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For a National Unity Ticket in 2020
It should be clear to most people after the fiasco in Helsinki earlier this week, that Donald Trump shouldn’t be President. I don’t know how you can look at that press conference and say, “Yes, that man should be President. America made a good choice.” At the same time, no one reading this wants to turn the government over to the Democratic Party, which is currently at war with itself over whether it wants to be moderately progressive or fully embrace democratic socialism.
We’re approaching a point where the divisiveness of our politics could cause serious long-term damage, or worse still, take a violent turn. Political violence is an aberration in our system, but if the situation continues to deteriorate, it could come to blood.
With an unfit Republican president on the one hand and a scary Democratic Party on the other hand, where does that leave us for 2020? There is a clear need for national healing, how do we bring it about?
I’d like to suggest an option: a bipartisan unity ticket in 2020.
The idea is that the Democrats would nominate an elder statesman. Someone who is not a fire-breathing socialist, with extensive experience in government, who is at the end of their political career. In my mind, I picture Joe Biden for the role. He would then, in turn, pick an anti-Trump Republican, someone like Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, or John Kasich. (Mitt Romney or James Mattis, being elder statesmen types, might also work.) The ticket would then pledge to only serve one term and not seek reelection.
To continue the idea, the cabinet and other appointments would be roughly split 50/50 (this isn’t outlandish, cabinets are often bipartisan), judicial nominations would focus on consensus choices, or the President and VP would take turns picking, and Supreme Court picks would be of people over 60. The idea, overall, would be to focus on consensus building in governing, with the end of national healing. Or, in the words of President Harding, “a return to normalcy.”
Before you condemn this plan as a fantasy, I hasten to note there has been a unity ticket before in American history. In 1864, Abraham Lincoln ran with Andrew Johnson, a Democrat. Those were extraordinary circumstances to be sure, but there is precedent.
Are there problems with this plan? Difficulties? Objections? Practical points that would need to be worked out? Sure. The biggest obstacle would be the need for an elder statesman to step forward and be willing to prioritize healing the nation over their own personal ambition. In fact, it would require a whole cadre of people willing to prioritize national healing over temporary political experience. But it could be done if someone chose to step forward and be a leader.
Published in General
Fred, when I got to Joe Biden I realized that you weren’t serious. Excellent send-up!
So this is what the Main Feed of Ricochet offers now. I have never been more disgusted. I go away for a month and this is what I find. This is what shows up in Google searches. Unbelievable.
I know nothing of electoral politics, so I can’t say it’s crazy or not crazy, as a practical proposal.
On the substance, it might be a best-choice compromise solution to the dilemma facing many thoughtful, loyally American voters today. American, in the sense of holding to traditional American values: Godly respect for others, respect for the responsibilities and rights of the individual, the rule of law, and public civility.
My ranking,
There has been talk about a Kasich-Hickenlooper ticket, a centrist Republican and centrist Democrat Governors.
How about a ticket with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg? He is an actual billionaire.
OMG “There has been talk of” ?? What the blazes does that mean?
It means “ego-stroking”
Constitutional amendment: the president serves one 6 year term.
Aside from the “Trump knows what he’s doing” part of this, I pretty much agree.
Sorry Gary, but I did a spittake with my beer when I read this . . .
Yes, Putin’s is repellent. So what? Stalin was 10 X worse and yet we managed to work with his USSR to defeat Hitler. But if we could put aside our differences long enough it seems we might be able to work together with Russia to combat militant Islam for instance. To quote a Clint Eastwood movie – that doesn’t mean we are going to be sharing long slow wet kisses. Doesn’t mean we have to approve of him or his policies, nor him of ours.
I agree completely. This is exactly how I see it too.
I hesitate to sell people short, even whack jobs like Maxine Waters or Sheila Jackson Lee.
Trump has had no political experience in elected office, but he’s had tons of experience in foreign affairs and politics as a businessman. In other words, he’s had to deal with foreign governments in order to expand his business empire. He knows what other countries do to support their own companies (or government entities) over ours. I dare say, he’s in a better position to deal with tariffs and so-called “free trade” than any President we’ve had since Reagan . . .
Trump won get over it. Trump is doing so many many good things, he’s won me over. Putin is not a threat. Democrats and the corruption of our entire government and media is the biggest threat to America we have ever ever had. This is truly the moment of enemies domestic.
No unity ticket, because that will just stop the progress Trump is finally making… stop the sensible remaking of the courts… stop the deregulation, the tax reforms… no Trump is not a great person, but he is an excellent President.
I think Donald Trump will be a shoo-in if he runs for reelection. It will be a sweep.
All he has to do is ask, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
I live on Cape Cod, and business is better here than it has been in over a decade. Every sector is doing extraordinarily well. We are largely dependent on tourism, and we are therefore very sensitive to the ups and downs of the economy. I knew the economy was doing better this year, but I had no idea how staggeringly much better until the most recent Fourth of July. Holy cow. I’m surprised there was enough food in the restaurants to feed everyone.
Not all problems can be solved or prevented with money alone, but enough of them can be to swing an election.
You lost me at “extreme right.” Where is this extreme right, and how do I join? All I see out there are centrists, leftists, and far-far-leftists.
Back to the topic, though. I will support this plan, if it includes a proviso that everyone in the nation (legal or illegal) be required to wear a red MAGA hat or MAGA shirt for the duration of the unity ticket’s term in office. Refusal to don the red would result in deportation to a s-hole country.
