(07-27-2022 11:36 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote: Early primaries will be to determine the designated hitter. Let's hope Trump's lead by that time is not too big.
Best way is to eliminate winner take all. let the delegates be apportioned in proportion to the voting. Let candidates throw their delegates to another when they drop out. Best time to make these changes - 2023.
That would probably have stopped Trump in 2016. But we're not in 2016 any more, and if that were done now it would basically hand Trump the opportunity to say, "They're changing the rules to screw me, just like the democrats did in 2020. I'm leading an exodus from the republican party, come join and support me in the general." That would siphon off enough votes to hand the election to whomever the democrats run, and that to me is a fate worse than death.
So what can be done? Well, what was Trump's appeal based on? He enunciated the frustrations that a large bloc of the voting electorate felt very deeply and passionately. The other republicans basically ran as RINOs and didn't get down in the dirt with the issues that the people were pissed off about. Then came the Trump presidency and the republicans did not get with the Trump program. The neocon RINO republicans undermined him, because many of them would probably rather have seen Hillary (who was in many ways one of them) as president that Trump as head of the republican party. Same for Biden in 2020.
Democrats claim to be the party of "working people" but in reality they are the party of the elites and the non-working welfare class. As long as the elites can keep the welfare class onboard with, "Keep 'em dumb, keep 'em poor, keep 'em depending on handouts, and you can keep 'em voting democrat," and a healthy dose of class warfare rhetoric (that their policies don't support), they can keep winning elections. Trump's populism exploited a divide between the working middle class and the non-working welfare class.
Obamacare made the perfect foil. It was pushed as providing universal medical care. It didn't. What it did was screw the middle class in order to subsidize the welfare class. And blue-collar people were rightfully pissed off about it. It exposed the basic hypocrisy in the democrat philosophy. So Trump won back the Reagan Democrats in the Rust Belt and won the presidency. Then the neocon RINOs screwed up and wouldn't pass anything to replace Obamacare, and lost that demographic for the party.
So what to do?
The populist conservative blueprint is what I think republicans need to follow. It can and IMO will be a winning strategy, but it requires buy-in across the board. That's what Newt got with the Contract in 1994--republicans across the board had to buy into it, and stay on message, or their national campaign funds would be cut off. If somebody tried to get you off message, stifle them and get back to message ASAP. It turned into an election about policies instead of personalities. The media expected the normal personality contest, and were caught totally flat-footed by the republican landslide. But when republicans got into power, they didn't do a lot of what they had promised. And they turned it back into personalities over Monicagate, so they didn't sustain.
So how to do that?
Start by exposing, "Keep 'em dumb, etc." for the hypocrisy that it is. Put out a set of policies aimed at making life better for the working middle class, and put some meat on those bones. "Here is what we are going to do to make your life better, and here is exactly how much better your life is going to be." With numbers and graphs and Ross Perot PowerPoints. Perot got traction with that, but ultimately his personality ruined him. Republicans need to find somebody without Donald Trump's negatives to lead that charge. And they need to commit to it.
Take health care. Instead of providing everything to the welfare class, and nothing to the working class, we are going to do Bismarck, which basically provides basic care to everybody. So Mr./Ms. Middle Class, your cost of health insurance will go down to nothing if you are willing to live with a free socialized medicine plan, or will go down about $3,000/year per person if you want to buy something with better coverage. Here are the numbers, here's how it will work. When challenged, admit that by the way, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates will get the same $3,000/year, but what is more important to you, that you are better off or that they are worse off?
Or take taxes and welfare. Right now, everything is focused on providing handouts to the welfare class. And that approach wastes a ton of money on gatekeeper bureaucrats to make sure that only the "right" people qualify. What if we just started everybody out with a payment that covered the very basics of food, clothing, and shelter, and if you want more you just work for it. So if you are at the lower income range, as you make more money, you don't lose any benefits. No need to hide what you're doing, because your payment doesn't depend on that. And if you are in the middle class, say starting around $55,000/year up to around $80,000 a year, you would get something around $10,000/year, wired to your bank account monthly, and against that you'd pay about 15% tax, so you'd be net ahead about $2,000 at $55,000 and net taxed about $2,000 at $80,000. Again, you are provably better off, and here are the numbers, graphs, and PowerPoints to show you exactly how much better off.
