Welcome to Empower You. I'm Amy Stevens. You may have heard Pastor Steve's podcast where we had a
conversation about public policy engagement or civic engagement. You know, COVID changed a lot
of things in our community and this is where the road really exploded in membership and where people
began to get engaged. And so Pastor Steve came to me and said, hey, would you consider volunteering
to help lead this effort? We have all kinds of views in our church, diverse views. And really,
how do we make sense of that? How do we move forward? People are exhausted. A lot of people
angry. Some just trying to raise their kids. How do we stay engaged? And I'm convinced it's through
big, important little things, things that you and I can do every day. And that's what you're going
to hear on these podcasts. You're going to hear from people in the community, school board members.
You're going to hear from people that work in the life pro-life space. You're going to hear
from legislators, people that are going to talk to us about what their lives are really like,
what their jobs are really like, and actually how we can make a difference and or support them.
And so that is the hope for Pastor Steve. That's the hope that I have,
and we look forward to engaging with you.
My guest today is Eli Bremer. Eli is a actually native Coloradan. I've known him for many years
and so happy you're here. He is a former Olympian. He's a U.S. Air Force Academy grad.
He ran for U.S. Senate, where he was endorsed by a majority of county commissioners. His wife,
Cammie, is a county commissioner. In fact, she's head. She's chairman of the board right now.
But he has an amazing story also about his son, Struthers, who was born weighing one and a half
pounds. One and a half pounds, yep.
My gosh, okay. But you also come from a long line in terms of family engagement,
policy engagement. Your dad, Duncan, was a former county commissioner. Your uncle,
Paul Bremer, was also appointed by former President Bush as the presidential envoy to Iraq
in 2003. You've played a really big role in this whole issue of women's sports, transgender men
engaging in women's sports, the exposing in terms of athletes, and the governance of the U.S.
Olympic Committee. You also, however, and one thing I was very happy about, and you endeavored,
you waded in the water. You were our former El Paso County party chairman.
And I'll never get those two years of my life back, Amy.
You never will. That's exactly right. You were our former party chairman in El Paso County. And
that in and of itself is a bravo. That's a tough job. It is a tough job. And you and I have
talked a lot about this. We've been talking about the blue state in the time you and I've known each
other, even in the time I served in office, right? The blueing of Colorado. And what are
we going to do about it? And we kind of lamented sometimes what's going on. Where I want to go,
and I'll give you a scenario. You know this well. As you were running for U.S. Senate,
I think our congressman, Doug Lamborn, for the fifth CD was running. We were also going through
redrawing of the boundary lines here in Colorado, everywhere.
Redistricting.
Redistricting. Here at our church, and Pastor Steve and I have talked a lot about this, we had
a lot of backing and forth. We had a lot of people all over the map here at our church. Not that they,
I would probably say a majority in this body are registered Republican and or independent,
but probably Republican. And a lot of over, right? Why would you vote for a compromiser? Why?
The buzzwords, the establishment, right? And we would just go, I remember I got voted off the
island on one chat group I joined. And then it was pretty clear where they were going, right?
Yeah.
And pretty clear where I was. And they were just, the group shut down because they were
asked too many questions. It was kind of ridiculous. But this is what we have going
on in every church. And this is what we have going on in our party. And about a few weeks ago,
I got a resolution. I'm a precinct committee person. I got a resolution by the Republican
party in regards to the fundamental principles of our party, which wonderful, we all want,
everybody wants principles. And it really revolved around the constitution, right?
The bill of rights, the 2016 Republican party platform.
No, I would go, well, OK.
I mean, that's fine.
I'm there with you.
I will support that.
I was a political appointee at HHS in administration.
And then it just says, be it resolved that the El Paso
County Republican Party, that any elected Republican
official, and any candidate that aspires to elected office
be firmly, openly, unequivocally, unashamedly
demonstrative in support of our fundamental principles.
Yeah.
So Amy, the question is actually then
who gets to adjudicate that.
And when I was elected chair, I was the youngest chairman
in the state of Colorado.
I was younger at the time and naive.
And I thought, oh, here I am.
People really asked me to serve.
I was an Olympian, Air Force grad.
I was separated from active duty.
And boy, did I get a wake-up call real fast
when I realized that was the fundamental question of who
gets to do the adjudication.
And when I was chairman, I coined the term the party
Pharisees, because I realized there
was an entire class of people who acted
like the Pharisees of the Bible.
And they said, we get to determine the law,
the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
And they went so far off the rails
that they convicted Jesus and executed him.
They literally convicted the Messiah.
And I hate to say it, but this is a problem we see in politics
is that you have self-declared adjudicators of the law.
And I've seen that.
