Politics, Demographics and 2018
written by Michael Giere April 20, 2018
After more years than I care to admit, I find myself more disappointed with my political party than ever. And that's saying something.
By way of perspective, I've had the privilege of working in two national campaigns, running for Congress in West Texas, serving in two Republican Administrations, being elected to party leadership in Virginia, and working and writing for more campaigns than I can recall. So, I've had enough time to draw some broad conclusions.
The party has always been afraid of its own shadow, even in victory. But in the last twenty years it seems downright eager to capitulate to the cultural radicals and join the big spenders without even an argument, much less a fight.
It has always had a self-anointed class of donors and influence peddlers who are more concerned with what the Washington Post and the New York Times think of them, than how history would judge them. Plus a herd of non-elected functionaries who walk close to the yellow line in the middle of the road, so that they can cash flow regardless of which direction traffic is moving.
And the party has always had its intellectual gadflies who see their own principles much the same as Lt. Colonel Nicholson saw that bridge on the River Kwai – a purpose outside of critical examination.
But, at least from my vantage point, worse than all of this is that the party has never had such a dearth of leadership, political savvy, judgment, and raison d'être as in recent years generally, and the last two more specifically.
The election of 2016 brought many of the party's weaknesses to the surface, making them obvious to any fair observer. Many blame it, of course, on Donald J. Trump.
But Mr. Trump's surprise victory was a consequence of long-standing Republican dysfunction, not its cause.
For much of this century Republicans have held the House or the Senate, or both, and the White House for the first eight years. Yet, the size, scope, intrusion and cost of government has exploded, and one is hard pressed to differentiate between the fiscal and social policies of the two parties.
Last month, as though to put an exclamation point on this reality, a 2,200 page, $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that was written in secret by a handful of staff and members, passed without inspection. (Evidently we will never have regular order again in Congressional budgeting).
This obese budget sets a new baseline for future budgets by ballooning spending in discretionary spending by 13%, and includes $21 billion dollars in infrastructure spending with no setoffs as was originally proposed. It is crammed tighter than a bratwurst with all sorts of really nasty things: from funding for various immigration activities, including illegal aliens – but not the wall, protecting Obamacare funding, a cool half billion dollars so that Planned Parenthood can continue destroying babies, and even retains National Public Radio – or National Panhandler Radio as commentator Chris Plante has dubbed them.
A mouse-trapped President Trump seemed flustered and rather dejected in signing the boondoggle that couldn't have been more chock full of liberal big spending eye candy if the Democrats actually did control the Congress.
The President vowed "never again" would this happen. We'll see in not too many months as this train wreck runs its course.
But, the damage is done, and the Republican leadership seem tickled pink – as though nothing extraordinary just happened. What they are missing is both obvious and sad.
Even at the White House itself, there seems to be shockingly little political acuity at all on the President's own staff. Mr. Trump appears to be virtually alone, the only person there who has the faintest idea of what is going on in the country, and why he won the presidency in the first place.
The party leaders and movers and shakers seem largely clueless, still, over why sixteen other candidates were passed over for Donald J. Trump, and why he was elected in spite of the every obstacle thrown in his path.
The politics of 2016 – what was on the mind of average, working class Americans – had been very obvious since 2010 and 2014, yet out of seventeen candidates running for the Republican nomination (including my own candidate), only Donald J. Trump dared address the issues head on: working, middle class Americans were fed up with wide open uncontrolled legal and illegal immigration that was clearly depressing wages, opportunity, causing a huge expansion of government services while fraying the culture; they were alarmed that the economy and prosperity was being strangled by rapidly climbing taxes and punishing federal mandates like Obamacare; and working class Americans were disheartened and disillusioned with massive international agreements that seemed to continually transfer jobs, wealth and even American independence to other countries who in return maintained hidden taxes and obstacles for U.S. goods, and in the case of China, openly stole intellectual property and demanded trade secrets as a price of entry into their market.
Voters heard Donald Trump like they had heard Ronald Reagan three decades earlier. President Reagan often said that if you really cared about and listened to people, then the politics was easy to figure out.
