Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / ShapeTheFuture.com ... Go Check It Out, Take The Survey

Transcript

ShapeTheFuture.com ... Go Check It Out, Take The Survey · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Good morning, ruminators. Welcome Wednesday, September third, on the Morning
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Show with Preston scottis Ose. I am Preston. Great to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: be with you, Show five four hundred and forty four
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and we are joined this hour by Genevieve Wood. She's
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: with a heritage foundation. She serves as a counselor spokesperson.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: She was a founding team member of The Daily Signal.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We have used pieces from the Daily Signal over the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: years and she joins us this morning to talk about
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Shape the Future. It's a billboard campaign. Genevieve tell us
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: about the genesis of this idea, this campaign.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Well, good morning, Prestin, thank you very much for having
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: us on and talking about the campaign. Yet, we are
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: running this in about eight different states, a lot in
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: the Midwest and also in Florida. And the goal is,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: too is really twofold. One is we believe that America
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: is on the cusp of a golden age. And if
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: you look at the billboards, they're related to Campaig. They're
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: all positive messaging things like America needs more of this,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and it has pictures of family or America pass it
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: on and really patriotic feelings about it. But there's also
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: the Shape the Future dot com website that mentioned on
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: the billboards, and we want people to go there and
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: take a survey and tell us one are they optimistic too,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: what issues matter most to them? And three what we
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: need to do to make sure the next two hundred
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: and fifty years of this country are even better than
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: the past two hundred and fifty years. And you know
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: the Heritage Foundation, the Daily Signal. We're based in DC,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the Imperial City, by the way, much cleaner and safer
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: than it used to be to come visit. But you know,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: we want to represent Americans across the country and so
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: we don't believe that we have all the answers just
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: sitting in Washington. We want to hear from the American
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: people and that's what we're trying to achieve with this campaign.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You said something that might give me a clue to
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the answer. But the why now is Is it because
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: we're at that two fifty mark and we're going to
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: be celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary in a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: little less than a year.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: That's certainly part of it, But it's also because we
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: are at a particular point in our history where we still,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: even though we have a lot of challenges, we haven't
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: gone over the cliff. We have the opportunity to make
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: you know, you saw it with securing the border when
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: President Trump came in to office in January. It took
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: about what two months to get the border really under control.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: After we've been told there's really nothing we can do.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Don't believe what you're actually seeing. It just been enforcing
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: certain laws. What it shows is if you have the
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: right policies, the right things can happen. So we're at
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: a point where we have a president, we have a
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: slim majority in Congress of conservatives who are willing to
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: do the right things, first and foremost, secure the border,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: but also also first and foremost putting families first and
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: looking at policies are best for the American family. So
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: you have to take the we have sees the opportunities
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: if you will, that you have, and we believe right
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: now we have the opportunities to get the right policies
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: in place to keep America going the right direction.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Genevieve, I don't know if if you were told anything
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: about our relationship here on this radio program with the Heritage,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: but we have had a very long relationship with the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Heritage Foundation. I'm a former vocational pastor, so I approach
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: this through the lens and through the perspective of my
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: faith in Christ, and I have a little bit of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a different view than what a lot of these billboards
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: are sharing. And so I'm just I'm curious, what is
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: once you gather and aggregate the information that you hope
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to get from people taking the survey, visiting the website
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: shapethefuture dot com, what is the hope? Is the hope
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: to get to kind of create some more policy positions
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: on different issues. What are you hoping to gain out
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: of this?
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Well, what we hope to gain is, like I said,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: two things. One is passing on a positive message to
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: give people encouragement, but two to gain from the public.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: What are the issues that keep you up at night?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Are the ones that get you up in the morning?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: I think people can be hopeful for the future but
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: also concerned about things at the same at the same time,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: and helping us get a sense of where people are. Okay,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: you have to you have to start there, right And
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: so it's not we're not going to change our principles
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: or change policies per se, but Knowing which ones are
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: on top of mind for folks helps us do a
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: better job of communicating not just with them, but the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: people who pass the laws that affect all of us.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Shapethefuture dot com. The idea is to plant some positive
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: seeds by way of Billboard. America's best days are ahead
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of us. Don't bet against the US. Abundance is more
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: than material in God, we still trust Don's early life
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: is ever faithful. The list goes on and on. Genevieve,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: why the states that were chosen? I mean, Florida has
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: had a massive swing from being sort of kind of
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: purple ish to now solid. You would you could argue
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the single most conservative state in the Union. And then
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: states in the Midwest, Why not California, New York, and Illinois.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Well, there are some, as you probably know, in twenty
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: twenty six coming up, there's gonna be some interesting political
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: races happening midterm elections, and some really key Senate races
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: will be happening, particularly in the Midwest, places like Michigan, Pennsylvania,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: for example, Ohio, and so knowing what folks in those
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: places think can help us talk to them. We're not
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: a political organization, but we can do a better job
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: of saying, here are the policies that are that shape
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: your life and shape your children's future. Think about those
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: when you go into the election, when you go into
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the voting boost. So that's one of the reasons for
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: those key places. But also places like Florida very rich
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: demographically in terms of all kinds of different you know,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: folks who live there, different backgrounds, a younger state by
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and large, and so having that kind of demography is
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: really helpful when you're pulling it in results like this.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And I was gonna mention Press. I mean when you
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: go to the survey, and again you don't have to
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: see a billboard to go to the survey. It's called
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Shapethefuture dot com. You know. For example, some of the
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: questions that we ask are we asked, how would you
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: describe yourself politically? We ask them to approve or disapprove
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: of President Trump's performance, But then we say, you know,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: are you hopeful for America's future? We ask can America
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: survive without a religious revival? So we're trying to get
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: into some pretty deep questions to get a real sense
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: of what people think not only the problems are, but
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: what the answers are I'm curious.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: The question on President Trump to me is a conundrum.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: If the question is simply do you approve or disapprove?
