Sunday, January 10, 2021

The Ronald vs The Donald

by Joe Siano


The Democrats are America's Establishment Party.  They run retread hacks who rehash the ninety year old Roosevelt agenda.  Even their rising star felt compelled to name her signature policy a “New Deal”

Much to the dismay of it’s patrician core, the Republican Party has attracted its share of mavericks.  Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were unwelcome interlopers.  More recently Ron Paul and Donald Trump have rocked the GOP boat – so much so that it may shatter on the rocks.

The old GOP was the party of Blue Bloods – the Cabots, the Lodges, The Rockefellers and the Bushes.  However, beginning with Nixon (another upstart outsider) and followed by Reagan, the venerable GOP became the haven for disenfranchised blue collar Americans who felt betrayed by Progressive politics.  

While the Democrats went from being the party of the Union Hall to being the party of the Ivy Tower, the Republican base moved from Country Clubs to Bowling Alleys and NASCAR tracks.

For their part, the Republican Brahmins were content to tag along on Democrat policies.  They just wanted another party to blame whenever things went wrong.  Let’s remember that FDR's New Deal was only an extension of Hooverism,  America fired coach Hoover but kept his playbook.

The Donald and the Ronald both connected with the great unwashed that the elites left behind.  But, oh how different they were.

Think back to the 2012 Republican Debates.  Ron Paul versus a stage full of empty suit, brain dead, mainstream Republican neo-cons.  He ran circles around them with reasoned arguments about the evils of central banking, fiat currency creation, the federal income tax, foreign intervention and centralized planning.  He was gaining real traction in the early primary states when  the party bosses used technical mumbo-jumbo and brute force to crush his campaign and further piss off his constituents.

Fast forward to 2016.  Trump is the candidate from anger.  No Ron Paul, with studied and nuanced arguments, he.  Candidate Trump went straight for his opponents throats with contempt, sarcasm, insults and name-calling.  Who can forget Low Energy Jeb, Lyin’ Ted and Little Marco Rubio? 


When it came to debate style and substance, comparing Donald Trump to Ron Paul is like comparing Mark Levin to Tom Woods.  Hmmm?  

Policy wise, both espoused pro-life and anti-interventionist policies.  When Ron Paul spoke out against our endless wars he was laughed off the Republican stage.   Four years later Trump used anger to attack the failed endless war policies of his competitors.  His base ate it up.

Beyond those issues, Trump was always wrong.  Wrong on trade, the Fed, fiscal restraint and in vilifying immigrants.  Ron Paul understood the virtues of the free exchange of goods and the free movement of people.  Ron was the only voice in either party to perceive the dangers of Fed bubble creation and overleveraged budgets.  The Donald reaped the benefits a of a buy-now, pay-later economy. He ran up debts for our grandchildren to pay while Wall Street reaped the rewards.

The Donald’s barrage of bombast and bluster carried the 2016 election..  But, as if he were a hero of classical tragedy, the Donald’s strength was also his downfall.  As an astute business marketer he understood how to find his market and how to nurture it.  But the red meat that he threw to his core turned the stomachs of the less committed.  Not many voted for Biden so much as they voted against Trump in 2020.

Now he leaves the country worse off than he found it.  Debt is astronomical and Biden will make it deeper.  One party government will squash dissent by:

1.      Suspending the filibuster to keep annoying dissidents like Rand Paul quiet

2.      Packing the Supreme Court with gaggle of 40-something collectivists so that no Executive or Legislative initiatives are ever blunted

3.      Granting  statehood to Washington DC to guarantee two more automatic Senate seats

4.      Abolishing the Electoral College so that big population, liberal states like New York and California can bend the nation to their will

5.      Opening the immigration floodgates and turn on the benefits to the new arrivals - thus a purchasing a fresh electoral base for a solid generation

6.      Regulating and censoring social media

The center cannot hold for long under these conditions, just as it could not hold in 1861under one-party tyranny.  The storming of the Capitol is just the beginning, a Bunker Hill moment.  On the left, CHAZ, sanctuary cities and other acts of nullification are the flip side of the same coin.

We can only hope that when the smoke clears, America will be a land filled with hundreds of “laboratories of democracy" as the founders envisioned.  Some may  socialist, some libertarian, some theocracies, some modern day Sodoms and Gomorrahs, some ethnic enclaves, some anarchies, and some nice regular places with common sense  rules and regulations.

Sadly, none of this will come without pain and sacrifice - and perhaps bloodletting.  I am not saying to be afraid.  But I am saying is be prepared and be hopeful.  The cracks in the Statist façade will grow deeper until the whole structure crashes down like the Berlin Wall.

Only then will the virtues of liberty become widely apparent .  Until that day, let us remain "the remnant" of true liberty lovers as Dr.  Paul would say.  Keep the faith.  Preach it without fear or shame.


Come senators, congressmen 
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
-
Bob Dylan  1964





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The Failure of Conservatism

 

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction."
 
- Paul Simon

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