Project and founder of Hall of Giants, to discuss Tillman's new book: The Political Vise: How the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. This deep-dive conversation covers Tillman’s personal journey in politics, the perils facing conservative movements, the influence of government unions, challenges in conservative storytelling, and the importance of engaging at the local level to renew American liberty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

John Tillman’s Political & Professional Journey

• Early Interest in Politics [03:38–06:15]

  • Tillman details a lifelong fascination with politics, recalling watching the 1968 political conventions as a nine-year-old.
    • “I’m sure I’m the only 9-year-old in 1968 who watched both political conventions pretty much gavel to gavel and thought it was fascinating.” —John Tillman [03:48]
  • Though he began as a journalism major, financial necessity led him to business, particularly sales and call centers, which gave him insight into people’s struggles and aspirations.

• Pivot to Policy and the Think Tank World [06:15–10:03]

  • After selling his business in 2004, Tillman sought to merge his business skills with his passion for public policy, eventually leading the Illinois Policy Institute.
    • Discusses “apprenticeship years” learning political advocacy and frustration with the conservative side’s inability to “sell” liberty effectively.

Challenges Facing Republicans & Conservative Movements

• Why Illinois Became a GOP ‘Wasteland’ [10:03–12:28]

  • Republican donors and establishment wrote off Illinois, leading to a fracturing between grassroots and establishment factions, and a donor exodus.
    • “Every time Republicans lose a territory or a district, too many in the establishment write it off and say it’s impossible.” —John Tillman [10:12]
  • Contrasts this with Democrats’ willingness to invest in lost causes to shift the political landscape.

• Landmark Supreme Court Case: Janus v. AFSCME [12:28–14:48]

  • Explains the Janus case, which ended mandatory union fees for public employees:
    • “The argument... was that everything by definition a union does is political.” —John Tillman [12:44]
    • The decision freed up to 5 million workers from compulsory dues, but unions now deploy aggressive tactics to retain fee collection.

• Storytelling: The Right vs. The Left [14:48–18:25]

  • Critiques conservatives for focusing on facts while the left wins with emotional storytelling:
    • “The left is better at telling emotional stories, while conservatives tend to focus on facts and legal arguments, and that generally the emotional stories dominate...” —Newt Gingrich [14:48]
    • Tillman illustrates the need to tie policy persuasion to real-life experiences (e.g., gas prices at the pump).

• Competing for the Moral High Ground [17:12–18:25]

  • Conservatives, despite having “truth on our side,” often shy from seizing moral arguments.
    • “We have truth on our side, we have the moral high ground on our side, and we’re afraid to take it.” —John Tillman [17:12]
  • Cites Trump’s messaging on immigration and transgender athletes as effective examples.

Structural & Institutional Challenges

• Nonprofits & Elite Influencers’ Government Dependence [21:55–25:53]

  • Breaks down how left-leaning nonprofits, government unions, trial attorneys, and businesses dependent on subsidies perpetuate a self-sustaining system of mutual support through government power.
    • “Nonprofits that get most of their funding from government... become nonobjective, biased advocates for ever more government spending.” —John Tillman [21:55]
    • The right lacks similar unifying glue, being more oriented around individual enterprise.

• Public Employee Unions as the Financial Nexus [25:10–25:53]

  • “There’s no question... they are the financial nexus of the left.” —John Tillman [25:10]
  • Government-funded unions lobby for policies that keep them funded, leading to circular political reinforcement.

Candidate Recruitment & The "Political Vice" Metaphor

• Challenges in Candidate Recruitment [26:18–29:52]
  • On the right, talent gravitates toward business, not politics, often making Republican recruitment harder.
    • “When you take 100 random people who are of the right... they’re almost always going to start thinking about a business career.” —John Tillman [26:18]
  • Even successful recruits get “pulled left” due to constituent and donor pressures.
    • Tillman recounts Senator Tom Coburn’s observation: even conservative donors “always have one thing” they want from their representative, pushing politicians left.
      • “Everybody that would come to see me and say, 'Dr. Tom, you’re doing such a good job… but now I got this one thing I need to talk to you about.'” —Tom Coburn via John Tillman [29:11]

Solutions & Paths Forward

• Focus on State and Local Races [30:26–32:00]

  • Tillman stresses the crucial need to contest school boards, city councils, and other local offices to shape culture and policy at the “headwaters.”
    • “We need to be competing when people are forming their thoughts long before the election cycle.” —John Tillman [30:26]

• Storytelling and Competing Culturally [33:21–34:13]

