Gary Bauer on Main Street Conservatism

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2015

⏱️ 76 minutes

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Summary

An activist and former policy advisor to Ronald Reagan, Gary Bauer has been at the center of conservative policy battles for over three decades. In this conversation, Bauer recalls how he first became interested in politics as a teenager fighting corruption in Northern Kentucky. Kristol and Bauer also discuss Bauer’s advocacy of conservative principles in domestic and foreign affairs from the Reagan era until today. Considering contemporary American politics, Bauer argues for a reinvigorated, pro-Main Street conservatism.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations, and it's a special pleasure today to welcome my friend Gary Bauer.
0:21.0	Good to be with you, Bill.
0:23.0	Thanks for joining me and thanks for everything you've done over the decades and fighting for
0:27.6	the conservative cause.
0:28.8	And you.
0:29.8	Well, thank you.
0:30.8	You've been a conservative activist, really a conservative leader since 1980 at least,
0:35.2	when you're 1981 when you joined the Reagan administration.
0:38.0	But let's just begin at the beginning.
0:39.8	What made you a conservative?
0:40.8	What is, what is American conservatism to you right?
0:43.3	Why have you devoted so much of your life to fighting for it?
0:45.8	Yeah well early on very early on I developed an interest in politics because of where I grew up.
0:55.0	Newport, Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio,
1:00.0	a blue collar town.
1:02.0	It ended up that in the years I grew up there the town was literally
1:07.0	under the control of an organized crime syndicate out of Toledo, Ohio. And when I say under the control of it,
1:15.0	literally the mayor, the city council,
1:18.0	even the police department, were all being paid handsomely
1:22.0	to allow the city to engage in all kinds of activities.
1:26.6	There were casinos in Newport, Kentucky, in the 50s and 60s when gambling was not legal anywhere in America other than Las Vegas.
1:36.3	There was open prostitution, there was graft, corruption, etc.
	...

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