so the people we needed to get to win the nomination was john tower, barry goldwater and strom thurm thurman, not nelson rockefeller. romney was perceived as that part of the party. i remember the late nick timmish. it w it was before the bible shlg. we were on park avenue at the fabricated offices. he said you better get up to new hampshire. romney is working extremely hard doing four or five coffees a day and he's really doing the state in retail politics. i went to president nixon, vice president nixon and ig said timmish is not a hostile guy. he said horomney is breaking ground. nixon said he can wait for the final day. he announced on february 23nd o election year. the republicans would be like announcing right now. so he announced and went in there then. what happened is romney -- it was at any time mormonism. i don't recall mormonism being brought up. romney was running on moral decay and denouncing moral decay, and we said the ads looked like toothpaste adds, you know? he desperately tried to get nixon into a debate. we're not going to debate him, and nixon said the debate is

down from occupy burlington, vermont, today to be here -- [applause] and i'm really inspired by the thurm of people that have risen up to protest the bullying, as you put it, of american elites in many respects through the occupy movement. do you think that the occupy movement has the potential to revolutionallize the system to the point that we can topple the power that has so corrupted the rule of law? what do you think the movement will need to achieve in order to -- achieve and overcome in order to do this? >> for me? for me? yeah? well, i think the occupy movements which are now all over the country, in fact, all over the world are very exciting development. in fact, inspiring in a lot of ways. really unprecedented. i don't know of anything quite like them in the past which is, makes sense. this is an unprecedented period in many ways. what can they achieve? they've already achieved a lot, i think. they've put things, they've shifted the range of discussion which is quite important. they've at the very least are laying down a legacy from which you can move on. there are short-term th

the regime's success lies also in its ability to attract large thurm of supporters and make -- large number of supporters and make them feel vested in the system. enrollment of new recruits was a major element of baathist occasion. in its recruitment policy, the party was particularly concerned to achieve a good percentage of woman members, and more importantly to overcome the aging of the party's cadre. a great deal of pressure was brought to bear on citizens to join the party, and some became members under duress, but many joined voluntarily through conviction or from a desire to benefit from being a baathist. the documents abound with evidence of citizens applying to join or rejoin the party. the vast majority of party affiliates, however, played little active role because of the party's rigid hierarchy. only the top three levels of memberships were effectively involved in executing policies. active members were subjected to frequent evaluation, promotion required passing special training courses, immersion in the cultural aspects of the party and demonstrating the potential to se

you don't given at 28 or 25 or whatever the thurm is. you've got to, i think, be straightforward about it and say we're not going to tax you, or we're going to tax you at a level that means business. megyn: what about he says we'll only have two income tax rates, 10% and 28%. >> that, again, has been advanced a number of times. it's effectively a flat tax which has been, you know, we can go back to our friend steve forbes and start looking at serious advocacy -- megyn: most of the people then say they're going to eliminate all the deductions you get up there, but he seems to be saying some people, i guess, he doesn't outline it in the journal piece but, yes, we'll eliminate some deductions, but he's going to trip and double other ones. he's going to get rid of the marriage tax penalty. is that good or bad? >> the idea behind it is good and, as you know, he puts that under the rubric of supporting and defending the american family which i think is critically important be societally, economically in the defense of the nation. but the probl

i think you put your finger on a problem that is both the thurm of think tanks, the proliferation, a crowded, noisy marketplace, and it gets harder to be heard, so there's a premium on digesting thicks, boiling them down, getting to the nut graph, right? and getting it out fast before somebody else does because you've got so many competitors. you know, so that's pressure on the account of the primary research and analytical admission of any think tank. you have to bhans it, and mike makes a good distinction. but we're all facing that pressure, competing in that marketplace, and, you know, the lines between commentary and empirically-based argument are being blurred n. the digital age, any digital scribbler can be a think tank unto himself or herself. get on wikipedia and get the facts you need, and you've got a 600-word piece out, and you're competing on an even footing with the mighty heritage foundation. [laughter] at least momentarily. but, you know, the think tanks play a very important role of validating ideas and lending weight to them based on their track records. you know, th