  • Conservatives must invest in content creation that is “entertaining first, lessons second.”
    • “We need to be entertaining storytellers where the lessons come through the side door, not the front door.” —John Tillman [34:13]

• Optimism for America’s Fate [32:06–34:13]

  • Despite cultural disadvantages, Tillman is optimistic:
    • “America is a miracle. And we have been through some very, very terrible challenges in our history... I’m optimistic that we will prevail, that liberty will prevail.” —John Tillman [32:06–32:54]

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I was the guy at every party who knew every Supreme Court justice in my 20s.” —John Tillman [06:34]
• “They sell dependency with limited upside, and people buy it because it sounds seductive and they want security over liberty.” —John Tillman [08:26]
• “Political fear, political expediency, deal making… and then, of course, political principle, which doesn’t come up often enough…” —John Tillman [17:12]
• “There’s a Hall of Fame for every single type of sport. And there’s no Hall of Fame celebrating America’s great entrepreneurs.” —John Tillman [19:08]
• “The right has to solve [the blue city problem] by finding ways to identify aligned voters... and turn them out in blue cities.” —John Tillman [12:12]
• “The indoctrination of the left starts early. And it doesn’t take very many. Two or three people on a six or seven person board who are aggressive can intimidate and silence everyone else.” —John Tillman [31:11]

Hall of Giants Initiative [19:08–21:27]

• Tillman outlines plans to establish a “Hall of Giants” — a national institution dedicated to celebrating American entrepreneurs through immersive, storytelling-driven exhibits, considering locations such as Florida, Atlanta, Nashville, and Dallas-Fort Worth.
  • “A little bit Hollywood meets Rock and Roll Hall of Fame meets Disney World.” [19:59]

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

| Timestamp | Topic/Discussion | |-------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:38–06:15 | Tillman’s early political passion and shift to business | | 10:03–12:28 | GOP challenges in Illinois; donor and leadership dynamics | | 12:28–14:48 | Janus v. AFSCME explained and its aftermath | | 14:48–18:25 | Storytelling's power in politics; emotional vs. factual persuasion | | 19:08–21:27 | Hall of Giants — vision and cultural engagement | | 21:55–25:53 | Nonprofits’ dependence on government and the progressive funding cycle | | 26:18–29:52 | Republican candidate recruitment and “the political vice” pressures in DC | | 30:26–32:00 | Importance of state and local office strategy | | 32:06–34:13 | Signs of optimism and the battle for cultural mindshare |

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Conclusion

John Tillman and Newt Gingrich engage in a frank, insightful exchange about why progressives so effectively dominate American institutions, from unions to cultural storytelling, and what conservatives can do to regain ground — notably, by investing in emotional storytelling, local political turf, and cultural assets like the Hall of Giants. The tone is pragmatic but forward-looking, concluding with a note of optimism about the endurance of liberty and the creativity of the American spirit.

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For more information:

• Book: The Political Vise
• Hall of Giants: hallgiants.org

(End of summary)

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[B]

Welcome to Newts World podcast on the iHeart podcast network. I think one of the most interesting things this last week has been the fact that California is considering a billionaire tax. The Service Employees International Union and United Healthcare Workers west, two of the more radical groups, have collected over one and a half million signatures. Double the signature requirement to put a one time tax on billionaire assets on the California ballot. Now I want you to think about this. The California Billionaire Tax act would target the net worth of about 200 people. They would impose a one time 5% tax on on the net worth of California residents with assets exceeding a billion. And the tax would be due in 2027, but taxpayers could spread the payments over five years. So we're talking here about pretty essential money. A resident with 20 billion in net worth would own a one time tax of $1 billion. And guess what that's going to do. It's going to guarantee that the remaining billionaires in California all leave. I mean, money is easy to scare. And when money gets scared, it picks up and it takes off. Just one more example of how out of touch with reality the left has become. On a much happier note, King Charles and Queen Camilla have visited. Plus and I were very fortunate in that we were at the canonization of John Henry Newman, the most important English Catholic in modern times. And Prince Charles, as he was at the time, came to the canonization in Rome and we actually got time to chat with him for a while at a reception. Very charming, very positive, very interested in learning, very easy to talk to. So I was delighted that he was visiting the United States, first time actually since Queen Elizabeth visited in 2007 to celebrate the anniversary of the Jamestown settlement. It's really interesting because you've got President Trump, maybe because his mother was from Scotland. He really likes the royal family and from everything we can tell, the royal family really likes him. And when you consider what a total loser they have as a prime minister right now, having the king visit is the right thing to do. Coming up, I'll be joined by John Tillman, CEO of the American Culture Project and founder and CEO of the hall of Giants. We're going to discuss his new book, the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty. I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, John Tillman. He is the CEO of the American Culture Project and the founder and CEO of of the hall of Giants. He is known for building the Illinois Policy Institute and co founding and chairing the Liberty justice center. Which successfully argued the landmark supreme court case Janus vs AFSCME, ending mandatory union fees for public employees. He's joining me to discuss his new book, the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to to Regaining Our Liberty. John, welcome and thank you for joining me.

