ATR_Podcast_blog

Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has crushed hundreds of thousands of small businesses and caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs. Politicians and public health officials across the country only exacerbated the problem with their myriad of restrictive and overreaching lockdown policies. The next few years will be crucial to America’s economic recovery.  

To discuss what lessons conservatives should learn from COVID-19 and the failure of government polices meant to address the pandemic, ATR President Grover Norquist invited Phil Kerpen onto last week’s episode of Leave Us Alone

On long-term emergencies and extended Governor power, Kerpen clarifies:  

“When something is an emergency for this month and then the next month and then the next month and you get into years, you’ve lost your whole system of government if you have one man rule by dictate by the governor. Rather than things going through the legislative channels and your elected officials having an opportunity to vote on them. We cannot tolerate essentially open-ended rule by dictate by governors.”  

On state government mandated shutdowns, Kerpen explains: 

“The best predictor of whether you have any type of restriction over the past year was the party of the Governor more so than the level of COVID or anything else.  Democrats showed they were extremely restrictionist and they were for every lockdown measure and mask mandate you could imagine.” 

On the true effectiveness of lockdowns, Kerpen emphasized:  

“The kind of lockdown that might actually work, I don’t think is actually possible to be implemented. The kind that we had accomplished nothing except imposing massive economic suffering.” 

Listen to the full episode below: 

 

Leave Us Alone with Grover Norquist is a weekly video and audio podcast found on all major podcast streaming services: