The GOP Had It Coming

REMINDER: Join us this evening (Monday, November 14) for the penultimate (i.e., second to the last) presentation in our online Zoom conference “End Inflation and the Fed.”

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Date and time: Today, Monday, November 14, at 7 p.m. Eastern time.

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Republicans are licking their wounds over the fact that the Big Red Wave failed to materialize in the mid-term elections. The problem, however, is that they absolutely refuse to take personal responsibility for their debacle. 

Republicans have long emphasized the importance of taking individual responsibility for one’s actions. In fact, one of their most popular mantras is, “With freedom comes responsibility.”

Republicans have long applied their mantra to Democrats. Whenever they are faced with the adverse consequences of their war on poverty, for example, Democrats have responded, “Please judge us by our good intentions, not by the actual consequences of our programs.” Republicans have responded, “No, your good intentions are irrelevant. You need to take individual responsibility for the negative consequences that your war-on-poverty programs have produced.”

The problem, however, is that Republicans refuse to apply their mantra to themselves. They refuse to take individual responsibility for their own actions and instead, like Democrats, look for scapegoats or excuses for their actions.

A perfect example of this phenomenon is the mid-term elections, where the Big Red Wave turned out to be a Tiny Red Ripple. 

Just think: President Biden is presiding over an economy in which prices of gasoline, food, cars, and other essentials have been soaring. His handling of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan was deadly and messy. He has gotten us perilously close to nuclear war with Russia in Ukraine. He is provoking China by taunting it regarding Taiwan. He periodically appears to be out of touch with reality. His support of immigration controls continues to produce chaos, crisis, death, suffering, and an immigration police state along the border. Like all Democrats, he remains irrevocably committed to welfare-state socialism. He continues the federal government’s out-of-control spending and debt. He continues to support America’s deadly and racist system of drug laws.

All that is a perfect prescription for a Big Red Wave, one in which Republicans should have swept to overwhelming control over both houses of Congress. But it was not to be. The Tiny Red Ripple has left the Senate under the control of the Democrats. The verdict is still out with respect to control over the House, but even if the Republicans win such control, it won’t be by much. 

What was the cause of this debacle? Well, listening to Republicans, it is another “stop-the-steal” scenario. They’re saying that the mid-term elections were crooked and that the Republicans really did win them. If the Democrats had just not stuffed the ballot boxes, their argument goes, the Big Red Wave would have flooded across the nation like a tsunami.

What Republicans can’t do is accept responsibility for what is the primary reason that voters rejected the GOP in the mid-terms. That reason is none other than Donald J. Trump, who continues to be a political darling for most Republicans (and also, unfortunately, for some conservative-oriented libertarians). 

Many of the GOP candidates who were defeated were nothing more than Trump automatons. In order to secure Trump’s blessing and endorsement, Trump required them to publicly state and defend his “stop-the-steal” thesis for the 2020 presidential election. If they refused to do so, Trump would refuse to endorse them and possibly even come out against them. 

Thus, it’s clear that voters weren’t interested in GOP candidates who were scared to death of antagonizing Trump. Voters knew that if they elected these Trump sycophants, they would be nothing more than Trump automatons once in office. Voters were clearly not interested in Trump sycophantic drones serving in either the Senate or the House, where they would do whatever Trump ordered them to do.

Moreover, the fact is that a large number of people are not interested in having Trump return to the White House. And there is a good reason for that. With his temper, arrogance, petulance, thirst for power, and belief in using federal regulatory power as a dictatorial weapon, Trump’s policies and orientation bear a remarkable political resemblance to those of Italian ruler Benito Mussolini. 

Consider some of the things that Trump did the first time around, all of which would have found favor with Il Duce: 

He initiated a vicious trade war with China.

He instituted a welfare program for American farmers who were suffering from his vicious trade war against China.

He ramped up the brutal embargo against Cuba.

He enforced deadly and destructive sanctions against the people of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and other nations.

He continued the federal government’s out-of-control spending and debt.

He launched the COVID-19 stimulus program.

He kept U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He surrounded himself with generals and warmongers (e.g., John Bolton).

He visited the CIA soon after taking the oath of office to swear loyalty and fealty to that evil agency.

He loyally supported the national-security establishment.

He ramped up the deadly war on immigrants and America’s immigration police state.

He built a Berlin Wall along the border, in large part through the forcible stealing of private property through eminent domain.

He continued the JFK assassination cover-up by acceding to CIA demands for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records.

He refused to issue pardons for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

He reaffirmed his allegiance to Social Security and Medicare, two of America’s largest socialist programs. 

Moreover, there is little doubt that if Trump had succeeded in convincing the Pentagon of his “stop-the-steal” thesis in the 2020 election, Trump would still be president today. (See my January 13, 2021, article “The Pentagon Speaks.”) Given his propensity for dictatorial conduct, there is little doubt that a second term would be even more dangerous for America than Trump’s first term. As bad as Biden is, American voters are obviously concluding that Trump would be worse. By putting their eggs in the Trump basket in the mid-term elections, the GOP had it coming.

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