The Olasky Interview preview: Kay Coles James

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: A preview of this week’s episode of The Olasky Interview podcast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Yeah, and before we do that, I was so thrilled this week to see that The Olasky Interview —as a stand-alone podcast— is already trending on iTunes’ ranking of the top 200 News and Politics podcasts.

That is amazing, considering there are about half a million, probably more now, half a million podcasts in that store. And to accomplish that, right out of the gate, for a new podcast is pretty remarkable.

EICHER: Haha, and we stumbled out of the gate, because there were some issues getting Apple’s approval. But our team got it all worked out and it went live just last Saturday.

The amazing thing about debuting in the Top 200 is the competition. We’re among The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, BBC, all these legacy publishers and broadcasters with enormous resources, and it’s great to be going toe-to-toe with those news organizations. We’re really grateful to the Lord for allowing us to have this influence. 

I put out a Tweet, though, saying I was feeling a little jealous. The World and Everything in It took years to crack that Top 200, and to see The Olasky Interview just 20 notches below us was a little startling.

REICHARD: Startling and wonderful all at the same time. So thank you for supporting us, and if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to check out The Olasky Interview. Available now on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you leave a review, you’ll help others to find the program too.

EICHER: Alright, on to the preview of today’s episode. This time WORLD Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky talks with Kay Coles James. She’s president of The Heritage Foundation in Washington.

MARVIN OLASKY: Now, you and I met back in 1995 when you were leading the Virginia campaign towards different kinds of choice, including welfare choice and so forth. That was when compassionate conservatism started to be talked about seriously, and then all seemed to fizzle during the Bush administration. There were some improvements made, but not a whole lot, and now compassionate conservatism sometimes is even a dirty word amongst some Republicans. What happened? What went wrong? What can we learn from the experience of what went right and what went wrong during those years?

KAY COLES JAMES: Well, let’s start with I never liked the term compassionate conservatism.

OLASKY: Because?

JAMES: Because conservatism is compassionate, and I don’t think that, and I make a point of saying, I think we should just stick with conservative because we have got to convince people that being conservative by definition means you are compassionate.

I think that we have the opportunity to win every Bernie Sanders voter because I defy them to say they care more about poor people than I do as a conservative. I defy them to say that they care more about quality education than I do as a conservative. I defy them to say that they care more about access to healthcare than I do as a conservative. So I don’t want to add the descriptor compassionate to conservatism because I think conservatism by definition is compassionate.

OLASKY: Except that the people who didn’t want you to go to public school called themselves conservatives, right? They were there, and…

JAMES: I am liberating the term. I am setting it free.

(Photo/Flickr, Gage Skidmore) Kay Coles James, president of The Heritage Foundation, addresses the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference.

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