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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  December 14, 2013 3:10pm-3:16pm EST

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wisconsin geographically we are starting to move north. ideologically i thought it was very -- we saw kelly ayotte in new hampshire being one of the few people that stood up during the government shutdown saying enough is enough. you people are killing me up here. i was glad to see pat toomey take a couple of courageous stance as well on a lot of different issues. i think it's really good news the republican party has come out of my region and is now starting to influence elections in the northeast, the midwest and who knows maybe in the far west and here's the thing. if we want to be a national party again, we are going to have to do that. in 2008, 2009, 2010 there wasn't a single republican representing anybody in new england. hopefully we are turning that around it is we have to be a national party again. that's not only good for republicans but it's good for
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the two-party system and good for the country trade thank you so much. i appreciate it. thank you, guys. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> it's a rare constant in american political life if you look at say congress in 1901, less than 2% of members came from working-class backgrounds, got into politics and eventually round up in congress. flash forward to the present day the average number of congress spent less than 2% of their career doing manual labor jobs or doing service industry jobs. so this is one thing that really hasn't changed.
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lots of different aspects in the political process. broad cass television, cable news the rise of candidate centered elections all of this is happening. one of the constants during the last 100 years or so is working-class people are not getting elected to political office.
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beat the other thing we can do to test whether roosevelt made a difference or not be the way history turned out is to use my
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counterfactual history test. suppose a possible alternative had been present not wendell willkie who was the moderate republican internationalists who ran against roosevelt in 1940 but suppose the republicans had nominated charles lindbergh who was a great aviation hero who was very isolationist and quite sympathetic to hitler's germany. if you had a president lindbergh instead of a president roosevelt i think history would have turned out quite differently. i doubt that he would have made the preparations that roosevelt made. a and b i doubt that after japan attacked the united states that he would have oriented toward toward europe rather than keeping it focused just on a show. so in that sense franklin roosevelt made a big difference.

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