FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Alabama Republican Party's ALGOP Chairman John Wahl - Jeff Poor Show - Tuesday 8-27-24
All right, thank you so much for your time. Hello, Kansas. We feel fun. Let me thank you for your time. You're working for our week for a living. Just to send it on down the line. Hello, Wednesday. Can you go minor? Let me thank you for your time. 3430106, if we have time, we will try to work a couple more in. Joining us now is the Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. We do this every Tuesday around this time. John Wall is on the line. Chairman, good morning. How are you? Oh, I'm doing well. It's good to be on the show. Thanks for coming on. We always appreciate your time. Well, how are you feeling? I'm not asking you this every week, but I mean, there's a lot of doom and gloom from our side out there. But I don't think that's quite necessary. No, and look, you know, obviously after the switchout with small Harris, you know, and the honeymoon phase, the trend was concerning. I think we all felt that. We all saw that. And look, the depth to which the mainstream media will go to cover, you know, cover over for imperfections and cover over for outright lies. It's a little bit shocking. Not that any of us should be surprised by it anymore. This is normal. But what we've seen over the last week we can have are the numbers to stabilize. Like, good. We're not. The trend has not continued. You know, things are getting our balance out as they normally do after a new candidate's in the race. And what I've been telling people is if you look at the numbers of Trump versus Biden, free debate, we're actually pretty much gone back to that. So pretty much just bottom line. We literally, the Republican Party Donald Trump won a presidential race. D. Joe Biden and the Democrats switched out the candidate. We have a new race. And now we're back in the same position where we were, which is slightly up. I do believe that the electoral held the day that Trump would win. We've got a bit of a lead in Georgia, a bit of a lead in Pennsylvania to a very, very key state. And then we're also still looking good in Nevada and Arizona. So I don't know. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think the numbers have stabilized. We're still in the lead. And now we just got to make sure that we do the job of getting the message out, talking about the values and why our values. And that's helped with people from America to be safe, successful, how to have your life. So I think we're a full campaign motive. It's time to rock and roll and fight for the thing. And the other aspect of this, and you hear this from all the national Republicans, like, well, she's looking to do any interviews. And, you know, Chairman, I wouldn't mind seeing a never seen Kamala Harris do a single interview, very few press conferences of any. Because that to me, I mean, this just sounds like a, who in the right mind would use that kind of strategy running for president. And I said, like, a losing strategy. And rather than griping about it, let them do it. Go high. I agreed. I agreed. Like, look, who wants to vote for a candidate who can't come out and talk for themselves? And it will. It will. There's enough time left that that strategy will pick up a particular general. Well, I just, it's fascinating to watch. And, in our side, like, well, you know, tell me what you, the debate stuff. And here's my take on the debate. And you know, the discussion here, Chairman, that Trump doesn't want the mics on while, you know, he wants a muted, or when it's not your turn or whatever. And I don't think it's a product necessarily of Trump, like, really caring about any of that. But it's more of this. You can't see any ground to these people. They agree upon terms of a debate. And then they want to come back and change them that you've got to be careful with that because if you give an inch, it'll take a mile. You've got to, like, say, hey, no, we agreed to this. This is the deal. And I think that's sort of what's going on here. Oh, 100%. And look, the profit is a negotiator. It's who he is. What he is. And I think you're absolutely right. What you're seeing from Trump right now is he's taking a shot across the valley. Look, guys, don't push me because I'll go. I'll think my mom won't go home and you don't have a debate about it. Like, this is a two-way street and you have to have me in order for this to work. And I think it's actually a smart strategy. Without that, without that, do you feel often, if you will, then these guys will run all over and all over. And so, yeah, I think this is a stretch. But you can do it. Look, you need me. I don't need you. And I think that can be successful. You could do the deal that was arranged. And hopefully, keep the moderators a little more fear actually during the debate. I think that's the goal of Donald Trump's debate conversation a lot today. And I think it's more. Yeah. It's the only leverage he really has. And that's what's important. I think he's got to stay in his ground here and not let them play this cat and mouse game with the debate rules. My other take on this, and I don't know if you've even given this much fault, but just speculate here. Like, the strategy for the Harris campaign is strange to me. It's very peculiar. I mean, I remember Biden and it was during COVID, but he was doing these Skype interviews. And they did not look that great, but he was doing things. She's not doing anything. And the best I can figure is that she's just not -- they got to coach her up, or they got to work out some of the imperfections, the weird, nervous laugh, or whatever. Like, this is a work in progress as we go forward. Yeah, no. And I think we will get