Category: Politics and Issues

Kim Reynolds says goodbye but one should be appreciative of what she accomplished. After taking over from Terry Branstad when Governor Branstad was appointed ambassador to China she moved Iowa in a new direction.

The Pandemic was where the governor shined as she along with others like Desantis, Kemp and Noem opened their state and schools when others were on lockdown. History should point out she was correct, and this had a positive impact on the Iowa economy as unemployment has since been below the national average and consistently in the upper half if not upper 20 percent.

She has worked on tax reform, reducing our tax rates which even exceeded Illinois top rates when she started with the long-term goal of eliminating income tax and in the process kept spending under control. She favored more parents’ choices in their children education and defended the most vulnerable, the unborn.

Reynolds is Iowa cool, stayed in the background and simply let her record speak for herself.

Kimberly Hecker book A Woman of Firsts  Margaret Heckler, Political trailblazers, pens the story of her mother-in -law, Margaret Heckler,  congresswoman from Massachusetts as well as cabinet member of Reagan administration and ambassador to Ireland.

Ms. Heckler tells a fascinating story and in the process of gives us good front row seat of the political dynamics of the 1950’s through the beginning of the Clinton years.   It begins with Margaret Heckler formative years, and it is those formative years that we see the true character of Margaret Heckler.   Her parents were Irish immigrants, but her father never wanted a child and essentially pawn her off to Belinda West, another Irish woman but never formally gave her up for adoption.  Her mother advise Margaret seek independence in life and to show the depravity of her father, he was even prepared to leave Margaret in Ireland with relatives but while in Ireland, he decided to bring her back to America, the land where she was born.  Yet throughout her life,  Margaret never deserted her father and even as she made it in politics including the ambassadorship of Ireland, she allowed her father to part of her accomplishments.  Driven by her Catholic faith, she learned the lessons of redemption and forgiveness and in politics she never viewed her opponent with hate but wiliness to collaborate with them if they were on the same page.  In her election against Barney Frank, the only election she ever lost, she was advised to remind voters of his gay lifestyle that in 1982 could have saved her race but instead, she ignored her advisors and refuse to go down that path.  She lost the race as the local Democratic Massachusetts machine gerrymandered her district to benefit Franks. 

I will emphasize how one  person can have both a negative and positive impact as a public official.  In the case of Heckler, she was a feminist, a supporter of the ERA, but her feminism was about allowing women an equal shot at opportunity.  In her world a woman couldn’t get a loan or credit card without her husband name, the avenue of credit was closed off to many women.  Hecker from the time she entered Congress worked on legislation to fix this and in 1975, she succeeded in a bipartisan way to get passed credit reform and the legislation was signed by Gerald Ford.  Kimberly Heckler details how Heckler succeeded and showed a legislator at her best, collaborating with different people from both parties over a decade to get this done.  Margaret was an effective legislator and while others feminist like Bella Abzug would preen for the camera, they often did little to advance the cause of women whereas Heckler working behind the scenes lined up support to move the agenda.  This law along with title 9 which she worked on and gave women a leg up in pursuing athletes had the impact of bettering women lives economically. 

Heckler was a pioneer, succeeding in a man’s world in which she was one of few women and as Kimberly Heckler observed she was the only woman in her law school at Boston University.  (Interesting she could have gone to Harvard law school, but Harvard would not accept both her and her husband in the same class and quite frankly, the Dean didn’t care for women lawyers, so she went to Boston University, whereas her husband didn’t finish Harvard laws school and moved eventually in the financial business.)

On the political side Margaret was caught in the following changes, the first being a Republican in the state of Massachusetts,  a Democratic enclave, the second is being a moderate in a party turning to the right and finally, she faced a feminist movement that cared less about economic opportunity for women and more on the one issue on abortion in which she was a pro-life Catholic.  The irony is that Massachusetts had a Catholic priest in Congress who voted for abortion rights, Father Robert Drinan. Drinan political career came to an end when new Pope John Paul II made it clear that priests should not be politicians, and Father Drinan went back to being a priest. 

Heckler first political congressional inroads were against the long-time political icon, Joseph Martin, a 4-decade veteran of congress and in 1966, Martin wanted one more term in congress before retiring and allowing John Parker, the GOP establishment favorite to take his place.  Heckler and her husband figured out they could beat Martin in the primary and win the general.  Heckler knew that this was her opportunity as in two years, she could be facing a tougher candidate.  Heckler took on the political establishment and won her first congressional race.  For the next 16 years she would represent Massachusetts 10^th district.   Heckler was a moderate Republican and in Massachusetts, this was the only way to get elected in a state dominated by the Kennedys and as Kimberly Heckler noted, even in Margaret district, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans and independents were significant part of the districts. She had to please enough independents and Democrats to win. 

This would put her odds against the grass roots of GOP nationally as the party became more conservative.  Ronald Reagan nearly took the 1976 nominations from Gerald Ford and his supporters were determined to win the nomination for Reagan in 1980.   Heckler supported George H.W. Bush in the 1980 primary year as both were close friends from their days in Congress as both were first elected in 1966 and Bush was a supporter of the ERA which Reagan opposed, and Heckler supported.

Kim  Heckler details this struggle of the Moderate wing and conservative wing and Heckler herself met with Reagan in which he made clear his opposition to the amendment, but Heckler did get a promise from Reagan before the nomination convention that he would pick a woman to the Supreme Court.  This meeting showed Heckler own political maturity for she knew she was not going to convince Reagan to change his mind on the amendment, but she was able to get a commitment to have a woman on the Supreme Court, which Reagan did with Sanda O’ Connor.  

She campaigned for Reagan, and this would pay dividends later.  Reagan inherited an economy with double-digit inflation and the first thing he had to do was to tame inflation and at the same time grow the economy.  The recession of 1981-82 was the result of Carter inflation and Reagan supply side economic plan had opposition within the Republican party but Reagan got his economic plan passed but the impact of the plan and attempt to tame inflation had its in-side effect as unemployment went up to nearly 11 percent.  For Heckler, she had to deal with a gerrymandered district and the downside of the recession.  The irony is that the recovery began about the time of the 1982 election but too late to help Heckler.

1982 Election was the watershed year in which feminism became identified with abortions as many of her former allies in the feminist movement abandoned her on this issue despite the fact she was a leader in legislation that opened the door for women.  Barney Franks record on women issues did not compare to what Heckler accomplished but it didn’t matter a pro-life Catholic woman could not no longer be part of the feminist movement.

Finally, Heckler details the battle between moderates and conservatives in the Reagan administration and Heckler was offered department of treasury and NASA after her loss, but she opted for Heath and Human services as she felt she could do better for America or as she remarked, she didn’t want to sit at her desk signing  checks and wondered what she knew about spaceships.  Jim Baker, a GOP moderate, working for Reagan liked the idea of moderate Heckler at HHS.    

At HHS, she moved quickly to getting a handle on AIDS in which she quickly received funding for test to protect the blood supply and successful treatment for a disease that was a death sentence.  She had to fight opposition within the Reagan administration since this was mostly a virus that was induced through sexual intercourse and though IV drug usages, many within the administration didn’t view this as a health crisis.  Heckler effort succeeded in protecting the blood supply and turned HIV from being death sentences to a disease than can be managed within a period of less than a decade. 

She also worked on expanding Hospice through federal programs and after 1984 presidential election was in the crosshairs of Don Regan, the new chief of staff and Nancy Reagan who was jealous of her friendship with Ronald Reagan.   Heckler may have been a moderate, but her Irish heritage was the common ground with Reagan own Irish heritage and both became good friends which made Nancy jealous. As for Regan, he was trying to cut her budget, and she wanted newer health care programs just like Hospice.  She won the Hospice debate but ended up the ambassador to Ireland.  Ronald Reagan called this a promotion and while much of the political world understood this was a demotion, Heckler moves to Ireland proved to be a new opportunity. ( Don Regan got on the wrong side of Nancy Reagan and was sent packing shortly afterwards.)

She was the prefect ambassador to Ireland due to her own background and knowledge of the country. She worked with Irish government and American corporations to invest in Ireland and even today, Ireland is home to many American corporations.  A demotion proved to be a promotion and demonstrations of her foreign policy capability. 

Unfortunately, her political career ended there.  Bush administration replaced her as ambassador and President Bush didn’t see fit to find her a place in his administration despite her effort on his behalf in 1980 and friendship that existed from 1966. 

Heckler was accomplished woman who viewed feminism as means to open the door for women economically but most feminist today don’t even know or care that she did  that benefited them by opening the economic opportunities.  When I asked Kimberly Heckler what Margaret Heckler would think about men in women sports her answer was that Margaret would disapprove and view it a betrayal of the title nine and women.  Heckler did not betray women or feminism but many feminists in the end betray feminism.

Consider Heckler record with her successor.  Margaret Heckler supported Reagan  economic plan, and her opponent opposed it.  Heckler was right as this plan led to nearly a quarter of century of economic growth and even spread worldwide as our planet became more prosperous.  Heckler was right with her vote and Franks was wrong.  When George W Bush wanted to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,  Franks stood in the way.  Franks opposition was a major factor in the recession 2007-09 and the housing crisis.  Heckler record led to economic opportunities and Franks record close the door for many in 2007.  Elections matter.

The one thing I wish I saw more of was Heckler foreign policy views.  We have but a glimpse as she went from supporting the Vietnam to opposing it.  Her view that American solders were dying in a war that Johnson administration was not willing to allow them to win. She became a advocate of veterans and worked on better treatment for returning Vietnam veterans. I would love more in depth on this issue and her view on Nixon plan.   There are very few pages on her view on China based on personal visits and she observed if China become more economically powerful, they will prove to be threat. That was in 1975, and she proved right. 

In the 1970’s was the decade of Soviet expansionism and Reagan opposition to Ford/Carter détente and which he put into action in his administration.   I wish we had more on her view of Détente and the Reagan policy toward the Soviet Empire.  Her handling of Ireland showed she had the ability in managing foreign policy issues but alas, we would never know what Heckler could have done politically had Bush used her in his administration. 

Heckler career post government was one of helping others including her involvement with Dame of Malta, helping the poor and her continue interest in health care issues.  Kim Heckler gave us a glimpse of a woman who was part of changing time in our country history and the times themselves.  Heckler own ability as a legislator and the will to advance her agenda proved beneficial and very few legislators can say they accomplished as much as she did and certainly compared to her successor Barney Franks, her record proved superior.

Editor note:  Reagan proved correct in not supporting ERA and wondered if Margaret Heckler eventually accepted this view, a point that was never discussed.  Kim Heckler and George Landrith had a friendly conversation on this issue as George made the case he opposed ERA but as I noticed that many of Margaret goals of economic opportunities happened, and women even can serve in combat without the ERA.  Economic opportunity came for many women because of Margaret Heckler. I wonder if Margaret Heckler was part of the political process, if she moved toward welfare reform.  I interview Jan Meyers a moderate Republican but who played a role in welfare reform during the Clinton administration, and I imagine that Heckler would have join Meyers in promoting the  welfare reform of the 1990’s which was a bipartisan effort between the Republicans and Democrats. 