Unfortunately, I've seen it for years.
And I think this is partly why we are slipping away.
In the same way that the Pharisees of the Bible
were driving the Jewish people further and further away
from God, I think the Pharisees in politics
drive us further and further away from electoral victories.
I think today, you and I have had this conversation
with our party.
But actually, I'm seeing it also in the Democratic Party now.
In other words, my former lobbying partner
was kicked out of the Hispanic caucus.
He wasn't La Raza enough for them.
And I mean, he is as up and coming a leader as anybody.
And I said, wait, what?
You've got to be kidding.
Amy, I think particularly as Christians,
and in full disclosure, Steve Holt
gave the opening invocation at my launch event.
Yes.
So I've known Steve for a long time
and consider him a good friend.
But I think as Christians engage in politics,
first and foremost, let's remember your faith
surpasses everything else.
And if you engage in politics, it
needs to subordinate to your faith.
And that truth is truth, and righteousness is righteousness.
And I love the hearkening back to when Jesus said,
give to Caesar what is Caesar, and to God what is God's.
And oftentimes, I see churches that get political,
they lose their true north.
And we can disagree on what a candidate is
or something like that.
But within the body of Christ, we
need to be very careful to keep that.
With that said then, it's also important to be wise.
And there's a lot of organizations
that I see surrounding various churches that
get politically involved.
I'll use an example.
There's a pro-life group.
I'm going to put this in air quotes.
It's a pro-life group that attacked my wife
because she was not pro-life enough.
Now, my wife literally put her life on the line
to bring our son into this world.
We were counseled minutes before she went into an emergency
c-section that the safest thing for her to do
would be to terminate our son's life,
and that that would guarantee her life be saved.
She said, no, that's not an option.
So I've emceed.
Right, but there's a group of people
who say she considers herself, or she's not enough.
So we've financially supported pro-life causes.
I spent, I think, six years I was the emcee at the Walk
for Life.
And there was this group in town that declared themselves
a pro-life adjudicator.
And they sent out a survey to her
when she was running for county commission saying,
will you demand that all abortions in El Paso County
are canceled?
Now, you've been involved with the government.
Can a county commissioner cease abortions in the county?
Do they have the legal ability to do this?
I don't know that they do.
They don't.
No.
And so she reached back out and said,
I can't affirm that I will do this because I don't
have the authority to do it.
They also wanted to know, will you
attest that the county will not do
any business with any enterprise that supports abortion
or something like that?
Well, there's legal and constitutional reasons
why a county is unable to do that.
Those policies are decided at other levels.
Right.
And same, by the way, federal can also.
We deal with this all the time.
For instance, a very particular example I looked at
when this came up was the county is self-insured.
So let's say that you're a county employee
and you're in Boston, and you have an emergency
and you go to a hospital where they perform abortions,
the county would have to, you know,
they have to pay your medical bills,
that's the agreement you have.
So you don't have any control over this.
So from a logistical point of view,
she looked at it and said, I'm not going to lie to people.
I'm pro-life and I'm not going to lie to them
and tell them I can do things I can't do.
So she was attacked as not being pro-life.
Right, and by the way, I've had those surveys.
I've had them and I-
And they're gotcha surveys.
Oh, they're gotcha surveys.
But there's one, I mean, I remember saying,
how much have you given to candidates?
How much have you walked for candidates?
What have you done for candidates?
And what's really interesting, Amy, and you know this,
but a lot of people don't,
that this is predominantly driven by money.
Again, back to the Pharisees.
What was going on in the Pharisees' days?
It was about money, it was about power.
I think it's important for people to be very wise
and say, don't just listen to what someone says.
Steve Holt, the pastor here, has many times said,
we should be fruit inspectors.
We should inspect the fruit of what someone's doing.
And so, again, I'm not going to say the name of this group.
It probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out,
but this is a group that masquerades as a pro-life group.
And yet what they do is they attack pro-lifers
and then they send out financial solicitation emails
to pay for the people that run what is called a scam pack,
a political action committee that's a scam.
Right, and we've seen that on Second Amendment issues too.
We've seen it on Second Amendment.
There's a major scam pack,
one of the largest ones here.
So, I think as we engage politically,
it's important to be wise and to say,
Jesus did not call us to be foolish
and just to walk into a situation blindly.
He said, be discerning.
Look at the fruit of what a business does
or what a person does and judge it by its fruit.
And that, I think that applies very substantially
in the political arena.
Well, you know, when you were party chairman,
this is kind of when this whole, I'm more pure than you,
kind of, you're not enough is what I call it,
the you're not enough.
I remember when the Tea Party was going on
and I was in office at the time and I remember thinking,
wow, okay, people are gathering around.