[A]

Well, it's great to be with you, Newt. I'm a longtime admirer, so I enjoy being on your show with you. Thank you.

[B]

You've described yourself as a political junkie from a really young age. What is it about politics that sort of grabbed your attention? And how old were you?

[A]

I'm sure I'm the only 9 year old in 1968 who watched both political conventions pretty much gavel to gavel and thought it was fascinating. My brothers who were two and four years older thought I was crazy. I just thought it was a fascinating experience and I liked competitive nature of it. I like the storytelling of it. I like the mystery of it as it appeared to me as a nine year old. And I went on from there to work in the library and read every newspaper I could get my hands on from around the country in the small town I grew up in and started out in college as a journalism major and a political science minor before getting my sanity back and going into business.

[B]

You decided you wanted to be a journalist writing about politics, but then you went off to business. How did that work out?

[A]

My parents divorced when I was young and my mother was paranoid, schizophrenic and institutionalized throughout my childhood. And it was not the greatest situation. Ended up loving my football coach during my senior year for part of my senior year in high school. And so I pursued these passion as a freshman and sophomore in college. But then I realized I've got to make some money and I studied how much at that time journalists were making and it wasn't very much. And then I studied how much people going into business were making and it was a lot more. So I switched. I needed to make some bones for my family and my mom.

[B]

But you focused on sales and marketing. To what extent did that do you think grew out of your political interest?

[A]

I think it was a big part of it. From the time I was a kid, I used to lay in bed at night dreaming of being a marketer and a salesman, even though those terms in the 70s were not as prevalent as they are today. And I just always liked selling. I was the kid and maybe I just didn't have enough friends, but I was the one who always called everybody up to get the baseball game together, to get the football game together and organize everyone. You know, I had to sell them on it. You don't want to go to the lake and go water skiing. We're going to go play football or baseball today or whatever it might be. So I was always a bit of an organizer and a salesman. And then I realized that that was sort of my calling. And then when I left college, actually while I was still in college, I started out working in a call center, which is a very hardcore sales environment. The movie Glengarry Glen Ross is not far off from reality. And then I ran call centers for the first 11 years of my career, teaching people how to sell who are in desperate situations. And I really learned a lot about the human condition, about leadership and management, about struggle, about redemption. People who work in call centers on a part time basis, desperate for money. Nobody does it because it's fun work. They do it because they're really hungry. And it gave me great respect for the human struggle, which is why I am so focused on entrepreneurship in the private sector, because it is the root source of all prosperity, both material and spiritual.

[B]

You're developing, you've got a business, things are going pretty well. But then in 2004, you sold part of your business and began thinking about either doing another business, going into the corporate world, or finding a way to get involved in politics and public policy. How did that discussion unfold?

[A]

Well, I had been talking about politics in my personal life for many years, and I was the guy at every party who knew every Supreme Court justice in my 20s and knew who the speaker of the House was, as you once were, and who the Senate president was and so forth. A friend of mine, I read about this in the book. Regina Hart, who I'd worked with in the call center business, said, you know, you should try to find a way to get involved in public housing politics. It's your passion. You care about free enterprise and the founding and entrepreneurship. So with her encouragement, I started poking around and learned about the think tank world and advocacy and kind of how it actually worked, as opposed to what I'd studied in school when I started out in political science. And I started making phone calls to every single organization I could find. I called so often, Newt, that they started to scream my calls out because I had a terrible pitch for a guy who was a salesman. I'm in my mid-40s. I just sold my business. I want to get involved in public policy and advocate for the Great American Marathon. You know, I was not an academic. I had no particular qualifications. They didn't Know what to do with me. They started to scream me out so much that when I would call, they dumped me. So then I started calling into the phone systems. You know, back then, the way phone systems worked, it was like 924001. If you dialed 0008, you'd get some mid level person. And eventually I got Lynn Bradshaw, who worked for Steve Moore at the very new Club for Growth. And by that time I'd refined my pitch and I said, you know, you need to create the Club for Growth model at the state level because we have too many soft Republicans who are not committed to. And she goes, we're thinking about doing that. Why don't you sit down and meet our board member Howie Rich when he comes to Chicago for Resource Bank. So I had a phone call with Howie. He said, you're going to Resource bank, right? And I said, of course. And we made arrangements to meet at the hotel in Chicago. And then I had to figure out what Resource bank was because I had no idea.

