Welcome to the three martini lunch.

Grab a stool next to Greg Carumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review.

Three Martini's coming up.

Hey, so glad you're with us for a special Thursday edition of the Three Martini Lunch.

This is one of those rare days where both Jim and I are away, so we

decide ahead of time, hey, let's talk about something special that day. And today we're going to be

talking about our favorite, least favorite, and craziest election nights and election cycles,

in honor of the results on Tuesday. We talked about the results yesterday, but we'll also

both be out tomorrow. We'll be talking about some more stories that slipped through the cracks. Could have been martinis, but other bigger stories kind of push them off the top of the bar. So get ready for that tomorrow. But today we're going to be talking about our favorite, least favorite, and craziest election cycles. And Jim, it seems like pretty much for the most part of this century, they've been crazy. And we'll get to all of it in a moment. But you and I have been through quite a few election cycles. That's the first thing that stands out. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of, it used to be like a time. I'm like, oh, there's like a two, three, four big it's like, no, no, I can look back to you where we were now. It'll be interesting to see where our choices align. I suspect, you know, the chances for overlap are pretty good, particularly our perception of good, perception of bad, and the craziest. I think people go most people already tell what the craziest one is going to be already. But let's go through this and see how they go, Greg. Well, Jim, as we've documented a few different times here during our 15 years on the podcast,

there's very few feelings professionally like the morning after a good election night for conservatives

and Republicans. But you and I are older than we probably like to admit. So we've seen quite a few.

So there's a few to choose from. What's your favorite election cycle or election night that you can

remember?

So a couple strong contenders here, really tempted to go through the 2010 or 2014.

2014, I was down in Dallas for Glenn Bex, the Blaze, and they ended the show with a whole bunch of race.

Like, Republicans hadn't stopped winning.

So I had to celebrate that one, you know, portions of that one in my hotel room, live blogging and all that.

But no, no, for the best, I went back to 2004.

George W. Bush was not only the winner of that, you know, down to the wire, there were a lot of people who believe John Kerry was going to win. I guess now that he's passed away, if you've missed my piece,

the Obi-Wan Kenobi, who I quoted in those days,

was former Reagan speechwriter Tony Dolan, who was my mentor then and just a great guy. And he was at that point working for the Office of Secretary of Defense, but he was very plugged in with Bush-Cheney campaign. And he just had this serene calmness that the American people were going to get this one right, that they understood the stakes of the election. This was a post-9-11 election. And he won. But the second thing that made this like just the best election night compared to all others, that was the night that I met my good friend Marshall Manson on the on the NRA news program of my other really good friend, Cam Edwards. I'm right in the carry spot then. I think I'm a hot shot who really knows about elections. I've been covering the race

pretty intensely. I got Obi-Wan. Marshall, who was at that point working at a individual

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