This could be quite exciting.
This could be, you know, this could be helpful, frankly.
But then it became very clear that the people
that were moving and taking that over had probably,
few had barely worked a day in their lives
or couldn't hold a job or in my mind
were even suspect in mental health.
I mean, you and I would go,
that's probably not a person I'd have on my team.
And we would say,
that's probably not someone I would go with.
And eventually we began to see the party
kind of taken over by this.
A number of years ago, this was right after my term,
but I was intimately involved with it.
We had a vacancy for a state Senate seat.
You remember this?
Where there was a recall election.
And it was out of this group that they ran, you know,
the supposed Christian conservative candidate.
And I remember a conversation with one of my best friends
who I was joking with him.
I said, what do you think when we look at her background,
we're going to find, it turned out she wrote pornography.
And so we had the Christian conservative
and we had two former now former state senators
who were part of this.
You know, I sort of call them the chief Pharisees
who were promoting a woman who wrote pornographic content
as the Christian conservative candidate.
And so again, I don't think we can do enough
to advise people to be wise and ask questions
because you know, the Christians were supposed
to support this woman.
And, you know, I'm like, wait a second.
You know, maybe I missed that section of the Bible
where this is how we're supposed to act.
I want to ask about a conversation you told me you had
with a former state Senator.
And you kind of went through the whole reasoning
of can we agree to disagree
or can we have a different opinion?
Well, and in this case, it was really interesting
because, you know, I know you've started the book
Getting to Yes.
And it's a great book.
I'd recommend it to anyone.
It was written, you know, 40 years ago
and it's about how to get what you're trying to get
out of a negotiation.
And they talk about the difference between a position
and like in your principles.
Okay.
And so I sat down with this former state Senator
who I'd been having issues with.
And, you know, he considered himself
the most ardent pro-life person.
And I, you know, I said, well, hold on a second.
You've never actually passed legislation
that affects the life issue.
He said, yeah, but my voting record's really good.
And I said, well, you know,
there's a whole different group of people that believe
that if you reduce the number of abortions you've done,
you've saved lives.
Schindler's List, the movie Schindler's List, talked about the man who couldn't save all
the Jews, but he saved some of the Jews.
Now, frankly, if you're one of those Jews who was saved, you're probably not condemning
him and saying he wasn't enough pro-Jewish.
So that was when it really struck me what a disconnect there was, because he couldn't
even see that other people might have a different opinion, that if you say I'm for lowering
taxes and you cut a deal to lower the taxes by 5% because you couldn't get to 10%, that
that was better, and that doing good was better than not doing good.
And again, I hearken back to, I think Jesus gave us some really great lessons.
And he talked about collecting food for the disciples on the Sabbath.
Would you rescue an animal out of a pit on the Sabbath?
And one of the message of Jesus was love your neighbor as yourself.
And this is not some warm, fuzzy deal.
It was very practical.
It was go do good things.
And so I look at that and I say, personally, I believe that politicians who advance our
values are more effective and do more for our cause than the ones who don't, and who
stand there and say, I got this rating from some outside group.
Yes, this group.
I get that.
And by the way, it was interesting because in that conversation with that former state
senator, he was talking about these ratings groups.
And I said, so where do the ratings come from?
And he said, well, they're objective.
And I said, right.
But who decided?
Right.
Well, it doesn't matter.
They are objective.
And I said, no.
And Amy, let's be very clear, because I think it's important for people to understand this.
A lot of these groups who do ratings.
So if you're looking at someone's ratings, a lot of the groups that do ratings are special
interest groups that are making money off this.
So what do they do?
They've got a couple of candidates who they sort of own or a couple of elected officials.
And then there's oftentimes two sides of every vote.
And there's a reason why a good person might vote one way or the other.
So what they do is they say, OK, we need to bolster this person, this person, and this
person.
And so we start with whatever they did was correct.
And we back into that.
Or we list a bill and we say, this guy was the champion.
Correct.
He was a champion on this bill.
And yes, everything from there.
And so when you look at these rating systems and things like that, realize there's people
behind them.
And you didn't elect those people.
You probably don't know who they are.
But I pretty much guarantee you they're making money off of it.
Right.
And they all think the same way.
And there is an inherent bias in everything they do.
And as much as I hate to say it, a lot of it comes down to money making.
Yes.
And you've been around as long as I have.
We've seen that where there's this person behind the scene who couldn't cut it in their
business life.
So they come in, they create this rating system, they judge oftentimes good people, and then
they make money off.
Right.
And we wonder then why we cannot find or have a bench enough of good candidates who will
actually get in the game to run, because they don't want their own party running against
them.
