President Donald Trump is certainly making life interesting for Republican Legislators on The Hill who are looking to pass legislation, as opposed to controlling every nook and cranny of media coverage. Republicans in the Senate are quickly running out of time to utilize reconciliation to undo President Obama’s healthcare legacy (and many believe that Republican Senators may be deliberately running out the clock). Conservatives, who have spent ten years trying to reclaim the Republican Party, alter the legislative agenda, and return the United States to free market principles, are all but exhausted; disappointed as their failures mount with every electoral success. Rational discussion has all but come to halt.
While some conservatives continue to fight over idealistic agenda items that are overwhelmingly unpopular in Congress and with the public at-large, other conservatives continue to wage their own personal, emotional vendettas against elected Republican Congressmen. Meanwhile, Democrat Leadership in Washington D.C. continue to play chess, while Republican Leadership struggles to master the basic moves of Checkers.
The Burn-It-To-The-Ground Populists in the Commonwealth are licking their chops as they see the full fruit of their labor all but having finally come to fruition.
So I’m curious – what will Republicans run on in 2018 and 2020? What if there’s no wall? What if there’s no free market solutions to health care? What if they have to raise the debt ceiling three or four times? What if Planned Parenthood is still funded? What if Medicaid and Social Security are still growing, still eating away at the federal treasury (a building littered with IOUs and interest rates)? What if education continues to lose “market share” to Medicaid in many of our State Budgets? What if Trump succeeds in destroying our free trade agreements? What if he fails to do so? What if all those old Rust Belt manufacturing jobs don’t come back? What if ISIS is still around in 2020? What if new housing prices skyrocket after Trump goes into a showdown with Canada’s Timber Industry?
Does anyone really believe that the Republican Party is going to get its act together? Is there any evidence to support such optimism? I don’t think so.
Republicans don’t even have a budget. Here we are again, voting for omnibus bills and continuing resolutions; and President Trump is drooling over a potential government shutdown in November.
The Republican Party rose to power on the basis of the country’s overwhelming dissatisfaction with the Democrat Party, with rising health insurance rates, rising healthcare costs, and the slowest economic recovery in history. Now that the Republicans are finally in power, it’s up to them to govern. They need to stop looking at polls – to stop reacting to everything they hear at a town hall or in the media. They need to develop a plan, push all of their chips to the middle of the table, and see what happens. Governing means making tough decisions.
In management, you make unpopular decisions all the time. Sometimes your employees hate it. Sometimes your customers hate it. Why? Because people hate change and they seem to prefer feeling anger to patient-optimism. We’re a nation with trust-issues. However, if the decisions you make as managers are the right decisions, then you win more customers than you lose, and your employees eventually adapt. If profits go up, then you can hire more employees or replace the ones who never really got on board.
The Republican Party needs to manage the federal government; and right now, I’m not seeing quality management. I’m seeing chaos, disorganization, deferment, and defeatism.
What are the Republicans going to run on in 2018 and 2020? They can’t run on needing more power. They’ve got all the power they are ever going to have. Seriously, how much energy does the conservative movement have left? Movements run on momentum and the conservative movement is losing theirs.