If you want to see the difference in governing between many Republican governors and Democrats, just look at the California disaster.  In Florida, you have hurricanes, in Iowa you have tornadoes and occasionally derechos (which are hurricane strength winds coming across fruited plains) and in California, you have wildfires and earthquakes. 

The fire showed the complete failures of the blue progressive governance as Joel Kotkin noted, “The reason for this shift lies in the clear failure of Democrats, writ large in the inferno now consuming large swathes of LA. In states like California, Democratic politicians no longer prioritize such things as public safety and key infrastructure, including roads, ports and, most importantly at the moment, water systems. Indeed, today’s ‘progressives’ generally shy away from things like building dams or maintaining water pressure in the name of protecting the environment. They are far more focused on climate change and ‘social justice’… Of course, California progressives will justify this by blaming the fires on climate change, even though a leading fire expert at the US Geological Survey suggests this claim is unsupported. Fires have been a regular feature of life in southern California for at least 20 million years. Moreover, given the recent extremely dry weather conditions, LA should have been prepared for a conflagration. It was not. A councilperson representing the Palisades has noted the ‘chronic underinvestment in our critical infrastructure’.”

California failures can be contrasted with red states like Florida where DeSantis not only was superior in his handling the pandemic as he opened up the schools and economy sooner, but his handling of severe hurricanes in which power was restored quickly was superior how Galvin Newsom handled the Californi fires and the state began its rebuild quickly.  California largest city is burning to the ground, and the state officials have no clue what to do and as the council person noted, there was chronic  underinvestment in critical infrastructure.

There are methodology to reduce or eliminate fires as one report noted, “Instead of focusing almost solely on fire suppression, the state must institute wide-scale controlled burns and other strategic measures as a tool to reinvigorate forests, inhibit firestorms and help protect air and water quality, according to the Commission’s report, Fire on the Mountain: Rethinking Forest Management in the Sierra Nevada.”

California officials had the information needed to prevent this disaster, but they chose instead to spend millions on “Trump proofing” of the state while they actually cut the budget on fire fighting and failed to fill the reservoir.

Kotkin wondered, “The LA fires are likely to accelerate the shift in American politics, demography, and economy away from the old centers of wealth – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, Chicago – and towards a new constellation of former laggard states, mostly from the South, the intermountain west and Texas. These provide the base for Trumpism. Indeed, the current ring-kissing at Mar-a-Lago in Florida symbolizes this shift in regional power.” 

In the past few years, bad Democrats politicians have often been replaced by worse as Andrew Cuomo was replaced by Kathy Hochul, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was replaced by Brandon Johnson and Garvin Newsom survived a recall and no guarantees that he would not be replaced by a worse governor and Los Angeles did vote in Karen Bass.   

Blue progressive model has failed, and this failure has caused massive destruction and at least two dozen deaths. 

Why Trump

In reading Alex Berenson substack piece and Bridget Phetasy explanation on Twitter on why they were voting for Trump, leaves me with the following observation. Whether you like Trump or not, he is the only alternative to modern day failed leadership class and why Ms. Phetasy and Mr. Berenson are moving in his directions has less to do with them moving right than the fact the modern left has managed to combine a hatred of America, hatred of our constitutional government and are just plain nuts.  Berenson and Phetasy has not changed, the Democrat Party and the left has changed.

For them and for others like RFK, jr., Nicole Shannon, Elon Musk and Jennifer Sey, this journey began with the Pandemic in which real science was ignored, the role of China in allowing the virus to escape ignored and the outright loss of freedom during the lockdown and the complete failure of the lockdowns to stem the virus.  No one has ever been held accountable for the one of the biggest health care fiascoes in my lifetime if not one of the worst public policy disaster in my life time.

The results were a censorship regime instituted by the media to censor anything that contradicted the prevailing political narrative that the media and political establishment set up.  Trump institution of the lockdown ended his chance to win re-election as a good friend of mine, Dr. Larry Fedewa, predicted and one of the worse advice ever given a President. Trump had his own second thought according to Dr. Scott Atlas but failed to clean house and Biden administration continued with lockdowns, mandates, and the country suffered inflation, excessive government spending and instituted government censorship.  Even to this day, Tony Fauci is still considered a hero by many of the leadership class despite the disaster he helped usher in.

Berenson outlined his reason for supporting Trump:

“More specifically, here is Trump’s analysis of Americanism:

1. He is pro-capitalism, at least as he understands it, and in most respects, he embodies the better elements of standard Republicans, such as limited government, income tax cuts on individuals and businesses, a policy of deregulation, etc.

2. Trump’s energy policy can be summed up by his loud, Trumpian, pro-industry cry, “Drill, baby, drill!“

3. He would reintroduce justice to our penal system and, most likely, move to neutralize “Soros prosecutors.”

4. He advocates no “reforms” that would destroy America’s constitutional system or the nature of the Supreme Court. 

5. As Biden works to protect Iran’s oil income and its nuclear weapons program, Trump has promised Iran that he would “Blow your country to smithereens!” should they threaten Americans.

“America First!” is the political version of egoism’s “me first.” Trump has even implicitly challenged the foreign policy of American self-sacrifice, e.g., insisting that allies pay for their own defense.

Trump will negotiate with potential enemies, but not forever. No pacifist endlessly turning the other cheek, he will use military force when Americans are threatened.

This is the world’s only hope for peace.

6. Today, Wokeism teaches that “merit” is a racist concept, “objectivity” is oppression and “logic” and “mathematics” are examples of “white supremacy.” The Woke universe resembles a dystopia — a world in which the individual’s mind is helpless — and words like “boy” and “girl,” and “male” and “female,” become unintelligible, and the use of pronouns a political debate.

Trump opposes all things “Woke.” He opposes the Left’s rewriting of American history, DEI hiring practices, biological men playing in women’s sports, the instruction of elementary school children in masturbation and unconventional sexual positions, and the push to permit transgender surgery on children.

7. Unlike most of the spineless Republicans of the past, Trump will not shrink from a battle. In the words of columnist Dan McLaughlin, “Trump brand is a guy you might not like or admire, but you know he won’t hold back and he’s never afraid to go there.” Trump is a fighter — and he can act as a man of principle even if he often cannot state the principle philosophically.

8. Trump’s convictions do not rest on being a religionist type of Republican. This is most striking in his opposition to a national abortion ban which many Republicans are trying to push through Congress. He supports IVF.”

Berenson does a good job of outlining Trump position including a good summary of his foreign policy, which is not isolationist. Trump is willing to talking to our enemies but not  appeasement of our enemies.  When Trump was President, the world was safer and more stable, something his opponents will never acknowledge.  He was not looking for new enemies to slay  but willing to stand for American national interest and make it clear to our allies, they have to pay their fair share.    The Middle East was more stable, Iran was in an economic box, the Abraham accord started the process of allowing an alliance between the Sunni’s Arab’s and Israel against Iran.  In Europe, Ukraine was not invaded, and we forget the first invasion was during Obama/Biden policy and the second during  the Biden/Harris administration.   Nato began to increase defense spending and the good news with Putin in Ukraine, this still continued. The world is on fire and the Obama/Biden/Harris administration policy is responsible.  

Berenson details the difference between Trump and Harris. 

“Unlike Harris’ assaults on the Constitution, Trump’s assertions were a matter of outrage — he believed that the election had been stolen — and he saw himself as fighting for America…In contrast, of course, Harris would alter the nature of Supreme Court itself, end the Electoral College, destroy the filibuster, and anything else that might limit the government’s power. The threats from Harris to the founding documents are philosophical in nature, not just verbiage, but permanent and fundamental changes, with all of the practical consequences this implies…When, in anger at the bias of ABC News, Trump states that the FCC license of that network be pulled, it is sheer emotionalism. Harris and her running mate have advocated permanent censorship of all media for what they term “misinformation” and “hate speech.”

Trump may allow his outrage to get the best of him, but he never assaulted the Constitution in his time in office whereas Harris and Biden not only talked about restricting the right of free speech, but they also did something about it as Alex Berenson was censored over his reporting about the Pandemic and which was often accurate.  Harris told Jake Tapper that social media has to be corralled;  Hillary Clinton has argued for government to have control on stopping “misinformation” by censorship and John Kerry has called for censorship against climate skeptic and let not forget Tim Walz called for censorship in his debate against JD Vance. 

Bridget Phetasy decision is based on what I call the commonsense agenda as she talks about the burning of cities in 2020 and how transgender movement is ruining children by transitioning these children into a different sex that is irreversible.  She makes the point that this is not a right or left but a civilizational battle in which Western culture is under siege and as she stated this is a vote for America. She added that she has been radicalized by being a mother and fears the psychotic notion being promoted by the left.   She made the point she has not changed, “still anti-pharma, anti-censorship and anti-Cheney.”  (I am beginning to think that many Americans have joined her on being anti-pharma and anti-Cheney but as Ms. Phetasy noted, many younger Americans favor censorship regime.)

Ms. Phetasy may be part of a new movement that is moving the present right to the center and making it the movement not of ideology  but of common sense.  Jennifer Sey sacrificed her job at Levi to protest the school closing  and  other insane covid pandemic policies.  For Sey it is about free speech.  Elon Musk is a man who donated to the Democratic Party in the past, but he is also a futurist who looks to explore space and take humanity to places unknown.  He believes in America and rejects the zero-sum thinking that permeates much of our leadership class.   Alex Berenson has been the victim of censorship by the social media colluding with the Biden Administration and knows what is at stake. 

While Musk has been on the Trump bandwagon full tilt,  Jennifer Sey, Bridget Phetasy, and Alex Berenson are people who are not Trumpian but understand America is off the track and govern by a reckless leadership class that keeps an open border to allow everyone and anyone including gangsters and possible terrorist into the country and gets involved in wars they have no clue how to end while putting the world on razor end.  This leadership class thinks eliminating the combustible engine is a great idea while forcing us to buy electric vehicles that are both inferior and more expensive.  We live in a world that has abandoned the idea we should be judged on our content of our character and not by the color of our skin.   Trump is the imperfect vehicle with many flaws which is why I supported Ron DeSantis in the Iowa Caucus, but Trump is what we have presently standing in the way of civilizational decline.  It is that simple

Donald Trump has called for an “iron dome” for America and for those who wonder what President Trump means, for those of us who remember the original Reagan vision of defending America, it is the Strategic Defense Initiative.

In 1983, when Ronald Reagan proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, his opponents called it star wars with disdain. One United States Senator spoke at the National Press club in 1986, “Star Wars represents a fundamental assault on the concepts, alliances and arms-control agreements that have buttressed American security for several decades, and the president’s continued adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”  When Iranian attacked Israel with missile, this Senator found himself working with Israel to knock down those missiles.  Yes, Joe Biden should be thankful to Ronald Reagan for his foresight.

 In 1988, I ran a congressional campaign in Missouri 5^th district and my candidate, Mary Ellen Lobb, reviewed data on SDI and as we talked about the concept and how to use it in the election she insisted that we must include regional powers about Iran. Ms. Lobb was prophetic about the importance of SDI, and it use against Iran. This was 1988. 