And the idea that we have some of this going on right now has forced some candidates to
have to pay to get on the ballot, to pay for signatures, because their own party works
against them.
And I wish, you know, anybody living in another state has got to start seeing this is the
road to completely and totally losing your power, completely.
I mean, it saps majorities.
I had a guy, I was at a conference and he came up to me, he's from South Carolina, and
he was talking about infighting there, and that he's so worried about it because people
are making crazy connections and in a way skewering each other, doing them in.
It's why we say during the presidential campaigns, yeah, why not 16 Republicans?
Let's jump in the race so you can skewer each other while the Dems just sit back, have one
candidate.
They don't do anything else.
I mean, to me, if people could look at Colorado and see how that has so worked against us,
right?
Yeah.
It was funny.
I don't remember who said it, but it was very clever.
They said, you know, if someone were to do a postmortem on the Republican Party in Colorado,
it would be ruled a suicide, not a homicide.
And I think there's a lot of truth to that, and I hate to say it, but some of that has
come out of the church.
I love what I see out of this church.
The church I attend is also very grounded.
The pastor does a great job of saying, here's what the truth is.
You figure it out.
Here's what the Bible teaches about sexuality.
Here's what it teaches about abortion, and you figure it out from there.
I think that begets Christians who get involved and really understand better how to engage.
We also see, on the flip side of that, people who get really revved up, and, you know, divisiveness
is not something we see around Jesus in the New Testament.
We see—not Him causing it.
I mean, He's—He sometimes—
ends the fight, but not starts it.
And he doesn't, you know, when the disciples came to him,
remember the disciples come to him at one point,
says, Jesus, Jesus, there's people over here
acting in your name, doing good things,
and we should stop them.
And he said, why?
They're doing good things,
let them keep doing good things.
And, you know, yet we see that culture.
Unfortunately, that culture has taken hold
at the highest levels in Colorado right now,
of if you're out trying to defend life,
if you're out trying to protect women's sports,
if you're out trying to cut taxes or protect guns,
but you're not in our faction
and we don't get to control you,
then we're condemning you.
Right, exactly.
I remember as majority leader,
I had someone from the other,
across the aisle, Democrat, come over and say,
hey, listen, there's a few of us here
that are deeply religious, Catholic,
and if you wanted to run a late-term,
you know, an anti-late-term abortion bill,
we'd be with you on it.
That would never be allowed in the Republican Party.
Well, it wasn't allowed.
You know, we floated the idea, the speaker and I,
we said, great, we're happy to do that.
We think, again, we'll be, you know, cutting back.
And again, you had a faction that said,
if you do that, you're not pro-life
because then you're approving
anything below 24 weeks is okay.
And we said, how did you get there?
Not at all, people.
But we have an opportunity, other side of the aisle,
joining, right?
To have a positive impact.
Nope, not having that.
Let's rewind.
If our founding fathers had taken this approach,
we never would have created this great country.
Right.
Slavery never would have ended.
Right.
You know, when the Constitution was passed,
slavery was still an issue.
And there were a number of our founding fathers
that understood how bad slavery is
and that it's a terrible thing.
It had been going on for the history of society.
But it was wrong.
And yet, because of the approach that they took,
they said, we're not gonna be able to end it today.
But you know what?
They ended it 75 years later.
And that was, you know, that was a high watermark
for America that they did this.
And I think that's a great path for us to look at
and say, we're not gonna win everything tomorrow.
Right.
But can we make our state a better place?
Can we get it back to our core values that we agree on?
You know, can we get back to the point
of individual liberties, of personal responsibility,
of respecting life?
Right.
You know, respecting that women
should have their own bathrooms and sports.
If we say it has to be there tomorrow or we give up,
well, we're not gonna get there tomorrow.
Exactly.
No, and to undo so many, and I mean,
the federal government, of course,
is the absolute worst example.
But people tried, right?
As a political appointee, you try.
You try to undo some things.
You try that.
And it takes forever.
I just have to say, if we cut literally half
of all these departments, no one would miss a thing, right?
And really, I wouldn't miss a thing.
And we began to see just to get the minutest thing done.
And you know, I have to say,
we had a president who kept pushing and pushing
and saying, we have to get this done.
We're gonna get this done.
No one's taking off till it gets done.
There's merit in that in government.
And I think so few people understand
that sometimes it's the getting to yes
that you talk about in the gray areas.
You're not gonna get everything you want.
No, and you know what?
It's interesting to me that people talk
about our founding fathers
and practically deify them politically.
And yet our founding fathers said we built the government
around having to compromise.
And so, you know, our founding fathers would get kicked
out of the Republican party today.
