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Hey everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change.

Norm Ornstein is with us, but this time is with his buddy Tom Mann.

These guys have been two of the most respected political scientists among Republicans and

Democrats for decades and decades until about a decade ago when they wrote a groundbreaking

book.

It's even worse than it looks.

Then Republicans started kind of hating them.

Now part of the reason they were so respected is that for years they had been, I guess

what you call honest brokers.

Norm was with the more conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

Tom, for Brookings, the liberal Washington think tank.

And so everyone in DC would talk to them.

And Norm and Tom were very influential.

For example, Norm was a key advisor to John McCain and Russ Feingold on McCain Feingold,

which was one of the most significant campaign finance reform bills in history.

But at a certain point, the Republican Party just went off the rails.

They'd been training that way with New Gingrich and Tom Delay, but during the Obama administration

they ceased to become a political party that had any morings whatsoever in terms of serving

the American people.

Mitch McConnell stated very clearly right after Obama's election, that his goal was to

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