The Wider War on Grift

The onrush of good news from so much winning has me a bit giddy, so I need to step back and assess what the enemy might do to regroup and counter.

Old hands Carville and Axelrod have warned Democrats not to make USAID a hill to die on for the simple reasons that (a) voters do not love foreign aid programs and (b) the USAID funds distribution looks like an elite inside scam. They advise to wait and pounce when cuts actually affect real people, then the pushback and political regrouping can begin.

This is cogent advice. Serious cuts of the kinds needed to rein in the budget bloat and federal overreach would affect many local programs, especially since the COVID "emergency" overspending created new dependencies.

So how can cuts be effected without losing momentum towards long-term reform and resizing?

Democrats must not be allowed to effectively frame the "compassion" versus the heartless rich narrative. If the immediate focus is on doing government better and cheaper and kicking out the grifters and middlemen, the old battlelines can be redrawn. We are not cutting your benefits--we are cutting out middlemen who do not serve you.

Before the GOP can reform, much less curtail welfare, it must be the party that most aggressively gets all benefits to people at the lowest cost, that looks out for front-line workers while being the express enemy of the parasite class, thus taking the air out of the eternally bogus "compassion" shtick. The winning needs to be wider and deeper. We want that fourth carrier.

A necessary first step is to make federal spending less byzantine, to make it cheaper to deliver funds and services and easier to detect misuse. Have Elon's geek squad explain in detail how it is we continue to add to the trillions spent on the War on Poverty while poverty is still winning. Where does the money go? How can we spend less yet deliver a bigger share to the poor and front-line service providers rather than to consultants and political hacks?

Imagine the political and perception impact if Trump can go to Chicago or Baltimore and meaningfully promise to deliver what's due to the people faster and at less cost while still reforming and cutting. It is not really about "compassion" if the Democrats' biggest concern is for NGOs, consultants, government employee union bosses and the politically connected. They cannot be allowed to get away with pretending to be about people in need.

Successive Japanese defeats in the Marshalls caused them to rethink their defensive strategies. They planned better, dug in and inflicted horrific casualties on Americans at Peleliu and Iwo Jima. Democrats will fight even harder than that as they become ever more aware of the real threat to their current electoral status. They can see their media air cover dissolving and NGO slush funds for grass roots and social media efforts disappearing. But it ain't over. And the USAID victory is not yet even the equivalent of taking Mt. Suribachi.