Israel realized the importance of missile defense and within two years of Reagan announcement, Israel began working with the United States and this past weekend, the world watched in real time how SDI worked in protecting Israel population.   While United States didn’t develop a space-based system, the technology has put together an arsenal of ground, air, and sea based interceptors and Israel developed an iron dome to protect the population from short range missile along with David’s sling protection includes medium range missiles and the Arrow 2 and 3 hit missiles at high attitudes.  

Now that we have a  spaced based force, it should be obvious that a space-based system will protect American population from missiles but maybe also protects our satellites as well.  It is time to review the Reagan years for on many issues, Reagan was ahead of the game and SDI was one area.  He understood that keeping a world on the edge of mutual destruction was not the long-term strategy, but SDI allowed something different, a defense against missiles.

Israel has showed the ability to protect their population and shown how SDI does have a role in future of the warfare when defending the homeland.  

Over past two decades, North Korea and Iran are expanding their missile capability and moving forward with their nuclear program.   North Korea goal is to modernize their missile capability to be able to reach North America and Iran is working on the ability to strike at Europe and much of the Middle East.  Russian invasion of Ukraine and its abandonment of nuclear arms control has shown that Putin is not interested any kind mutual relationship with the West and their present stockpiles is larger than the United States and China is aggressively expanding it own size of nuclear arsenal and will achieve numerical parity with the United States over the next decade.

Russia and China seek to destabilize their world order, and their neighbors are under threat of invasion, engage in both nuclear expansions including coercion so it is time to review Donald Trump Iron dome including hypersonic missiles. The Trump Iron Dome must evolve into a suitable missile defense that reaches for the next 30 to 40 years to include not just threats from North Korea and Iran but also China and Russia. 

The present war in the Ukraine war and Israel battle with Hamas has shown the efficacy and potential of missile defense and how incorporating layer defenses to not just stay ahead of Iran and North Korea as well as well stopping any low escalation pathway to Russia and China.   The Trump Iron Dome is continuation of Reagan original vision of SDI, a defense of the American people

Was 2016 Trump’s foreign policy a return to realpolitik based on a balance-of-power view of the world and would 2024 Trump foreign policy continue this phrase or even a return of a more modest foreign policy. In 2016,  Michael Barone noted, “Some will dismiss his appointments and tweets as expressing no more than the impulses of an ignorant and undisciplined temperament — no more premeditated than the lunges of a rattlesnake. Others may recall that similar things were said (by me, as well as many others) about his campaign strategy. But examination of the entrails of the election returns suggests that Trump was following a deliberate strategy based on shrewd insight when he risked antagonizing white college-educated voters in the process of appealing to non-college-educated whites.”

Historian and Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson viewed Trump’s foreign policy as an extension of Henry Kissinger’s worldview. He observed, “A world run by regional great powers with strong men in command, all of whom understand that any lasting international order must be based on the balance of power.”

 Trump took a congratulatory call for his election victory from Taiwan’s president. Tsai Ing-wen. The first visit to Trump Tower after the election was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; this sent a message that China would not be allowed to operate in the Western Pacific unchallenged and Trump would work with our allies. Trump also appointed Terry Branstad, the governor of Iowa, as the ambassador to China. Branstad first met Xi Jinping in 1985. Barone viewed the appointment as a “bad cop, good cop” move.  He observed, “Trump wants some changes in trade relations with China and limits on its probes in the South China Sea and will build up U.S. military forces. But there’s room for acceptance of China as a great power. Trump wants some changes in trade relations with China and limits on its probes in the South China Sea and will build up U.S. military forces.”  This was eight years ago but you can see that Trump was moving toward a new policy with emphasis on the Chinese threat.

As for dealing with Russia, Barone added, “There’s room for acceptance of Russia, too, as suggested by the secretary-of-state nomination of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, self-proclaimed friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s. He may be opposed by Republican senators who, like Mitt Romney in 2012, see Russia as “our No. 1 geopolitical foe.” But perhaps Trump favors Kissinger’s proposal for a neutral and decentralized (i.e., dominated and partitioned) Ukraine, with an end to sanctions on Russia. Tillerson would be a good choice if that were your goal. This would make the Baltic States and Poland understandably nervous, but they could take some comfort in Trump’s reaffirmation of our NATO pledge to defend them and in the fact that Pentagon nominee James Mattis has gone out of his way to honor Estonia for its sacrifices in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The irony that Barone was not entirely correct as Trump proved tougher on Putin than the Obama-Biden administration ever was, and people tend to forget that Putin chose to first invade Ukraine in 2014 during the Obama administration and Obama did nothing.  The irony is that both Russia and United States were signature to the Budapest agreement in which both countries guarantee Ukraine sovereignty as long as Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.  Obama viewed Ukraine not in our national interest, but Obama at least threaten sanctions and Putin decided to bide his time to go after the rest of Ukraine.  He waited until Biden took office and the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and Biden hint that depending upon how far Putin moved in Ukraine.  Ukraine was a war that should not never happened, and Putin viewed Biden as weak and Biden would follow Obama policy that Ukraine was not truly in United States interest but Biden and NATO armed Ukraine to defend itself and this is where we are. 

Trump’s criticism of NATO included his view that NATO member states should contribute more toward their own defenses.  As Michael Barone noted, “Finance ministers, stung by Trump’s campaign criticisms, are ponying up more money to meet their NATO defense-spending commitments; German chancellor Angela Merkel is backing down from her disastrous decision to welcome 1 million refugees.”  No one debates this now, but they did in 2016.

Brexit was the first break in the European Union’s dominance of the continent. While Obama threatened Britain with being sent to the “back of the queue” if they voted to leave the EU, Trump supported Brexit and a possible future U.S-U.K. free trade agreement which has yet to occur.  Brexit could be the first step toward the formation of the Anglosphere an alliance of English-speaking nations that would support Trump’s “America First” view of the world.   But with the recent defeat of conservative and Labour Party accession to power may  delay this and maybe the present British government may look back to the EU.

In the Middle East, Trump ditched Iranian deal and boosted the Sunni-Israeli alliance against increasing Iranian influence through various peace agreements between Sunni states and Israel.   While Trump may pay less lip service to human rights, the reality is that Obama also paid lip service to human rights. 

Niall Ferguson noted, “Yet it was Trump who in August (2016) pledged that his Administration would “speak out against the oppression of women, gays and people of different faith” in the name of Islam. While the Obama Administration has shunned proponents of Islamic reform, Trump pledged to “be a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, and [to] amplify their voices. This includes speaking out against the horrible practice of honor killings,” as well as establishing as “one of my first acts as President . . . a Commission on Radical Islam which will include reformist voices in the Muslim community.”

Ferguson’s point is that Trump did not make human rights a central theme of his foreign policy but his policy against Iran in the Middle East and China did more to advance human rights than the Obama/Biden administration did or Biden/Harris administration.  President Obama often talked about the importance of human rights, but the Obama administration often ignored helping the truly suffering. His Syria policy may be responsible for the death of a half million Syrians, not to mention the thousands of people who died in Iraq and other Middle East nations because of Obama’s reckless policies.

In 1982, Herman Kahn wrote The Coming Boom, in which he foresaw the economic prosperity of the Reagan years and a new world order that included the rise of regional powers and new challenges to the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the U.S.S.R.  Kahn thought that a multipolar world would eventually stabilize but the era before stabilization could be chaotic.  Kahn’s predictions proved to be accurate.

Kahn saw the rise of China, Japan, and Germany as powers.   Today, Germany is the leading European economic power and Russia is working on expanding its sphere of influence within Central Europe while reestablishing Russian nationalism and a new Russian Empire.  China is working on being a Pacific power and both Russia and China look to check American power. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the United States was the lone superpower, but Russia, China, Germany, and India are now looking for their own place in the world as global powers.  The rise of these countries signifies that we live in a multipolar world.  Russia is now working with China and BRICS nations are now challenging the Dollar primacy as the main world currency.  Iran is moving toward being the leading Regional power in Middle East and hopes to use it power to eliminate Israel. 

The Trump Administration’s goal was to challenge our loyalty to transnational organizations, beginning with the United Nations.  If one is serious about foreign policy, you can’t be serious about the United Nations, but if you are serious about the United Nations, you can’t be serious about foreign policy. When Obama failed to veto a UN resolution condemning Israel after the 2016 election, this reminded many Americans and most Republicans of the anti-American and anti-Israeli attitude of much of the United Nations. Obama’s support of the Iran nuclear deal allowed Iran to increase their influence in the Middle East and Biden revising the deal once again allowed Iran to be a threat to our influence and to Israel.  The one thing that Obama/Biden/Harris failed to ask why

Lawrence Sondhaus in his book World War One: The Global Revolution discussed the debate about the U.S. joining the League of Nations and how the Republicans in the Senate failed to ratify Woodrow Wilson’s vision of transnational collective security. Sondhaus observed that while Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge opposed the League of Nations, he favored an active foreign policy that defended American interests in a way like what President Theodore Roosevelt followed during his administration. Lodge supported a separate treaty that promised France that the United States and Great Britain would defend her, since Lodge perceived this treaty as being in our national interest.  Wilson’s refusal to separate the debate over whether America should join the League of Nations from the issue of America signing the Versailles Treaty doomed United States support for the Versailles Treaty.  A similar debate will soon begin about America’s involvement in transnational organizations such as the United Nations and whether it is in our national interest to stay in or at least be as active in these organizations as in the past. Trump ‘s “America first” foreign policy didn’t mean isolationism, but a foreign policy that defends America’s interest first. 

Trump was a good ally of Israel and did what others have promised but didn’t do: move the US embassy to Jerusalem. While the professional diplomatic class stated that the move would prove disastrous, it not only didn’t prove disastrous, but it didn’t even stop Trump’s biggest diplomatic coup, the Abraham Accords which allied Sunni Arabs with Israel.   Trump didn’t just ditch the Iran deal, but also designed the Abraham Accords as a strategic architecture to counter Iranian influence.  The accords tied the interest of Sunni Arabs and Israel to counter, the Iranian threat. Prior to the Trump administration, Palestinians had veto power over American policy toward Israel.  Trump’s solution was to expand our national interest in the Middle East beyond the Palestinians conflict with Israel.  Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, and Trump made sure the Palestinians did not get into the way of America’s effort to counter  the rise of Iran,  a direct result of the Obama-Biden Iranian nuclear deal, one of many bad foreign policy decisions made by the Obama-Biden administration. Biden revised the Iranian deal, and it has proven to be a disaster like much of Biden foreign policy.  Iran, short on cash when Biden took over, is now flush with cash to support terrorism in the Middle East.  The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7^th and the expansion of attacks on Northern Israel by Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy.  While Biden said all the right things, there is no doubt that Biden/Harris are pushing for a cease fire that allows Hamas to stay in power and keep the war from expanding in the North. If Biden/Harris team get their way, Israel will have Iranian proxy on their border and Yemon is becoming another Iranian proxy on Saudi Arabia border and threatening shipping in the Red Sea.  Biden/Harris foreign policy is proving even more a disaster as the Obama/Biden policy proved to be. Biden’s energy policy. Imposing new restrictions on American oil and gas production and distribution, plays into the hands of our enemies and OPEC, and reducing our options in the Middle East.  The real problem of the Biden administration is that it is filled with former members of the Obama administration whose Middle East policies proved to be a disaster to our national interest, a Harris administration will be no difference. 

