Tonight, Buck welcomed the irascible Kevin Williamson, a roving correspondent for National Review, to the show to discuss the hype around the Georgia special election and the wider political temperature. 

Williamson offered an unsparing view of the fallen state of the Democratic Party.

“If you took away direct election of senators, we’d have something like 70 Republican Senators right now,” said Williamson. “Obama was a charismatic figure, but under him, they kind of let everything burn to the ground.”

In an altogether refreshing reminder that the Left’s bark is significantly worse than its bite, Williamson gave his opinion why.

“They said to themselves, ‘We’ve got the White House, the media, and the courts,’ and that’s all we’ll need. But truthfully the situation is pretty dire for them. Suddenly, they’re all interested in gerrymandering…which is funny because for 50-60 years, gerrymandering was their main business.”

“I think they’re starting to figure out that Obama was bad for them,” Williamson said of the Left. “He was good for himself, he was good at making himself look like a beloved intellectual. But in terms of building an organization, they’re gutted out. They’ve gotta be a little bit nervous.”

Buck asked if it could really be the case that Bernie Sanders is the best the Left can do.

“They’ve been down this road before, in the 60s and 70s,” said Williamson, “and it took Bill Clinton to remind them that they need to be socially liberal but pro-free market.”

The discussion then turned to health care and Williamson’s view of how favorably the countryside views single-payer healthcare.

“I think people support single-payer without really knowing what it actually is,” said Williamson. “By and large they claim to support the healthcare systems in Western Europe. Well, the number of countries that actually have single-payer in Western Europe, or anywhere, is pretty small. Most of Western Europe has private insurance with generous subsidies, which is more or less Obamacare.”

Echoing something Buck has been insisting on for some time, Williamson said, “My sense of it is that most people don’t want monopolized health care. They want more generous subsidies.”

Finally, Buck sought Kevin’s explanation for how the Republicans fumbled so poorly on the repeal and replace effort.

“Republicans are absolute fools,” Williamson began. “People had legitimate concerns about health insurance, they wondered if they went to the hospital whether they’d be covered. There was no transparency in prices, and very little understanding. All Republicans kept saying was ‘We’ve got the best healthcare in the world,’ and they ignored those concerns. Now here we are eight years later, they showed up and said, hey, here’s a bill that nobody likes. And boom, it falls flat.”