[B]

That's wild. Do you end up as the CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute from 2007 to 2020? I mean, that's quite a commitment.

[A]

It was. I'd sold my business completely by then, and I'd worked for three years with Howie Rich and Eric o' Keefe and some other people. And as I refer to it as my apprenticeship years, kind of learning how it actually worked and really having the naivete that I had come into it with scrubbed from my psyche. Because it turns out it's a lot different reality than what you think when you read about it from afar. And so by 2007, I parted ways with those guys and decided to strike out on my own. And I wanted to prove a premise, Newt, that the greatest force for good ever created in the human sphere is our founding principles and our free enterprise system, and in particular the entrepreneurs who are the drivers of that free enterprise system by creating businesses that serve people well and we sell it like it's cancer and make it sound terrible. You know, you got to sacrifice. You got to pull up by your bootstraps and you got to work hard. One's vocation, one's business pursuits, one's career pursuits, should be one of the greatest creative experiences you have in your whole life. And if it's not, find a new job. And the other side was selling dependency, decline and despair. You know, get on the program, we'll get you welfare, we'll get you housing, we'll get you health care, we'll pay for your education. We'll take care of your children from birth till death. They sell dependency with limited upside and people buy it because it sounds seductive and they want security over liberty. And I was very frustrated with our side not being very good at selling it. So I wanted to get involved. And I started the Illinois Policy Institute, was in Sullivan at the time, and I started out as chairman, eventually became CEO. And we went on a great run and had a great time there for a very long time, and showed that in a blue state you could have an impact. And then after I left as CEO in 2020, I remained as chairman until earlier this year when I resigned as chairman. I've gone on to these other things I now do.

[B]

So I'm curious, with that many years experience in Illinois, why has Illinois become such a wasteland for the Republican Party?

[A]

There's several components to that answer to that question. Number one is a psychology problem on the right that you will appreciate given your experience. In 2004, you might remember that George W. Bush lost to John Kerry in Illinois by 10 points. Didn't spend a dime trying to win, but he came within 10 points of winning. Four years later, John McCain beat Barack Obama by 12 points in Texas. And the Democrats said, we can get Texas and started investing and getting Texas. And they nearly won Texas in 2020. With Biden almost catching President Trump in the 2020 election, that opened back up to kind of back to the norm in 2024. But the point is that every time Republicans lose a territory or a district, too many in the establishment write it off and say it's impossible, demographics are changing, the other side has an advantage. The Democrats, on the other hand, every time something's like that, they think, oh, there's an opportunity. We need to invest and build the infrastructure. So part of it is the psychology. Everybody wrote Illinois off, and the national donors and the national political machine sort of saw Illinois as a lost cause. And then what happened internally after that is you had a fracturing of the leadership. You did not have a coalescing between the establishment Republicans and grassroots Republicans. They really didn't care for each other. And the establishment Republicans in particular did not understand how to appeal to and respect pro life, pro Second Amendment rural Republicans. And so you had a fracturing that went on. It was briefly united again when Bruce Rauner won the governorship in 2014. But then Bruce had a very challenging one term before he was defeated by Governor Pritzker. And so what's happened is, so all of that led to an exodus of the funding class Ken Griffin has moved to Florida. He's in Miami now. The only donor that puts material money into the state of Illinois remains Dick Uline. There are others who put money in, and I applaud every single one of them. But the big, big, big check writers, the seven figure checked writers, have largely left. So you have a resource issue now where Republicans are outspent in almost every race, anywhere from 2, 3, 4, 5 to 1, and the state is not as blue as one thinks. We don't have a blue state problem nationwide or in Illinois. We have a blue city problem. And the right has to solve by finding ways to identify aligned voters that have been long ignored and turn them out in blue cities.

[B]

One of the things you did do, you were involved in the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case that ended mandatory union fees for public employees, which was a big deal. Can you explain what it was all about and why it mattered?