Trump confronted Chinese Communist Party efforts for military dominance, advocated for pro-democracy activists and persecuted minorities. and. Most importantly leading a fight against Beijing’s efforts to export authoritarian models, including adopting technological censorship the coopting of other nations’ elites and institution including our own.  Our foreign policy establishment has given special accommodations in trade, with the idea of exporting our values. But the Chinese are also exporting their values.  Big Tech’s censorship of conservative thoughts copies the Chinese social media’s own censorship of its citizens Confucius Institutes impacts China’s history is taught in our Universities.

One of the defenders of the old view of China was Joe Biden, whose families also benefitted from deals in China while he served as vice-president.  The question is whether Biden has learned anything.  At the beginning of his administration, there was no real deviation from Trump’s foreign policies. How long this last is questionable, since the people Biden put in place to oversee in his foreign policy were. in the past was part of the old Chinese policy.  During the election, Biden conceded that China was our biggest competitor, but that Russia was our bigger threat.  Before he left office, Trump imposed visa restrictions on individuals involved in their connections to foreign influence as well as limiting the length of visas for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to one month.

As National Review observed, “These narrowly tailored visa restrictions alleviated concerns that an all-encompassing ban on the CCP’s more than 90 million members from entering the United States would sweep up ordinary people. Instead, this approach targets Party leaders, immediate family, and those who truly pose a threat. Contrary to Democrats’ claims that such visa restrictions are racist and xenophobic, they demonstrate solidarity with the people of China against those most responsible for the ruling regime’s human-rights atrocities.” [i]Note that many Democrats view any restriction on Chinese diplomats as racist, which demonstrates how much many within our leadership class have absorbed Chinese values.   Acting as if challenging China hegemony is racist is nonsense, since the Chinese are this century’s National Socialist/Fascist regime.  An important goal of American foreign policy is to strengthen our alliance against China.  The Biden administration be challenged by a more aggressive China and any alliance against China will depend on how our allies view American strength.

In the 1990’s, a good friend told me about a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Empire that he was surprised how communism ended up as National Socialism.  The Hitler of today is President Xi.

China has concentration camps that hold millions, they use social media to control the population and President Xi is the Big Brother of our time. There is no liberty in China, and while the CCP allows profits to be made, the state controls every “private” enterprise.  It is state corporatism, and China controls business as tightly as Hitler did in Germany and Mussolini did in Italy.  OK? China views itself as the new center of the universe, with all nations bow to Beijing.  While I don’t view China’s, National socialism means conquering nations, there is one exception:  to ensure that Chinese Communist ideology reigns supreme, freedom in Hong Kong and Taiwan must be crushed. 

What will a world be like if China was the most powerful country? It would be a poorer and less free world.  We will see what will happen when other nations or groups of nations copy China’s national socialism.  We will see more of own elites discuss their admiration of China the way Michael Bloomberg, for example, stated in the 2020 Democratic primary that “Well, it’s a question of what is a dictator. They don’t have a democracy in the sense that they have general elections. That is true. They do have a system where a small group of people appoints the head. And they churn over periodically. If you go back and look at the last two or three decades, there have been a number of people that have had the same position that Xi Jinping has.” But if China becomes the number one power, this means the United States will decline in economic power, and the freedom we take for granted will slowly disappear.

Trump’s foreign policy team has put an alliance in place, the Quad partnership between Australia, India, Japan and United States. which was originally conceived in 2007 before being disbanded in 2008. This is becoming the nucleus of a multilateral response to Chinese moves into the Indian and Pacific Oceans.  We are looking at moving from the demands of competition into a direct conflict with Beijing.   AEI scholar H. W. Brands, noted, “Well into Barack Obama’s presidency, U.S. cyber posture featured, with some very important exceptions, an emphasis on cultivating norms of restraint in this emerging domain of competition. The problem was that these norms were shared mostly by friendly democracies, but not by hostile autocracies…Russia and China, along with North Korea and Iran, have used cyberspace as an arena for hacking, espionage, and political meddling. Since 2017, U.S. Cyber Command has shifted to a more aggressive strategy featuring “persistent engagement” and “forward defense” — getting inside rivals’ networks and using disruptive action, or at least the threat of it, to keep them off balance.” 

Trump’s policies, from energy policies and the Abraham Accords to the Quad alliances recalibrated foreign policy towards more traditional goals. Donald Trump s administration brought back realpolitik, in which our country’s foreign policy will be based on America’s national interest. Idealism will no longer be a reason to send young Americans into combat. but defending our national interest will. 

The weakness of the European Union is not the lack of creativity on the part of their people but the political institutions in place retard growth.  Even in older European countries such as France and Germany, entrepreneurs are frustrated by bureaucratic inertia.  In the United States, the Obama administration placed countless obstacles in the path of economic growth and Biden’s economic plan is even worse when it came to planning new obstacles to entrepreneurship, following the failed EU policies.  One solution for American foreign policy makers is the development of the Anglosphere. James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus in their book America 3.0 saw the end of the bureaucratic state, or what they call “the end of America 2.0,” and return to a smaller and more decentralized “America 3.0.” Bennett and Lotus begin with a brief history of how we got to where we are at present, as we moved from being an agricultural America 1.0 to an industrial America 2.0.   What Bennett and Lotus present is not just a roadmap toward a new America over the next25 years, but a new foreign policy based on the alliance of the Anglosphere nations: United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.   We are not yet close to America 3.0 that Bennett and Lotus envisioned, we do see an opportunity that Republican governors like Ron DeSantis move their states forward and as DeSantis showed in 2020, Republicans can move their own agenda in the face of obstacles imposed by a pandemic.  This could be the beginning of an attack on the bureaucratic state and a second Trump administration could see an direct assault of the Administrative state

Bennett and Lotus trace our roots and our desire for liberty and individualism back before 1776 to the Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century after the fall of the Roman Empire.  Our culture has two thousand years of history, and our desire for liberty is inherited.  One thing that scholars see as a sign of progress is the nuclear family with individuals, not parents, selecting their spouse.  The beginning of freedom for women began when this happened, and children left their parents’ home and no longer belonged to extended families. From there, they made their own wealth and expanded the economic pie.

The question is whether we can move to an America 3.0 without a complete collapse.  The authors say this can happen.  They present a libertarian vision that includes the elimination of the federal income tax and dramatically reducing federal government power, but they still support a defensive posture that includes maintaining our present alliances, along with federal protections for civil rights.  So, while the authors questioned much of our foreign policy for the past decade and their criticism mirrored Trump’s, they don’t call for the non-interventionist policy . On domestic policy, they see many of our social problems being created by the federal government and foreseeing many states forming regional compacts on policies like health care.  While many conservatives and libertarians may not agree with their vision, Bennett and Lotus present both a domestic and foreign policy alternative that can be synergistic with Trump Populism and Reagan conservatism.  

While European are building a bureaucratic, centralized European Union, the Anglosphere nations are for most part suspicious of top-down super state institutions and instead as Bennett and Lotus state, “promote more and stronger cooperative institutions, not to build some English-speaking super state on the European Union, or to annex Britain, Canada or Australia to the United States but rather to protect the English-speaking nations’ common values from external and internal fantasies.” Brexit gives us the first opening to build the Anglosphere and tie Great Britain to the United States and move away from the bureaucratic European Union, which may be beginning its own implosion.

Who is part of the Anglosphere? Author James Bennett and Michael J. Lotus answer, “Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the United States and Great Britain, while Anglosphere regions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa are powerful and populous outliers. The educated English-speaking populations of the Caribbean, Oceania, Africa and India constitute the Anglosphere’s frontiers.”[ii]

Former Margaret Thatcher’s advisor John O’Sullivan has called for an American policy that is pro-American while undermining the European Union super state.  The present German government has is attempting to use the European Union as a tool for its own economic hegemony over Europe. Germany needs to tie Central Europe to modern Europe and many Central Europeans want an American presence in Europe to safeguard their security, not just from the European Union dominated by Germany but a resurgent Russia to their east. 

In the nations that form the Anglosphere, Bennett and Lotus note, “The market economy is more than the absence of socialism. It is more than the absence of interventionist government; it is the economic expression of a strong civil society; just as substantive democracy is the political expression of a civil society and civic state.” [iii]While there is no rule that democracy and the market economy need to exist side by side, they often do.  What matters is a civil society and understanding that government is but one player in society and part of a greater society.  Religion, charities, and corporations of varied sizes as well as political parties are all players in society, and all interact with one another.   A strong civil society sees individuals creating and working in a variety of enterprises, but the Left’s attack on this civil society is threatening the foundations of our country.

For the Anglosphere nations, strong civic societies had their roots in medieval Europe.   James C. Bennett and Michael Lotus contend that in the Middle Ages, particularly in England, the modern-day society was built upon mix of “tribal, feudal, local, church family and state institutions” [iv] and the lack of a single overwhelming power capable of dominating. a nation.  From the Magna Carta, English princes and barons made it clear to the crown that they had rights and this ideal became rooted in English custom and eventually made its way across the Atlantic.  When civil society is strong, government can be limited to specific duties since welfare can be provided privately as well as publicly. 

James C. Bennett and Michael Lotus do not yet consider India formally part of the Anglosphere but for the Anglosphere to dominate the 21st century, India must become part of the alliance.  They write, “In such a commonwealth (Anglosphere), should the Indian choose to engage it, it may well be that Bangalore becomes a major center of the Anglosphere in thirty- or fifty-years’ time.  Anglospherists do not fear this, knowing that just as London is still great today because it shares an Anglosphere with New York and Los Angeles, it and the American metropolises will be great tomorrow partly because they might share it with Bangalore.”[v]

 Indian writer Gurcharan Das remembers attending Henry Kissinger’s lectures at Harvard in the early 1960’s and listening to Kissinger point out that Nehru was a dreamer and “it is dangerous to put dreamers in power.” Kissinger’s own views on Nehru may have been misplaced and he admitted it in his most recent book on diplomacy.   Nehru was not an idealist and certainly not a pacifist like Gandhi.  When force was needed, Nehru was prepared to use it. Four wars with Pakistan, including the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, constant combat with China, and pushing the Portuguese out of Goa showed that India was not afraid of using military force.  What Kissinger called a foreign policy of dreamers was a serious attempt to buy time for the new nation, residing as it does next to belligerent neighbors.   Kissinger’s own opinion from his Harvard days changed when he stated, “India’s conduct during the Cold War was not so different from that of the United States in its formative decades.” The difference is that in the United States’ formative years, there was an ocean between America and Europe. India, on the other hand, is in a region populated by vipers and political rivals. 

