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Six Myths That Are Killing the Republican Party
1. Tax Cuts Are a Slam-Dunk Win
There’s an old saying that “God put the Republican Party on Earth to cut taxes.” But there’s also an old saying that goes “You can’t call a frying pan a Studebaker and expect me to skip church,” which is just about as relevant to the modern voter.
Tax cuts may be good policy. But tax cuts in and of themselves are not the electoral tonic they were back in the 1980s. Why? Because 45% of Americans don’t pay income taxes and, therefore, have nothing to gain from Republican tax cut plans. When Republicans try to explain how tax cuts are good for the economy, it usually goes something like “Tax cuts are good for the economy [mic drop].”
Instead of tweaking the tax code with what Democrats can easily describe as “Tax cuts for the rich,” Republicans should embrace major tax reform and educate the public on how simplifying the tax structure will bring about economic growth. There are no shortage of examples where this has worked, but they cannot assume that voters know that tax cuts are good. Certainly, they are not going to learn that from the government-run schools or Democrat-led media.
(Exit question: how many actually believe that politicians will ever really simplify a complex tax code that they can stuff with favors for wealthy donors? Show of hands?)
2. All Foreign “Trade Deals” Must Be Supported Without Question Because Free Trade Has Absolutely No Downside for Anybody. Ever. (Except Unions. Maybe.)
When the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed in 1993, the American middle class was promised that:
- More trade with Mexico would grow the economy and raise the wages of the American middle class; and
- NAFTA would reduce illegal immigration by creating more economic opportunity in Mexico.
Here’s what actually happened:
- Middle class wages have stagnated and declined since NAFTA;
- American manufacturing has declined since NAFTA; and
- Illegal immigration skyrocketed after NAFTA was passed.
Here’s a dirty little secret: economists and corporations do not want the middle class to be making more money. If middle class wages increase, that means workers are more expensive, and that means they are not “globally competitive.” They want American workers to be competitive with third-world laborers, even if that would require Americans to live like third-world laborers. (Hence their desire to import massive numbers of third-world laborers.) It’s a perspective that looks a lot nicer from the editorial offices of the Wall Street Journal and the executive suites of Goldman Sachs than it does from the working class neighborhoods of the Midwest.
Should Republicans be against free trade? Not necessarily, but Republicans should side with American workers, and only sign on to openly negotiated trade deals that clearly benefit American workers.
3. Republicans Have to Always Be the Pro-Business Party
To many voters, “pro-business” means “pro-crony capitalism,” and it’s obvious even to the casual observer that the GOP is in the pocket of corporate america and the chambers of commerce. Consider what the conservative base wants: Obamcare repealed; executive amnesty defunded; Planned Parenthood defunded. “Impossible,” sighs Mitch McConnell. “The votes just aren’t there, so there’s no point in fighting for them.”
Now, consider what the GOP was willing to fight for: letting mega-banks gamble in derivatives with taxpayer money; passing Obama’s top secret 2,000 page foreign trade agreement, funding the Export-Import Bank. All of these were priorities of big donors and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Should the GOP become anti-business, like the Democrats? No, but as long as they side with big business against the middle class, their alliance is an electoral liability. Expecially when it is clear the GOP will fight for what its big donors want, but not for what its voters want.
4. The Immigration Issue Can Be Neutralized With “Secure the Border First” Rhetoric
The GOP has decided that the rhetorical response to demands to end illegal immigration is “Secure the borders first.” But they done nothing to secure the borders. In fact, the GOP Congress passed a bill requiring 900 miles of double-layer fencing on the southwestern border in 2006, then repealed the bill the very next year. The GOP’s fecklessness (and frankly outright dishonesty) on illegal immigration opened the door for Donald Trump, whose candidacy they now regard as an existential threat to the party. Gee, maybe you should have secured the border when you had the chance.
5. The Key to Elections is Winning Over Moderates and Independents
Even John McCain and Mitt Romney’s losses have not laid this myth to rest. Obama did not win in 2012 because he won over independents. He didn’t. Obama won because he did a better job at turning out his base voters than Romney did.
