by Edward Ring
If you want to reduce crime, bring back affordable energy, get America’s southern border under control, and once again teach children academic fundamentals in the public schools instead of brainwashing them with politicized garbage, you might support Republicans merely because they aren’t Democrats.
This isn’t a bad argument, but it isn’t enough to turn the tide.
After all, Democrats make a similar argument. If you hate racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, want to save the planet from climate change, and save America from fascists, you will vote for Democrats because they aren’t Republicans.
It doesn’t matter that the argument against Democrats has substance, and the argument against Republicans does not. Almost every major legacy and online media property is shilling for the Democratic Party, which means their perception is the reality for millions of Americans.
As a result, if all Republicans have got to offer voters is “we aren’t them,” Democrats will finish turning America into California in short order.
How does the Republican Party reunify, project a shared vision that attracts independent voters (and libertarians), cut through the media bias, and start winning by landslides all over America?
Why hasn’t the GOP attracted tens of millions of independent voters? Estimates vary, but according to Pew Research, in 2020 independents were 34 percent of registered voters nationwide—more than Democrats at 33 percent, or Republicans at 29 percent.
The first step is to realize that while it is probably more effective for politicians to speak in moderate Reaganesque tones, they must never equate measured speech with RINO appeasement. Republicans need to make radical assertions if they want to appeal to serious conservatives, as well as attract independents. That shouldn’t be difficult. Telling the truth in America today is a radical act.
With that in mind, it’s time for Republican candidates to quit hedging on the big issues. Here are some soundbites that ought to be coming out of the mouths of every GOP candidate in America:
People who commit crimes are criminals, not misunderstood victims. They have to be put in prison to protect society. In prison they can overcome substance abuse, get an education, learn a trade, and may eventually reenter society as productive citizens.
We will fire district attorneys who don’t prosecute criminal acts. We will not apply double standards of any kind to law enforcement and we will hold criminals responsible for their actions regardless of their identity and background.
We are not in a “climate crisis.” There is no “climate emergency.” We will only support public infrastructure that yields obvious economic benefits.
Clean fossil fuel and nuclear power are not going to destroy the earth. We need more of both. We will stop subsidizing and mandating “renewables.”
Homeless people cannot take over our cities. Building “supportive permanent housing,” with no conditions, is a corrupt scam. We will use that money instead to swiftly move the homeless into shelters, mental hospitals, and jails, depending on their afflictions.
We will overcome the environmentalist assault on single family homes. We recognize that mandating high density housing and “infill” to the exclusion of building new suburbs is an unbalanced and unhealthy approach. There’s plenty of land in America.
We’re going to stop exporting jobs. We will eliminate tax incentives that encourage American companies to source raw materials and manufacture products overseas. We will eliminate regulations that discourage domestic production.
We’re going to stop importing welfare recipients. We will get our borders under control again and from now on we will admit immigrants based solely on their merit.
We will pursue antitrust enforcement in any industry wherever oligopolies have formed. These run the gamut from agriculture to social media.
We will withhold Section 230 protection from any online communications platform that censors content protected by the First Amendment.
International corporatism and international communism are two sides of the same coin. We oppose both.
We will win the 21st century space race.
We will reassert and protect private property rights and free enterprise.
Transgender treatment on any minor is an atrocity. We will make it a federal crime.
Have a look at this photo of a healthy six month-old fetus. We support, without apologies, a federal ban on late term abortions.
We support private schools and charter schools, and we will break the teachers union monopoly on public education.
Our public schools are going to teach children to be proud of their country.
American school children will learn that if they are honest and work hard they can look forward to a bright future, no matter who they are.
America is the least racist, least sexist society in the history of the world.
In a nation that wasn’t being destroyed by special interests, these would not be radical statements: There is no climate crisis. We must use fossil fuel. Jail criminals. Take back our cities. Teach students useful skills. Stop sexualizing children. We love our country and our traditions. Statements like these need to be repeated constantly and unequivocally, because they challenge not the details, but the foundations of modern leftist politics. Leave quibbling over details to RINOs and “Mod Dems.” Candor will expose their vapidity.
It isn’t necessary to support everything on this list, or any common sense list, in order to join the fight for a radical agenda that restores relevance to the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan’s big tent approach in the 1980s put the Republicans in firm control of Washington for many years. Whether or not that coalition was the best we could do, it delivered enough power to transform the nation. Republicans can do this again.
The entire premise of a Republican big tent strategy should be that a supermajority of Americans have realized that common sense has become radical. To win, everywhere, Republicans merely need to calmly assert, in a measured tone, words that have been stigmatized as radical in defiance of reality.
Republicans can win national supermajority status by leaning in to these supposedly forbidden assertions. The civil war for the soul of the Republican Party may be unresolved, but at least they’re having one. The Democratic Party, riven as well with rival factions, is nonetheless not in a state of civil war. It is wholly owned by an economic elite that wants to erase American pride, identity, tradition, sovereignty, prosperity and freedom.
America’s Democratic Party is beyond redemption, and with increasing momentum, Americans are recognizing this. All Republicans have to do is offer an alternative. These radical sentiments, which in a sane world would not be radical at all, are that alternative.
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Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism (2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California (2022).