The United States, as the leader of NATO and the premier Western power, has inherited the traditional British interest in ensuring that no one single nation dominates the Eurasian landmass.  India, also, has co-opted policy from its former English master.  In 1934 Britain designed a plan to stabilize the Sino-Indian border and to dominate the Indian Ocean from Aden to Singapore.  India’s present naval building effort reflects those same objectives.  Like the United States, India does not want to see an Islamic fundamentalist revolution sweep through the Middle East.  As China grows in strength and challenges the United States in the Far East, China also threatens India at her northern borders and through the sea-lanes including the Indian Ocean. India is crucial in both the development of alternatives to China’s authoritarian state but also the expansion of the Anglosphere vision of the world.  Trump made progress toward moving India toward our circle and the question is whether Biden’s foreign policy team is smart enough to follow through this alliance or even understand its advantages

An America First policy should begin with the formation of the Anglosphere defense alliance, while adding additional allies against common foes.  It also means to recognize what is in our national interest and what is not, to ensure that our resources are not wasted on nation-building but making sure we can project force when our national interest is at stake.   America First is not isolationism, but a view that we do have our national interest. and we don’t surrender our national identity and policy to transnational organizations.  The Paris climate accord is an example of an agreement to avoid, as we would have put our economic and energy plans at the mercy of transnational organizations that would have reduced our ability to prosper. Even the supporters of the Paris Accord couldn’t present evidence that it would reduce global warming.  John Kerry views himself the master of the deal when it comes to climate change, but the Paris Accord is allowing China and India to delay their own efforts to reduce emissions while we are committed to doing it now.

 If anything, the return of John Kerry to power as the climate czar before leaving to help with 2024 demonstrated the failure of the leadership class.  Kerry’s career in the Senate was at best mediocre, He failed in his 2004 presidential bid, and his tenure as Secretary of State was part of the worst foreign policy team in the post-World II era.   As the new climate czar, he will prove equally unequal to the task, as he has in the past. 

A Republican foreign policy will put our foreign policy in our hands, instead of in the hands of transnational organizations, and will protect our national interest in a multipolar world. 

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Donald Trump has always been an enigma for many conservatives as we still wrestling with his legacy. His accomplishments from his first administration  were significant, and, in most eras, he would be viewed as a significant President.  His economic plan lifted Americans incomes including those at the bottom, his Middle East policy managed to ally Sunni Arabs with Israel, and his recognition of China as a global adversary would have meant a shift in foreign policy if he won re-election.  Then there was the Trump who refused to concede the election until January 6^th, when the Capitol riot occurred. Trump’s propensity for controversial statements and tweets antagonized many Americans and he certainly didn’t always behave “presidentially.”  As we approach the election day, he is locked in a tense fight with Kamala Harris, a political hack of no accomplishments.

In my book, The Rise of National Populism and Democratic Socialism, What Our Response Should Be, I compared Trump to Herbert Hoover, another businessman who became President. In 1929, Herbert Hoover became President.  Before becoming President, Herbert Hoover’s reputation was that of a self-made millionaire and brilliant manager and served as Secretary of Commerce in the Harding and Coolidge Administrations and to many voters he was the Great Engineer who would bring his business expertise to government.  While much of Hoover’s reputation was that of a conservative, the reality was that Hoover was a progressive Republican when he ran in 1928.  My father once reminded me that much of the New Deal began under Herbert Hoover and his run for President in 1928 emphasized his business expertise and his managerial skills, which included his efforts in heading the American Relief Administration, which relieved the hunger of more than 200 million people In Europe from 1918 through 1922.

Hoover was a disciple of the Efficiency Movement, which sought to eliminate waste throughout the economy and society.  This movement played an essential role in the Progressive era in the United States.  The theory began that society and government would be better if experts fixed national problems once they were identified.  Hoover felt comfortable with the Progressive movement.  I bring Hoover up since Trump’s original campaign was like the Hoover appeal– a businessman who will run government by bringing in the best experts.  Trump doesn’t talk about “reducing the size and role of government” but talks of managing the present government better.

In her biography, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, author Joan Hoff Wilson described Hoover’s economic thinking:

“The version of Hoover presented in the media’s narrative of Hoover as champion of laissez faire bears little resemblance to the details of Hoover’s life, the ideas he held, and the policies he adopted as president.  Where the classical economists like Adam Smith had argued for uncontrolled competition between independent economic units guided only by the invisible hand of supply and demand, he talked about voluntary national economic planning arising from cooperation between business interests and the government . . ..  Instead of negative government action in times of depression, he advocated the expansion of public works, avoidance of wage cuts, increased rather than decreased production—measures that would expand rather than contract purchasing power.”

St. Lawrence University economist Steve Horwitz added, “Hoover was also a long-time critic of international free trade, and favored increased inheritance taxes, public dams, and, significantly, government regulation of the stock market.  This was not the program of a devotee of laissez faire, and he was determined to use the Commerce Department to implement it.”  Trump, like Hoover, opposes international free trade and in the past talked of surtaxes on the rich.  The similarity between the progressive Hoover and the progressive Trump were eerie to many of us in 2015 and through the 2016 primary.

I theorized that Trump’s model of Republicanism would be like Hoover’s and Richard Nixon’s.  Nixon was a statist as president, including creating new bureaucracies like the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency as well as wage and price controls.  Nixon’s goal was to make government work for the Middle Class and his supporters – his silent majority.  However, Trump broke more toward Reagan on domestic policy, except for his trade policies, which closely resembled the GOP of the 1920’s.   Trump’s goal was to make government work for the middle class, those who were left behind over the past two decades.  Trump’s policies benefitted minorities and those at the bottom as those at the bottom and minorities saw their income go up until the pandemic. The pandemic sent much of the middle class, lower class, and minorities income lower and for wiping out the gains many made during Trump’s first three years as president. 

Richard Nixon’s own economic policies, along with the paralysis of the Watergate scandal, led to the recession of 1973-75 and to the stagflation of the 1970’s, which included slow or no growth along with high inflation at the end of the decade under Jimmy Carter.   It wasn’t until the Reagan years that the back of inflation was broken.  After, we saw more than two decades of economic growth resulting in a rise of income for the middle class that continued during the Clinton administration, but it was the supply side economics of Reagan that shook America out of lethargy.  Reagan faced a different challenge, raging inflation and high marginal tax rates that was sucking many in the middle class into higher tax brackets.  Today, the marginal tax rates are considerably lower to go with recent Trump reductions of corporate taxes. Even the highest Biden corporate tax rates will still be lower than what they were before Trump lowered the rate. (Biden’s corporate tax rates would place the United States near the highest in the developed world. And Harris wealth tax on multimillionaires will add an extra taxation that will tax unrealized gains and hurt future investment.  Harris plan will take Biden plan and make it worse.)

While many Trump supporters tried to compare their guy to Reagan [i]throughout the 2016 election, there are significant differences.  Unlike Trump and Hoover, Reagan was an accomplished politician who had been on the political scene for decades and had already run for president once.  Before that, he was a well- known actor and even as an actor, he had a keen interest in politics. Before Reagan became president, he had been fighting for conservative ideals for three decades and understood the political process as well as the ideas behind them.  Kiron Skinner, Annelise Skinner and the late Martin Anderson’s own research confirmed his substantive knowledge of the issues by reviewing and publishing many of his diaries and other private writings.

In 1967, Reagan was invited to be part of a debate with Robert F Kennedy on American foreign policy and destroyed him and eleven years later, many felt he won a debate with Bill Buckley on whether the U.S. should withdraw from the Panama Canal Zone.  These two debates showed he had the ability to go toe to toe with some of the best debaters of his era.

There is one similarity between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump is that both were consistently underrated. Trump in 2016 as a debater succeeded with his attitude, not on what he knew.  The four words, “Make America Great Again,” exhibits Trump’s mindset. He wanted to reverse the decline he saw just Reagan wanted to reverse the decline he saw in 1980.  In the 1980’s the Soviet Empire appeared on the rise, and we were dealing with double digit inflations with many wondering if the American dream was slipping away.  Another similarity with Reagan and Trump is that both reached blue-collar workers.  In 1980, these voters were called Reagan Democrats. Now they are called Trump Republicans.

How often have we heard what a great dealmaker Trump is?  How many people will remember that Reagan was a master of negotiations?  When Trump during the election made the case that Reagan worked with Tip O’ Neill, he did not remember Reagan did not deal with Tip O’ Neill, he dealt against O’Neill by working with moderate Democrats to get much of his budget and tax policies passed.  Reagan had a Democratic majority in the House plus heavy opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate.  Many moderate Republicans were against his economic plans, and he did not deal with O’Neill.  Instead, he dealt with many of the moderate and conservative Democrats and went around O’Neill as well as much of the Senate Republican leadership who were not sold on his “supply side” economics. 

Reagan’s deal making with the Russians was exemplary, but Reagan’s success is that he dealt from strength.  The nuclear freeze was in full force during his first administration as the left were trying to undermine his military buildup by keeping America from putting Pershing missiles into Europe to counter the Soviet SS-20.  Reagan’s first goal was to rebuild the military before dealing with the Russians and to wait for the right moment to call for arms reductions on both sides.  That moment did not come until Mikhail Gorbachev took over the Soviet empire in 1985. During his second term., Reagan successfully negotiated the removal of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in both Europe and Russia in 1987 because the year before, he walked out of the Reykjavik conference on nuclear arms reduction.  Reagan’s policy set the stage for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Reagan walked into the White House with a worldview and a plan to go with that worldview.   Unlike Reagan, Trump did not have a history of consistent ideology when he entered the White House, and he supported Economic nationalism and consistent supporters of protectionism. This was shown in his cabinet appointments, as he selected conservatives such as Rick Perry and Scott Pruitt but others just as Steve Mnuchin were outsiders. Trump appointments come from all factions of the Republican Party and in the case of Mnuchin, a political novice with no public record as a political activist other than his donations, mostly to Democrats. Trump’s ideology was originally based on Trump’s personal brand, divorced from a consistent worldview.  While Reagan began his career as a Democrat, his move to the right aligned with his movement toward traditional Republican values. Trump did show that he belonged to the right as his court appointments, tax and regulation policies showed. His foreign policy was the more modest approach that George W. Bush ran on in 2000 before 9/11. His view of “America First” was not isolationism as much as ensuring that American interests came first and that included an energy plan that allowed America through fracking to challenge OPEC as the leading producers of oil natural gas and oil and having our allies pay their fair share of their own defense.  (When Trump took office, many NATO countries were not fulfilling their bare minimum 2 percent of defense spending including Germany, the leading economic power in Europe.) NATO began increasing their defense budget during the Trump administration and continued during the Biden years as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Throughout the 2016 election, Trump’s two signature issues were immigration and trade. He exploited the yawning gap between the views of the elites in both parties and the public on these issues.  He feasted on the public discontent over a government that can’t be bothered to enforce its own laws on immigration no matter how many times it says it will.   With the Biden Administration’s first steps in reversing border security of Trump years, this only reinforced the political class willingness to obliterate our borders and open the tap of illegal immigrants coming into the country. While Kamala Harris may pretend that she is tough on the border, the reality she was the border czar, and the border went undefended from unfettered illegal immigrations.

 Nixon ran in 1968 on behalf of the silent majority who were overtaxed, whose sons were fighting in Vietnam and who witnessed crime going up.  Nixon ran a law-and-order campaign and when he governed, he expanded the welfare state in his first term while giving us the Environmental Protection Agency.  His goal was to rein in the bureaucratic state and create a conservative big government that worked for the middle class.  He did not reduce government spending or the power of the administrative state.

