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We Called for a New Contract for America: We Wuz Right
Earlier this year a number of us on Ricochet (and elsewhere) repeatedly called for a clear and crisp national agenda for the Republican Party, something every candidate could rally behind and repeatedly put at the center of every campaign stop and debate.
They failed to do this. And yes, while the Republicans won many more votes than the Democrats (and many more than in 2020), and yes, while there was much more ballot harvesting and other fraudulent activities by the Dems, and yes, while we allowed Trump to still somehow be in the middle of the campaign: This election was a debacle because there was no clear positive message.
“We are not the Democrats” is not enough. Our party needed trumpet blasts of what we actually stand FOR. We all knew it. We said it, time and again. And we were right.
Published in General
Yes, yes, yes!
We must have a positive message!
Edit: I meant must not just
Damn Skippy, iWe. Hit em again!
Not that I’m ruling out them other two explanations, but I figure you’re right.
Oh, wait. You already hit one of the other two. Good job.
What are some of the major points? Can we get a Top Three points that nearly all Ricochetti would agree on?
Some big steps to disband/disperse/disentangle/destroy the Deep State might be in order.
Drill baby drill , pump baby pump, deregulate baby deregulate, repatriate (industry)repatriat, tax China baby tax China, build the wall baby build the wall.
Oh, wait ! That’s all MAGA , can’t have that !!!
I think that this is the problem. We, meaning those who consider themselves conservatives and Republicans, have very little agreement about what we stand for.
I have almost nothing in common with the libertarian and so-called conservatarian-types, other than opposition to the Democrats.
As a practical matter, for the past 30 years or so, the only significant achievements of the Republicans have been some tax relief, deregulation, and free trade. The free trade, in particular, has been hard on the working class.
In the meantime, our culture has slouched into Gomorrah, just as Judge Bork predicted.
The reason, I think, is that libertarianism is actually another form of Leftism. It rejects tradition, rejects faith, and essentially rejects everything that stands in the way of “doing your own thing.” That’s the slogan of the 60s radicals, you might notice. Which, for some reason, the libertarians do not.
I’m not referring to the Libertarian Party. I’m referring to about half of the Republican Party, which follows the same ideology, and probably has done so since Goldwater. I’m starting to see Buckley’s “fusionism” as a subterfuge to convince the traditional Conservatives to join in a coalition with the libertarians and the, well, something like robber barons. The trad-Cons didn’t get much out of the deal, though it was marginally better than the Democrats. At least it slowed down the pace of that slouch a little bit.
As a trad-Con and, thanks to Trump, something of a populist and isolationist, I’m quite fed up with the Republican agenda since Eisenhower. I will continue to support Republican candidates, as they are better than the alternative.
We may be in the middle of a party realignment, with the Republicans moving in a populist direction and becoming the party of the working class. I think that this is the battle going on within the Republican Party right now. Trump was a strange leader for this movement, because he does not have a history of supporting traditional values, but he did perform better in this area than any other Republican President that I recall.
In the midst of such a potential realignment, it will be very difficult to provide a unified message.
I agree completely.
There was no clear message, because, according to Paul Ryan, the GOP leadership and Chamber of Commerce is working to purge out that populist notion of the party helping out voters. If the GOPe campaigned on what they really believe, then they wouldn’t win any elections.
I think we might not have that needed platform of ideas spelled out in statements, but many of us, especiallty those of us living in Red Chinese Commie “paradises” like California understand that the “with-it Republicans” non-RINO party members favor instituting changes to bring about the following:
One) Education
A – no CRT in the classroom or in the text books
B – no explicit sex education for the under 11 years of age crowd
C – no conversion of public library community rooms for “family days at drag queen” performances
D – serious suspensions for those bullies who inflict physical harm on their classmates.The way it is mow, the bullies are back at school after a 72 hour suspension while the battered child is still at home recovering from the injuries
Two) Tough immigration policies, as were in the works and working under Pres Donald Trump. No monthly benefits for people who come here illegally
Three) Bodily autonomy for any and all. Big Pharma has not shown any benefits to anything they forced on the public. Masks are useless unless an individual is in the throes of an actual illness, complete with symptoms. (Or if the individual has been exposed by someone with real symptoms.)
Four) Restoration of tort law for any individuals affected negatively by any vaccination program. The 1986 legalized revisions of tort law to the benefit of the pharma companies has resulted in far too many adverse effects and deaths. Childhood vax schedule should be eliminated for kids under the age of two. (Japan did the data on this and decided far too many babies and toddlers were being damaged in the USA – they announced their pulling out of the 1 day to 2 years of age vax scheduled program after they did the data analysis from our CDC data.)