[A]

Yeah. So the Janus vs. ASME case freed 5 million government workers from being required to pay union fees for collective bargaining, even though they had opted out of the union. And this was all based on a 1977 case called Abood. And essentially what Abood said was that a union has two responsibilities. One is its collective bargaining responsibilities and its representational responsibilities responsibilities, and one is its political activity. And so the court ruled that when someone opts out, you can stop paying the political money, but you can't stop paying the fees for collective bargaining. And so the argument that Mark Janus made, and we made on his behalf as his law firm, Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm, was that everything by definition a union does is political because when they're collectively bargaining, they are bargaining for higher taxpayer dollars to pay for more expensive union contracts. And they're don to the very people that they are bargaining with in the state House of Representatives or the state Senate. The key question in the hearing In February of 2018 was when Anthony Kennedy asked the lawyer for ask me the union, if the plaintiffs win, if Mark Janus wins, will your political power be diminished? And the lawyer, amazingly, said, yes, it will. And Anthony Kennedy said, well, doesn't that make the case right there? And it did. And so it was a sweeping, complete repudiation. And now if you're in a union, you no longer can be forced to pay any fees to the union. And somewhere there's 5 million union members this applied to, and somewhere north of hundreds of thousands have now opted out and are no longer paying those union fees.

[B]

I mean, that was a major achievement

[A]

for Liberty it really was. It's a long tail of making it pay off. There's really good people. The Mackinaw center out of Michigan, the Freedom foundation and many others are doing great work helping to educate union members on how they can opt out, what their rights are to opt out. The unions, as you can imagine, Newt, have not gone quietly into the night. And they lie, they cheat, they steal, and they try to trick their members into continuing to pay the union dues, of course, or union fees.

[B]

One of the things that you say that I agree with 100% is that the left is better at telling emotional stories, while conservatives tend to focus on facts and legal arguments and that generally the emotional stories dominate the factual stories. I mean, doesn't that kind of drive you nuts?

[A]

That is the core reason I decided to get involved in public policy and politics in the first place, is I wanted to get to the heart of how you persuade people. And not just persuade people, but persuade and also inform. We're in the persuasion and consent business. That's what we do. The other side is in the coercion and submission business. And part of their coercion is their misleading stories that are based on lies and untruth. So one of the things I always talk to people about when you're trying to sell a policy idea is you have to sell it at the point it intersects an individual's life. So if you're not selling the policy at the point it intersects an individual's life, you are going to lose the argument. I'll give you a quick example right now with what's going on in Iran. There's all this discussion about the Strait of Hormuz, the shutdown of shipping, the constriction of flow of oil, and prices are rising. Okay, that's all very interesting, but the more important way to talk about it is at the gas pump right now. At the gas pump. This is a true story, by the way, what I'm about to tell you. A few years ago, I was at the gas pump and a woman pulls up with her adult son who's in his 20s, and he gets out to go prepay and she gets out to pump, and she's waiting for him to prepay, and he takes about five steps and turns around. He looks at his mom, who's in her 50s. He goes, mom, how much? Right there is the point of intersection. She stopped and she thought she was doing math in her head. And she looked at him, she goes, let's do 20. And so he goes in and prepays with $20 and they bought about whatever it was, 4ish gallons of gas. Whereas I put my credit card in and filled up my tank. I advise everybody to go, next time you fill up your tank, look around, if the pumps around you and see how many people are prepaying $5, $7 and $10. And that tells you about gas prices now. Most of the time they've been very high during Democrat administrations. Trump has to address this issue in a sympathetic way and basically say those prices are going to come back down and you're going because of what's going on in Iran, but temporarily. I hear that at the pump you are suffering.

[B]

Part of it may be because the news media is so overwhelmingly Democrat, but we have a harder time telling the truth than they have lying.

[A]

That's really true. That's a great line. I might borrow that because it is amazing to me. I always say we have truth on our side, we have the moral high ground on our side, and we're afraid to take it. That's one of the arguments I always make, is we're going to play by the rules of the political vice, which means politics is a pressurized system. And he who applies pressure has power. If you can't apply pressure to the political decision makers, you are not going to have any power. And pressure comes in many ways. Political fear, political expediency, deal making, as you're well familiar with, as we all are. And then, of course, political principle, which doesn't come up often enough, but you have to be able to compete in a pressurized system. But then we also have to sell in the language the audience consumes, and we should be seizing the moral high ground. And when we do, we win. The reason Trump won the argument on immigration is because he took the moral high ground back from the Democrats. And he said it is wrong to let people come in and change the character of our country in a completely unfettered way and allow rapists and killers and bad people among the total to come in and harm our own citizens. That is a winning argument. The reason the right has won on biological men and women's sports is because it's an emotional, fair argument. We're on the right side of the moral argument. We need to do that in every policy area.

