When the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump, it repudiated Bushism. Bush Republicans are recycled Rockefeller Republicans, and, in that sense, Trump is another Goldwater. As an original Goldwater Republican, I am well aware that Trump is something completely different. He is an adaptation to changing political circumstances.
Back in the day, conservative Republicans were all free trade. Economics told us that each country should produce goods where it had a comparative advantage, and trade with nations for goods when it had a comparative disadvantage. Everybody would be better off. It made perfect sense, and still does.
But the globalist and corporate Republicans, as well as the corporate Democrats (the Clintons), hijacked free trade and screwed the American worker. It was happening right before our eyes, but we didn’t see it. Free market Republicans saw the United Auto Workers lose members, and thought that unionization had made American labor overpriced. But it wasn’t the unions that screwed the worker, it was the globalists. At the altar of world harmony, they sacrificed the working men and women of their country. A pox on them.
Another aspect of Bush Republicans was neoconservatism, or the Great International Crusade for Truth, Justice and the American Way — that is, Iraq. That disastrous decision, and the thinking that led to it, had to be repudiated for the Republicans to regain power.
In its 2012 post mortem, the Bush Republicans at the RNC advocated easing the stance against illegal immigration, in order to win more Hispanic votes. This was the third leg of Bushism, and the most idiotic. If Trump won on one issue, it was immigration.
These three Trump policies — “America First”trade agreements, the rejection of foreign interventionism, and the enforcement of our immigration laws — are now mainstream Republican positions. But it is a brand new face of the Republican Party, free of the control of the donor class. Because the donor class are Bush Republicans.
The Democrats need to reject Clintonism just as the Republicans have rejected Bushism. And then they need to escape the control of the public employee unions. I don’t know if they can manage that. But until they do, they will be the party of government in a country that doesn’t like the government. That’s a tough sell.
A correction: Maryland Senate President Mike Miller was not a protege of Senate President Jim Clark. This was pointed out to me by Senator Clark’s daughter, Martha. Senator Miller was a co-sponsor of the BBA Resolution, and voted for it. But he was not bosom buddies with Senator Clark.
We passed the Wyoming Senate on first reading, 20-10. Final passage should be on Friday. The Convention of States (CoS) failed in the Arizona State Senate, 13-17. Bill Fruth was engaged in hand to hand combat in a Tennessee House subcommittee today, fighting for the Resolution calling the Nashville Planning Convention. The people he has to fight are CoS. If they are included in the Resolution, the Convention is off. They don’t care.
The sooner these people go away, the better.
Senator Jim Clark was a glider pilot in World War Two, and landed a glider full of 82nd Airborne Paratroopers in Operation Market Garden. One of them could have been my Uncle Fritz. These glider pilots were total bad asses. They not only fly their flimsy, overloaded gliders, once they land they’ve got to become paratroopers. Senator Jim Clark, R.I.P.
reaganproject.com 