ICYMI: CFG President David McIntosh Joins WSJ’s All Things Podcast

Washington, D.C. – In case you missed it, Club for Growth President David McIntosh joined Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel on the latest episode of the All Things podcast. In the episode, the two discuss the state of the Republican Party, why Kamala Harris has emerged as the John Kerry of this cycle, and why limited government and school choice are the keys to Election Day success.

Click here to listen to the full episode of All Things with Kim Strassel featuring Club for Growth President David McIntosh.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Announcer: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast.

Kim Strassel: Welcome to All things with Kim Strassel from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. I am here this week with David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth Action, the super PAC. Involved with Club for Growth as is engaged as it is every cycle with a number of House and Senate and state campaigns and David’s here to tell us about all of them. David, thank you so much for being here. We go back a long way. I think I might even go back farther watching the Club for Growth grow from this supply-side force in GOP primaries. I am still old enough to remember that the Marge-Roukema fight in New Jersey, believe it or not, to this powerhouse in primaries and general elections, and even, and we’re going to get into this, now some statehouse battles. How big are you guys going this cycle? I count at least four Senate races in which you’re engaged, maybe a dozen House seats, but what kind of numbers are we looking at in terms of races and dollars?

David McIntosh: So overall we think we’re going to bring somewhere 175 to 200 million to the table in this cycle. As you know, Kim, we get engaged in primaries. So we’ve already been doing a lot of races there in the House in the Senate, one very important governor’s race in West Virginia, and as you mentioned, some really high profile school freedom races at the state legislative level. The core still is that federal PAC and super PAC to help elect free market conservative senators and house members. We do have, well, it’ll end up being about six Senate races that we’ve been participating in, but the key ones in the primary was Jim Banks, which turned out to be the primary where we won without having to firing any shots.

Kim Strassel: Your home state, Indiana.

David McIntosh: My home state, yeah, and Jim Banks is going to be a great senator there. We helped Bernie Moreno win his primary in Ohio and now we’re helping him in the Senate race against Sherrod Brown. Ted Cruz in Texas is somebody the club’s always supported, and once again, are going to be up there as one of the super PACs helping him. A couple of the aggressive contested races are coming up as well, Sam Brown in Nevada and Kari Lake in Arizona.

Kim Strassel: Kari Lake is today indeed, right, the primary?

David McIntosh: Yes, and we’ve spent most of the money there actually teeing up for the general race against a very far left Gallego, her opponent then. I think she’ll win handily the primary today and then the same in the House races. Nancy Mace got challenged down in South Carolina and we helped her. Next Tuesday, I want to be careful because predicting these things you can get into trouble, but I think Bob Onder in Missouri is going to be a great new free market conservative congressman. We knew him because he was a member of our fellowship. It’s a non-political program that we do to teach economics to rising leaders around the country and Bob was one of the participants in that. We got to know him, and then when he decided to run for Congress, the PACs at the club are supporting him there.

Kim Strassel: Yeah, I want to jump into some more of these races. Before we even get there, I have one question though. We’re having a lot of conversation about this change at the top of the ticket, obviously, Joe Biden deciding he’s not going to run for reelection again and Kamala Harris essentially being coronated as his replacement. I know that you guys don’t play it in the presidential level, but what changes does that mean for down ballot candidates? What are you seeing? The fact that she’s now there and he’s not? Does it make it harder, easier? How much is it having to change message? What does it mean for the down ballot races you care about?

David McIntosh: Yeah, I think that’s a crucial question. By the way, Kim, we are going to be involved in the presidential, particularly where there’s overlap in the states, but rather than spending a lot of money on TV ads because those are covered by the candidate and the super PAC, we’re going to focus our effort on voter turnout and creating enthusiasm there. That’s the big factor that I see has changed. When the Democrats switched from Biden to Harris, the enthusiasm was high on the Republican side. Trump won the debate against Biden, the assassination attempt and his very strong response there right on stage, Republicans were of all stripes ready to go, ready to support him, ready to support the ticket down ballot. Democrats were disheartened that they had Joe Biden at the top who clearly was not effective and had problems, let alone the record of his whole administration. Now with Kamala new person, there’s more interest. Okay, maybe we have a better shot of winning and you’re seeing a lot of enthusiasm come up from their voter base, but for her to win, she has to pivot from her dramatically far left progressive record on issue after issue. She wanted to ban fracking that’ll hurt her in Pennsylvania. She wants to abolish ICE, make the border wide open. By the way, what I tell people, if you want to know what Kamala is like as president, look at her record on the order and those issues. She was put in charge of that appeared to be in charge of everything, certainly in charge of the diplomatic part and she failed utterly. She supports defunding the police, single payer healthcare, and support for an assault weapons ban that will just drive the base crazy on the Republican side. I don’t think she can escape that.