Right, and Reagan.
And Reagan would be kicked out, yeah.
So, and what they meant by that is
that the process is built around that.
And so, you don't have to like it or not.
It's not, there's no morality to it.
It's sort of like saying, you know,
my truck has an owner's manual
and it says you need to change the oil.
And here's the type of oil you put in.
Now, if I don't change the oil,
eventually I'm going to have negative consequences.
So our founding fathers built this form of government.
They didn't trust human nature.
They didn't want one group to have too much authority.
So they said, we're going to set it up
so you can never get everything you want.
Now that's a good thing because personally
I don't want the current people in charge of Colorado
or our country to get everything they want.
In fact, it would terrify me.
And so yet oftentimes I see conservatives and Republicans
who say, well, I'm not gonna compromise.
I say, it's not a negative character trait to do that.
It's understanding that the system was built
that you're not going to get done what you need to
unless you can find a way to work within the system
to get something done.
Right, right.
Or raw power.
power days, right? We're really past, at least even here. The same kind of thing we see in
those subdivisions, we see it at the Capitol. And a lack of free speech, a lack of, sorry,
our way or the highway, because that's what's going to happen here, people. And almost to,
well, again, it's so oppressive. It is so authoritative. And you think, oh, my gosh,
10 years ago, that would not have been the case.
So Amy, you know what's interesting is when you said that, I had to actually think which
party you were talking about, because they both act the same way in that you've got,
but one controls the levers of government and the other does not. And yet you actually
just accurately described a lot of political figures. And if we're going to make the changes
we want to make and that the church body tends to want to see done, we're going to have to
be smart about it. And I just, I gave a speech last week to a county party and they asked
me to come talk and say, how do we move forward? And I said, you know, one of the things that
I've seen is that we don't, we don't engage other people. We do a lot of talking, but
we don't do a lot of listening. And it was interesting. A gentleman came up afterwards
and said, what do you read for news? And I said, I try to read all the news. He said,
I only read Breitbart. And I said, I'm curious how many of the people that we need to persuade
only read Breitbart news? He said, probably none. And I said, how many of them are reading
CNN? He said, probably a lot. And I said, that's why I read CNN every day, because I
want to understand what's out there. So I think we have a tendency to get very insular.
And unfortunately, this type of thing, all it does is it feeds our gravitas, it feeds
people's egos and it says, ah, you know, I'm, you know, I'm so righteous. It's the Pharisee
thing. What we really need to do is, is frankly, have a little bit more humility about, you
know, we have great answers. We have, we understand the biblical principles that can
go into, into governance. You know, it was biblical principles that led to understanding
that, that all, all men are created equal. And that means that based on your skin color,
you're still equal, which led to the end of slavery. You know, these are good principles
that, you know, where do we see a personal responsibility? It's biblical principles.
These are things that we want to bring into the government. And yet, if we, if we go and
yell at people and tell them how amazing we are, you know, we're not evangelizing them
into our cause. And if we yell at them and say, well, that person believes the exact
same thing, but they're at a different click. So I can't support them. Then that doesn't
help us either. Right, right. And we saw that actually, uh, not just at state convention,
but we saw it in the County convention, right? People who said they were the Patriots, they
were wearing some sort of little bracelet or something. I can't tell you how many people
I know who said they wanted to leave and take a shower after that. Now, God help us.
If you go into a church body and, uh, you know, when I go into a church, whether it's
my church or this church, you know, I expect to feel edified in a walk out and say, okay,
my spirit's been fulfilled. And yet that was a general feeling that people had this year
was they, they'd never heard the kind of foul language, the kind of vitriol of people who
were, who were doing this in Jesus name. Uh, and, and again, I go back to what I love
Steve's deal. Well, let's be fruit inspectors. And if, you know, I, I attended an event that
was hosted at a church a couple of years ago. And I remember walking out of that political
event hosted at a church and feeling like I didn't, I would not have wanted my at the
time six year old son to have heard the words coming out of the pastor's mouth because they
were so vile toward other Christians. Wow. You know, uh, it reminds me, and I read a
wonderful book this year, Kurt Schleicher's militant normals. I get, I get the whole,
how, uh, the rise up of people going, look, we're sick of you giving away the house. When
you get to Congress, we're sick of you, uh, changing, you know, you were this way when
you were here, then you got over there and now you're just, you know, I get that part.
It's a great book, by the way, I highly recommend a militant normals. And I also recommend Douglas
Murray's the madness of crowds. And now I'm reading yours. Get to yes. But I would say
that in that they're there. In fact, I, I remember this, this bill, odd bill, uh, homeopathic
bill, uh, every year we'd come before us and everyone was like, ah, no one could come to
agreement. Right. I mean, it's split. It's split every, the, the personalities on the
house floor as you run it are really interesting, but in this homeopathic bill, okay. Um, and
Colorado's big on homeopathy, natural meds. I mean, all we're, we're very East and West.