Yet, if you talk to party leaders across the states and listen to the "politicians" on the Hill, you have to conclude that they really don't get retail politics. They're captured by soundbite politics, pretending that they are conservatives while voting like liberals, because they have very little regard for their own constituents. What comes naturally to the Democrats is a chore for Republicans.
Now the new mantra you hear from too many Republicans is that massive, ever expanding government and reduced liberties are driving policy and demanded by the changing demographics in the country. The party must change.
Hogwash, demographics ain't politics. The purest form of racism is when we believe – which we as a party too often infer – that African-Americans, Asians or Hispanic's don't want to be a free people. That they don't want to be prosperous people. That they don't want to raise their families in a faithful and safe civil order. Do Asian, Hispanic or African immigrants want the same form of corrupt governments that they immigrated from or fled?
The real problem for our party is we so rarely listen and talk to these same "groups" – I even hate talking about other citizens on the basis of ethnicity – employing these ideas. We don't invest in any meaningful discussion with them except with contrived "identity" based events.
The party has no national agenda and makes no effort that seeks to educate, explain, and appeal to Americans based on what America is, and isn't. We have a foundation of guaranteed rights unknown in human history, and we treat it as a throw-away line in speeches. We have the most prosperous population the world has ever produced and the economy with the most equally distributed wealth – because of human freedom, not in spite of it. All too often, we collaborate on fixating on our faults, and instead of attacking Democrats when they play identity politics – which is pretty much always – Republicans remain absent from the field of battle. We rarely respond to the radical left, fearing a fist fight, even when it is obvious that the American people agree with us.
If a "blue wave" election is coming towards Republicans this autumn, it is their own fault. But there is still time to regroup, and put a national agenda before the public that endorses, not runs from, the ideas and issues facing middle income, working class Americans – ideas that formed the basis of the 2016 victory. And it will take President Trump, going back to the people and asking a simple question; do you want an America that works for everyone, or just an America that works for the few?
Politics, Demographics and 2018 was last modified: April 21st, 2018 by Michael Giere
Michael Giere
Michael Giere writes award-winning commentary and essays on the intersection of politics, culture, and faith. He is a critically acclaimed novelist (The White River Series) and short-story writer. A former candidate for the US House of Representatives from Texas, he was a senior executive in both the Reagan and the Bush (41) Administrations, and in 2016 served on the Trump Transition Team.
Former NYer April 22, 2018 at 1:28 pm
There's the Deep State (Democrats) and there's the Swamp (GOP Establishment). They trade positions of leadership every few years and the country goes to heck in the meantime. Which is worse? I'd have to say the Deep State because they simply don't care about the good of the country. But, the Swamp enables the Deep State through its utter cowardice. Damn the citizens, full speed ahead.
daverkb April 22, 2018 at 1:17 pm
By the comments here, there's no much hope for a better future, that is until there is first a revolution in information which totally demolishes the presuppositions about the validity of the two Party system as it had been constituted and has operated over the many past decades. If there is to be a 'better world' for Americans, it will have to come by way of the displacement of the controlling elite. But again, this can only come through information which exposes just about everything in America as having been One Giant Piece of Fraud perpetrated deliberately upon an unsuspecting and nearly clueless American people.
I am tired of people supporting political parties. What for? Has either party ever supported the health and interest of the American people and their families … in any substantive way? And if they have, how is it possible that we have gotten to the place of implosion, as a distinct people, as a political form?
Congratulations to Mr. Giere for another cogent piece of writing! Little efforts become greater over time. Keep on writing down your thoughts.
Stonewall Jackson April 21, 2018 at 7:50 am
The argument that we have to cater to illegal immigrants and legalize them cause they are the big demographic wave that is marching across the border and will swamp the GOP is akin to the Polish joke…
Stan and Chas decide to start a fruit stand in the city. So they get a truck, go out to the country, buy watermelons for 1 dollar. They take the fruit back to the city and sell it for one dollar. This goes on for months. One day, Stan says to Chas… I don't think we're making any money. Chas says to Stan… I told you we should have bought a bigger truck.