Like Nixon, Trump ran on a law-and-order platform, including standing up for a new generation of forgotten Americans, many of whom fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And as 2020 showed, the left’s attempt to defund the police and cut budgets across the country only increased crime, much of it in urban centers. 

Trump in his own way succeeded in doing what others claim conservatives needed to do.  He significantly increased GOP vote totals among minorities.  Only George W, Bush and Ronald Reagan outperformed Trump’s vote totals among Hispanics in 2020 and Trump’s Black votes percentages were higher than both men and only Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford exceeded Trump percentages with blacks since 1972. While exit polls had Trump at 12 percent among Blacks, one post-election poll had Trump support among Blacks at 18%. At least 1,500,000 more Blacks and Hispanics voted for Trump in 2020 than 2016. 

Trump’s failure was his inability to get to over 50% plus and after two election cycles, his coalition was stuck at 47%. One factor that hurt Trump was the collapsed of Third Parties with Libertarians going from 3.5% to 1 %.  He increased his numbers among minorities and that in previous elections would have been enough to secure victory, but he lost ground among college educated whites, in particular college educated men.  The question that remains is how much of that was due to their disdain for his personality and how much was due to his policies.  We will find out in 2024 but on issues like immigrations and fighting for the middle class, Harris campaign has borrowed openly from their opponent.  Trump view on immigration is now mainstream and his opponent has conceded it by essentially pretending the immigration policy over the previous four years didn’t exist.

Trump’s influence on the party is significant for he built a new coalition of attracting many poorer and blue-collar whites to the Republican flag and his game plan for developing support among minorities is showing fruit.  Trump did what we at Americas PAC have suggested, build a coalition around rural and blue-collar whites while adding significant numbers of minorities.  His biggest failure was suburban America in 2020.  In 2016, Trump had a four percent lead in the suburbs but in 2020, he lost the suburban vote by two percent, a six-point swing.  The coalition is within reach of a Republican victory, but it entails finding a politician who can woo the suburban vote while keeping Trump Republicans loyal to the G.O.P. and make further inroads among minorities. These issues remain in 2024 and the constant lawfare campaign waged by the Biden/Harris administration and many local Democrats prosecutors in many blue locations just as Atlanta and New York.  Is Trump the right messenger, that is what 2024 will show.   

The battle to see Trump punished will continue on a state level and New York City and Biden’s Justice Department will certainly carry on their own jihad against Trump and his family after the 2024 election and if Harris wins, this continues and will most likely expand against other Republicans and conservative. There is a precedence for this as Franklin Roosevelt pursued members of the Hoover administration—and. in particular Andrew Mellon– legally and modern-day Democratic Party is even more nasty, and Joe Biden is not losing sleep over his DOJ or some state attorney general pursuing the Trump family until they find something to jail him or members of his family or bankrupt them nor will Harris.  For many Democrats, Trump was an affront to them, and it is their attention to wipe out any aspect of Trumpism. 

Trumpism is part of the conservative movement, and the GOP and conservatives need to understand that for their own future success and for the sake of the country, a synergy between Trump populism and Reagan conservatism is not only within reach but also a necessity.

There is no place for a “never-Trumper” movement within the conservative coalition directed at his supporters but an acceptance that they are integral part of the coalition without which the GOP and conservative’s movement can survive.  The never Trumper movement should have ended in 2016 after the primary for obvious reasons, –the Democrats were far worse and still are.  Biden and a future Harris Administration has already proven along with much of the leadership class that they intend to institute a socialist regime that threatens the very fabric of our society.  Trump may have his weaknesses, but he is preferable to Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic Party.   As I detailed in my book, The Rise of National Populism and Democratic Socialism, the Democratic Party is now the socialist party of America. But the fundamental question remains:, what about the GOP and the conservative movement?. Where do we go from here?

In 2014, before the “Trump coalition” was formed, Americas PAC which I lead campaigned in Illinois.  Republicans made a strong showing when they took the governor’s seat, and two congressional seats and Senator Dick Durbin was held to 53% of the vote against weak competition.  Throughout the campaign, we ran ads that argued that rising government spending and debt reduced voters’ economic opportunities, and these ads succeeded in persuading voters to vote for Republicans.  Voters, our customers, knew that the Obama economic plan produced eight years of stagnation and that they no longer benefitted from Democratic policies. In 2016, the rise of Donald Trump showed that many Republicans didn’t even trust their own party to follow through on producing opportunities to succeed. So, they nominated an outsider.

For years, Democrats have been good at framing their ideas as a way to solve their customer’s problems but the customers, namely voters, are no longer automatically buying the Democratic plan and for the most part, their campaign in 2020 was about “Hate Donald Trump” and not talk much about their socialist game plan. But now they are governing, they showed their true agenda. While Harris is hiding her own radical nature, the reality is that there will be no change in Biden’s policy.

As I mentioned in my previous book, the GOP has yet to decide on what kind of party they will be and what they will emphasize.  Trump was solid on taxes and regulations; his foreign policy was a return to the more modest approach that George W. Bush campaigned on in 2000.  But Trump increased government debt and government spending.  Trump’s spending plans looked modest compared to what Democrats have pushed in the Biden years and what Harris is now proposing. What he promised to do was to “Make America Great Again.” As Americas Majority Foundation associate JD Johannes noted, “Too often politicians and their consultants view voters as blocs or market segments.  For Democrats, this makes sense since they view voters as part of demographic groups, but Republicans and conservatives succeed when they view voters not as blocs with specific issues but address major macro concerns.”

The pandemic produced a fissure within the country and many in the middle class saw their incomes decline. Michael Lind observed, “Some on the populist right and anti-capitalist left interpret the prolonged state lockdowns as conspiracy by big business against small business.  It is easy to see how people could reach this conclusion.  Many small firms had been destroyed during the pandemic by government-mandated bans and social distancing rules while bigger firms had an easier time. According to Inequality.org, between Mid-March 2020 and February 2021, the wealth of U.S. billionaires grew by 1.3 trillion.  But the wealth gains for the rich have gains for the rich have come mostly from their disproportionate representation in stock market, not from the ability to steal customers from small companies that have gone under.” Regardless of the cause, the cost of the pandemic had unequal consequences for a good portion of the Republican coalition. 

Voters noticed that while they got money from the stimulus to tie them over from a government induced plan to stop the economy cold, the ability to start up their lives proved difficult and for many as they entered 2021, the Federal government and many state governments did not want to give up their control while many governors, mostly in red states, decided to open the economy. (The latter opening was opposed by much of the political class located in Washington DC and the scientific class.)  The pandemic proved the futility of the leadership class and if it was not for those Republican governors just as Brian Kemp, Ron DeSantis, and Kim Reynolds, the United States would have suffered a severe recession going into 2021.  Instead, their efforts led to a reduction of a peak unemployment at 14.4 percent to 6.7 percent and Biden/Harris administration inherited an economy that grew 20 percent over the last six months of 2020 and 1.5 million jobs returning to workforce from the lockdown instituted in the spring of 2020. If states like New York, Michigan, Illinois and California have followed Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Dakota, the unemployment would have been even lower, and the expansive government spending in 2021 could have been avoided.  We would be better off economically without the inflation that accompanied Biden/Harris game plan.

We live in a political world in which the Republican party is still defining itself whereas the Democrats are the Socialist Party.  In the case of the Democrats, we have to understand modern day Socialism is not what we may believe in textbook socialism in which government controls the means of production but instead it is closer to a fascist model that the mechanism of “capitalist society” is left in place, but that government controls what private sector does.  Example will be government forcing companies to make electric vehicles and consumers buy them as gas combustible cars are phased out as part of a net zero strategy.  Net zero is the ultimate corporativist model being followed by the political left and the Democrat Party as private utilities companies will be paid through subsidies and guaranteed return on investment to switch to wind and solar.  Without these subsidies, wind and solar is not practicable and compared to nuclear, hydroelectric and oil, coal and natural gas, inefficient.  The result is that the middle class and poor will be denied choices in vehicles, less vehicles to buy and they will be more expensive.  Energy to heat their home will be even higher without dependability. 

Modern day socialism practiced by the left today resembles more fascism than what we classified as socialism, but the result is the same, the government controls what is produce and allows selected favored industries to fasciculate the delivery of these goods.  Capitalism exists in name only.  One excellent example when Biden/Harris forced technology companies just as Facebook and Twitter to censor political opinions that ran counter to Administration views in the name of stopping misinformation. They become the vehicle of censorship by denying important scientific information that was far more accurate than the science promoted by Biden/Harris administration.

As for the Republicans, they are becoming the party of the working man and woman, and they have the opportunity to put a coalition that includes significant minorities, blue collar, rural American and small business owners in suburban and urban centers to win elections in the future. The key element is to understand what needs to be done.  Henry Olsen made a few observations, “The Republican Party’s nomination of Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as its presidential ticket has caused many to declare that the party of Ronald Reagan is gone. Permit me to state an unpopular opinion: It isn’t…That view is unpopular because many of those who say they espouse Reagan’s values don’t really understand what those values were. And that’s the point: Reagan’s enduring influence isn’t what many of his self-appointed devotees thought it was, and that influence is far more powerful in today’s GOP than those adherents realize… Reagan himself did not share any of these supposedly Reaganite ideals. Reagan criticized government social planning and wanted a dramatically smaller government, but he was not free-market fundamentalist. He expressly supported social programs that prevented poverty and was unafraid to support new programs when he was convinced they were necessary. He was willing to raise taxes when needed, and he even imposed tariffs and other restrictions on international trade when he thought it was in America’s interests…In short, Reagan favored a robust private sector economy tempered by necessary regulations and social programs to ensure the bounty of growth was shared by all.”  My view is that Olsen makes a good case of the populist nature of Reagan conservatism, and it begins that his reducing marginal tax rates was due to the fact that many in the middle class were hit with a marginal tax rate that reserved for the rich a generation earlier.   The marginal tax rates were at 70 percent and by the end of the decade it was down to 28 percent and never exceeding 39 percent.  Many in the Middle class the biggest federal tax burden is social security and Medicare not federal income tax.  They are hit with many states sales tax and states like New York and California income tax so conservative economic needs to move in a different way beginning how to reform social security tax to preserve the system while reducing the overall burden on the Middle class which I do in my book “America at the Abyss Will America survive?”  Reagan to move the free market forward in  a welfare state, he occasionally took a step back to move agenda two steps forward.  He didn’t oppose the welfare state but wanted to reform it to ensure that those impacted would move up the economic ladder and not be trapped in a permanent cycle of government dependency.

Reagan did raise some taxes in his term but the overall tax burden on the Middle Class was reduced just as Trump tax plan did a similar thing.  Reagan did impose tariffs but only for short period of time and receive reciprocal treatment for America, it was not a permanent situation as his goal was to increase overall trade internationally. He did reduce regulations that interfered with growth just as Trump did.  Trump negotiations on the new NAFTA followed Reagan strategy with changes that benefitted American worker while allowing trade to expand.  

On Foreign policy, Olsen wrote, “He favored robust national defense and a resolute defense of freedom, but he rarely committed American military might. He criticized the Vietnam War in the 1960s from the right because there was no strategy for victory. One cannot say with certainty what Reagan would have done about Iraq or Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attacks. One can say that he would not have favored the endless deployment and squandering of military might in engagements that were intentionally meant to produce stalemate.” 