better about that. Like, Malah Harris, you thought of the convention, you've seen that her -- she has been a few rallies in a minute. What you're going to see is you're going to see her scripting. So watch for this over the next month. I think you're going to see her doing events, doing statements, but it will be what she has to call a call for. She's scripted. Three minutes to get off script. And I think she wants a lot of the more to tell her. Chairman, I interrupted you here, but we can barely hear you. Oh, I'm sorry. Is that better? Yeah, it's much better. Okay, yeah. No, I was saying that I expect -- watch over the next couple months. I think what we're going to see is we're going to see her doing events where she's got able to have a telephone. You know, rallies, certain things where she's able to stay on script. And I think what we won't see is her getting into in-depth interviews or that type of thing where she would be asked the question she does not ready for it. But I also think that's why this debate on September 10th is so important. We -- I want to see her have to talk about issues, talk about things, and debate back and forth where she doesn't have a telephone, but she's not necessarily ready for those questions. That's what we really need to do in the real small areas. I'll be asking you this. Do you worry that Republicans are -- not just Republicans, but everybody out there are setting the bar way too low for her and she's like -- she's not going to have any expectations that she's just can put on a very mediocre performance and then the perception will be -- she'll be heralded as some kind of rock star. You know, I am not -- and I say that because I watched what happened with that -- with that first debate with Joe Biden. The press, the people who are -- the people who are actually on the bubble here, who would vote -- who could go either way are listening to the mainstream media. And the mainstream media from the next mall here is a brilliant rock star. And so that's what they're going to come into that debate with. They're not hearing from the conservative talking heads. They're not listening to Fox News. They're not listening to talk radio. They're listening to the mainstream media. And they're going to come into it with the expectation of small actors being very well. So I don't fear that as much as we saw that with Biden. Like all of a sudden, people were shocked at how bad Biden was doing. That's the guys. If you had been paying attention to your conservative friends on social media, you would have already missed how Joe Biden was doing. This was not a surprise. And I think we're going to see a similar thing here. Yes. Setting that bar for Burr in the conservative circles, it won't matter. Those votes already won't get. So I think what we're looking at is how do the independents react? How do Democrats who are -- who are maybe too common-sense Democrats who are considering voting for, you know, don't like the policies of Democratic Party who are considering voting Republican this time? Those are the people we need to have the right impact with. And I think -- I think they're going to expect that they do well because of the mainstream media. Yeah, I mean, and the -- sometimes we do this and my friend Dale Jackson up in North Alabama does this, where he could fight sort of the media view and the media conventional wisdom with the public perception. And I think where we're struggling right now is we -- the collective. We -- I don't really know what America thinks of Kamala Harris. I mean, we know what -- we know what they -- the media think and we know what certain segments of society think of her. But I am not convinced that that's a true reflection. And this is where Republicans have to be careful here. This is a true reflection of, like, where the needle is on her. No, that's absolutely right. And I think it's something that -- that our nominee has to think about. You can't just speak in generic terms, like, just because you're base as a certain opinion of someone doesn't mean that the country is a whole lot. And I think one of the things that we, as Republicans, and our candidate that's especially have to keep in mind is you're not talking to your folks. You're not even talking to the media. Any chance you have to be in front of camera, you need to be talking to the American people. Talking about the values we believe and why those values are better than the Democrat values. Like, if we can get this back to a campaign about the issues and the values that we represent, the Republican Party wins all day long. We know it. The public knows it. And the press know it. And that's why they work so hard to keep things off of policy and other personality. And the personality thing -- and I hear this one all the time -- Well, Trump's personality, people are just going to go out and vote against it. And this is another dumb argument, but you hear it all the time. Like, well, the Trump will underperform -- or he'll have, say, somebody running statewide, and you put him side by side, a Republican side by side with Trump, and the other Republican always outperforms Trump. But it's this, Chairman, I think, that Trump has coattails, and without Trump on the ballot, that side by side Republican, like, be it camper, or whoever in Montana or whatever, does not -- is not going to perform as well without Trump helping along the way. That's absolutely correct. And I think it's incredibly important that we talk to them and we remind them, like, this is not a personality contest. This is about saving America. This is about the future of our children. And I think we'll see them clean back. They're going to hold their nose. They're going to vote Republicans. They're going to vote