Interview With Steve Parkhurst, Campaign Manager For Draft Newt

On Friday evening, March 30, Draft Newt campaign manager was kind enough to sit down with us to discuss the Draft Newt campaign as well as a potential Newt Gingrich candidacy…

We’d like to thank Steve for taking the time to speak with us and we wish him luck. Please visit DraftNewt.org for more information.

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2008 Central Exclusive Interview With John Cox, Part 1

We sat down with Republican presidential candidate, John Cox, to discuss his campaign, foreign policy, domestic policy and the other candidates.  Below, is the transcript from Part 1 of the interview covering Cox’s campaign and some foreign policy issues…(and don’t forget to check back for Part 2)…

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AsC: Can you win the Republican Primary and can you win the general election?

John Cox: Well, you know obviously, I’d need a lightning strike of good order here, but I think that can happen with the internet, with the 24 hour news cycle that we have today.   One hundred years ago this would be pretty tough, but the country obviously today is a lot more politically attuned.  People are plugged into the internet today a lot more than they were even four years ago when Howard Dean was running.  He went from nothing - he was a governor, but a governor of a pretty small state.  Just to give you an idea, when I ran countywide in Chicago, Cook County has 5 ½ million people, about 3 million registered voters.  I got about 800,000 votes - that’s about 100,000 more people than there are in Vermont.  So, you could say that I start off with a little bit more name recognition than Howard Dean did.  Now, he was a governor; I have not been elected to anything, so obviously there’s not as much similarity as you would think there.  The point of the matter is that he went from being pretty well unknown to being a national figure in the span of about a year.  If I can get some groundswell going and get some grassroots support, the media fire will spread pretty quickly.  I dare say that 6 months ago Barack Obama’s name recognition was probably in the 10 percent range nationwide - it’s still a lot better than what I have today - but today his name recognition is probably in the 80 or 90 percent range.  And, that’s the power of media, that’s the power of internet.  So, could this happen?  Yea, I think it’s possible.
AsC: An MSNBC poll from February 2007 of likely primary voters states that 73% of likely primary voters are paying very close attention to the primary process and the candidates.  What would you tell those 73% of people to do right now to start learning more about you and to start getting involved in your organization?

John Cox: Well obviously the website is the best place to start.  There’s tons of information on the website in terms of my background and the issues.  Obviously, too, there’s a book that I have written called Politics Incorporated that kind of defines who I am and why I have decided to make this race.  So, I think people who want to know about who I am and what I am about will be able to find out a lot through the website and the book.
AsC: Before we get into the substantive questions, one more calculus issue.  When did you start thinking about running for president and what was the process involved there?

John Cox: Well, you know, I ran for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2003.  That was a whole disgrace the way that happened with Obama getting in there over a couple of weak opponents.  I thought about what more of an impact I would have on the political process; I’m a businessman and I’ve been involved in the political process.  I’m not interested in being a career politician.  I’m not desperate to get an elected job.  I’ve got five businesses I run, I don’t need to be in politics.  But, I want this country to be better obviously, I want this country to have the benefits going forward that I’ve enjoyed.

So, I looked at what was going to happen in 2008.  I started looking at the potential candidates that were already being talked about right after the President’s victory in 2004.  You know, most of the people being talked about as a successor to President Bush were just more of the same – career politicians, a couple of celebrities.  I didn’t really see a Ronald Reagan out there.  I didn’t see a movement conservative.

At the same time, I had been looking at what the Republican Congress had been doing and we had lost our bearings.  I tell people that the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was Medicare expansion and Republicans falling all over themselves, twisting arms in the middle of the night, to pass the largest expansion of government and the largest expansion of an entitlement program in 40 years.  And I said, is this the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan?  And the answer is: it’s not.  I believe that the movement conservatives are still out there.  I believe Reagan democrats are still out there.  Ronald Reagan won two landslides by the largest electoral majorities in the history of this country because he stood up for something and he stood up for principle.  And, he wasn’t a career politician.  And, he appealed to people to understand that government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.  All of sudden we had a president and a republican leadership that didn’t think that way.  They were going to find problems for government to cure and they were going to expand government big enough to try to cure those problems.  I thought they were wrong in doing so.  So, I said I just can’t let 2008 pass without getting a voice of a true Reagan voice into this campaign.  So, I sat down and started to write a book about what I thought.  As I wrote the book and wrote the book, it became more and more clear that the best way for me to get these ideas out there would be to run for president.  Get these ideas out in front of the people and try to reform the Republican Party around Reagan’s ideals.

AsC: You suggest that the path to victory in Iraq is to strengthen their economy by increasing oil production and then turn it over them them….

John Cox: Absolutely…

AsC: Is this the primary motivation for violence?  Is that what you believe that this sort of financial concerns are the primary contributors to the violence?

