And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome to Conversations.

I'm very pleased to be joined today by my old friend Spencer Abraham,

a former senator from Michigan, Secretary of Energy, experienced political

observer, operative candidate with the whole package.

And Jay Koss, my colleague at the Weekly Standard, who was author a very good book,

A Republic No More, which I recommend to you all.

We're going to discuss it's September 9, 2015, right after Labor Day, the traditional kickoff of the presidential

campaign and I could think of no better people than the two of you to

explain where are we how do we get here and more importantly where are we going we

had a conversation back in November and I don't think any of us mentioned the name that that was more partly looking back at 2014 but also looking ahead and we had intelligent discussion parts of it stand up most of it stands up quite well.

I don't think we mentioned the name of the current

Republican front-runner on the other hand, Donald Trump, you know. So that's a minor

omission. So how did this happen? Well we weren't alone in mentioning him but you know I think it's a long

way to the finish line I mean obviously I think the selection today and going

forward is going to be very hard to predict because there's so many things

unique about 2016 and that may be true in future elections as well.

There's more candidates than we've ever had in a Republican field.

There's going to be a lot more money because the advent of the Super PAC and the Supreme Court's

decisions letting people make unlimited donations to Super PACs has changed that scenario

so that a lot of candidates who would otherwise have trouble with money are going to have

one or two major backers ensuring they can

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