Red View — Blue View
Republican Split Coming?
What good has Trump done for anyone?
This is installment #3 of our Red View — Blue View series where two writers give opinions on political topics, one from each side of the isle. Part of our goal is to bring understanding, to de-escalate presumptions, and to shine a light on truth when it can be found. Reader’s views are welcome in the comments, especially if they bring clarity and light.
On the eve of Trump probably moving out of the White House, today’s topic is about the future of the Republican Party.
The Blue View, by DJB:
I have a question for my friend Jim. I know he is still tilting at windmills about the election that Trump lost. I don’t think martial law will be declared. I believe in less than a month Joe Biden will become president.
By then we will know if the Republicans still hold their slight majority in the Senate. Despite all the noise and despite that the two Republicans who are running in Georgia seem to stand for nothing but making money, for themselves and their friends, they will probably win.
Trump has clearly demonstrated that he will fight almost to the death to remain as president, but he has no interest in doing the job. He likes campaigning. He likes the perks. He likes the attention.
Yet, it seems that a large number of people who vote Republican, still want Trump to be president, if not now, then whenever he can reclaim the office.
Many people who voted for Trump may not vote for another Republican. They may not vote at all. We in the Blue states see Trump as a man who is incapable of understanding what the job of president entails, and we can’t understand what good he has done for anyone, or how anyone believes anything he says. Do his fans still love him? Will they stand by him, until… until forever?
Whatever he did, cruel, mean, and unconstitutional, all the other elected Republicans let him do it. Some even praised him.
But Trump will be out of office on January 21, 2021. What will the Republican Party stand for? What will they try and accomplish?
Besides Trump, the most powerful Republican is Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader. Sometimes it seems he actually has more power than the president. But his power only goes in one direction, the power to say “NO.”
He says NO to any legislation that will do anything to help anyone who is not a major Republican donor. That includes most of the people in Kentucky who voted him back to the Senate. His power lies in that he almost always gets all of the Republicans in the Senate to vote NO along with him.
To me the Republicans still stand for “small government, low taxes, no services, and no regulations on any type of business. That’s it. It boils down to “I’ve got mine, I’m keeping all of it, and I don’t care much about you.” Am I missing something?
But wait! I have another question. You will probably find this offensive, but I’ve never really gotten a clear answer, only denials without evidence or investigations.
What is Trump’s relationship with Putin and Russia? Is he just a lap-dog who is in total awe and envy of the man’s cunning and power? Or is it more than that? Does he owe millions to Putin or his cronies? There is something there that has been very harmful to the United States.
We know that Russia effectively spread disinformation that helped Trump win in 2016. We saw that Trump told exactly the same lies. We know that there were many contacts bestrewn Republicans and Russians. We know that Mueller was forced to have a very limited investigation and to not look at Trump’s personal dealings with Russia. We know that William Barr distorted the contents of Mueller’s report before it was released to the press, and that few Republicans admitted that they read it. We know that it contained ten clear instances of obstruction of justice. We know that Trump protected anyone who had connections to Russia. He pardoned Flynn, and got Roger Stone out of jail. Stone was proud of the fact that he never told the truth, and Trump rewarded him.
There are many more Trump/Russia questions that remain unanswered, right up to Trump’s non-response to the huge hacking of America’s cyber systems. Do you have any credible explanation, or is it again just the free press being mean to Trump?
The only thing we know for sure is that we can’t believe Trump.
The Red View, by Jim West:
To understand where we are now, we must first understand what the Republican party used to be. Yes, as DJB said, it was always about smaller government and lower taxes. It was also about fiscal responsibility, personal freedom, family values and free market capitalism, but over the prior decades the Republican Party decided against those principles.
What happened was the ‘deep state’ took over. The government never got smaller. The national debt grew exponentially (now at $27T). They passed regulations that made it harder to start a business. They allowed eminent domain to violate property rights. They gave too much power to environmental agencies. They started surveilling Americans and recording their metadata. And right now, they are limiting free speech and censoring conservative voices.
Likewise, over the years, Republicans embraced programs that paid mothers to not marry, destroying the family unit. They removed God from our culture, embraced political correctness, and destroyed work ethic in those receiving generational welfare.
