What? Has Mark lost his mind??? What the heck is going on here????
Relax. There’s a reason I wrote that. You might recall I’ve said that I work with a bunch of youngsters. I’m talking people who are 30 or more years younger them me. A great bunch of kids. Hard working. Intelligent. Nice. Very much products of modern America. Like most young people, they swung heavily towards the Democrats on Tuesday. They are the future of America.
And that is what one bright, young man said to me today: maybe we should try Socialism?
I, of course, said “no”. I didn’t, at the time, mention my preferred method of dealing with Socialists (it involves helicopters) but I did gently push back – but I also realized that I’m old. I do remember the USSR. I also have a fund of knowledge America’s youth simply does not have…nor was I primed from preschool to be receptive to collectivism by the public school system. In other words, the kids are thinking this because they don’t really know anything else.
Earlier today I noticed a post on X where it was noted that Capitalism giving you 2% annual growth is great – on a thirty year time line. You don’t really see the benefit…it shows up over time. But it shows up so gradually that even many of those who benefit don’t see the connection between a free market and higher wealth over time. And far less do young people see it. They lack basic knowledge. They lack experience. But they do see that buying a home is getting increasingly difficult. That cars are very expensive. That living the life I live (house w/pool, two cars, two vacations per year) is out of reach…and they can’t see that if they just continue to work steadily in a free market system, they’ll get it. They wonder why can’t they have it right now? The Socialists, after all, promise it right now.
And it isn’t just the young who have this sense that what we have isn’t working. Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024 were based entirely upon a conviction that is isn’t working. And the Democrats victory on Tuesday was also just that: a sense that it isn’t working. The policies which Trump has implemented, if carried through, will make America a free, prosperous and safe nation. But on a time scale of decades, not next week. Democrat’s promised stuff that will arrive next week. We promised nothing concrete – except Trump’s $5,000 which GOPers should have run with and hammered on 24/7 but they sort of left it out there…ridiculed and then ignored. Trump knows you have to tempt – you have to sell. You have to offer a reason.
Keep in mind that Florida bucked the blue wave – it was close but the GOP remains in total domination of that State. Why? Well, DeSantis made sure property tax relief was on the ballot. That got people to the polls – even if they were mad over Iran or gas prices, they wanted that property tax cut. DeSantis sold it – to put it bluntly, he bribed the Florida electorate to stick with the Republican Party. It was crude politics – and it worked like a charm.
Gas prices are too high. Food prices are too high. Mortgage rates are too high. In the immediate, there’s no much that can be done about that. Trump’s policies will eventually bring all that down. But we needed to offer something today. Trump’s $5,000.00 was the offer. State and local GOPers should have been making offers. Congressional GOPers should have sweetened the pot. How? Just off the top of my head today I came up with:
- Make 25% mortgage principal payments tax deductible.
- Make the purchase of American made cars tax deductible.
- Make the purchase of American made electronics tax deductible.
And then make all three retroactive back to January 1st, 2025. And you sell it on a program of “paying back our workers”. Think about it: we who work pay for the whole edifice of America. We pay for the military, the Learing Centers, the Islamo-Commie NGOs…all of it on our dime. The Democrats hardly pay for any of it – they “work” in the places we’re paying for. What do we get for it? Hardly anything at all. So let’s campaign on paying back those who paid in. And long term it isn’t inflationary – it isn’t printing money, it is just letting people keep their own money and the stimulus it would have in home building and American manufacturing would rapidly eclipse the temporary hit to revenues.
The people are not great thinkers pondering theories of government – they are highly distracted, low-attention-span regular folks who want peace and an easy life. They don’t want to have sticker shock every day. They don’t want to wonder if they can make it. And they want it now; not thirty years from now. Is this ideal? No. But if we want to preserve an America where speech is free, we’d better get these people to vote for us…and they won’t vote for us on a theory nor on a promise that decades from now things will be great.
As I’ve been saying for years, we have to think anew and act anew. The old GOP died when Trump rode down that escalator. MAGA is not committed to any particular party. To build a new GOP for freedom we’re going to have to convince people to go with us and stick with us for decades. We can’t win if we lose every other election. We need a generation of power – and we’re not going to get that generation by quoting Reagan to people born after he died. The core principle has to be America First. No more wars unless we’re directly attacked. No more sending money for other people to fight wars (this includes Israel – I am a stout defender of Israel as a Jewish State but if Israel wants to celebrate her centennial in 2048 they’re going to have to totally destroy their Islamist enemies in short order). The whole of economic policy is to make America secure and living here cheap. Clean up the crime. Keep the border closed. Push back against the weirdos. All of these policies were actually supported on Tuesday. It is just that a lot of people who support them also voted Democrat for political office because they were justifiably disgusted with a GOP not just being lousy, but actively sabotaging Trump. You will not talk these people into being with us – you have to show them the money; the benefit of being with us.
Or, lose. Our choice. We can stick to so-called principles and just keep losing until the Democrats pack the Court and they rule we’re illegal. I’d rather not have it come to that – especially as it would very likely spark a very violent Civil War. But we won’t avoid it by hoping people will suddenly realize that Adam Smith was right. We’ve got to make it cheap to buy gas in a peaceful America where people can just mindlessly go about their business not worrying about it. We have to make people vote for us and stay with us – because there’s no reason to change because its all going well. That is how Democrat political dominance happened…because from 1944 to 1974 things were just going well. No need to shake things up. Just coast along. It wasn’t a deep seated conviction that Keynesian economics were great. Ninety percent of the people who voted Democrat didn’t even know who Keynes was…but they kept voting Democrat because it was all ok. Free market economics is the way to go – but we can’t win talking about it. We just have to make it ok.
