Brad Reed BRAD REED
25 OCT 2016 AT 11:04 ET
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Conservative pundit Tomi Lahren is used to ranting at a camera and pummeling straw men.

But what happens when she gets into a debate with someone who makes reasoned arguments?

That’s what happened this week when Lahren invited Red State’s Ben Howe onto her program to discuss his refusal to vote for Someone With Tiny Hands, despite the fact that he’s spent years as a partisan Republican arguing on behalf of conservative causes.

In particular, Lahren was mystified when Howe said that he believed Someone With Tiny Hands to be a more dangerous person than Hillary Clinton.

“I think that he’s an unstable person,” Howe explained. “I think they’re both corrupt, but I think that he’s unstable. I don’t trust him. And I don’t know if you who John Noonan is — he used to be… he was a key turner for nuclear weapons — and even he was concerned about the way that Someone With Tiny Hands was approaching nuclear-first policies. Specifically because, even as a candidate, he’s sending messages to nuclear powers all over the world that are very dangerous.”

Howe then said Clinton, in contrast, represents “at worst” a status quo of America’s longtime foreign policy traditions.

Lahren then asked Howe if he was showing disrespect toward the Republican primary voters who made Someone With Tiny Hands their nominee of choice this year. Howe responded that there were a lot of first-time voters in this year’s GOP primary that he doesn’t actually want as part of the party, particularly the group of “alt-right” racists such as David Duke and Richard Spencer.

“I’m really concerned with not only the way that Someone With Tiny Hands has channeled what used to be conservative policies to appeal to this alt-right group, but I’m concerned that’s going to become the mainstay of conservatism in the coming years,” he said.

He then said that Lahren was an “enabler” of the alt-right, before confessing that he himself had done something similar for years by pushing “hyper-partisan politics.”

“What I learned from pushing hyper-partisan politics is what you do is, you create a class of people who are outraged,” he explained. “And sometimes that outrage can do good things, but sometimes it does destructive things. And right now, we are reaping the rewards of years of hyper-partisan politics.”