To support that program and balance the budget, propose lower and flatter and broader (fewer, or no, non-business exclusions and deductions), like both Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin did ten years ago, and add a national consumption tax (VAT/GST). Again, the impact on the upwardly-mobile poor and the middle class can be quantified and presented as numbers, graphs, and PowerPoints. The criticism will again be that the "rich" are better off. But again, what matters more, making you better off or making them worse off? And if by making them better off, we get them to invest more in the growth and jobs in the USA instead of looking for more tax-efficient overseas alternatives, that means more jobs and higher wages for you and your friends, and what's wrong with that.
You obviously can't have everybody better off, somebody has to be worse off. The non-working welfare class won't be buying any welfare Cadillacs off what they are going to be getting under this plan, and they won't have the opportunities to game the system that they do now. And those fat cat bureaucrats who drive up the cost of programs for doing their gate-keeping role won't have nearly as cushy a life under an approach that cuts out overhead. But when the top 3 counties in the USA for average household income, and 7 of the top 12, are in the DC metro, which produces nothing but rules and regulations for the rest of us, and essentially no value-added production, it becomes pretty clear where belt-tightening is both justified and necessary. Real estate values in northern Virginia and suburban Maryland will take significant hits, and that probably makes both those states unwinnable for republicans in 2024, but they didn't win either in 2020 so no big loss
I am afraid that ship has already sailed for 2022. I expect republicans to retake the HOR, have a close one in the senate that could go either way, so overall be somewhat better off but not nearly what it could and should have been. But that could be the best possible outcome. If we as a nations can ride out the socialist/communist judges and bureaucrat administrators that a democrat-majority senate will approve, and if republicans do some post-mortem soul searching to figure out why their landslide didn't slide, perhaps they will embark on the approach I recommend. If they do, and if all their 2024 primary candidates run on that, then I think they blunt Trump's attractiveness to a large voting bloc, and someone else (DeSantis?) can emerge as the new and better leader. I think whoever does emerge revitalizes the Reagan Democrats and wins back the Rust Belt. And if any republican can run the table from Pennsylvania to Michigan, he/she will be hard to beat.
If you have someone without Trump's negatives saying the same populist conservative things that Trump said, and doing so without the childish attacks on things that don't matter except to his ego, I think you appeal to a lot more voters than maybe some people realize. And if you have the whole party saying the same things to back him/her up, then I think you can get to landslide proportions. And then if you do the things that got you elected, I think you may cement a substantial majority for a long time.
The other thing republicans need to do is to become passionate about winning elections. You can't do anything if you don't win elections. That was one of the beauties of Newt's Contract, it put the focus on winning. Unfortunately, the follow through was lacking, particularly when republicans lost focus because of their visceral, emotional, irrational hatred of all things Clinton, and turned to Monicagate. Unfortunately, the only issues where republicans seem to be able to generate any passion are abortion and gay rights, and what passion they do generate is for pretty extreme positions. Be moderate/centrist on both (abortion with limits and make adoption an easier process, and gay rights without the trans and indoctrination/grooming stuff), you'll still be way more attractive to Evangelicals than the extreme democrats, and you'll be able to exploit democrat extremism, particularly with the Black and Hispanic populations who tend to be socially conservative because of their own religious preference (Evangelical for Blacks, and Roman Catholic for Hispanics).
If republicans don't shift gears, then I simply don't know where to go next. I totally buy George Freidman's idea of a struggle between elite intellectual experts and common sense. Democrats have already staked out he elite intellectual experts side of that battle. I'm ready for republicans to champion the common sense side. That will put neocon RINOs in a bind as to whom to support, but so be it. There are way more blue collar workers than there are elite intellectual snobs.
