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Will Conservatives Fight Each Other for the Next Four Years?
I have no idea what will happen over the next month. It’s possible but unlikely that President Trump will be re-elected; it’s also likely that Joe Biden will fill that seat; his winning this election fills me with fear and dread.
But to me, even worse than watching an elderly man who has cognitive problems and misguided ideas become President will be watching the Conservatives at each other’s throats. I foresee those who enthusiastically support Trump holding angry grudges against those who believed that Trump could not overcome the odds or beat back the fraud. And I can imagine those who believed the odds were long will be hated by those who believed that fraud should have been uncovered and Trump should have won.
This outcome is a lose-lose proposition for Conservatives everywhere.
Why do I bring this issue up now? Because in one sense, it doesn’t matter what the results are: we could waste our energy berating each other, blaming the system, and condemning those who were on the opposite side of us.
I’m also raising this issue now because we must focus on the real potential catastrophe: Democrats may very well be in charge of the government at one level or another and their dominance could destroy our country.
Now I will admit that I’m not fond of watching people fight with each other, verbally or otherwise (although I did enjoy the original Karate Kid). But the stakes are too high for us to get sidetracked and fall into Republican reticence of being Mr. Nice Guys or giving up the farm. Instead of fighting with each other over the past, let’s try the following:
- Make sure one way or another that a highly credible commission is established to study the results of the election, identify the fraud that occurred, find the mismanagement that was pervasive, and identify solutions. This effort will require identifying which steps should be proposed for the federal government to oversee, and which should be given to the states. If possible, the recommendations should include penalties for breaking or mismanaging the rules. The committee should be bipartisan and should preferably include people who are no longer in government, but have credibility on both sides of the aisle.
- Stop crying over spilled milk, no matter who wins. It will have been done. Arguing amongst ourselves is just another kind of distraction and will stall any progress on the part of Republicans. I frankly don’t care if you feel there was massive fraud or if you believe there was fraud, but not enough to make a difference. (I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle.) It’s history. Finished. Done.
- Let’s figure out the next steps for the Republicans that go beyond fighting the Democrats or re-litigating the election. We need to revamp totally the principles of Conservatism. We need to give up on old hopes that will be lost for the future, such as small government. We need to figure out how to educate people about US history and its goals in moving forward. We need to determine how to best engage people in America and build enthusiasm for 2024.
- We must explore the psychological impact of this election and be honest about its effect on ourselves and the people. Each of us should take a good hard look at ourselves and ask what really motivates our antagonism toward our colleagues. I learned a good lesson that is almost always true when it comes to human motivation. We become angry when two aspects of our psyche are challenged: being right and looking good. That means when someone accuses us of being wrong, we defend ourselves, insisting that we are right. It doesn’t matter whether we are “really” right or not; we must protect ourselves from those who question us. “Looking good” describes those characteristics that we value because we think they make us “look good”; they are what you value about yourself, not necessarily what someone else appreciates about us. That means when a person violates your important beliefs about your looking good—being smart, being right, being ethical, being educated—you will have a strong negative reaction and even fight back. I know intimately the limitations of these reactions!
Once we realize that our reactions to others’ challenging us are based on our irrational fears of being discounted, it’s much easier to disregard what they say about us. For example, some men like to tell me I’m reacting “emotionally” to something. Most women hate to be told that; I love it because I can respond by saying, “You’re right! I am emotional. But I’m also smart and knowledgeable.” That usually stops the attack.
* * * * *
My hope for all of us is that we don’t move into the next four years with a chip on our shoulders. Let’s not attack each other; let’s not spend our time in useless arguments. Instead, let’s transform our anger into passion; our concerns into dedication for America; our frustration into a laser-sharp focus. Let’s work together. Let’s help each other.
Let’s set the example of what it means to be proud Americans.
Published in Politics
Looking ahead towards the 2022 and 2024 elections, I wonder how Republicans should view entitlement reform, especially the reform of Medicare and Social Security.
For quite a while the Ryan plan was the near consensus GOP plan regarding entitlements. In 2011 the newly elected Republican US House enacted the Ryan plan and the Democrats were delighted. They began depicting Paul Ryan as the evil conservative who would push Grandma in a wheelchair off of a cliff to save money.
Possibly one of the reasons why the Romney-Ryan ticket lost in 2012 was because they were viewed as cold-hearted accountants who wanted to reduce the growth rate of government by reforming Medicare and Social Security.
In the first GOP presidential debate both Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee said that they would not reform entitlements. Trump even said that Single Payer health care worked well in Scotland, which was a view that was rarely espoused in a Republican presidential debate.
