And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by Steve Hayes, colleague for 17 years, I guess, is that right right hard to believe at the weekly standard and one of our leading

reporters editors commentators starting a new publication with Jonah Goldberg in just a couple of months, I think,

New Year, so we're looking forward to that.

Thank you.

Author of very fine biography of Dick Cheney, a good book on Saddam Hussein, the war on terror.

Anyway, welcome back, you're in Spain with your family, which you enjoyed, right?

I loved it.

You've adjusted. Wonderful.

We're still adjusting to the return in the United States and the ferocity of the debate here, but it's good to be back. It's good to be here. You have to say that it's good to be back even if it's... But did you really get away from in Spain no you

i did it at the end of the time in Spain i wasn't paying i was working hard on

weekly standard stuff the first

right and and the new publication in the last six months but I didn't I took Twitter off my phone I didn't check Twitter on the computer very often

That's terrible it was it was pretty great

So coming back probably heightened for you what we'll talk about today the the moment right that I mean the moment that I don't think you expected to see

terms of conservatism and the Republican Party and everything you've been a conservative pretty much your whole

ever since I met you your whole career in Washington right? Yeah yeah I was a

conservative I mean I was one of these sort of dorky kids in high school who was

really interested in politics and considered myself a

conservative then. I was you know I grew up in the age of Ronald Reagan when a lot of

conservatives my age were were born and that was sort of the model for what conservatism looked like.

So I've been a conservative ever since then.

So where are we?

...