Kim Strassel: It doesn’t seem to have hurt her so far though. What accounts for that? She’s going up in the polls.

David McIntosh: Yeah, I think people don’t know her yet. They don’t know her record and the social media take on her focused on her silly giggles, as if her personality wasn’t fit for the job. I think when Republicans start focusing on the contrast in her record, that she’ll have to defend all of the Biden record on spending, that gave us inflation, the record at her own promotion of defunding the police on terrible results on crime. It’s pretty clear to me now that she’s avoiding that exposure, just letting the honeymoon effect occur without having to actually go before the voters. At some point, she’s going to have to do that.

Kim Strassel: Can she afford to pivot though and then maintain that liberal enthusiasm you were talking about?

David McIntosh: No, I think she ends up being the John Kerry of this election if she does that. I was for it before I was against it, and that just turns everybody off because they don’t trust you. They don’t know where you’re going to come out on things in the future.

Kim Strassel: Okay, we’re going to take a break here, hold on, and we’ll be back with more soon with David McIntosh with the Club for Growth. We are back. I am here with David McIntosh, head of the Club for Growth. So I’m really struck by the races that you guys are engaged in and from what it sounds like there’s yet some more to come as these primaries finish up, but you mentioned Ted Cruz in Texas, Rick Scott in Florida in the House I see. There’s the interesting thing and I wanted to ask you about. I see the bulk of who you are supporting, a lot of GOP incumbents or open seats that are currently owned by Republicans. So you are involved in the effort to keep those seats and that suggests to me that what you guys see out there is a very tough map. I have seen some things on your own website about that, talking about how there are in this cycle going to be 12 seats held by Republicans and 10 held by Democrats listed as toss-ups, that there are 17 Republican incumbents represented in districts that Biden won in 2020 from 0.1% to about 15%, and how few seats Democrats have to defend in order to retake control. So it sounds to me as though this is like one of these races is like you got to digging into maintain rather than a target rich pickup opportunity. Is that correct?

David McIntosh: It ends up being actually a little bit, probably 60/40 for us on pickups. We’ve got Scott Baugh in California to pick up the Orange County seat down in Newport Beach. We’ve got the Ohio seat with Merrin, where last year we didn’t have a great Republican candidate. This year we do in Marcy Kaptur’s seat. Yvette Harrell in New Mexico will be supporting. Tom Barrett in Michigan, I think that is a defense one. Then we do have a couple defensive ones. David Schweikert in Arizona is somebody that is great on our issues. Does a tremendous job in the Ways and Means Committee on tax legislation and he’s in a slightly Democratic seat. So we want to be there to support him, make sure he wins. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania. So it’s a mix of both, but you’re right, what we’ve focused on is the House seats where there’s a great economic conservative running and it’ll make the difference between whether the House majority expands or if the Democrats are able to capture the seat.

Kim Strassel: How do you view that candidate quality this time around? This is the perpetual story of the Republican Party is that they get to the general election and they don’t necessarily always have the best candidates. How do you rate that effort this year by comparison to previous years?

David McIntosh: I think we’ve done a great job of recruiting good candidates. All of those folks that I mentioned are going to be very strong. They’re able to raise money, they’re able to solidify the conservative base, but also reach out to independent voters. You’ve seen the Republican majority get into fights over the last 18 months. I think Speaker Johnson’s now been able to really bring everyone together to say the most important thing right now is that we expand this majority, so we can actually get the bills done that President Trump wants us to pass. They’ve recruited well. We had a few primaries where a different group, an AOA group spent money because they didn’t like the conservatives that we had picked, but for the most part we all agreed let’s focus on the general election because expanding that majority is key to any success next year and passing tax cuts and passing reg reform, the whole agenda. As you know, the Senate map is much better for Republicans where we’re already, if you count West Virginia with Jim Justice, we’re at 50, Ohio, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, all of those are definite places we have a shot at. Pennsylvania, I was having lunch with a friend on the Democrat side. He thinks if they don’t pick Shapiro as VP, the Democrats will be depressed there and Dave McCormick will have a good shot of winning, which was good news for me. So I think you’re going to see a lot of activity in the Senate. Again, Club isn’t behind every Republican, but we get behind it, the board approves the spending, and the donors help us be able to fund the race on the ones who are really good on taxes, regulation, and the economic spending issues.

