From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
What You’re Missing at the National Review Ideas Summit
Good news! You can watch some portions of the National Review Institute Ideas Summit on C-SPAN. My interview with Kellyanne Conway went well from where I sat. She seems fairly confident that they’ll get some version of the House bill to the President’s desk, that Tom Price can enact all of “Phase Two” at the Department of Health and Human Services and that “Phase Three” isn’t a faraway dream; once Obamacare is repealed, Democrats may want to have a say in what replaces it, and thus offer some support for the second round of replacement legislation. To get to all the good stuff in Phase Three, like selling insurance across state lines and tort reform, you need 60 votes in the Senate.
One fascinating story from Conway about Election Night:
“We had agreed the night before, [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook had agreed the night before through an e-mail to me, that within 15 minutes of the [Associated Press] calling the race for Secretary Clinton they would wait fifteen minutes, and then she would go to the podium and declare victory. So he was basically saying that you have 15 minutes for Trump to get out there [and concede]. And then he said, ‘in the event that Mr. Trump wins–” Conway offered a wink, indicating Mook was convinced this would never happen – “Secretary Clinton will call him within 15 minutes of the AP [calling the race]. Jason Miller tells me that the AP has called it, and I ask, ‘What state?’ He says, ‘the whole thing!’ And I look down, literally, (to my phone) and it says, ‘Huma Abedin.’ And I say, ‘Hey, Huma, what’s up?’ And she’s absolutely lovely, she really is. And she said, ‘Hey, Kellyanne, Secretary Clinton would like to speak to Mr. Trump.’ And I said, ‘Now?’ And she says, ‘Is he available?’ And I said, ‘We are very available!’ And my husband took a shot of that moment, handing Trump the phone… And the rest is history. That was a really remarkable moment.”
Asked what lessons Republican candidates could take from the Trump campaign, she noted that while not every Republican candidate will be able to emulate Trump’s approach, she thinks the coming cycle could be a good one for the GOP, as the Democratic Party has effectively chosen to concede so many former supporters. “Where are the pro-life Democrats? Where are the pro-Second Amendment Democrats? They just don’t exist anymore.”