6. Conservatives Will Stick with the GOP Because They Have Nowhere Else to Go
The Republican Establishment has no idea how angry the base is, and even Donald Trump’s ascendance hasn’t given them a clue. As evidenced by the recent comments of moderate Republicans like Charlie Dent and Tom Cole, the Establishment still views the conservative base as whackobirds whose place is to vote for the party and expect nothing in return.
The GOP hasn’t had a single major piece of conservative legislation signed into law at the national level since Welform Reform was passed in 1996. How long are conservatives supposed to stand by the party, hoping for some results? Probably not as long as the party leadership thinks.
Published in General
I think 6 is important. The ‘but Hillary is worse’ ship is sailing.
At some point republicans have to give people a reason to vote for them not against a worse alternative.
I consider myself an “American worker” and I fully support free trade. Pandering on this issue might be good politics, I don’t know, but it’s not good economics and barriers to trade will make “American workers” poorer and won’t save “manufacturing jobs.”
I don’t work on Wall Street, I’m not an economist, and I will never vote for Jeb Bush. I just don’t think the supposedly conservative party should be pushing feel-good, populist narratives that are guaranteed to reduce the standard of living for all of us.
MBF, I support free trade as well, but what we’ve seen in past agreements, the Korean FTA being particularly troublesome, is these agreements are free trade for those best positioned to lobby for carve outs.
If we were having discussions over eliminating subsidies and tariffs that would be helpful as you highlight, but that is not what happens and thus why these things have to be given executive agreement status and fast tracked.
To pass the Constitutional burden on treaties these agreements would have to be so good for America that they receive overwhelming bipartisan support, but we do not get there.
Exactly. And it is not helpful when Free Trade Agreements (like Obamatrade) are negotiated in secret and run 2,000 pages long.
I am not opposed to Free Trade, but I think the axiom that ‘Free Trade Is Always Good for Everybody’ has been left unexamined for too long.
6. is weighing on me now.
I do believe that the worst of the Republicans is better than the best of the Democrats, but I am also grasping that if the Republicans can get away with electing a moderate, they will and that will work against us in the long run.
I am well aware that I cannot vote for a Democrat having ripped myself out of the Party of Death, and being ready to vomit should Jimmy Carter be re-elected (which seems to have been the mood of the whole country at that point).
If the moderate is also pro-abortion, I cannot vote for him or her.
I am by designation an Independent, having realized that the Republican Party would sell me out in a heartbeat if they thought they could justify that effort. But, I cannot vote Democrat as they are wretched and loathsome.
So I hope that the Republicans don’t get that low, no matter what the consultants recommend.
Free trade done right invokes Adam Smith. There will always be a protected industry that loses.
We’ve gotten too soft to cope with the cycle of creative destruction.
You’ve correctly identified the problems. However, there is one more, that I think is the overarching one. We don’t have two political parties. We have two wings of one political party, the Washington DC party. The Democrats use the same techniques on their base as the ones you described above to keep their voters in line.
I have no hope that there is a way for the people to dismantle the Washington party short of a bloody revolution and no one wants that for their kids. In fact a fair portion of the populace is happy to simply be treated as sheep as long as the government “takes care of them”.
All fine and dandy but the original post was a demagogic attack on the NAFTA boogeyman.
Brent, do you honestly believe that a majority of Americans are worse off today than they would have been without NAFTA? The populists that keep harping on this issue sound like the radical socialists that always want to claim “capitalism has failed” whenever there’s a recession.
If something being negotiated by Obama administration in secret isn’t really free trade (“carve outs” as you say, are the antithesis of free trade), then why harp on free trade as a concept?
I think the wage stagnation, manufacturing decline, and the high cost of illegal immigration — all occasioned by NAFTA — have been harmful to the majority of Americans. Perhaps, serious border control and competitive regulatory reform should have been part of the deal.
Thanks for this. I can see trade being beneficial when you’re talking about comparative advantage and specialization in very simple models with a limited number of goods but I just don’t understand what the advantage is to signing large free trade deals encompassing numerous provisions with tiny countries or poorer countries where the US dominates them in economy, technology and population. Is it all about cheap labor after all?
Where did I say that?
This is the problem in a nutshell.