It’s possible that Trump received many votes in his 2016 contest against Hillary Clinton from people who did not like the Paul Ryan attention on entitlement spending but appreciated Trump’s promise to leave entitlements alone. Trump had not been a Republican for most of his adult life. So, it was hard for Hillary Clinton to tie plans to kill Grandma to Donald Trump.
But it’s clear that unreformed Medicare and Social Security will bankrupt the United States. So, this poses a dilemma. In the future, Republicans could take the Trump route, which is to deny any interest in reforming entitlements, or Republicans can take the Ryan route, which is to lay out a plan for reforming Medicare and Social Security, leaving them vulnerable to Democrat attacks.
It will be interesting to see which direction the GOP goes in the future.
That will not happen. If there is anything that is ironclad about Internet discussions it is that Trolls Always Troll.
But thanks for getting clarity on this point; I’ve removed my credit card from the system, so my account will end when the year is up. (I think it is in March).
If this place gave refunds for unused time, I’d go tomorrow.
I don’t think it’s the length of the post so much as the frequency of the posts, the sheer numbers of them creating a mini-thread of their own, essentially threadjacking the OP.
The problem with these multi-comments threads within a comment section, is that you have to read through them to find the odd meaningful posts that have been posted stuck in between the comments of the hijacking mini-thread.
I don’t think a blocking button would work against this type of threadjacking. Instead I would ask for courtesy and comity on everyone’s part. But there are a half dozen or less who don’t see or accept this. And even more who can’t seem to resist responding.
First things first. The first thing Joe Biden will do is open wide the door to immigration and start giving legal status to DREAMers, etc. Demography is destiny. If Republicans go back to their Karl Rove/Jeb Bush/Chamber of Commerce tacit agreement with Democrats on immigration (rich Republican donors get their cheap labor and Democrats get to import voters), then there is no point in discussing anything else.
You’re right that Democrats have successfully demagogued reform of Social Security/Medicare for the last 40 years. Unless someone has a way to change that dynamic, laying out Republican plans for reform is a waste of time. Republicans will continue to play the Washington Generals to the Democrats Globetrotters. The Trump route may not have been so much a lack of interest in reform, as recognition that there was no way to win on the issue, so why play a losing hand? Immigration, on the other hand, was a winning issue, and is in fact a necessary issue if Republicans are to have any hope on anything else, including entitlement reform.
In earlier comments, when I talked about the Republican Party returning post-Trump to its old ways, and not learning anything from Trump, this is what I was talking about. That’s the party that talked incessantly about “repeal and replace” of Obamacare for years, then when it had the chance in 2016, showed it was wholly unprepared to do so. It’s the party that wastes its time with detailed entitlement reform plans that have no chance of passing and only provide a target for Democrats. I’m done with that party. And I will not be listening to any arguments to the effect that we have to vote for a Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan type in 2024 because Biden would be worse.
I wonder if entitlement reform might happen, not because it is enacted by Republicans over the vitriolic objections of Democrats, but because it appears to be an economic necessity in the eyes of both parties. It seems far fetched currently because the Democrat party does not seem to be interested in any limits on government spending.
But in other nations entitlement reforms have often been pursued, reluctantly, by the party of the Left or by a coalition of Left and Right parties, simply because the entitlements produced so much distortion that they cried out for reform.
Right now interest rates on the national debt are reasonably low. But if those interest rates were to jump a bit, it could make managing the debt without any entitlement reform an impossibility. Could this sort of debt crisis happen during the Biden-Harris administration? It’s certainly possible.
@jclimacus
As for your last point, “. . I will not be listening to any arguments to the effect that we have to vote for a Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan type in 2024 because Biden would be worse,” I am very likely to continue voting straight Republican tickets as I have in the past.
Only twice have I voted for a candidate who was a member of a party other than the Republican party.
In 1984, when I was 18 and voting for the first time, my father told me that the GOP candidate for state senate (in California) was an extremist. Actually, this GOP candidate was simply a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. But I listened to my father and voted for the Democrat in that race while voting Republican for all other offices, including for Ronald Reagan’s reelection.
In 1990, President George HW Bush broke his “read my lips; no new taxes” pledge and I was furious. My Republican congressmen (in California) joined with George HW Bush and voted for the tax increase. So, I protested by voting for the Libertarian candidate for Congress in 1990.
Those are the only times a candidate for a non-GOP party has received my vote.
So, regardless of who the Republicans nominate in 2024, it is likely I will be voting for him or her.
