This country is in so much trouble!
The Democrats handed their primary to Joe Biden without even considering anyone else, and Donald Trump pretty much swept the GOP primaries. Of the two, the Trump victory is the most problematic. Democrats don’t have much in the way of principles. It’s whoever’s turn next. But in viewing the Republican outcome, I ended up wonder what happened to liberty, peace, free market capitalism, fiscal conservancy, sound money policy, and small-government sentiment.
Let’s be clear on this! Donald Trump doesn’t stand for these core conservative values, so why did Republican voters greet him like a returning conquering hero?
Know Our History
The last time the United States reelected a president who had lost a preceding election was the late 1800s. President Grover Cleveland won the 1884 election, then lost the 1888 election, then won again in 1892. We don’t study Cleveland in history, but he was a remarkable president. He really stood for something worth wanting in the White House. Cleveland was a staunch advocate for the gold standard, free trade, budget surpluses, non-intervention foreign policy, and a small federal government in Washington DC to provide the safety for states to experiment at the local level. Because Cleveland didn’t start any foreign wars and he didn’t need to deal with a massive domestic welfare system, he was able to reduce the national public debt (grown massive during the Civil War) from $1.62 billion by 25% to $1.22 billion. In the heyday of classical 19th century liberalism, Grover Cleveland was the representation of the era.
Yes, Cleveland was a Democrat, though of the Jefferson/Jackson kind, not the Barack Obama/Biden kind. It’s too bad Democrats gave up a large portion of Cleveland’s classical liberal legacy during Woodrow Wilson’s foolish war to make the world safe for democracy abroad and progressive interventionalism acceptable at home. They then spent the rest of it during the almost-permanent White House occupancy of Franklin Roosevelt when the greatest egotist to occupy the Oval Office created the permanent Welfare State.
They might once have been a party worth being a member of.
Republicans have made worthy efforts to reclaim Cleveland’s legacy since then — men like Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Howard Buffett, and Romald Reagan, though former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul comes the closest to espousing Cleveland’s principles in our era.
I’m not a member of their party either, for reasons I’ll discuss as the election rumbles along.
Welcome to the Modern Era
Donald Trump is the exact opposite of Ron Paul or Grover Cleveland. Trump is an egomaniac who favors an enormous federal government, protectionism, and monetary insanity.
Yes, many Democrats do too. Are you seeing my point?
And Yet….
Donald Trump had the audacity — and he has a lot of audacity — to compare himself to Ronald Reagan at 2021 CPAC. I’m old enough to remember Ronald Reagan when he was president. I didn’t start out as a fan, but his tenure in office convinced me he was a good president. A deeply principled and humble man, Reagan never would have countenanced the behavior Donald Trump engaged in following the 2020 presidential election.
Yes, the 2020 election was probably the most questionable election ever conducted in US history. The state and local electoral systems were completely unready to handle 65 million mail-in ballots and there’s little doubt that inappropriately tabulated ballots in 2020 exceeded that of the notoriously manipulated 1960 election when Chicago’s Grant Park Cementary had an impressive turnout and it seemed likely Lyndon Johnson’s operatives bought votes in Texas precincts.
Trump lost the popular vote by 8 million, but he lost the Electoral College by only 43,000 out of 12 million votes in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Georgia recounted the 2020 election several times and Biden scored 6,580 more votes than Donald Trump, so was declared the winner. But where the procedures followed so the election was fair?
We’d need to do a database analysis seeking “anomalies” to know that answer to that question. We’d need to cross-compare databases for registered voters and votes cast in Georgia with other certified Georgia databases which might included death certificates for registered voters, addresses and locations for registered voters, voters who moved out of state prior to the elction, and the number of voter IDs per registered voter. Significant “irregularities” found in these comparisons might indicate a problem wi the election system.
Usually dead people and those who have moved out of state aren’t legally allowed to vote. I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s unfair. Most states supposedly “scrub” decease and out-of-state voters from their voting roles prior to an election. It’s unclear if Georgia did that prior to the 2020 election. That adds an element of uncertainty to the Georgia outcome because Georgia requires all registered voters must have a legitimate residential in-state address. A federal post office location or a commercial warehouse cannot normally be considered a legitimate residential address. Yet hundreds of votes in the 2020 election seem to have originated from federal post office locations, commercial warehouses, and several other non-residential locations.
Moreover, a computer cross-check of voting roles and ID numbers in Georgia discovered hundreds of individual registered voters with MORE than one identification number at multiple addresses. Some of these voters had as many as five seperate IDs.
Omega 4 America (also called Fractal) did an analysis of these specific anomalies (and many more) recently. Omega 4 had previously assisted state governments in uncovering fraud in their medical and health care databases by employing the same methodology. They compare legally eligible recipients for state programs with actual funds received. Similarly, in this particular case involving the fairness of the 2020 Georgia election, Omega’s “fractal” analysis concluded that there may have been more than 12,000 separate procedural rule violations and possibly much more. The election was officially decided by just 6,570 votes, so Omega concluded there was really no way to determine who legitimately won the election. After all, the “irregular” votes could have all gone to Joe Biden, or they could have all gone to Donald Trump, or they could have gone to either candidate in some unknowable percentage. So, fair and square, who really won? Who knows.