Our pseudo free market economy is much more productive per capita than any of our trading partners. The only way we can begin to address their tariffs and subsidies is to give up much more than we get in return because of the sheer size and scope.
The Korea FTA is a great example. When it was signed Texas GDP was greater than Korea’s. We were already crushing them productivity wise. What were they going to give up that benefits us? The preponderance of concessions came from the U.S. with a shift in trade balance favoring Korea.
So who benefitted? The few well connected donors whose industries benefited from Korean access.
Who lost in the U.S. everyone else?
If Korea lowered all the tariffs and ended their subsidies our productivity would’ve added to our trade position.
Thanks Brent.
It is a fundamentally irrational propostion based upon absurd assumptions that don’t exist in the real world.
If people said that free trade is generally good in some to most circumstances, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
I am unconditionally in favor of free trade. Every chance we get. Unilaterally. There is NO question that open flow of goods and services benefits nations. Protectionism is very, very dangerous.
But calling a document that runs thousands of pages “Free Trade” is mere doublespeak.
How many serious people actually believe that? Modern soundbite politics leads politicians and pundits to talk about positions they support in only glowing terms (and positions they oppose in only awful terms). Voters rarely want to hear about trade-offs, even if the net effect is positive.
Just curious, but did you really mean to use unilaterally?
It seems if we did so that would be surrendering our negotiating position with respect to trading partner’s protectionist regimes.
Your exceptional kindness shows through again with your use of ‘mere doublespeak’.
Yes. We win as consumers OR as producers. So the US would win big by allowing all goods and services in without tariffs or limits.
Who cares? We win by not having barriers. They lose by having them. Protected industries, in the long run, are a tax on their own nation.
In the long run I concede your point.
In the short run the dislocation of human capital is problematic without offsetting opportunities.
#2 also ignores the increases in real world wages brought on by falling prices.
Brent, good to hear, and that’s what I expected you to say. I just wish more conservatives would be explicit in calling out the anti-NAFTA demagogues on our own side. I mean did you follow that link in the original post about “American Manufacturing Decline”? It reads like a teamsters union newsletter. Anyone can look up the fed data showing the steady increase in manufacturing output since the mid 90’s (outside of recessions).
America manufactures more in terms of dollar value today than it did prior to NAFTA. Are you arguing that high income semiconductor manufacturing is less desirable than making plastic toys?
Yes but that goes to your point about us being too soft on creative destruction.
The problem is always in the “for who and over what time frame” questions. Nor do people consider consumer and producer surpluses the same, even though economists are agnostic. Also the fundamental assumption of universal human interchangeability is deeply misanthropic.
Stupid computer.
Fact: The USA lost a third of its manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2010. (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Fact: The bulk of these losses can be traced to granting Communist China “Most Favored Nation” trade status.
“This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment after 2001 and the elimination of trade policy uncertainty resulting from the U.S. granting of permanent normal trade relations to China in late 2000. We find that industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience greater employment loss due to suppressed job creation, exaggerated job destruction and a substitution away from low-skill workers. We show that these policy-related employment losses coincide with a relative acceleration of U.S. imports from China, the number of U.S. firms importing from China, the number of Chinese firms exporting to the U.S., and the number of U.S.-China importer-exporter pairs.”
So?
Quite.
I run a company which will make nothing directly – yet unlock billions of dollars in savings PER YEAR. Manufacturing could be done on the moon for all I care – and the benefits accrue to our customers and shareholders regardless of where manufacture happens.
Glorifying one kind of job instead of another is senseless. A job is worth the wealth that is generated. Full stop.
V the K- When you mention “manufacturing decline” what do you mean precisely? Employment in manufacturing has certainly declined, but that is less due to trade than it is to the increasingly capital intensive nature of high end manufacturing. With the exception of a few years during the recent economic collapse, US manufacturing output has consistently risen over the last forty years.
This is the one that’s been an epiphany for me this campaign season. The border is never going to be secured in any meaningful way. There’s simply no will for it in the political class. I can’t help but disrespect the Republicans who use this rhetoric, which seems to be all of them (if you know of an exception, please do tell). Surely they know they’re lying.