John Cox: No, look violence is the outgrowth of a whole bunch of people trying to get control of that country.  They’re finding a willing voice or they’re finding a willing ear with a whole bunch of people that are economically distressed.  Take a look, take a step back and look at Iraq.

In the north and the south, do you see much violence?  No.  In the North, Kerkuk, the Kurdish area, where by the way there are Sunnis, there are Shiite, there’s not many of them, there’s mostly Kurds.  But, they live side to side and they work and there’s no violence to speak of; same thing in the south where Basra is.  Now, what do these two areas have in common?  They both are areas where there’s a lot of oil production.  People are working.  People are feeling like there’s a future to their country.  They don’t want to disrupt their lives, because they’ve got reasonably successful lives, not by American standards, but certainly by their standards.  And they’re not listening to Al-Qaeda.

Contrast that with the middle of the country - Baghdad, Anbar, Fallujah - unemployment is at 50%, gasoline is being rationed, electricity is on 3 hours a day. Al-Qaeda goes in there with money and says ‘here plant this IED, kill these American occupiers.’  Well someone who is unemployed, who doesn’t feel there’s much hope in the future may well take that offer and do something - strike back.  I dare say if the unemployment rate in Washington D.C. were 50% you might find some willing people here to rise up against the local government.

AsC: So then you’re not ignoring the religious undertones you’re saying that these   economic reasons are the primary…

John Cox: Well, I’m saying that the way you cut through those is by keeping people happy and prosperous.  How do I know this?  Look at what goes on right now all throughout the Middle East.  All throughout the Middle East, you have Sunni and Shiite Muslims.  Now Sunni are the vast majority, Shiite are a minority in most other Arabian countries, Muslim countries.  But you know what, there’s Shiite in Saudi Arabia; there’s Shiite in Kuwait.  And do they kill everybody?  No.  And Why?  Because those countries have prosperity.  They are producing oil.  The people have education.  The people have food.  The people have housing.  The people have a future.  And, they put aside their religious rivalries.  In their own homes, they may sit there and say ‘oh those Sunnis, I don’t like them’ or something like that or ‘that guy down the block.’  But they don’t act on it.  Because they know, first of all that there’s a justice system that will come down on them.  But, the other part of it is, they have a job to protect.  If they go off and commit some violent act, they’re going to lose their job and their family’s future is at stake.

Right now, in the middle part of this country, their financial future isn’t at stake.  As a matter of fact, it’s almost the other way around with the way the militias are; their financial futures are more secure by committing violence.  I think that’s what a lot of the motivation is.  I think if we had gone in there right from the get go and gotten the investment going in the oil production…you know, before Saddam invaded Kuwait, Iraq was producing 5 million barrels of oil a day.  At the start of the war, 4 years ago, they were producing almost 2 million a day.  Do you know what they are doing now?  A million and a half.  So they are producing about 30% of their capacity and about 60% of what they were producing 4 years ago.  It’s gone down!  And it’s not because of violence.  I think that’s the biggest misnomer going out there.  The violence isn’t where the oil production is, the violence is in the middle of the country.
AsC: Do you believe Iran is working towards nuclear weapons?

John Cox: Absolutely…and why not, I mean as long as the rest of the world is willing to pay them extortion.  They see nuclear weapons as their way to enter the world debate and their way to basically make themselves a power player in the world.  And, we’ve got to send the message that the nuclear club is closed.  It’s just not in business anymore.  And, if you try to get nuclear weapons, we’re going to shut down your economy.

AsC: Is that what you would do as president?

John Cox: I think that’s the only thing you can do.  I mean, I don’t ever want to take the military option off the table because that’s stupid.  It frankly doesn’t make sense to take one of your options off the table.  But, it’s the last option that we would obviously do.  You know what?  I don’t think it would be necessary.  Just like Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union without firing a shot, no marches, no armies, no tanks.  We can bring down the dictatorial governments of Iran and North Korea.  And how?  Show the people of those countries that we mean business, not necessarily militarily, but business in terms of prosperity.

So, Iran has got a young population - they want growth, they want prosperity.  Give them a laboratory example with the country next door.  Show that the Iraq economy can be rebuilt.  Show that the U.S. can get the Iraqis to be prosperous.  And if the Iraqis are driving around in hummers, not military hummers, but they’re driving around and they’re employed and business is booming.  And there’s cranes all over building hospitals and schools and the people of Iraq are prosperous and happy, what kind of message is that going to send to the people of Iran right next door?  I’ll tell you what; they’ll get rid of those Mullahs that are taking their oil.  You know, Iran’s economy is going downhill.  The only thing keeping them afloat, no pun intended, right now, is oil.  And why?  Oil prices are high.  But they are actually producing less oil today than they were five years ago.  That means that their economy is destined to have some major problems here, going forward.

