South Carolina's Senate runoff is decided tomorrow, and fewer than 400,000 Republicans will likely make the choice. Jenny Beth Martin opens on the two names on that ballot: Congressman Ralph Norman, who told the Senate to hold a talking filibuster on the SAVE America Act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, and keep the floor open all night until it took the bill up, against Senator Darline Graham Nordone, appointed six weeks ago to the seat her late brother Lindsey Graham held. Chad Connelly ran the South Carolina Republican Party and is on the ground with pastors in four counties this week. He walks through the turnout model, the county-by-county early vote, the negative advertising that landed in the final ten days, and where he thinks it breaks. Jim Pfaff, who helped organize the House Freedom Caucus before it had a name, argues the case for readiness in a Senate that confirms everyone who touches foreign policy. Then the story nobody in the political press wants to talk about. A 21-year-old built a polling company that did not exist, used artificial intelligence to stand up the website, published statewide numbers, and watched reporters print them. One of those fabricated polls had a Democratic Socialist candidate for governor of Wisconsin ahead by 23 points. She lost by half a point. Also in this hour: Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service moving to bar illegal aliens from four refundable tax credits, Enes Kanter Freedom and the Women's National Basketball Association, data centers as a ballot issue, and a national debt that just crossed 40 trillion dollars. More at jennybethshow.com and teapartypatriots.org.
Guests: Jim Pfaff and Chad Connelly, with Robert McNeely
Jim Pfaff is the president of The Conservative Caucus and a recurring guest on this show. He spent roughly thirty years on Capitol Hill and around national politics, and he convened the private meetings that became the House Freedom Caucus, sitting in the room as the only staffer.
Chad Connelly is the founder of Faith Wins, an organization that has registered more than two million new evangelical voters over the last two election cycles, and the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party. He joins from a pastors' meeting in South Carolina the day before the runoff.
Robert McNeely, a former broadcaster and a regular contributor to the show, joins for the closing Rapid Round.
Key topics:
Timestamps:
00:02 — Cold open: fewer than 400,000 voters pick a senator
03:32 — The panel: Jim Pfaff and Chad Connelly
04:24 — An August runoff nobody is watching
05:46 — Why Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund endorsed Ralph Norman
07:25 — President Trump's endorsement against Senator Mike Lee's
10:46 — The debate clip: national security is not her thing
15:17 — What South Carolina said about that debate
18:10 — What changes the day after Labor Day
19:54 — Senator Chris Van Hollen on Democratic Socialists in his party
24:53 — Chad Connelly: Christian eyeballs on the process
27:44 — Jim Pfaff on Republicans conceding the argument
34:02 — John McCain, the bailout, and the campaign he threw away
37:03 — Where the inflation actually came from
42:15 — Milton Friedman on greed, and government greed
48:04 — Rapid Round: Robert McNeely joins
48:23 — Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service move on four tax credits
50:17 — Enes Kanter Freedom and the Chicago Sky
54:47 — Data centers, power generation, and the election
01:03:39 — Elon Musk wants the data centers in space
01:06:09 — The fake poll that fooled the press
01:11:10 — Four questions to ask about any poll
01:13:09 — The call to action: poll workers and poll watchers
01:18:19 — The national debt crosses 40 trillion dollars
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