Kim Strassel: Well, let me talk to you about that a little bit. I’m actually really curious for your views because, look, I know there’s been some bumps in the past between Club and Donald Trump. I believe though he was at an event of yours this spring and he said that the love is all back. So apparently is the love still flowing?

David McIntosh: It definitely is. I was riding on the plane with him this last weekend when we went up to Minnesota and we were at the Bitcoin Conference. Club is a huge supporter of deregulation of Bitcoin and crypto so that innovative technology can produce growth in the economy here in the US, and he is too, but we’re definitely aligned and supportive. There’s still issues that we end up not agreeing on. We’re very much free trade oriented. We think tariffs are taxes on the American people and can hurt American businesses as their supply routes get interrupted and taxed. On most of the big issues of tax cuts, extending the Trump tax cuts, deregulation, which he’s all with us on that, and I think now even cutting back on the spending. In his first term, I don’t know if he said this, but I interpreted it as with next to zero interest rates go ahead and borrow. We don’t see that now and we’re seeing the excessive spending cause inflation that is causing the Fed to have to raise the interest rates. So I think he will now be on the side of watching the spending, making sure we don’t have the runaway spending that we’ve seen.

Kim Strassel: Well, we can hope. We can hope. This is what I wanted to ask you about, which is when you look out there, though I know you’re focused right now on this election and this cycle, but we just had Trump’s pick of JD Vance, some of that controversy you also were referencing in the House this last year prior to Speaker Johnson coming on board. This has been about some real fractures in the party and a lot of people right now talking about JD Vance as the future of the party and it’s a much more populist vision than you or I, I think, are committed to. You’re a former Reagan staffer for goodness sake, but we’re talking about a vice presidential candidate who’s been very skeptical of any welfare reform, talked positively about industrial policy. How concerned are you about the party in coming years losing its focus on the free market policies that have made it so successful?

David McIntosh: I do believe we’re going to have a tug of war, if you will, in the Republican party for which direction to go in. Trump is, like Reagan, not an ideologically driven guy, the way Reagan was, but the core of the party still agrees with us overwhelmingly on these issues. Trade being probably the one exception to that. On tax cuts on deregulation, I would even say on welfare reform, the base that JD wants to bring into the party are working families who resent it when their neighbors are on welfare. I used to campaign in those neighborhoods in Indiana and they would come to the door and say, “Hey, what are you going to do about welfare? I’m feeding my kids hamburger and my neighbor’s on welfare and he’s feeding them steak.” It gets down to that basic sense of unfairness and so I think we’ll win on that issue. I’m an optimist like Reagan was.

Kim Strassel: Me too.

David McIntosh: Yeah. I think the right ideas will prevail in the end, but we’ll have to push for them. Our foundation at the club, the educational arm, just released a handbook on all of the liberty-oriented issues that we can stand for, deregulation, a lot of the tax cuts, that will promote manufacturing in the United States. So you’ve got this guy Oren Cass out there with the National Compass saying, oh, we need to raise taxes, keep spending, government should have an industrial policy, all of the bad ideas that have been proven not to work in Europe and other places. So we put out this handbook as no, we can achieve the goal of good middle-class manufacturing jobs and other jobs through our Liberty policies that worked in the past. We’re promoting that up on the Hill, and with anybody that’ll listen to us. So I think we’ve got to fight the battle of ideas, but I always believe the right ideas prevail and I’m looking forward to that.

Kim Strassel: To your point, I had a fascinating conversation not so long ago with Samuel Gregg, the economist. He recently won one of the Bradley prizes and he was talking about the misconception that there isn’t real manufacturing in this country and opportunity for real manufacturing growth.

David McIntosh: Exactly.

Kim Strassel: He pointed out that sometimes it’s of a different type than we think of. Meaning we not necessarily, nor should we be aiming toward people standing on assembly lines with wrenches, as much as standing and creating new drugs and pharmaceuticals and there’s a lot of high-tech manufacturing that we as the United States are singularly placed to engage in and lead the world in. So it was very interesting conversation.

David McIntosh: No, that’s right and it’s value-added manufacturing. So you import the raw materials from somewhere else and our very skilled labor can turn that into a high value product that we sell to the rest of the world.

Kim Strassel: Everyone, hold on while we take one more break and when we get back some more with David McIntosh from the Club for Growth.

Announcer: From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast.

Kim Strassel: Welcome back one more time. I’m Kim Strassel here with David McIntosh. I was very fascinated to see the club jumping feet first into an area that I never necessarily associated as much with the club. We’ve just been talking about economic liberty and free trade, low taxes, but you guys are jumping into these fights at the state level over education reform and education freedom. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the fight that you recently had in Texas and how successful that was?

