Discussion with a Democrat leading to what my complaints are about the Republican Party

 

Some background, I have been going back and forth with someone on “X” about the Democratic party among other conversations in our modern world. I try to stay productive in our conversations yet since they go back and forth coherence or a long view can drop by the wayside. I am not going to rehash my current viewpoints on the Democratic party and instead focus on some of my opinions on why the Republican party falls short. I invited the person on “X” to read this for their enjoyment. It is an open invitation.

First I am a conservative and regular readers know I say that often and am probably more conservative than I let on. I am also somewhat pragmatic when it comes to either implementing public policy or even writing it. Most Americans even though my “X”  friend disagrees are center to center right and I will get to that in a moment. And quite frankly centrist public policy in many cases is the better public policy in a Republic such as ours. The goal is to protect along with grow the people and country so that the majority benefits and any minority depending on the policy is still protected. Hence centrist policy helps to achieve a balanced approach to running the country.

I won’t get into all my reasons as to why I see the Republican Party failing us and some of this post will be a brief history. I will not spend too much time on the current version of the Republican Party since anyone outside of it sees what the problem is now.

I am starting with the social conservative aspect which may be a problem since most people struggle with social conservative policy including the Republican party. First I am pro life, but do not under any circumstances confuse me with the debacle of pro life policy coming from the Republican party over the last 40 plus years. You cannot legislate or adjudicate morality. It is a disaster to do such. The best case example is Prohibition. Outlawing anything to do with morality only entrenches people’s hearts in the wrong direction. You have to change a person’s heart for them to understand.

Yet I am pro life and that means from conception to natural death. What does that mean? It means for pragmatic purpose if you believe people should have their babies then you need to believe the family needs to be a primary benefit of public policy. This includes good and affordable healthcare, childcare, strong education for our children (equal opportunity applies also here) and taking care of the elderly yet not prolonging people’s lives artificially. And of course you can probably add more.  And this is where Republicans fail us. They spend inordinate amounts of time screaming about women carrying their children to term, but then turn their heads on the rest. I believe we should have our babies. Republicans with this attitude give too much credence to the left saying they just want to control women’s bodies. There is no desire to control women’s bodies in my mind.  I want babies to be born. Life is precious and way to delicate to treat indiscriminately. And then we need to do everything we can to support life and the quality of life until natural death. And this is where centrist public policy comes into play. Some Democrats say we support helping people, I do not disagree in the mentality just in the application they fail. That is another discussion.

Now for some historical points as to why I think the Republicans fail our country. I became an independent shortly after the 1980 presidential election. This is when I saw the Republican party change from a center right political body to an organization that’s primary concern was big business. And yes the Republicans were supporters of big business before 1980, but it wasn’t the biggest driver of most of their policy. And earlier I mentioned most Americans are centrist to center right. They are now and they were then and Richard Nixon understood this well. At the time the term silent majority best exemplified this point. His whole campaign in 1972 revolved around bringing the silent majority to the forefront. And he succeeded beyond belief as he had one of the biggest landslide victories in American political history.

On a side note, my Father was super liberal and actually worked on the McGovern campaign. I considered myself a liberal in my teens. I changed for a variety of reasons in college and yet again a story for another day. Still though I have quite a bit of respect for Jimmy Carter, probably way more than most Republicans. He was anomaly though.

So what happened between 1974 and 1980. Some say the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party came to the forefront since Reagan was originally a Goldwater Republican, but it was more than that. Reagan won in another landslide and the circumstances at the time had more to do with his victory. Reagan then took the party in a new direction and this is where I drop off as being a Republican. A friend of mine in college and I use to argue relentlessly about what it meant to be a conservative. He was a diehard Reagan Republican, while I took a more populist approach.

I saw too much emphasis on big business. I abhorred the tax cuts for the rich (trickle down economics) and saw it as a takeaway from the working and middle class that would hurt them in the long run. And yes I am not speaking in hindsight, they worried me from the get go.  Then along came Grover Norquist with his demand that all Republicans sign onto his tax cut pledges. I felt even at the time the balance of power was being handed to multi national corporations to the detriment of everyone else. And this Republican mindset then was used to justify some pretty horrendous policy and actions by the Republican party ever since.

Add in people like Newt Gingrich and Fox News and the leadership of the Republican party had started their march to the current power grab by Trump. They probably never wanted Trump when they originally started their march. I feel like they would have preferred someone less bombastic and a bit more rational, but they set it up for him and now we, the people, are being served crap on a cracker to quote Penny because they still want their power grab, but can’t put the Trump genie back in the bottle to preserve some rational aspects of this country.

There is MAGA and there are the remnants of Reagan Republicanism both fighting for control of the party, neither though has the best interests of the working and middle class.

So what are the similarities that I say are conservative to the Republican party. This is where I say they give lip service, but have never truly implemented real conservative policy. First I do want less government, but since one of government’s roles is to protect the people we have to accept it as a necessary evil if we want to survive or thrive as a Republic, a people and body politic. And yes that means we do need to spend money on national defense, but also more. The alliances Trump is throwing out with the bath water are important. National defense is never just a country trying to survive by itself. That is self destructive. Alliances, trade, common morality all matter in dealing with other countries. You develop those over time and they are just as important to national defense as your military. Actually you spend less on national defense if you have strong alliances, not that we spend less. We could spend less if we did it right.

And protecting it’s citizens economically is another role of government. And this is where I go off a cliff screaming about how the Republican Party has failed us. Supporting billionaires and multi national companies over the populace is not conservative policy, it is supporting billionaires and multi national companies, nothing more. You can word smith with the verbiage all you want, but it is not conservative policy. If you believe the root word of conservatism is to conserve then conserving the values and livelihood of the populace is what you need to do first. Or how can you say you are a conservative?

I have written massive amounts of public policy ideas over the last fifteen years in this blog so I won’t rehash at this moment.

The goal of this post was to give you an idea of why I feel the Republican Party has failed us and I am just touching on it today.  

I probably need to break down the this versus that aspect of certain policies to give you a better perspective, but that is some weeds to dig through and this post is long enough. Again if you want to cherry pick some of my posts to argue against me fine, but remember there are fifteen years so somewhere down the line I probably already addressed your thoughts.

Well I never use Substack, but adding this so if you are reading this on Substack you will need to go to blogger to find the rest of this blog.

Cheers