RE: Forget the Indictment for Just a Minute …
My priorities for 2024 are
1) Defeat democrat nominee for president
2) Republican majority in senate
3) Republican majority in HOR
I don't think republicans can win the white house with Donald Trump, and I don't think they can win without him if he decides to run a third party campaign. In any event, I think their best chance is to reprise Newt's 1994 Contract approach and make it about issues, not personalities. One big problem with Trump is that as long as he is around, it is going to be about personalities.
On the subject of issues, republicans need to adopt some winning positions and push the hell out of them. Anti-abortion and anti-gay rights are not winning issues for them, although they seem to be the only things they get excited about. If they could adopt centrist positions on both that are in line with the vast majority of Americans (abortion up to 16-20 weeks, with exceptions afterwards for rape/incest/life of mother/child, and basically just leaving LGBT people alone to do their own thing without imposing on the rest), and contrast those with the extreme positions on the left (live birth abortions and the whole trans thing), they should be able to hang on to the vast majority of Evangelicals (who have nowhere else to go), make some inroads with generally socially conservative Blacks (Evangelicals) and Hispanics (Roman Catholics), and appeal to more independents.
They also need to come up with positions on guns and health care. They cannot keep going forward wiith no plans for either: After running against Obamacare for 4 election cycles, they got in power and did nothing. I still thnk that may have cost them in 2018 and 2020, and possibly 2022. Here's what I would propose:
Health Care--Bismarck. It's the way the best systems in the world (France, Holland, Switzerland, Germany) do it, it's the only approach that provides universal coverage (which Obamacare doesn't) and also provides a way around endless queues and delays. It should be an easy sell. The facts are there.
Guns--One, bring back mental hospitals instead of trying to mainstream crazy people in society. The increase in mass shootings actually ties in on the timeline closer to the demise of mental hospitals than to any gun laws or lack thereof. Two, require all gun free zones to have restricted and controlled access enforced by armed security. Mass shootings take place in gun free zones because they are easy targets. Eliminate that. Those two things should get rid of mass shootings. Point out that no "gun control" law has ever brought about a material decrease in gun deaths--not in Australia and not in UK, by the way. For other shootings--provide stiffer penalties for use of guns in crimes, make it a priority to break up gangs, and I would consider some sort of shooter license as an alternative to gun registration.
Other things I would propose:
Legalize marijuana and decriminalize possession of minor amounts of other drugs. The Portuguese experience has been that getting drugs out of the criminal justice system has facilitated getting treatment for addicts and has actually reduced drug use. This also dovetails nicely with breaking up gangs. And it should increase votes from younger generations, where republicans generally are doing poorly.
Budget and deficit was a problem 10-12 years ago, and has gone way beyond that now. The only way to balance the budget at this point is to do the same thing Europe did 30 years ago--implement a national consumption tax. This also has a significant trade protection impact, and is the only way to level the playing field for the USA in global trade. Offset it with the Bortz-Lender prebate/prefund, which also becomes a subsistence-level universal basic income (UBI), allowing the current welfare boondoggle to be farmed out to the states on a voluntary basis, with the money they save because Bismarck makes Medicaid redundant. Also implement the other recommendations from Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin, including lower and flatter income tax rates applied across a broader base (fewer or no non-business exemptions and deductions), again borrowing from improvements Europe made 30 years ago.
Save social security by upping the tax rate slightly to 15% (7.5/7.5), removing the wage/salary cap (the most regressive tax we have), making social security benefits tax-exempt, lowering the calculation of top-end benefits (offset by removing the tax), and introducing a "super 401k" privatized portion that will invest in infrastructure (there is you infrastructure funding) projects, to be paid by user fees set to provide a 5% ROI (compared to 1-2% currently for the SS trust fund).
For defense, adopt JFK's "2-1/2 war" or Sir Jackie Fisher's "two power" objective. Get there without increasing spending (actually reducing spending) by 1) converting 400K active duty positions to 1MM reserve positions (the way Israel, Sweden, Switzerland, and frankly Russia and China do it), 2) converting 240K admin/overhead positions to combat/combat support, 3) cutting civilian and contractor personnel in half, 4) reforming procurement procedures to go with proved technology rather than developing technology, 5) focusing on more cost-effective capabilities (in the Navy, this would include mine warfare, ASW, and NGFS), 6) revising the "top heavy" rank structure, and 7) never fighting a war that we don't intend to win. We do not need more personnel in and around the Pentagon today than it took to win WWII. The goal would be to have the strongest military but never have to use it because nobody would pick a fight with us and we don't go around picking on them.
Repeal the patRIOT act and other infringements on constitutional rights. Note that we had all the info we needed to have prevented 9/11, without any of those subsequent infringements, since on 9/12 we could supply every news outlet in the world with names and photos of the 19 hijackers. This will go a long way to break the power of the Deep State, since they will no longer have the color of law for their egregious acts.
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