That alone should have raised red flags and yet Republican governors, secretaries of state, and legislatures in those states refused to consider the Democrats might have fiddled with the election rules to assure Joe Biden won the election. The matter is settled in practice if not in spirit.
So, what does Trump do as he comes back on the scene for a third go at the White House? He suggests the Supreme Court, rather than the states and their voters, should be the arbiter of American presidential elections.
Has he never read the US Constitution? Maybe never read the Founders’ writings?
Cult of Personality
Donald Trump has always been the biggest personality in any room. How do I know that? I’ve heard him talk. His cult of personality isn’t a popular uprising. Those are centered around principles and transcend their leaders. If Trump drops dead tonight, his followers will move on and vote for Mitt Romney or Ron Desantis by November. Trump isn’t offering any remedies to the current mess of our government. He’s merely seeking as many votes as he can get by stroking the valid economic pain most Americans are feeling currently.
Trump’s economy was better than Obama’s and Biden’s, but his claims that the economy during his presidency was the “greatest” is a pure delusion of grandeur.
But that’s the problem. The GOP has long been the guardian of capitalism and sustainably rising wealth and living standards. The economy has been better in Republican administrations than in most Democratic administrations since the turn of the 20th century because Republicans enable sound money policy and minimum regulation. (The 1950s was a notable exception).
Trump did do a good job in dismantling the regulatory state Obama had more than doubled during his eight years and Congress’s tax cuts during Trump’s administration probably did signal to the business cycle that it was time to return to normality. The peak of that resulted from the work of millions of workers and businesses in the free market. Trump is not a miracle worker. He was just standing in the right place at the right time and his tariff and money policies didn’t start to hurt the economy until after he left office. Truthfully, presidential terms and the business cycle don’t coincide. Presidential policies can harm the economy, but it’s a rare president who actually deserves the acclaim they gather for a good economy. Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan might deserved the accolades, but Trump — well, let us remember that he locked us down under Covid 19, which crushed the US economy, ending a lot of small businesses. He unleashed Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the White House Coronavirus Task Force to wreak havoc on a functioning economy, while they fostered public hysteria wholly unnecessary for the actual impact of the disease.
If you were old, fat or had another disease, covid was dangerous for you. If you’re 99% of the country, you could go on with your life and catch another version of the cold.
The Greatest Economy Ever?
Trump’s assertion that he created the best economy ever is countered by the actual numbers from other presidential administrations.
Real GDP Growth Per Annum During Presidential Terms Since 1950:
Eisenhower (1953-1960): 2.52%.
Kennedy-Johnson (1961-1968: 5.19%.
Nixon-Ford (1969-1967: 2.73%.
Carter (1977-1980): 3.19%.
Reagan (1981-1988): 3.55%.
Bush the Elder (1989-1992): 2.21%.
Clinton (1992-2000): 3.81%.
Bush the Younger (2001-2008): 1.75%.
Obama (2009-2016): 1.94%.
Trump (2017-2020): 1.25%.
Except for Carter, they all outdid Trump’s economy.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump ran up the federal debt. Trump won the prize for shackling future taxpayers, many of them not yet born, with unimaginable amounts of new debt.
Average Annual Increase in the Public Debt:
Clinton: $203 billion.
Bush: $655 billion.
Obama: $1.132 trillion.
Trump: $2.334 trillion.
Remember, Trump was in office for only four years, but Obama would have needed to be in office for another eight years to outdo Trump.
The Federal Reserve needs no encouragement to print money without regard for the value of it, but Trump encouraged a reckless rate of money-pumping. Capitalist prosperity requires sound money policy and Trump failed at that most basic job of a Republican president.
Per Annum Change in the Fed’s Balance Sheet, 2000-2020:
Bush (2001-2008): $185 billion.
Obama (2009-2016): $295 billion.
Trump (2017-2020): $750 billion.
These numbers make this fiscal conservative nostalgic for Obama and I really think he was a horrible president. Donald Trump is no conservative. He was and remains a self-promoting loudmouth who pursued the wrong solutions, but somehow manages to pull people into his orbit. Yes, absolutely, Biden is a terrible president, and no, I don’t think Robert Kennedy Jr. would work out for us if he became president. But neither is the Trump we know will save the country from the fiscal ruin that is looking more and more inevitable.
Who are the Libertarians nominating? Let’s hope it’s someone sane and able to communicate and that American voters will get over their obsession with main party elections. They can win if people vote for them. And we need competant leadership. We can’t wait another four years. Wake up and smell the cofffee burning, folks.
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator who thinks we need to start thinking outside the partisan box before the country collapses from doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results.