Five) Restoring election integrity – Eliminating all electronic machinery and going back to paper and pen with humans counting the votes. This will need to be done per the US Constitutional guideline that each state has its own election laws. But it must be done.
Those are off the top of my head. Not set in stone and only a beginning.
Abortion is off the above list as it has already been adjudicated earlier this year by the Supreme Court.
Energy
Crime
Parents rights
Taxes
Deregulation / freedom from the deep state
Border wall
Election integrity
There should be a change in how the GOP actually discusses many of the issues when they buy ad time.
To the extent that you attack a candidate, do it by tying them to the insanity of their party at large.
School choice.
Free People
Free Markets
Getting the Federal Government out of ALL education is the first step in freeing the people.
Would the United Nations be able to continue if we left? We fund most of it. First, we must kick them out of New York and off US soil completely.
I disagree a bit. Of course there’s “MAGA”.
And we have this from the Trump web site:
That’s pretty good.
Though I don’t see much on the GOP.com web site.
By comparison, the dems really don’t have anything. Their platform was “No malarkey.” and “Build back better.”
Biden has nothing BUT malarkey.
“I was specifically assured that there would be no malarkey.”
There’s an interesting problem here. Any political party can create a list of positions, and voters might agree with those positions, or not. And at the same time, those positions might be sincere, or not.
For example, the democrat platform includes abortion, which voters may agree or disagree with.
But at the same time, the democrat platform also includes “Providing a world-class education in every zip code”. And we know that’s not sincere as dems have pretty much owned the education sector for decades and that’s exactly why it’s a mess.
So I think we need to operate at a different level.
I’ve become convinced that the classic left-right political measure is… misguided. It’s not at all clear what left and right means any more. And it doesn’t help that the word “liberal” has been newspeaked to mean the opposite. And it always ends up strategizing that if you’re too far left you won’t get the right side voters, and if you’re too far right you won’t get the left side voters. That’s a lose-lose.
I’m an engineer, and I model systems a lot. And if I understand the mechanism behind something, I can accurately predict what it will do. In Newtonian Mechanics, if you apply a force to a mass, you know what will happen. An economist might be considered to be a “money engineer”. If you know what the financial incentive mechanisms are, you can accurately predict what will happen.
So over the years I’ve become more and more convinced that the real issue is not political left vs. political right, but rather those who want government to serve the people vs. those that want to exploit government to bank a lot of money.
“Drain the swamp” vs. “Drain the treasury”.
Nobody likes a crook, so this should be pretty easy.
All true. I enjoyed this description.
But politics is about getting an audience. There’s no system unless we can get the molecules together somehow. :) :)
Gas prices didn’t double overnight when Biden cancelled the pipeline. You can look up a graph of this. It’s just not true.
There was some modest increase, and perhaps it was related to the pipeline, perhaps not.
Gas prices did go up quite a bit this year, and for a while the price was more than double what it was when Biden took office, though it’s dropped lately and is still up about 50-60% overall. Most of that appears connected with the war in Ukraine.
Basing a policy of a falsehood doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
I do agree that Biden’s energy policy has been foolish, and that we’d do better by encouraging oil production and distribution.
Yes, although I contend that we are on a bullet train and not a hand basket. Slouching was so 90’s.
One principle everyone should agree with: We will support decisions at the smallest prudent place of the body politic. Local control, if not individual control. Promote individual autonomy as much as possible. We see no reason for the bureaus of government to involve themselves with minor children’s sex, gender or ethnicity. These should be out of the hands of government. HANDS OFF!
It is not a falsehood that gas prices went up steadily after Biden took office and were a BIG problem BEFORE the invasion of Ukraine. So, the fellow said the prices doubled overnight. That was rhetorical but closer to the actual truth to your dismissing the increase in prices until “this year”. I have a memory that goes back prior to the invasion. I suspect you are trying to mislead. I would be pleased to hear that it was otherwise.
Therein lies the conflict. The GOPe thinks of “free markets” as big corporations doing as they please and using government to prevent competition. I think of “free markets” as “functional markets”. A functional market has transparent pricing, contracts, and true competition. Functional markets are good. Free markets, like an untended garden, are eventually corrupted with weeds.
As for people, we should have few laws and many norms. The GOPe only cares about cheap labor as inputs to exploit. We need norms and some laws (eg, immigration laws and tariffs) to provide a framework for prosperity.