[B]

You and I share the same frustration, and I agree with you. I think partly was both Trump and Reagan were Democrats. They approached this whole communications thing very differently from Republicans. It's just really kind of wild.

[A]

It's ironic, Newt, that the party that is anti free enterprise is better at the free enterprise's core thing, which is marketing and selling. And the party that supposedly is for free enterprise is terrible at marketing and selling.

[B]

That was amazing. Now, because you continue to be a very constructive, positive guy and you're now developing what you call the hall of Giants. What's that all about and where will it be?

[A]

The hall of Giants is going to celebrate American entrepreneurs. It's amazing, Newt. I had then Governor Daniels in for a speech back in 2012 during the era when Obama was saying, quote, unquote, you didn't build that denigrating business people and entrepreneurs who created businesses. And I was very offended by that because I'd been an entrepreneur and started several businesses by that time. And Governor Daniels mentioned that in his remarks. And then when I did my closing remarks, I said, you know, it's kind of amazing to think about it. There's a Hall of Fame for every single type of sport. And there's no hall of Fame celebrating America's great entrepreneurs that have created the great solutions to our problems and made our lives better. So I started this journey to kind of look into it. I mean, there's a Hall of Fame for tow truck drivers. There's a Hall of Fame for accountants and salesmen and marketers. There's a Hall of Fame for burlesque dancers that I keep threatening my wife I'm going to go visit and on and on. But there's no national hall of Fame celebrating America's entrepreneurs. That is an iconic national destination. We call it the hall of Giants because we want to brand it a little bit differently. And we are looking at Florida as a likely destination, but we're also looking at Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, Fort Worth. And we've gotten a great group of board of advisors, from Amity Schlase and Steve Moore to former Governor Doug Ducey, Chris Roofer, the great golf entrepreneur Mike Kaiser, Kim Dennis from the Searle Freedom Trust. And we're continuing to recruit. I've had a great meeting with Governor DeSantis and gotten his support. He's very supportive of us perhaps bringing it to Florida. We're going on a trip to Atlanta. But this is not going to be like any other museum, Newt. This is going to be a little bit Hollywood meets rock and roll, hall of Fame meets Disney World. So what we were talking about earlier about storytelling, we are going to tell the stories of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and the problems they solve and how they make our lives better through storytelling. Immersive, experiential exhibits. It'll be a little bit like Disney World. You'll get on rides, you'll travel through time. You'll get on a buckboard wagon in 1776, transition into a steamship and then to a locomotive and then to an automobile, jet airplane in a rocket ship, and you'll disembark on Mars and everything like that in between. So we've done a great deal of planning, a lot of fundraising. It's going to take us several years to raise the capital for this. It's about a $350 million capital raise. So we're well on our way to doing that. And we're looking for people to help us out. And they can learn about [e-mail] when

[B]

we come back, we'll talk about how power and influence work in Washington and why Republicans have a challenge recruiting good candidates. You draw a line between nonprofits doing good work and those heavily dependent on government money. What is your real concern about the difference in where the stream of revenue comes from?

[A]

There's three sides to it. The political decision makers are in the middle. There's media pressure from the left side. There's public opinion or people pressure from the right side. But at the bottom of the vice, the traditional vice, are elite influencers. And those elite influences are often nonprofits. And nonprofits that get most of their funding from government, they become non objective, biased advocates for ever more government spending. So you have a competition on all three sides of the vice. The problem is that the Democrats and the progressives dominate control of those three sides. On the elite influencers, their business models are very simple. Who are they? Who are the left's elite influencers? It's the government unions we were talking about earlier. It's the private sector unions, it's the trial bar, and then it's the nonprofits that get most of their money from government. Or it's what I'll call green dependent business or government subsidy businesses. They have one thing in common, which is none of them create independent value on their own. They rely on government regulations and tax programs in order to fund their business model. It's true of the trial bar. It's true of both private and public sector unions, and it's true of nonprofits that get most of their money from government. So that's what unifies the left left. The problem on the right is we don't have a unifying purpose like that other than our adherence and fealty to the founding principles and our belief in free enterprise. And that is not as strong a glue as what the other side has because if they don't control government, their business models, their revenue models suffer. And then, of course, among them, as you well know, there are true believers who really think the rest of us are rubes and idiots and we don't know how to run our life. And they want to run our life for us. The ideologues, beyond those that are just financially interested.

[B]

Well, I mean, you have this whole problem that on the left, they believe in government, government funds them. They then fund keeping control of government so government can then fund them. It's a totally different model than conservatives have.