David McIntosh: Yes. I’m very proud of what we were able to do there. Kim, way back at the founding, school choice was put onto the list of seven different issues the club would stand for, and we’d asked candidates about it, but there really wasn’t much policy at the federal level that affected it. Then coming out of COVID, we started to notice that parents were increasingly dissatisfied with their public schools, that groups that had resisted school choice and school freedom plans now were more open to it. In fact, I just saw a poll coming from the University of Houston, every demographic group, Black Republicans, Black independents, Black Democrats, Latino Republicans, Latino Independents, Latino Democrats, all support school freedom. The only group that is not as slightly below 50% support are the white dudes for Kamala.

Kim Strassel: That’s interesting.

David McIntosh: It’s an issue that has come to fruition in this country. We view it as freedom and free market in education that will give us better education. What we realized last cycle was if the club came in and we did it in a few races in Florida and Oklahoma, but when we were by ourselves, the powers that be at the state capitol would come around and defend the incumbents. So in Texas, Governor Abbott put school choice, the universal choice where every parent could guide the funding for their student, into the legislative process. The Senate passed it, but the Republican House blocked it three times. Finally, second time, he called us up and said, “Hey, I noticed you guys care about this issue. Would you help us?” So we sent messages into those legislatures, tried to get them to change their votes. We also told them, “Hey, we’re going to remember this in the election when you’re up against a primary challenger who’s for school freedom.” Gave them warning about it. The governor said the same thing. Well, sure enough, the third time they voted it down and we went out with some of the other groups, American Federation for Children, Governor Abbott, and recruited candidates. We had tremendous success. Spending about eight and a half million, we were in 14 different races in the primaries, and Texas has runoffs. We defeated 10 incumbents in those races.

Kim Strassel: 10.

David McIntosh: And incumbent is really hard to do.

Kim Strassel: Oh, yeah. That’s really remarkable. 10 of 14, so how does that change the dynamic now there?

David McIntosh: That now gives Governor Abbott a majority in the new House that’ll take their oath of office in January. A majority in that house will pass his school freedom bill and Texas will have universal school choice, so a huge impact. We’ve also been talking to governors around the country saying, if you want to do this, we’re going to be there, because this is one of the key issues Club’s going to get behind in the coming elections.

Kim Strassel: And Tennessee soon, right?

David McIntosh: Yep. Governor Lee and I got together for dinner. He told me it’s his top priority. An interesting story there, the recalcitrant Republicans had promised they would vote for the bill until after the filing deadline when nobody could run against them and then they flipped their votes and one of them voted no on (inaudible). Yeah, classic terrible politicians, but we basically said, “What are the open races?” One guy who voted no in the House is trying to run for the Senate. We’re going to block that. So we’re engaged with the governor in five different races as a signal to the rest of the legislature we’re serious about this. We want you to pass the Governor’s school freedom bill and we’ll leave you alone, but if you vote against it, we’re going to recruit a challenger next time. We’ll come after you, because overwhelmingly, the parents want this. Public wants this as a way of improving our school system, making public schools better and giving kids options if they get a better education in a private school or home school.

Kim Strassel: Remarkable. Last question, just because I think it’s a nice way to round this out. What kind of lessons do those victories there at those state levels and those coalitions you’re talking about, how much and how many different voters gravitate to this, what lesson is there for National Republicans as they head into this election?

David McIntosh: I think we ought to make that school freedom an issue that we put on the table. We’ve worked with some of the members in the House to take some of the federal spending and turn it into a scholarship type program that parents could have control. As you know, federal spending’s just a smaller percentage of the overall education budget, but it’s an issue that is a winning issue with the public. We’ve polled it with suburban voters, which in the 20 and 22 election were the voters that Republicans had trouble with. We won them in the past, but they weren’t happy with the party had been. That issue lets those suburban voters come back to the Republican party because they care deeply about their children and their children having a great education.

Kim Strassel: David McIntosh, we thank you so much for taking the time to give us this update from the ground down there in the trenches, and I hope we’ll have an opportunity to round back with you sometime soon.

David McIntosh: I would love to do that, Kim. I appreciate your reporting and giving me a chance to tell our story. Politicians always say the next election’s the most important one, and for them it is because they get to keep their job or not. I do believe for the country we’re at one of those inflection points of which direction we going to go and the contrast couldn’t be greater. There’s basically progressive socialism on the Democrat Party and back to freedom, limited government on the Republican side with a history of success that everybody agrees.

Kim Strassel: Says a guy who’s been fighting for limited government and freedom for a long time. Thank you again. Thanks for coming on.

David McIntosh: Thank you. Great to talk to you.