And I remember the majority leader, uh, saying to me, because we had just switched in 2012.
So we just lost. And she said, this thing comes before us every year. I think we need
to get this past. And I said, I agree. I agree. And it's so funny. We did get it past,
but we had ours on my side of the, all over the map, all some with.
Some totally against, and D's on the other side.
Some really with us, and then not.
But we got it done, and you would,
you know, even today, it'd be called,
well, that's completely compromising, right?
But now here, could we agree, could you and I agree
on some benefits, the benefits of homeopathy
for people who choose, right?
For themselves, their children, yes!
That's freedom.
Yes, it is freedom.
And so, I always think about that,
because it really required us.
She was on my side of the aisle, working the votes.
I'm on her side of the aisle, working votes.
We got the thing, but again, how rare that is today.
How, just so rare.
It is, and there's, you know, I also,
on the one hand, I don't like it
when a politician goes and they change,
but that, there's also something that comes about
the longer you're in an activity, you grow mature.
Yeah.
The longer you, the longer I competed as an athlete,
the more mature I was.
Right.
And so, you also, it's also good to have, again,
a level of humility, and if you have a question
for an elected official, don't listen to the outside group,
take it to them and say, is there a reason for this?
Yes.
Because what I've discovered is that oftentimes,
there is a reason.
Right.
You know, and sometimes it's that the law
doesn't allow them to do it.
Sometimes it's that they can't get done
what you think they can get done.
Yeah, that's actually very often.
My wife woke up one day to 300 emails in her inbox
complaining about a development that had been approved
in the city and saying, you need to block this,
and some very angry people that were friends of ours
who were sending her nasty letters.
She had to get her staff involved
and send out to every single person,
we're sorry you feel this way,
you should probably address it to the city council
because it's not in the county.
And oftentimes, again, it's easy to get angry,
it's easy to get wound up,
but maturity comes from spending time in something
and truly understanding it.
And one of the things that I've,
I still learn a lot and I like to,
I hope I keep on learning my whole life.
I've learned to ask questions to people and say,
why is this the case?
And oftentimes, you'll discover that it's not as simple
as we thought at first.
I mean, when you first got elected,
you probably thought life was very simple.
Right.
Until someone.
And then you suddenly realize,
wait, this is a whole lot more complicated.
Oh my gosh, you and I were talking about Schwarzenegger
when he became governor and he said,
there is no university anywhere
that teaches you this with problems every day.
Right.
I mean, it's crazy.
Yes, and so, as people engage in the system
or you're trying to understand is my elected official
or is this candidate gonna do a good job?
Right.
That's something to ask.
And it's also important to understand as people mature,
usually that's a good thing.
My son who's eight makes better decisions now
than he did a couple of years ago,
and he's still eight, so he makes bad decisions.
I point out to people who have this vitriol and say,
this person's not identical to me,
therefore, I judge them and I'm 100% opposed to them.
I say, I don't agree with every position
I held five years ago.
And five years from now, I won't agree exactly
with every position I hold today.
That's maturity.
So if I don't even agree with myself over time,
why should I hold somebody else to the standard
of having to agree with me 100% of the time
when I can't even get my own act together?
Well, you know what's so scary at the Capitol this year
is to see people who really, literally from the House floor
when I'm elected, I'm representing 70 to 100,000 people
in El Paso County, right?
And I have, when I served, highly educated.
US Air Force Academy area, everybody retired military.
So you better have an answer for why you voted,
the way you voted, because they're gonna come
and call you or email or-
Which is good.
Which is good. That's okay.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Exactly, exactly.
And, you know, to me, I was thinking,
you and I lived through some of the worst vitriol,
particularly when you were party chair.
I mean, really, that's when things
also began to really turn.
You and I know, I mean,
we had the health benefit exchange, right?
I didn't pass it.
I didn't vote.
Michael Bennett voted on that.
And from the feds, it came to our state.
Now, you either understand state-wide,
it would be like abortion.
If they said, hey, we passed it.
It's coming to your state.
So you gotta decide what you're gonna do.
Federal or state?
Yep.
Who's gonna have the answer?
You had to make a decision based on your authority.
Right.
And on what you could control.
Exactly, and-
And you-
No handbook.
Because obviously, you and I were
in massive amounts of communication at the time.
This became a big blow up around the state.
And I remember very clearly,
your logic was the decision, I believe,
that is being presented is,
do we let the federal government
or do we have local control of our health care system?