For advocate of an America’s First foreign policy might begin reviewing the former Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger six rules for engagement.  The principles were:

1. Forces should not be committed unless the action is vital to national interest.

2. Forces should be committed wholeheartedly with the intention of winning – or they should not be committed at all (No half-hearted commitment).

3. Forces should be committed with clearly defined political and military objectives.

4. The use of force should be the last resort (after all diplomatic initiatives have been exhausted).

5. The relationship between objectives and the force committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.

6. Before committing forces abroad (in foreign countries) there should be some reasonable assurance of public support.

Casper Weinberger set these principles in the aftermath of the Vietnam war in which America was divided and there was serious question on how the war was conducted, so he set in principle ideas that political leader needs to consider.  In 1984, two events occurred, one in which 240 Marines were killed as result of a suicide bomber in Beirut and the second, the invasion of Grenada in which United States removed a Marxist government that overthrew another leftist government and supported by Cuban forces.

The Beirut attack was part of an ill-defined peace keeping mission in Lebanon and eventually Reagan, left Lebanon as oppose to getting sucked into an endless morose and in Grenada, United States went into with overpowering force, and easily removed the Cuban forces in an island in our backyard, the Caribbean. 

The first Gulf War was influenced by this principle as United States and their alliance went into Kuwait with overwhelming force, defeated the Iraqi army easily before ending the war.  And Bush administration went to the American people and Congress to gain approval to use force if diplomacy failed in persuading Hussein to leave Kuwait.  After the failure of diplomacy, the first Gulf War commenced. 

The second Gulf War and the war on terror began with these principles but after the initial victory, the United States expanded upon the objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan to reinstitute democratic government in both countries.  From there, United States engaged in long term engagement that ended in failure in Afghanistan and is not truly succeeding in Iraq.

The question is how to use these principles in the future to protect American national interest and not lapse into an isolationist position.  During the Reagan years, the number one objective was to defend the West from the Soviet Empire and everything else was tied to that.  Arming the Afghan rebels against the Russian was part of that strategy and within Congress there was bipartisan support and did not involve the use of U.S. troops.  Grenada could be justified since the threat was close to home and overwhelming force and clear military objectives were present.  The first Gulf War was another war that had defined objectives, expel Hussein from Kuwait, it was in a vital area that impacted both the United States, and her allies and overwhelming force was used. Many criticized President George H W Bush for not marching to Baghdad and the Bush administration felt that their mandate was limited and that they were not interested in occupying Iraq. We can argue the case but then Weinberger thesis was that there was limit to what the American public would support and what they would not.  For many in the Bush years, they feared being involved in another insurgency.

Reagan, like Trump did in his first administration, did not waste American resources and kept his eye on the ball, the dissolution of the Soviet Empire just as the future administration must concentrate on the Chinese. 

The point is that the synergy of Reagan policies and Trump populism is the way forward. The most successful aspect of Trump first term was his tax plan, his energy plan and his push against regulations.  On statewide basis, governors like Kim Reynolds, Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp and other GOP are showing the way on moving forward as they have promoted, school choice for parents, insist parents have a role in education, tax reduction and reform and keeping spending under control and that is why since the pandemic, GOP governors have outperformed their Democratic counterpart when it came to lower unemployment and job growth and kept spending in control. The results have been migration from blue high tax states like California and New York to Florida, Texas and other red states.  

Trump voters are integral part of the coalition, but we need to expand to beyond the MAGA group, to minorities who see their community becoming unsafe, their economic opportunity reduced, and many are upset over illegal immigration the cost and increase crime in their community.  Reagan showed the way to move forward.  Trump is a right of center politician, but he is the ideologue and unlike Reagan, doesn’t have a world view but has a mixture of several world views that sometimes are contradictory but his success in his first term will be a repeat of following Reagan strategy of embracing the Middle Class.  Reagan was not loved by the Republican establishment and let not forget that his main opponent that year was George H W Bush who viewed Reagan supply side as voodoo economics.  Bush was wrong and the Reagan plan led to nearly quarter of century of economic growth that positively impacted all aspect of the population. 

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Why do many Americans ready to support Trump/Vance ticket? For many in the middle class, they view the system is rigged and inflation has hurt their overall income as any rise in salary has been neutralized by rising inflation. 

In a report conducted through the Americas Majority Foundation, “The U.S. is still a country where wealth and income earned through hard work and personal risk taking is respected. Our national survey found interesting dynamics. 71%  of Blacks, 79% of Whites and 66% of Hispanics believe that hard work is still rewarded but when asked if the economic system rigged against the Middle Class, we see the results reverse. 71% of Blacks, 65% of Whites and 61% of Hispanics believe the economic system is rigged. In a survey among Michigan voters in August of 2016, two of every three voters viewed the system rigged against the Middle Class with two/thirds of White and Black voters along with 55% of Hispanic voters viewing the system as being rigged against Middle Class. Even with that cynicism, four out of five Michigan voters believe that to increase economic opportunity and a fair opportunity to succeed, you must grow the private sector, which is the position taken by Republican candidate Donald Trump, the first Republican who won Michigan since 1988.” 

We found that many Americans are of two minds. They think that hard work is still rewarded and support the proven principles of productive work, delayed gratification and personal responsibility and they also fear a trend toward the system being rigged against them. A system where the proven principles are not enough. While they respect the entrepreneurs who start up their companies, they have less respect for executives who manage long-established companies. The heart of the complaint is executives who are paid millions while seemingly running former power-house companies into the ground. This entrepreneur/manager divide is part of the explanation on whether a person sees it as a system that allows people to pursue their passions or a system where only the top benefit. If they see a manager-stock-trader economy, they will likely think of it as a rigged system where only the top benefit. If they see an entrepreneur economy, they are more likely to think in terms of pursuing passions.  Many Trump Republicans like other Americans view the system rigged against them.

President Trump showed a commitment to the concerns of “Populists Capitalists” who did not fare well under many trade agreements and past economic policies.   Which is what underlining the tension within the GOP from speaker race to the presidential campaign, as the populist wing of the party feels unwanted and outside as many within the GOP just as soon be rid of Trump supporters.  The GOP is going through the process of defining what kind of Party it will be in the future.  Will it be a populist party or a conservative party?  Or a third way, a constructive collaboration of the populist and Conservative party?  Trump own administration did combine both with his tax and regulations reduction plus his only trade deal was NAFTA Two, adjusting work rules to benefit blue collar while keeping trade flowing.  Trump foreign policy was a more modest approach, concentrating on China and not adding any new involvements.  His trade policy more protectionist than previous Republican administrations but there was enough that united the Party and even today, there is more that unites the MAGA and more traditional Republicans than divide.   Republicans can’t win without the populist wing and the populist wing must understand that it is part of a conservative/populist coalition.

The one issue down the road is Entitlement reform, as it is agreed that we need to tackle Medicare and Social Security but as noted, many of the Trump coalition are among those who are not prepared for retirement and since 2007, the investor class declined, in particular among the Middle Class.  The Middle Class and upper Middle Class saw significant drops in participation in the investor class since the Great Recession. Two thirds of those with incomes between $30,000 to $74,999 were members of the investor class but this was reduced to 54% by 2017 for a drop of 13% and those earning between $75,000 to $99,999 declined from 85% to 75%.  The Stock market lost half of its value during the Great recession and many investors removed their money from the market or they took money out to survive periods of economic difficulty. The rise in the stock market has made up the difference in what was lost, many of the Middle class did not reinvest and did not participate in the market’s rise. This has helped in the decline in income and wealth of many within the Middle-Class during Obama’s recovery. Both College graduates and those without college degrees saw reduction in investor class participation but those without a college degree saw bigger drop in participation as members of the Middle Class and many blue-collar workers not only saw themselves without jobs but they also saw their nest egg disappear. Eighty-three percent of College graduates were members of the investor class before the Great Recession but after only 78% of College graduates were members of the investor class. Those without college degree went from 53% to 43%. Many of these workers became Trump Republicans during as Trump made significant inroads among blue collar and no college graduates voters. 

While 2024 Republican convention moved toward the populist wing, the synergy of conservatism and populism continues and the definition of who the Republicans are continues. Many Republican governors have shown that their free-market approach worked better than their Democratic counterparts. Texas and Florida have been the beneficiary of the exodus from the major Democratic states just as California, New York and Illinois.

I had a chance to interview Powerline blog and president of Center of American Experiment John Hinderaker whose Center of American experiment offices were torched.  During the interview, he reminded me that on during Trump inauguration, Antifa terrorists torched buildings and conducted a riot of their own. CNN reported ,“Six police officers were injured, and 217 protesters arrested Friday after a morning of peaceful protests and coordinated disruptions of Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony gave way to ugly street clashes in downtown Washington…At least two DC police officers and one other person were taken to the hospital after run-ins with protesters, DC Fire Spokesman Vito Maggiolo told CNN. Acting DC Police Chief Peter Newsham said the officers’ injuries were considered minor and not life threatening…Bursts of chaos erupted on 12th and K streets as black-clad “antifascist” protesters smashed storefronts and bus stops, hammered out the windows of a limousine and eventually launched rocks at a phalanx of police lined up in an eastbound crosswalk. Officers responded by launching smoke and flash-bang devices, which could be heard from blocks away, into the street to disperse the crowds…“Pepper spray and other control devices were used to control the criminal actors and protect persons and property.” As a footnote, all charges were dropped, something that did not happen with J6 defendant and as John Hinderaker observed, this riot on Trump inauguration was worse than January 6^th.

Ian Tuttle noted about Antifa in National Review, “Here is currently, on the streets, smashing storefronts and setting things on fire, a group called “Antifa,” for “anti-fascist.” Antifa are not a new phenomenon; they surfaced during the Occupy movement, and during the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Antifa movements began in early-20th-century Europe, when fascism was a concrete and urgent concern, and they remain active on the Continent. Lately, Antifa have emerged as the militant fringe of #TheResistance against Donald Trump — who, they maintain, is a fascist, ushering into power a fascist regime. In Washington, D.C., Antifa spent the morning of Inauguration Day lighting trash cans on fire, throwing rocks and bottles at police officers, setting ablaze a limousine, and tossing chunks of pavement through the windows of several businesses.”

The assassination attempt on Trump should not surprise anyone for the past decade, much of the political violence has been instigated by the left.  As I detailed in my book, America at the Abyss, Will America survive?, I had liberal friends in a 2019 conversation on Donelson Files,  arguing that Antifa was not comparable to the various Neo Nazis and white supremacists, and one even mention they were “anti-fascist” since they have it in their name . Among the data I used to counter the “peaceful nature” of Antifa was 32 reported incidence of violence this group had done, including at least six attacks on journalists covering them . They were right, Antifa is not the equal of these supremacists or racists, they are worse .