[A]

That's exactly right. I write about that in the book Newt. It's one of the most important things, is that the left loves government power. The left believes in government power. The left thinks average citizens are not capable of making really good decisions without a little nudge or a shove or a push or some friendly coercion to do and behave as the intellectuals and our betters on the left think we should. And so they revel in gaining government power. Part of the problem on the right, generally speaking, is that we want to devolve power back to individuals. I think a really good example of this, Newt, was the results of the pandemic. You watch very quickly those governors that seem to revel in controlling everything and extend extreme versions of lockdowns. The governor in my now former state of Illinois, the governor in Michigan, Whitmer, obviously Gavin Newsom. These people reveled in shutting people down and controlling their lives. But then you got to see the opposite. You got to see Governor DeSantis in Florida, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, Governor Noem in South Dakota, and Governor Kemp in Georgia, all as quickly as they possibly could, devolving power and giving people back their freedom to Rome and live their lives. And that really is an illustration of the difference between. Difference between the two parties.

[B]

And you make the point that because it's so central to their existence, that the public employee unions are really extraordinarily central to the left staying in power.

[A]

They are the nexus. There's no question in my mind that they are the nexus. They are the financial nexus of the left. Besides the billionaires writing big checks, Tom Steyer and Lewis and all the others, they are the political nexus, both in terms of funding with, ironically, money from the private sector, coercively taken from private sector workers. But nevertheless, they get their funding through that process, and then they have worked into the laws, the labor laws, that they get all kinds of time off to go out and organize and become political activists. That's one of the ongoing stories with the Chicago teachers here in Chicago, how they take time off with the kids from school to go do political activity. It's outrageous that we're using government employees and government money to lobby for more government. It probably is unconstitutional, but it's hard to enforce.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt thought that it was unconstitutional and was deeply opposed to public employee unions for that reason.

[A]

One of the few things I agreed with him on.

[B]

You talk about a challenge in recruiting strong Republican candidates as compared to what the Democrats do. How much of that's a function of Republicans actually being focused on business and on earning a living rather than on power?

[A]

I think it's a big part of it. I really think that when you take 100 random people who are of the right and 100 random people who are of the left and you ask them, where do you want to go to make your bones? The ones on the right are almost always going to start thinking about a business career on average. And very few of them are attracted to politics. And some of those on the right that are attracted to politics may be attracted to politics for the wrong reason reasons. And the right reasons, which I also write about, I always talk about. There's two kinds of politicians. There's the politician who became a politician to advance a policy agenda. That would be you. That would be Ronald Reagan. That would be Barack Obama. And then there's the politician who adopted a policy agenda to advance a political career. I would put Mitt Romney in that category. Charlie Criss from Florida in that category. Our own Spectre in that category. The challenge is finding those truly committed, liberty focused people on the right who want to take their talents and do it in politics and give up. Although these days people in politics are making amazing amounts of money. It's kind of crazy. I mean, the stock picking of Nancy Pelosi is extraordinary. Maybe we can start selling that idea. But nevertheless, the talent tends to go to the private sector on the left, where people are much more motivated by power. Think about the difference. When you start a business, you're not starting a business to become powerful. You become powerful by starting a business that serves other people well. In politics, you become powerful by controlling government money and people. And that's very attractive to people. So it attracts a different kind of person. And I think that's the difference.

[B]

You also make the point that even when we do recruit people, a significant percent of them end up in places like Washington and gradually get drawn into actually being on the other side.

[A]

It is the late, great Senator Tom Coburn. When I first got involved, I'd been at it for about two years and I was perplexed by the following question. Why is it when a conservative gets elected they seem to move to the left once in office and when liberals get elected they just move further left. Why does nobody move to the right once in office? And this was the genus of the beginning of me developing the political advice concept. And so I asked Senator cockburn that in 2006 and he goes, oh John, I can tell you why that is. I got elected from a conservative House district in Oklahoma. I get to Washington when I first started serving in the House. You'll remember him at this time, Newt, I'm sure I got elected as a fiscal conservative and anti earmark person which I'm sure made your life difficult as speaker. But nevertheless it was who he was and what he was about. And then his calendar filled up with all the important people from back in his home district who are all conservatives and donated to him and running the cards of dealerships and the oil businesses and construction.

[B]

I think he delivered 13,000 babies.

[A]

Right? That's exactly right. I mean he was a doctor long

[B]

before he had a real base of affection in that district.