Right.
And I think if most conservatives
were presented that question,
they would say, oh, I think the local-
Sure.
Controls the better option.
Just like with guns.
Right.
And if you're not given option C,
which is neither of the above-
of which you weren't given, then you have to do it, but they wanted that.
Right.
Unreal.
And again, it looks so simple because you have people that don't think through some
of these things.
In other words, it's in a two second sound bite, right?
Two seconds.
That's the answer, right?
And it's kind of like saying, I'm going to go back to the floor, House floor this year
where I'm elected to represent, but if I disagree with you, you're a hater.
You're a hater.
And I've watched those in control of the Democrat Party go, no, I'm sorry, you disagree.
In fact, people were even told the kind of verbiage they should be using.
Someone got gaveled because he said the word—he was arguing and said the word Planned Parenthood,
and they're like—they were gaveled, and he said, wait, what?
They're a business.
They're here.
Another guy gaveled because he dared to talk about a resolution because his three daughters
were back to the sports issue, and he said, I'm not comfortable with what's going on.
He's gaveled.
Right.
He's saying, wait, what?
And so the question becomes then, does my representative actually get free speech as
we're supposed to debate these issues on the House floor?
I see that coming.
I see that as a very big issue.
You and I disagree.
You're just a hater.
Yep.
We can't—and again, we're back to how do we get to yes?
How do we get to yes?
Or how do we get to no?
And at a practical level, you don't get to—you don't get your policies passed unless you
get a majority.
Right.
You have to have the votes there.
You know, it's something that I think a lot of people who even are engaged in the system
don't understand the true civics and understand how do these things actually work.
Right.
And in a speech I was giving the other night, I said, we've got to get back to understanding
this stuff because if we don't, we're just going to keep losing.
So I remember I was a much more—I was much more—I don't want to say rigid.
I was probably a lot more arrogant about my beliefs when I was younger.
And it was 2008.
I just finished in the Olympics.
And Senator John Kyle was in town.
And Cammie and I were asked to be sort of his—and we had the president of the NRA
was here.
And so Cammie was sort of her body person, and I was Senator Kyle's body person.
Great experience.
We drove down to Pueblo for an event that was poorly organized, so we wound up leaving
and coming back to Colorado Springs.
And I set up—I called up some friends over at Focus on the Family.
We set up a meeting with Senator Kyle and Jim Dobson to talk about the election.
So we were able to salvage the day.
But we're driving up, and he gets a call from Susan Collins.
And he says, Susan, you know, it's okay.
Vote against me on this.
And then he hangs up the phone.
And I looked at him, and I said, Sir, what did you just do?
And he said, I'm the whip.
It's my job to make sure we have enough votes to pass the legislation.
Whether it passes with 51 votes or 61 votes makes zero difference to me.
But whether or not she gets reelected makes all the difference, because if she gets replaced
by a Democrat, which is what would happen in that state, I will never get her vote.
And people don't get that, do they?
It was—I call it my road to Emmaus.
The scales fell off my eyes, and I suddenly understood—before that, I was like, yeah,
I'm going to go get those rhinos, and I would have been—I'd have been Paul.
I'd have been the rhino hunter.
You know, if we're doing biblical analogies, I'd have been the Paul, like, none of you
are pure enough.
Right, right.
And then, you know, hearing from this elder statesman how it actually worked, and I said,
I get it.
We have to be smart.
We can't just stick our head in the sand, or scream in the wind, or whatever analogy
you want to use.
Right, right.
And, you know, I hope that we can be wise as conservatives and Christians engage on
the system and say, let's be effective.
My minority leader said, vote your district or someone will vote it for you.
Yes.
That's very true.
And it's very—no truer words, you know, have been said.
As a majority leader, we had to look at our—you know, we only got the majority by one seat,
right?
I thought it was them.
We had to, you know, say, no, it was not you.
It was this guy, right, by 350-something votes, right?
So you're hurting caps, but you always have to think, okay, she is in a re-election position.
She just barely won her seat.
She cannot take the hit on this vote, or we need to—you know, very often she would say,
I'm going to vote this way.
I feel this way.
We're like, you do it.
And Amy, to put an exclamation point on that, the way—you will never even bring a bill
to the floor unless you have the power of the gavel.
Right.
Exactly.
So let's be really clear.
The second you lose that majority, you can't block legislation coming to the floor, nor
can you force it to come to the floor.
And so, if I'm scoring—you know, I came out of school.
or it's in business in the military.
So I tend to be objective in my analysis.
You know, in my business ventures,
you're either successful or you're not.
They don't give you an E for effort.