Obviously, there would also need to be a secret clause that hands the election to Trump, in the event that the non-unity Democratic ticket wins.
So you are giving Trump ten years total? I’d be okay with that… if he does this well for 10 years… we’d be in very good shape when he was done.
Trump is going to win this fall, and he’s going to win in 2020, because he is doing a very good job.
If you cannot see the extreme right…
You mean, for example, you want a Democrat-funding presidential candidate who hated the Iraq War, said nice things about Planned Parenthood, is fearless, wants trade tariffs, supported the Kelo decision, wants to stop immigration, is quite secular, and generally supported gay rights before President Obama?
And perhaps someone like Mike Pence could run for vice president?
Hey, I hear ya.
Your premise is that Trump is unfit for the office of President. So therefore anything you say before or after that point loses all credibility to those of us who support Trump for the most part.
We have a man that gave small businesses and the middle class a tax break. A man who ran on a pledge to avoid the treasonous-to-the-middle-class trade agreements. His election is probably the reason why Congress ran away from the TPP circa Dec 2016-Jan 2017. He wants jobs that pay well to return here to the USA. (That is already happening in areas of the nation where Big Energy is going ahead with hiring as it is now able to move forward with drilling.)
He opposes the Globalists’ agenda on immigration, understanding that in some places, it is born in America Americans being declined jobs because as a local employer told a friend “You proved yourself a good worker and we have no problem with you personally but our hispanic foreman only wants his personal hires to work here.”
He “gets” that The Dem majority Congress in 2007 sold Jeff Bezos the privileges of the US Postal Service without any of the responsibilities. And that the Dems’ decision puts Bezos in a delivery system monopoly of such immense power that no other human has held such unless you go back to the days of William Randolph Hearst.
He is attempting to restore diplomatic relationships with both North Korea and with Russia. He pulled us out of The Paris Accords, saving us 110 billions bucks just on that. He decimated Obama’s Iran Treaty. So there will be some sanity returning to the way that The USA deals with that nation.
He is going to see that NATO gets cleaned up and no longer remains as a huge slush fund utilized by wealthy politically entrenched Europeans. Rather it will exist for European nation protections and will be audited and paid for by the European Nations that NATO protects. Trump also has in place a strategy that is bringing about more break ups of sex trafficking leagues than ever experienced before. Not two years into his first term, and already over 6,000 sex perverts have been arrested. With over 2,500 women and children freed from being sex slaves.
It is significant that he has done all this despite being hamstrung by a major investigation that is run by the Office of The IG – which many of us realize is in bed with the very agencies it is supposedly supervising.
The extreme right in mainstream politics are the traditional right.
The extremities of the right are still marginalized.
The extreme left controls the Democrat party.
“Only our enemies go too far.” -Exactly what the leftists say as well.
Very much agree that it was a coup.
Nixon was given good press until he made the mistake of “rolling back price hikes.” (Summer of 1973.) Suddenly he was in trouble with Big Banking and Big Financial Interests. Once those interests decide you are their enemy, the press will be encouraged to beat up on you. So it was that in August 1974, Nixon resigned.
They’re out skydiving, BASE jumping, drinking cobra whiskey, eating ghost peppers, all that sort of thing.
Where do you stand on the titanium tax?
Look folks, you can argue that the extreme right positions are the correct ones to pursue, but you cannot argue they don’t exist. It’s simply unserious.
I think he is, as well, a great person. He’s a good family man, a paterfamilias, a successful businessman, maybe a bit oversexed, but America used to love that. As an employer he’s stellar; 3 years of trying and no complaints there! Love your comments, @sash, but why put him down at all?
I commend you for thinking outside the box, Fred. I would tweak your proposal by having Romney at the top of the ticket with either Hickenlooper or Manchin as his VP. They would need to run 3rd party. Let the Trump lovers and alt righters vote for Trump while the socialists and commies vote for Bernie or whoever the Dems put up. Hopefully there are enough sane people left in this country for such a ticket to triumph.
A long shot, to be sure, but I’m not so sure another 4 years of Trump won’t leave us isolated on the world stage with tyranny ascending in the world and our economy in the toilet because of Trump’s stupid trade wars.
I haven’t been on this site for a very long time and reading some of the responses here reminds me why.
I can’t remember if it was Jesse Waters or Greg Gutfield, both on Fox, that covered how many Bernie supporters were willing to feel some friendliness to Trump when it was explained to them what the tax cuts meant.
People here on Ricochet who live in TX have noted how many areas in that state have a lot of new workers out there handling the Big Energy needs for employees.
I live in a state with 2.1 million undocumented human beings, so the fact that for the last 14 months, we have had record low numbers of new people moving to Calif is a welcome change on the immigration home front.
A lack of new mouths to feed and newly arrived families to shelter is especially important when you consider that the Oct 8th 2017 fires left some 10K to 15K of households homeless in Northern Calif. How can we accommadate another couple of hundred thousands of people here when we can’t even house the 15,000 households whose homes were destroyed? According to headlines in yesterday’s most recent newspapers, many of those people are still relying on food banks to eat. My two cents is we really need to clean up this nation’s problems before we import more people.
Moderator Note:
We try to avoid derogatory labels toward our fellow members here, just like we ask people to refrain from calling their fellow Trump -supporting members slavering mindless cultists and so forth.Trump Derangement Syndrome. I recommend 90 days without Twitter to recover.Let’s get this out of the way because it’s going to keep coming up. I am using the second definition. Furthest from the center.