On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” host Michael Knowles discusses Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s announcement that he’s jumping into the Democrat Party’s 2020 presidential field. Transcript and video below.
You can’t just relive history. This is what Republicans have sort of tried and failed to do for 30 years. You can’t just run as Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was very successful. Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You’re not Ronald Reagan. You can’t run as him; you can’t relive his career. You can’t just have somebody else’s career. You have to be you.
All of the American presidents, certainly all of the notable ones, have been pretty original. Donald Trump is certainly an American original. Barack Obama, he’s an American original. Where else but in America could that man become president? George W. Bush, a very different man from his father. These guys, they have their distinct voice and their distinct agenda.
Beto O’Rourke doesn’t have that. He’s just a politician. He’s just a guy who was on the El Paso city council. Then he was in Congress where he accomplished basically nothing. Then he tried to run for Senate and failed. This is the issue, he’s running for president and he tells Vanity Fair that “I want to be in it…Man, I’m just born to be in it.”
There’s no draft Beto movement. There was no draft Obama movement. These were guys who didn’t need any convincing. They want to be “in it.” This is a very stark distinction from the traditional statesman who reluctantly goes and accepts power – who is just going to serve the people and go back to his farm or something. No, this is an ambitious guy who all he ever wanted was political power. So, when he says, “I want to run to serve you” – you don’t buy it. The fact that he is running as a centrist tells us something about what the campaign is going to look like. He actually said, “I’m a capitalist, I don’t see how we are going to meet any of the fundamental challenges that we have as a country without in part harnessing the power of the markets.”
He says I am a capitalist on the one hand and then he is talking to a bunch of reporters and says, I’m in favor of the Green New Deal and I think we only have 12 years before the world is going to end. It’s this bizarre schizophrenic, Democrat primary. One minute, they are super left-wing, super radical. The next minute they are trying to appear moderate and centrist. They are going to have to pick a side and the more you flip flop back and forth, the tougher chance you’re going to have convincing the voting public that you’re earnest, that you actually stand for something and that you’re not just a cynical politician. So, this raises a question, are the Democrats ultimately, by the end of 2020, going to moderate or are they going to go all the way to the left?