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I can answer that because there's
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: so many things I approve of. But there are a
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: lot of things. For example, the decision to as just
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: one example, the decision to not tackle the debt, the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: decision to engage in ownership of private companies with US
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: taxpayer dollars. Those are very troubling. How does a guy
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: like me answer a question like.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: That, well, and you can it's not disapproved or disapprove it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Do you strongly approve, do you approve? Do you have
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: no real opinion? You disapproved, you strongly disapprove. Sure you've
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: got some variation there, But we also have some open
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: ended questions. Okay, we can say, and you know, in
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: your mind, what's the biggest obstacle to America having you
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: going into a real golden age, And you could write
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: in that the debts are real problem. That's a huge obstacle,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: and you'd be absolutely right. So there's an opportunity not
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: just to click boxes, but to give true your feedback.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: On top of the questions that we actually asked, all right, pull.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Us behind the curtain. You guys have done this surveying.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: How long is the surveying going to last?
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Well, the campaign is going to be up for eight
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: weeks and we're only in the beginning of week two,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: so we don't have a lot of data coming in
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: just yet. But the campaign stuff will be it for
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: eight weeks, and then at that point we'll have a
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: sense of how much, you know, what we were able
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: to pull in, whether we need to extend, do we
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: need to go to other places?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: So, once you get this data, how does it get
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: pulled together analyzed? And then what happens as a result
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Well, and first happening you will come in, we'll be
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: able to, like I said, we ask a lot of
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: questions like what is you know, your backgrounds? We have
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: a sense of like what did more women think about this?
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: What did more men think about this? What do different
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: age groups give us when it comes to these answers.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Then taking a look at that and matching up with
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: the policies that we were working on internally at Heritage
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: with what the people have told us they say these
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: are the most important ones to us, and then sorting
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: through state by state, how do we talk about these
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: more effectively in these individual states. But it just really
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: helps inform our work and like I said, the way
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: we talk to those who are elected officials and make
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the laws we all live by.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So hopefully you plan to have a paper, a kind
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: of set of suggestions. What do you hope to have
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: put together by when.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Well, the goal in some cases would be we can
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: start using this immediately really going into into the next year,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: we're the midterms, where there's going to be more, hopefully
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: a renewal of talk about policies that affect the family,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: that affect our communities that are not just Washington based,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: but in our communities based. And we can say to
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: elected officials we meet with, you know, here's the survey
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: that we did in this particular state among this particular group,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: and here's what people are telling us, and it's something
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: that you ought to listen to. And again, depending on
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: the material that comes in, we may decide to extend
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: a campaign, take it to other places, but ultimately is
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: to take the feedback and make sure that people who
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: are making the decisions know about it. I don't think
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: we'll be doing like a white background paper on it.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: But we can use that information as our analysts right
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: about family policy, about tax policy, right about immigration and
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: border policy. They can take some of the questions that
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: people come send in and say, you know what, we
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: need to answer this in our papers, or maybe the
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: daily signal says, you know what, we need to write
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: more op as and pieces that address the questions that
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: people are telling us are most important to them.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Last question, Jennevie even thanks so much for giving me
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: just another minute or two extra. I'm curious. I know
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that generally speaking, Republicans, people on the right side of
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: the aisle, moderates, conservatives are listening, are at least open
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: to seeing what Heritage Foundation pushes out. Are Democrats? Are
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: people on the left side of the aisle even remotely
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: interested in what you have to say as a group?
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You know, they used to be a little bit more
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: so when you had more Democrats who were not just
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: so far left as they are as they are today.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: But what's interesting is that you know, that's not the
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: way most Americans classify themselves, right, Most Americans don't classify
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: themselves as I'm far right, part left, or even really
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: in these kind of political labels, and so what we're
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: trying to do is, you know, you can go to
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: anybody can go to the Heritage website, but we also
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: put information out there that doesn't have our name on it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: It's one reason we created the Daily Signal is because
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: we wanted people just to be able to read the
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: news or read a perspective and not have it to
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: stamp for something that might get go say, oh, I
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: shouldn't read this. So we do both because we do
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: believe our ideas are for everybody. They're not just for
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: a certain kind of person. They're for everybody. And we
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: want people to have the opportunity to make the decisions
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: that are best for them. And thankfully the American people
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: are more open than some of their elected officials are.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you making time for us this morning, and
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I'm going to push this out. I'm going to push
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: this out for the next few weeks and see if
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: we can get some responses for you.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Terrific.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you. Genevieve would with us from the
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Heritage Foundation. The website Shapethefuture dot com. Go for it,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: fill out the survey shape the Future dot com. You
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: heard er They want to hear from you, Let em
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: hear from you. Nineteen past the hour