Now, we would do a number of great things if we got Iraqi oil production up.  Think about 5 million barrels on the market a day.  First of all, oil prices around the world would drop.  We’ve got $60 a barrel oil today, overnight we would have $40 barrels of oil, if Iraq was producing 5 million barrels a day.  Now, that would benefit the Iraqis because they’d be producing a lot more money even at the lower price.  It would help Americans, who would finally get some benefit from the Iraq war – lower oil prices.  Our economy would do better, that would be a shot in the arm.  And, Iran and Venezuela would become a lot less dangerous.  At $40 a barrel oil, those dictators in both of those countries would feel a lot of pain and would be a lot less powerful.  They’d be a lot less able to ferment trouble around the world and buy weaponry and influence governments around the world.  So, there’s a lot of good to be done by getting Iraqi oil production up.  And, again, when the Iraqi oil production gets going and the Iraqis are prosperous, I think the Iranians are going to look at that and say ‘hey, I want a piece of that prosperity too.’
AsC:  Speaking of oil, which is a great segue, do you believe that there’s human caused climate change occurring globally?

John Cox: Well, I think the climate always changes.  I think that there’s probably some measure of human cause – the issue is how much.  The world has been warmer and colder throughout history and obviously that was way before cars.  Cars weren’t around during the Middle Ages and there’s a lot of scientific evidence that shows the earth was actually warmer during some parts of the middle ages.  The answer is: I don’t know and I don’t think scientific knowledge is totally sure on this point, because I don’t think scientific knowledge is actually sure about anything.  I remember when I was your age and I was growing up, there were scientists out there saying: We’re going to run out of oil by the year 2000.  Well, the world is awash in oil today; we haven’t run out of oil.  There were other people running around in the seventies who were saying the world was going to run out of food.  Well today, we produce more food than we can eat.  Our problem is obesity, not starvation.  So, the so-called scientists and I don’t put down scientists, they provide a lot of opportunity to people.  But, you know, they are not always that sure and they are not always right.

The issue is: should we clean the air?  Yes.  Should we diversify for fossil fuels? Yes.  How can we do that without crippling the economy?  How can we do that while still letting developing countries develop?  How can we do that without arming tinhorn dictators throughout the world?  These are the kinds of questions we need to answer.  We need common sense solutions.  What we don’t need are government dictates and government mandates that never work.  And how do I know this?  The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore.  It’s in the dustbin of history.  Centralized government management is an oxymoron; there is no management to it.  What we’ve got to do is get a private sector at work.  We’ve got to get policies that empower people to solve these problems, encourage diversification, encourage a free market, encourage clean air – that’s in everybody’s best interest.

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Follow Up: Exclusive Interview With John Cox

2008 Central recently sat down with Republican presidential contender John Cox for an exclusive interview.

The interview was a success!  John Cox’s gracious sacrifice of time, his candor along with all of your submitted questions helped make the interview interesting and informative.  The interview ran a bit longer than 30 minutes.  Accordingly, because the interview was so longer, we’re going to publish it in two parts to ensure that it receives the proper attention - Part 1 will be published this evening, Part 2 will be published tomorrow evening.

Part 1 - Basic Info and Foreign Policy

• Cox’s discussion of his chances of securing the nomination and winning the general election
• Discusses when he started thinking about and why he’s running for president
• Gives his plans for success in Iraq and controlling Iran’s nuclear ambitions [You'll definitely want to check back for these as his point-of-view is certainly not being discussed much by the media - whether you agree or disagree, it's still worth learning about new/different ideas]
• Discusses human caused climate change [Teaser: He doesn't really buy into all the discussion about climate change, but he still wants clean up the environment]

Part 2 - Domestic Policy and Assorted Questions

• Discusses his plan for dealing with illegal immigrants
• Discusses military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and reacts to Gen. Pace’s comments [You're not getting a teaser as I don't want to give away too much]
• Tells us what he’d do differently in the war on drugs and discloses whether or not he’s used marijuana [Teaser: His discussion on the War on Drugs is thoughtful and a position absent from the mainstream and deserving of more attention]
• Responds to criticisms of his Republican frontrunners Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney

Once again, we’d like to thank John Cox for his time.  We strongly encourage all to read the interview.

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Follow Up: AsC On The Radio

On March 11, 2007, AsC was a guest on WLPO’s sunday morning show with John Small.  They discussed the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.

Here’s the audio:

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2008 Central ANNOUNCEMENT: Exclusive Interview With John Cox

[Originally Posted - 3/19 @ 6:30pm] 

2008 Central has received an exclusive interview with Republican presidential hopeful John Cox.  This interview will take place on March 21, 2007. 

If you have any questions you’d like us to ask Mr. Cox, please email us (or post the question in the comments section).

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