For the GOP… After the latest amnesty… Zippo Bush says to Chico Bush… you know I don't think we're winning elections… Chico Bush replies… I told you we should have had a bigger amnesty..
Chad Davis April 21, 2018 at 6:45 am
Even if (and I say if because it's not a guarantee) the Democrats win back both houses in November, it's nothing new. President Obama lost something like 60+ house seats in 2010. Nobody played the end of Democratic Party narrative nonsense that the media does with Republicans.
Har Steb April 26, 2018 at 3:08 am
A lot of us just hope for the end of the GOP. Sadly, it won't happen.
Ken Reid April 20, 2018 at 5:07 pm
It's just not easy to get a majority in any Legislative body to cut spending. Mr Giere needs to read my Tbe column on this. I do not disagree with his missive but reality bites
Steven Brodie Tucker April 20, 2018 at 4:23 pm
You're placing your hope in a hopeless Messenger.
Are you referring to McConnell, Ryan, the Bushes, all of the people at Bearing Drift the political consultants who have seen Virginia turn blue, in short the Establishment GOP?
Steven Brodie Tucker April 21, 2018 at 7:55 am
Stonewall Jackson April 21, 2018 at 10:50 am
Well then Tucker.. you tell me what the Establishment GOP has done for us?
Trillion dollar spending bills indistinguishable from Nancy P's?
Endless wars costing trillions of dollars and more?
Open Borders
A security state that is incredible–Obama was able to use that on Trump by the way
They give you Bull$__ and nothing else.
Steven Brodie Tucker April 21, 2018 at 10:52 am
The GOPe's track record is horrible. You won't find me defending it.
Stonewall Jackson April 21, 2018 at 12:08 pm
I can't see the difference between Washington's Swamp party, except maybe the Democrat side of that party is better at it than the GOPe. Or maybe not… the GOPe gets you to vote for it and deliver less than the Dem Inc side does.
Gee Whillikers… we're gonna reduce that darn deficit one of these days… I think Lil Paulie Ryan had a plan to address it by 2035 at one point…
Robert Kenyon April 21, 2018 at 2:22 pm
SBT gets it.
David Dickinson April 20, 2018 at 2:56 pm
Amen (again).
Interestingly, I heard a liberal economist (I forgot his name but he was VP Biden's chief economist) talking on Bloomberg radio complaining that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress were more tone deaf to the plight of the American citizen that at no other time in the past. He said they cared more about donors than people.
That is our core problem–self-interested politicians. We keep swapping out different people and different parties and we still have the same problems.
My suggestions (that will never happen since the self-interested people would have to vote for them) are:
1. Congress returns to a part-time legislature.
2. Political donations go to the race and not the candidate to be divided evenly amongst the candidates running for that office.
I hear you loud on clear on the despondency. The fact that Republicans hold both chambers and the presidency and give $500M to murder babies means I am done with supporting federal Republicans. Add to this that state Republicans are running to the Left as fast as they can, and my local Loudoun Republicans never met a dollar they couldn't spend and this Republican is left wondering where the hell is the Republican Party?
Roger Schweikert April 21, 2018 at 6:41 am
I like your first suggestion but not your second. No candidate should have public funds to run for office just because (s)he is running. Each candidate and the positions (s)he takes on the individual issues should determine whether they are worthy of being supported or not even though it may prevent a lot of less well-heeled individuals who could be trusted to serve his or her constituents well may not be able to mount an effective campaign because of a lack of money. Besides if we ever taxed political contributions at a 50% or higher rate instead of income in this country, I think we all would be a lot better off.
Actually, I meant private donations not public donations. I agree that no public funds should go to the races. Money is corrupting our political system badly. I believe that if the private donations are divided equally among the candidates that 1) influence peddling comes to an end because every dollar you give goes to all the candidates in a race; 2) you get more candidates in each race and a better field to choose from; and 3) as you stated, the issues become the highlight and not fundraising.
Steven Thomas April 20, 2018 at 2:19 pm
Great article. #shakpack #va10
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