I’ve come to believe that we need to operate at a more fundamental level than politics or the spin that can produce a Dem statement like “Providing a world-class education in every zip code”. That is designed to sound specific when in fact it’s empty. In reality the problems we’re facing are deeper. What is truth? What is reality?
We’re endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. That truth is self evident.
Speech is not violence, and violence is not speech.
There are only two sexes, and they are not the same.
Men can’t get pregnant and women don’t have penises.
There is no such thing as “whiteness” or “blackness”. It’s made up by racists.
All legislation is imposition of morality. Some baseless preference is not inherently superior or even neutral compared to religiously based morality. Yet we don’t want other people’s morality imposed on us, so therefore most legislation, especially the more controversial and related to justice, should be as local as possible.
Communities die without economic engines. We can’t consume ourselves into prosperity. Healthcare, travel, and restaurants can’t produce self sustaining prosperity. All policy dials should be set to encourage production of and maintenance of local economic engines.
How do people support themselves in an era of outsourcing and technologically driven elimination of labor? Certainly that means excellence and flexibility in education. Public schooling as it stands is neither. Close publicly-run schools and switch to publicly funded-schools. Essentially, universal school choice. Of course that should be coupled with low interference from government.
Policy dials should be set to encourage production and savings instead of consumption and debt. Eliminate payroll taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes, substitute in tariffs and sales taxes.
Why the “so-called?” Do you suspect people who call themselves conservatarian of being disingenuous?
I was speaking from personal experience on this topic. I paid 1.50 a gallon when Trump left office, I now pay over 3.20 a gallon. The overall point stands: when Trump left office gas was at $x, When Biden killed the pipeline prices jumped and have increased on average. You can get into the statistics of various points when it decreased and the factors that led to that on a discussion forum, but political ads need to drive a single point home, quickly and effectively.
I won’t speak for Jerry, but IMO it’s a lot like fiscally conservative but socially liberal. The reality is that we only ever see the social liberalism enacted.
To answer your question: I believe most people who describe themselves that way are sincere. I just don’t think there’s much of a distinction or difference, especially in practice and in result.
First, the election wasn’t a debacle. It wasn’t as good as many of us had hoped, but it wasn’t a debacle either. In my own state, North Carolina, the Republicans did very well. They kept a Senate seat and elected the Trump-endorsed, MAGA candidate. They got rid of two leftie Supreme Court Judges. Supermajorities of Republicans were elected in the Senate and one vote shy in the House.
The (federal) House delegation is split, but that was because the Supreme Court gerrymandered the map to benefit Democrats. Now the legislature can re-gerrymander the map.
Why was this so? There isn’t a civil war going on among Republicans in North Carolina for one thing. Budd, a congressman, defeated former Governor McCrory in the primary. These were the heads of two different factions in NC. But a civil war did not break out.
The civil war in the NC GOP took place back in the 1970s along virtually the same fault lines it is occurring elsewhere. One faction was led by then-Senator Jesse Helms and the other faction was led by then-Governor Jim Holshouser. Things got patched up in the 1980s with the election of Gov. Jim Martin and the re-election of Sen. Helms in the same year that Reagan was winning re-election. By that time, it was clear that the problem wasn’t other Republicans, but Democrats. Political parties run on the basis of not only ideas but also patronage. Patronage is the basis for creating a machine to implement the policy.
This year, establishment Republicans refused to close ranks after losing primaries in many places and this resulted in the election of Democrats. And it seems only too clear the same thing is going to happen in 2024 as failed, hectoring voices from the past such as Paul Ryan and Bill Barr come forth. Another despicable failed voice from the past, Karl Rove, was actively campaigning for Democrats. Remember that when you see the white-board-wielding clown on Fox.
It’s worse than empty. It’s covering for an operation that takes a ton of money from the treasury, spends it on programs that will make education worse, pocketing a percentage. Graft, corruption, fraud, waste, mismanagement.
We’ve had a Department of Education for 43 years, with an annual budget of $68 billion, and nothing but terrible results.
We need a comprehensive approach for all such programs. Audits and report cards.
The opportunity here is that voters are for education and against corruption.
Truth is a separate issue. And it’s right out of the communist playbook; Orwell’s “2+2=5”, Goebbels’ “Repeat a lie often enough”, Hitler’s “Big Lie”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, and so forth.
Need a comprehensive on the mechanism. Attacking the individual ones is effectively a game of Whack-a-mole.
Stop with the investigations! I mean, does anyone REALLY think heads will roll? Unless it’s the janitor who happened to see something in the trash, I mean. No one will go to jail, or pay a big fine. The poor guy who got 3 YEARS for stealing a COATRACK from the Capitol is all that will happen…..