With free market capitalism, (the system that’s lifted more people out of poverty than any system in the world) republicans have polluted it with corporate influence. Most Republicans are making backroom deals and getting kickbacks that pay homage to corporate lobbyists at the expense of small business. These issues and more were drowning America in the DC swamp and we wanted out.
Then along came Trump. He understood many of the same issues we did. He openly challenged many of the domestic and foreign policies we thought troublesome. He locked horns with the media because he too saw how they protected Obama from his scandals and supported the deep state.
We hoped Trump’s money would insulate him from bribes, that he would less likely be ruined by the ethos around the Washington Mall. He promised to do the opposite, to drain the swamp. So we took a chance on the outsider hoping he would truly move America in the conservative direction.
And what happened? Right away his decisions were frugal when he saved billions of dollars by cancelling the order for a new Air Force One. When Trump moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, he rejected the blueprints for a new embassy and simply remodeled the existing consulate building, saving us billions more. And even now, he’s asking Congress to cut the foreign aid and increase the stimulus checks to Americans. He’s doing these things for the benefit of all Americans, not some special interest group or the swamp.
Trump got us out of bad deals like the Paris Climate Accord, the Iranian Nuclear Deal, NAFTA and other lopsided trade deals. Other big wins included the First Step Act to reform criminal justice and the Right to Choose Act that saved many lives. Trump increased military spending, giving our soldiers several raises. Cutting regulations ushered energy independence while his team brokered Middle East peace deals. The wall (400+ miles so far) has greatly reduced illegal crossings and Operation Warp Speed has provided vaccines in record time.
Trump set records with the economy (pre-Covid, which was China’s fault, not Trump’s, contrary to the lying media). He cleaned up the VA, destroyed ISIS, funded efforts to fight sex trafficking. He has proven himself an advocate for Pro-Life and school choice. He forgave $750 million in student loan debt for disabled veterans. He treats our enemies like enemies and our friends like friends. He’s common sense and Trump did that.
So yes, DJB, Trump’s fans will still love him and they will stand by him because unlike most politicians lately, he has done what was good for America.
“What will the Republican Party stand for?” That, I’m not sure, because a new party has emerged and I foresee a split coming. Trump has restored conservative ideals to politics, and right now we’re chomping at the bit to kick those RINOs to the curb. If a new political party is formed, maybe the People’s Party, or the MAGA Party, most of us would switch in a heartbeat.
So if you can’t understand “what good Donald Trump has done for anyone,” please read the list again, or click on this growing list of 450 accomplishments. The sad part is that the MSM never talks about them, so half the country believes Trump hasn’t done anything. Not true.
Regarding Trump’s relationship with Putin, Trumpers don’t understand why liberals are still so invested in that hoax. The whole thing was a scam from the beginning. And now that it’s been proven a scam, we’re pissed off that people haven’t been arrested. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Barr.
Here’s the way it works in a free country where the rule of law exists; when a crime is committed, an investigation is launched to find evidence of the crime. The Mueller investigation was not that. It was an investigation in search of a crime. And after 2 years, $32 million, 500 search warrants, 500 witnesses, 2,800 subpoenas, using 40 FBI agents and 19 lawyers, Mueller still couldn’t charge Trump with anything. (That’s NOT a “very limited investigation.”) Oh, they entrapped a few people on process crimes (Flynn and Stone among them), but we saw that as an abuse of the justice system. The investigation itself was illegal, based on a fake dossier and criminal FISA warrants. They made political prisoners, in America, political prisoners out of people who worked with Trump to send a threatening message, like we were living in Russia or China.
That’s the way we saw it, and it turns out, that’s exactly what happened. They failed to prove with evidence the accusations, and the whole thing was a hoax to pressure Trump out of office. Thankfully Trump held strong and wouldn’t be bullied.
So we dismiss liberal claims about what “we know” about the Russians because the premise of the whole thing was a lie, reinforced by the lying media. If liberals are so concerned about collusion or foreign influence, they ought to look at that Biden family. They’re already deep in it and China Joe hasn’t even been sworn in.
So, the Republican Party is heading for hard times. Several polls are showing approval for Trump in the high 80s and low 90s among republicans. To be clear, that represents support for Trump, not the Republican Party. We know the difference, and if anyone forms a new party, with a strong leader, with an allegiance to the America First, traditional values, MAGA doctrine, then it’s over for the deep state Republican Party.