 As Andy Ngo noted in his book Unmasked, they are well-trained para-militia who know self-defense and how to use weapons plus they have a political movement covering for them . When the right-wing rioters went into the U .S . Capitol, they were condemned by many in the conservative movement and no major political party supports rightwing ex neo-Nazis, but there are political movements that work with Antifa and support them. (I will add that there are many within the Democratic Party and their supporters who have supported Hama, which is 21^st century version of the Nazis Party. Many also supported the phrase “From the river to sea” which translate to the destruction of Israel.)  In Democratic-controlled cities like Portland and Seattle, they were allowed free reign to do what they wanted . They called the shot while their left-wing patrons merely looked on. .Antifa were the spear used by the left to intimidate and strike fear in not just their opponents but in some cases people who are presumably their allies .

While the media intensively covered the January 6th Capitol riot, the reality is the vast majority of riots in 2020 were linked to Black Lives Matter and United States saw three to four violent actions somewhere in the United States throughout the summer of 2020.  That means throughout the summer of 2020 to election day, there were three or four violent actions as bad if not worse than J6 . One study conducted by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), found that 95% of riots in which there was information available involved Black Lives Matter . This study was originally designed to minimize violent activities conducted by the left yet; they produced overwhelming evidence that the left was responsible for the vast majority of violent activities in the summer of 2020.

Andy Ngo has been one of the few journalists who has penetrated Antifa and discovered a terrorist group protected by much of the media and many prominent Democrats who either commend the group for being “antifascist” or pretend that Antifa doesn’t exist . Rep, Jerry Nadler (D—New York), stated that “violence from Antifa” was a myth . But Andy Ngo has found the truth that Antifa is indeed a violent group . Ngo, in an interview with PJ Media, stated that “Antifa was able to move to the mainstream aided by new liberal allies because collectively they all had a shared enemy: Donald Trump,”  Antifa convinced themselves that Trump was Hitler and they needed to respond or face a new Holocaust . Andy Ngo tells of Mike Strickland, the first journalist attacked by Antifa . When Strickland defended himself against Antifa in Portland in 2016 with a legal concealed weapon, he was the one prosecuted. Portland was protecting Antifa . It also sent a message that violence worked and Antifa could get away with it . Andy Ngo himself would be beaten three years later nearly to death and a couple of years later, he was beaten a second time by Antifa . As he was getting beaten, Antifa merely laughed out loud . Andy Ngo was attacked by national publications as a racist extremist and many on the left excused Antifa’s brutality . Ngo pointed out the symbiotic relationship between Antifa and left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center who would put Antifa targets on their own enemies list including Andy Ngo, whose only crime is telling the truth about Antifa and BLM . Andy Ngo observed, “For their world to live and thrive, America has to die .”  Damages in BLM riots between May 26 and June 8, 2020 resulted in as much as two billion dollars paid in insurance claims . In Minneapolis alone, 1500 buildings were destroyed  and much of the damage took place in minority communities on whose behalf they rioted for . Violent riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin left 50 million dollars in damages and nearly 60 buildings destroyed . The biggest damage occurred in the city’s most diverse areas that included where most minorities lived . Like Chicago and Minneapolis, minority areas were the hardest hits in the Kenosha riots

Antifa and BLM movement riots destroyed many minority communities and when the police were defunded, it was minority communities who felt the brunt of increased crime . Antifa were and still are a domestic terrorist’ group and in 2020, street violence was the result of leftist gangs and a major political party that was prepared to ignore the violence since it served their purpose, in promoting leftist policies, and helping to elect Joe Biden

After the leak of Roe vs Wade, there was nearly 100 attacks the following two months afterwards on Catholic Churches and pregnancy crisis centers..  One report by Catholic vote noted, “Beginning in early May, vandalism attacks against Catholic churches, pro-life pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and other pro-life organizations have been reported across the country. These attacks have taken the form of vulgar graffiti, property damage, threats, theft, and even arson…Though a rise in vandalism and intimidation of Catholic and pro-life organizations has been documented since at least 2020, the current spate of attacks has been spurred on by the June 24 overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme court, which returned the question of abortion policy to the states, leading to abortion bans in many parts of the country. ..Some of the reported vandalism incidents we’ve tracked appear to be copycat attacks. For example, several of the graffiti incidents featured the threatening phrase “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you,” which seems to have first appeared on a pro-life pregnancy center in Wisconsin in early May. The U.S. Catholic bishops have documented more than 100 church attacks since 2020, and are pleading for an end to the violence.”

The leftist violence continued unabated  throughout 2023 and 2024 as Pro Hamas protest and occasional riots that resulted in death of one Jew, occurred in 45 of the 50 states. In many cases, Jewish students on college campus have been harassed and forbidden to go to classes and outside acts of intimidation is often MO of these protest.  Roadways have been closed and Jewish businesses targeted.   Leftist ADL center on Extremism, reported 400 percent increase in attacks on Jews just in the first couple of weeks after October 7^th and including 312 reported incident and 190 of those were directly related to the protest between the war between Israel and Hamas. That includes physical assault, and violent online messages.  And let’s be blunt this antisemitism is coming from the left. 

The real issue is if you call someone a Nazis or a threat to democracy even though his own record shows the complete opposite, don’t be surprised if what we witnessed in Butler Pennsylvania will happen again.  The Democrats has made a center piece of their campaign that Trump is a threat to democracy and his supporters bunch of Nazis nor was he the only one.  From the past eight years, Trump was declared a fascist, a Nazis and threat to democracy but the irony he was the victim of the Russian collusion hoax and then the use of this to try remove Trump from office.  If Biden is replaced, it won’t be any difference for the next candidate will continue the Trump is a threat to democracy chat

Trump is not perfect and in many ways, he causes many of us to shake our heads, but he also wants to change this country and understands what is at stake.  His opponents have used lawfare to try impeaching him,  throw him in jail and then bankrupt his business.  What irritates the ruling class is not that he won but his knowledge of them, that many of them are not that particularly smart and have led this country to the precipice of disaster.  He may not have all the right answers, but he has at least asked the right questions about what is wrong with America.

His opponent has supported censorship in the name of stopping misinformation even though the biggest practitioner of misinformation are his opponents and their efforts to censor is merely to shut down debate.

What we can conclude is that for the past decade is that much of the violence has come from the political left from the riot at Trump inauguration which  along with James Hodgkinson who less than six months after Trump election attempted to kill GOP lawmakers working on the theory that many Democrats proclaimed Trump a fascist and threat to democracy.  In the summer of 2020, the left as already documented led a series of riots in many cities as result of the George Floyd death and America averaged 3 to 4 riots as bad if not worse than January 6^th including in Washington DC  from end of May through the elections. 

You can trace essentially two violent actions and the right, Charlotteville in 2017 and January sixth but hundreds have been associated with the left.  In the case of Charlotteville the organizer of the event, Richard Spencer, endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020 so maybe he found a home within the Democratic Party with office holders like Representatives like Tlaib of Michigan.  Under the Biden administration, there is Charlotteville every week.

John Hinderaker in my interview with him wondered if we are not headed to a split or at least involved in a cold civil war presently with both sides not even on the same page when it comes to what it means to be an American.  What we have witnessed is one side and their supporters being compared to Nazis and Fascists as well as a threat to democracy.  The January 6^th investigation was not designed for truth but to make Trump supporters as insurrectionist and certainly they chose not to investigate all form of political violence the previous years and any one was suspicious of the goal of the investigation was eliminated to participate which is why Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were allowed since they were GOP never Trumpers and allowed the Democrats to claim this was a “bipartisan” investigation. Bernie Thompson and other members of the Democratic caucus, tried to strip the secret service protection from Donald Trump in April.

Our politics is poison but there are three people who have played a significant role in this poisoning: Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama.  Hillary Clinton, who managed to get away with compromising national security with her personal server, also invented the Russian collusion hoax.  Her campaign set up the false story that Trump was a tool of Putin, even though she began the infamous “reset” which reversed the tougher Bush’s policy.    Most have forgotten that Obama did truly little when Russian invaded Ukraine in 2014 and in an interview, Obama stated, “We have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”  Nor did Obama/Biden administration provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine. You can argue that Obama administration was correct in their analysis but what you cannot argue is that Obama administration was tough or even tougher on Putin than Trump administration proved to be.  As for Biden, we know that he got a prosecutor fired who was investigating Burisma, a company paying his son about million dollars a year.  Biden family got their cut from Ukraine. Hillary Clinton fake dossier became the basis of Trump prosecution and everyone in FBI, CIA and higher ups in the administration knew that this was fake but yet no one came forward and stated there is no evidence that Trump was a Putin’s puppet.   This was known in 2016 during the election but yet neither Obama nor Biden stated it was not true. 

For past eight years, Hillary Clinton continued to lie about the Russian collusion, but she yet been called out. Obama could easily have stopped this by simply saying, “there is no evidence that there was collusion between Russian and Trump.”  He refused to do so, and, in the process, the Democrats and the left began a campaign to undermine Trump administration with special council investigation.  Many Democrats still to this day believe the Russian collusion hoax and much of the media spent the entire Trump administrating feeding the lie and many members of the Obama administration appeared on television repeating the same lie.

What if Obama told the truth?  The environment would be less contentious, and Trump would have been more willing to collaborate with the Democrats on issues. Issues like the border wall might have been solved or dealt with as many Democrats during the Bush administration actually supported a wall.  Politics has always been contentious, but we have gone beyond the contentious stage and moved toward the outright hatred stage where half of American hates the other half and now the other half is returning the hate.  The fall out of the 2020 elections is a direct fallout of the 2016 Russian collusion hoax as many Republicans viewed the 2020 election as illegitimate and there is certain more evidence that 2020 was rigged than 2016.  We now know that FBI pressured social media and the general media not to publish information about the Hunter Biden laptop which provided evidence of Biden’s corruption that reached to his father.  Voters were denied access to information as the FBI hid this evidence and many in the “retired intelligence” declared any mention of the Biden’s laptop was Russian misinformation.   One survey done showed that many voters were not aware of the Hunter Biden’s laptop controversy and enough may have changed their vote had they known.  There were enough voter irregularities to be concerned including stopping counting voters in the middle of the night only to resume it later. (Note that this doesn’t mean that Biden did not win the elections or what voter irregularities exceeded the margin of fraud. I have seen numbers to indicate that what voter irregularities did exist but did not exceed the margin of Biden victory even in battleground states.  There were enough irregularities to be concerned about election security and the media attempts to censor stories negative to Biden have been established) 

The MAGA voters that Biden and others view as a threat to democracy are men and women who struggle every day to make their life work, dealing with inflation that makes life more expensive while decreasing their actual income. The are not violent one and if you can come up one riot over eight years associated with the MAGA movement compared to thousands on the other side, there is no other conclusion. 

Those on the left and what is left of the Never Trumpers movement on the right, need to understand their own role in the poisoning of the political process.  They promoted the Russian collusion hoax, the impeachments, the various lawfare against Trump, and falsely accused their opponents of being threat to democracy and Nazis.  If they are genuinely interested in restoring civility, they musth denounce these positions and if not, they are the ones with blood on their hands and they represent the greatest threat to democracy.   As for Trump supporters, when Trump was shot, the one man who was murdered died while protecting his family and when Trump left the stage, they didn’t panic but shouted USA, USA, USA.  That is who they are, a man who died protecting his family and patriotic Americans who love their country and came to see the man they wanted to be President.  They are not the threat to Democracy.