Again, this is old-style Republican thinking. If we just make our case logically enough, or circumstances change, then Democrats will eventually see the light. Unfortunately socialism is a religion for the left and is impervious to empirical disconfirmation. It is a dogma with them that with enough taxes or, if that fails, straightforward money printing by the Federal Reserve, that socialism can work. To the extent that it hasn’t worked, it can only be because strong enough measures were not taken or dangerous malcontents (known in earlier time as counter-revolutionaries) sabotaged the process. The answer to the failures of increasing socialism will not be a return to rational economics, but yet more central planning enforced with increasingly draconian measures. That will be the response to any debt crisis. Welcome to our glorious post-Trump, Biden/Harris Progressive Utopia. But at least Biden won’t be making any childish tweets while he destroys what’s left of our civil liberties.
So, how are entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare likely to be reformed? It seems that there are only a few possibilities:
[1] Republicans control the White House, the US Senate and the US House and also are willing to cast unpopular votes to “cut” Medicare and Social Security (and also Medicaid).
[2] A coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the White House and Congress agree to reform entitlements.
[3] Democrats end up controlling the White House, the US Senate and the US House and reform entitlements because they would prefer to spend money on other priorities.
If it isn’t [1], [2] or [3], then what else is there? Are you just saying that these out of control entitlement programs are not going to be reformed and, thus, the United States will end up like Argentina, no matter who wins future elections? Elaborate a bit if you will.
Could you possibly learn to trim the posts you are answering so that only the relevant part is requoted?
All your response posts are long and hard to read because you don’t do that.
Back in Orange County, California, where I lived when I was in my 20s, Republicans picked up 2 US House seats, toppling incumbent Democrats.
In the California 39th, Korean-American Young Kim won. In the California 48th, Korean-American Michelle Steel won. These two women are the first two Korean-American female congresspersons in US history.
It’s likely that both will become part of the GOP outreach effort to the Asian-American community. Asian-Americans have higher per capita incomes than White Americans, yet currently a majority of them vote Democrat. Also, Asian-Americans are subjected to racial discrimination via the Democrats’ affirmative action programs.
So, perhaps we won’t spend the next 4 years tearing each other apart. Instead perhaps we will expand the conservative movement. I’m optimistic.
In case you haven’t heard, and you probably haven’t if you only listen to CNN, which is quite possible, the President increased his support in every single demographic except yours. White men.
So the expanding of the conservative movement has already been happening.
Booting Trump will likely make it contract again.
Biden beat Trump like a drum in the important metropolitan areas in swing states, especially in the suburbs.
Yep. Argentina. Doesn’t matter who is in office. The brief history: The U.S. national debt was about $6 trillion in 2000. GWB nearly doubled it to $10 trillion in his 8 years, largely because he financed his Mideast wars with debt. Obama increased spending even more, on the grounds that if we can spend trillions of dollars nation-building in Iraq, why can’t we here at home? This generated the Tea Party as a reaction, the last serious effort to control spending, which itself was successfully undermined by the Republican Establishment. Obama went on to increase the debt all the way to $20 trillion. By that point, 2016, it was clear that there was no longer any significant opposition with voters to unlimited spending. This past year we have a deficit of more than $3 trillion, which would be even higher if Republicans and Democrats could have agreed on the latest “stimulus” package. The supposedly “sober” Republican stimulus package this last month that was rejected by Democrats was for $1.5 trillion (which would have been added to the $3.1. trillion in debt already added this past year). That $1.5 trillion is one and a half times the stimulus package that Obama put through in 2009 that spawned the Tea Party. The $3.1 trillion accumulated just this year alone is equal to the entire Federal Debt in 1990.
It was GWB that really set the process going and undermined any moral standing Republicans might have had against debt. In the Trump years, Mitch McConnell and his Congressional allies could have put serious reforms in front of Trump. They never did. I don’t blame them; no one America really wants it anymore. We are going to ride the debt train to oblivion.
The option is going to be [4]. The debt continues to grow until it implodes. The Federal Reserve will try to fix the situation with money printing, but unlike 2008 where it worked, this time it will simply destroy the value of the dollar.
You seem to take a deterministic view. On that basis, it doesn’t matter who wins elections because we are guaranteed to end up like Argentina.
You have actually convinced me to at least attempt to reform entitlement programs in order to save our country. You don’t offer an alternative way of proceeding.