[A]

Yes, he did. And he's the epitome of, he became a politician to advance an agenda. But he said, what happened, John, is everybody that would come to see me and say, Dr. Tom, you're doing such a good job holding the line on spending and earmarks, but now I got this one thing I need to talk to to you about. And even conservative donors and advocates had one thing they wanted to talk to their congressman about. And so as you know, doing that one thing becomes part of the currency, it becomes part of the trading and the horse trading. And pretty soon a conservative is making deals to fund somebody's road because his donor needs a bridge near his new factory. Anyway, that was Tom Cockburn's story and I think there's, as you can probably attest yourself with a lot of stories

[B]

like that, Cockburn was one of the people who was impervious to being changed.

[A]

Impervious is a great word. The power and the pressure of the political vice did not work on him,

[B]

which is good for the country. Coming up, we'll discuss solutions and what it would actually take to change the system. A lot of people focus on Washington, but you suggest that state and local politicians actually have a very big day to day impact. How important is it that we focus on recruiting good candidates at the state and local level?

[A]

It's one of the Most important things we need to do. There are so many more people elected at the local level who have much greater influence over your life than at the federal level. Not that we should dismiss the federal level. They're all important, right? This is a global war on politics, if you will. But the other side is really focused on city councils, library boards, school boards and more. We cannot see that territory because one of the reasons this is important, not just in terms of who we elect at the local level, but building out the assets of competing in culture for Mindshare is you're very familiar with that. Andrew Breitbart popularized the term that politics is downstream of culture, which is obvious to all of us who are junkies, as we said earlier. The point I like to make is if we accept that that is true, and it is true, that means we need to be competing at the headwaters of the river. We need to be competing when people are forming their thoughts long before the election cycle. And those thoughts are formed by the films they watch, the shows they stream, the news they get through their apps, and of course, how their local government is responding to different issues. Is your local school board for biological boys competing with girls or is it not? And on and on with all these issues. The indoctrination of the left starts early. And it doesn't take very many. Two or three people on a six or seven person board who are aggressive can intimidate and silence everyone else. We've all seen this before. And of course then you put two or three liberty lovers who are fearless on those same boards and you can put a stop to a lot of the nonsense. So the local stuff is crucial to the future of the Republic.

[B]

My sense is that even with all these challenges, you're really hopeful.

[A]

Oh, I remain very optimistic, Newt. America is a miracle. And we have been through some very, very terrible challenges in our history. I mean, obviously we sort of forget the War of 1812, which was a great challenge, obviously the Civil War, the entire post Civil war Jim Crow era that lasted forever, and the civil rights movement, the rise of communism and the progressive area and the rise of communism and the whole destruction that the FDR domestically administration did. We've been through a lot and we've overcome a lot. And in the end I'm optimistic that we will prevail, that liberty will prevail. American greatness is not a birthright. Every generation has to earn our destiny that is coming in this century. And we're on the clock as to whether we're going to earn that or not. And those of us who believe in the liberty construct, cherish the founding principles and recognize them for the miracle that they are. We're on the clock to try to convince the rest of America who are just surface skimming and living their lives and building their businesses and going to their church, raising their kids, and they dip in and out of elections every two years. We have to build the capacities and assets to compete for their mindshare, not just during the two or three months of an election cycle, but every day of the year. 365 and every single year. And we are making inroads.

[B]

Look at it.

[A]

You know, right now on the right, the conservatives have control of all three branches of government very narrowly and control more state houses very narrowly. And we're winning those political victories despite the fact that the left has such gargantuan control of the commanding heights of the American cultural narrative. And we are making inroads. We're making inroads because shows like yours and in general the conservative media and news that is emerging, we're seeing some emergent with angel studios and others in filmmaking. And so if, if our donor class and investor class continues to invest in content creation that is pro liberty, that is entertaining first in lessons second. That's one of the mistakes we make is we hit people over the head with a lesson. We need to be entertaining storytellers where the lessons come through the side door, not the front door. We continue to invest in all of that. I'm very optimistic that the American 21st century destiny will be one of greatness.

[B]

I think you're right, Lacombe, strategically very optimistic because I think that we somehow arouse people to pursue happiness and in that process, they are just remarkably creative. John, I want to thank you for joining me. Your new book, the Political how the Radical Left Controls America and the Path to Regaining Our Liberty, is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere. And our listeners can find out more about it by visiting your website, thepoliticalvicebook.com thank you. This has been very helpful.

[A]

Thank you so much, Newt. It's been an honor to be with you.

[B]

Thank you to my guest, John Tillman. Newt World is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnesey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gainwood360. If you've been enjoying Newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on [e-mail] I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newts World.

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.