Republicans. But what people are forgetting are the people who are excited, the people like me, who are excited about Donald Trump, who want to see him in a way out there, want to see him clean out this law. And I think what these, you know, talking heads are forgetting is every election Donald Trump has been in it so far. And yes, everyone can -- this one could be different. But so far, in 2016 and in 2020, it was actually Trump who overperformed his voice. Not down ballot candidates, but Trump himself. And I think they're forgetting about that, that Trump effect, where he's going to pull out people who don't always come out to vote. And they're going to care. They're going to like him. Like his political director, like that he actually wants to do something. And they're going to turn out at a little higher percentage. And turnout doesn't matter. And I think we actually see Trump, you know, if the trends continue from the laughs to election cycles, we'll see Trump overperformed polling. The other thing I think, if you do -- you've at one point in your career done polling, and I don't know what they're going to base their modeling off of. But I think they're going to, once again, make the mistake of wanting to exaggerate Democrat turnout, or probably more specifically African-American turnout in Democrat districts. And that's once haunted them in the past. Like every election is, you don't have Barack Obama on the ballot. And Barack Obama, he was sort of the next segment of Democrat politicians. He's a once-in-a-lifetime guy. And there's no -- I mean, that's not going -- it's just not sustainable without him. But the pollsters -- and I think they made this mistake in '16, but maybe they've tried to correct a little bit for it. But they're just not going to have that big turnout that they probably anticipate. No, look, that's exactly right. And this is what I always explain to people. This is why polling is not old-sector. Polling, if you look into the math of it, like, it is very, very accurate with predicting what the general population is thinking, where they're at. Why it doesn't always match up with election day results is elections also have the dynamic of turnout. Which side is more energized to turnout? Because we all know that not all voters go to vote. And so your polling can change depending on who's energized, who's more likely to turn. And I think you're right. There's not a lot to be excited for right now on the Democrat side. You've got the border, you've got the inflation. And what I love about Kamala Harris is proud to do. We need to oppose it. She has tried to escape from all the things she has created. The border, now she claims she's poor, a secure border, even though her policies led to an open border. I love the economy, where she's blaming price increases. She's blaming inflation on businesses' working people off. And I'm like, there's a time where you have to take personal responsibility for your actions. And I think that's the key. The advertising that Trump does, the TV ads in between states holding her accountable for record will show not just the failure of a record, but also the fact that she's willing to lie through her teeth to win an election. Last question, we're wrapping up on this adoption campaign. It's like a congressional district. I think our race has changed, obviously, with Harris on the top of the ballot. But I think it's very different. We tend to think the second congressional district is going to be much like the country. And it could go for Trump or for Harris, just depending on what happens there. I don't know. I still think AL2, even with Harris having a momentum nationally, I think that congressional race is going to be hinged to whoever wins at the top of the ballot. And I still think AL2 is something Trump can win and properly carry Dobson along for the W. I think you're right. I think whoever, whichever presidential candidate wins, CD2, I think that will go the same way for that down ballot race. There's a lot of dynamics in CD2. You've got two metro areas where you've got a very much a rule area. It's between those two methods, between Montgomery and Mobile. And so there's three very unique demographics. And how do they react? How do they react to Kamala Harris being the switchout? Does that affect turnout? There's so many things there. But I think you're right. There's success in CD2 hinges on the presidential race. Then Trump wins in rural Alabama and pulling up black, you know, rural black voters over that we win. If Trump wins, CD2, I believe Trump will win as well. And so it's a pullout battle, though. You know, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. That switchout didn't make CD2 harder. I think I think you're going to actually have to lead with your Biden on the ballot. And now I think it's a neck-to-neck scramble for victory. And we're going to fight for it for all we have. Well, and I don't know what she could have done different. I think she's doing about as good as you can under the circumstances. Oh, that's absolutely right. Look, we know this district was created to be a Democrat district. We're going to try to steal it back from the Democrats' attempts here. But this was a hard district. And no matter what, we're going to make them play here in Alabama. So we're not going to give them a inch. So they have to fight for that to spend their time and their resources here. And so they can't be going after some other places as well. Chairman, we always appreciate your time. We'll talk again. Always good to be on the show. All right. That was Alabama Republican Party Chairman John O'Wall. Well, very back. This is the Jeff Moore show. If I'm talking about 065. 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