I don’t think you’ve actually offered an alternative. You just offered the hope that Biden/Harris would see the light if things got bad enough. I think that is wishful thinking. The alternative way of proceeding was to have Trump in charge when things go south rather than Progressive Socialists, who will see any crisis as an opportunity for more government tyranny. The American people are not open to real change yet, but might be when things get bad enough, which could happen very quickly once that debt bomb explodes. They will be desperate and open to anything – it will be Rahm Emmanual’s “crisis that shouldn’t go to waste.” The last people I want in charge are people always looking for an excuse to curtail liberties. I’d rather have the impulsive showman who hasn’t shown any real interest in becoming a tyrant. The idea that Paul Ryan is going to convince anyone with his bar charts in that situation (especially someone like Kamala Harris), would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
Blah blah blah.
You aren’t even responding to what I said.
President Trump increased his support in every category except white men.
You want the conservative movement to expand. It is. Thanks to President Trump.
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning. Did we not have around 422 Republican candidates attempting to get the Party’s nod for being the appointed Presidential selection back in 2016? And if there was not one among all those people who could claim to be both moral and conservative, then maybe there is something seriously wrong with how American politics is being determined.
(Oh wait a minute. It was a California gubernatorial election in 2012 that had over 200 Democratic possibilities. In 2016, the Republican Party only had 17 major political contenders facing off against one another in the lead up to the Primary.)
I’m not sure where your going with the California thing.
Most of the 2016 field could claim to be both. There was impassioned minority who didn’t want moral or conservative. Then followed a comedy of errors/collective action problem in which the rest of the party failed to get its act together.
Say what you want about the Democrats an there’s a lot to say, but the way they formed ranks behind Biden after South Carolina and saw off Sanders was enviable.
Only the top three should have gotten out of Iowa in 2016, Cruz, Trump and Rubio, and only two should have gotten out of New Hampshire, Trump and Cruz. Everybody else should have dropped out. Hopefully we will learn from the Democrats in 2020.
That’s assuming the impassioned minority is still a minority, which is optimistic. I’m banking on the populists facing their own collective action problem. The upside of there being so few credible pre Trump conservatives left their lane could unify early.
Not those people, Drew. Those people are icky.
Will Conservatives Fight Each Other for the Next Four Years?
Yes, it looks like violence and terrorism is endemic to the Left’s Never Trumpers.
Per the Federalist:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/13/left-wing-activist-group-launches-strategic-harassment-campaign-targeting-trump-election-lawyers/
It’s the Lincoln Project that is organizing the harassment and terrorizing of conservative lawyers’ homes.
I’ve always thought that the US would deal with the debt with inflation and the currency losing some of its value. Problem is, you can only really do this once.
Notice how the Neo con RINO’s are exemplified in this graphic. (The Republican part of it anyway.)
That is why there are rumors and more rumors involving a Global Reset.
Joe Biden received more votes in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. The result is that Trump got beat in the important swing states.
The conservative movement expanded, but the Democrat coalition expanded faster under Trump’s leadership. Thus, the need for new leadership.
Trump foreclosed the option you have presented by presenting himself to the public as unstable and erratic, losing the election to Joe Biden.
You can fantasize about an American electorate willing to reelect Trump despite all of Trump’s bizarre behavior. But that’s just a Trumpian fantasy.
As for me offering the hope that Biden/Harris see the light if things get bad enough, I only presented that as one possibility among many other possibilities because similar reforms have occurred in other countries.
You labeled GOP plans to reform entitlements “old-style Republican thinking,” while not presenting any alternative other than sitting on the sofa, watching America turn into Argentina.
You have convinced me that Paul Ryan’s approach was the patriotic approach and that Donald Trump’s approach was irresponsible.
Which, is fine for our resident Never Trumpers, who refuse to disavow the Lincoln Project.
Even as one of them whines and whines that posting publicly available data on money spent on campaign support is “doxxing “.
This isn’t really a new thing. We have had two different cultures for years. Democrats know the popular vote in their cities and immediate suburbs will win every election so they want to eliminate the Electoral College. Trump isn’t the reason we lost there. Those areas are heavily populated with “skulls full of mush” folks whose brains were fried by college professors.
I agree. My goal is to stay as free as possible until it implodes. The takers vote to keep their welfare. The middle doesn’t pay enough federal income taxes to fight it. The rich can afford their virtue signaling.
Biden underperformed Hillary in every major metropolitan area except four: Atlanta, Detriot, Milwaukee, Philadelphia. (Coincidentally, four places that are rife with voter fraud.) So no, he didn’t “beat Trump like a drum.” He did worse than loser-Hillary. But I guess if you shout falsehoods loudly, they’ll magically turn into truth.