You know, the Olympics, they didn't say like,
oh, we'll just put you in the Olympics
because you gave it the whole college try.
You know, you did a lot of practices.
I had to go win Pan Am games, okay?
They made me perform on the field with blood.
No one cares.
So in politics, the same is true.
If you lose the majority,
you can't push any of your agenda forward.
And so this is where-
Some don't care.
Exactly.
Because they care more to tell people, I fought.
Well, because they make money.
Yeah, they make money.
It's back to that.
They make money when we lose.
So it's really important to understand that,
that sometimes it's more like watching a game of football.
Yes.
Because, you know, and I use that analogy all the time.
If you're on defense,
there's times when you're gonna be on offense
and there's times when you're on defense.
When you're on defense, don't try to score touchdowns
because the other team's gonna score on you.
Play defense well.
Try to get the ball back.
Try to prevent your opponent from going there.
When you're on offense, don't throw Hail Marys every time.
Move the ball down the field.
Sometimes you're not gonna get it across the finish line,
but you're gonna get it closer
and you'll play the field position game.
Yes.
And you know who's done that magnificently
are the Democrats in this state.
Yes.
Yes, they have.
The Democrats did not run a bunch of radical leftists
to take over our state.
No.
So, and Amy, one of the things
that I've been thinking a lot about,
you know, because people, again, they sort of think,
okay, one really loud, obnoxious person
who speaks the truth that I believe
is worth three who are not as loud and obnoxious.
Well, that's not true.
They're actually worth exactly the same votes.
I believe that the level of change in the government,
whether it's conservative or liberal,
is not based on how vitriolic the people
in the majority are.
It's based on the size of the majority.
Yes.
Okay, because if you have a one-vote majority,
you can get very little done.
Yes.
And you will accomplish the center of your party, okay?
Right.
So that's very different
than if you have a larger majority.
Right.
And what the Democrats did in Colorado very skillfully
is they elected a lot of people
that were squishes, according to them.
But once they had a large majority,
they could lose two, three, five, seven votes.
Right.
And they were really governed
by the left-hand side of their party.
Yes, and they are today, I mean, very radical.
And so I think it's important for people to understand
that if you wanna see your values achieved,
it's not achieved by having louder, more obnoxious,
more vitriolic people.
It's by having more people who generally agree
with you holding those seats.
Yes, yes, no, I agree.
Listen, I wanna thank you for being here today.
These discussions are ongoing.
I may be calling you back, but they are.
And, you know, really seriously within our church,
these issues are happening.
And I think the whole be wise is very, very apropos
for right now, as well as the get to yes.
I think as I'm going through this book,
I go, oh my goodness, how do we, it's not personality.
Is it issue?
Is it principles?
Let's please get there.
And I think as Christians,
we need to have people use discernment.
Yes.
Okay, it's okay to ask questions.
Right.
And, you know, when we're vetting candidates,
it's okay to ask them beyond what's your view
of the constitution.
It's okay to say, you know,
I need to know what's in your past,
because, you know, we have set up a system
where a lot of times people say,
you can't ask those questions,
but it's up to us as Christians to be wise
and ask those questions.
I wouldn't hire an accountant
who has a history of embezzlement.
Be wise, be discerning.
Yes.
Take your Christian values into the political system
and use the lessons Jesus taught us.
You know, just because someone says they're a Christian,
it's okay to ask the question.
Are they a Pharisee?
Are they benefiting from this?
I don't think most Pharisees know.
I don't think most Pharisees, yeah.
They didn't get the memo.
We saw that back in Jesus' day.
Yeah, sure.
And people haven't changed much in 2,000 years.
No, true, true, very true.
It was the self-professed, you know,
spiritual people that executed Jesus.
Right, and as Steve will say,
he's toward the kingdom of God, you know, revolution.
He wants to see this kind of stuff, operating discernment.
And that's where we will make the most progress
is when we're wise and discerning.
Yes.
And we say, you know, the lessons we learned from the Bible,
you know, about the fruits of the spirit.
You know, I look at that in politics and I say,
how many times do I see someone
who is purporting to be following God?
And I say, I don't see any of the fruits of the spirit.
You know, call me crazy, but my Christian faith,
you know, advises me on this.
I'm still working on my fruits.
I got a lot of them to overcome.
We all are, but to that point again,
I think Christians need to be wise, discerning.
We need to pray about it.
You need to, you know, to test, you know,
Jesus said, test the spirits.
Sure.
And when someone comes in and tries to wave, you know,
these are my values in front of you.
you great, but test it and be wise. I like it. Thank you. Boy, always great
talking to you. Thank you, Eli Bremmer for being with us. Thanks, Amy. Thank
you.