The funniest part of the Donald Trump phenomenon has been the slap in the face that GOP voters have delivered to the Republican and Democratic establishments as well as to the experts, pundits, editorial boards, and commentators in the mainstream press. Practically every time these people have told voters all the reasons they should not vote for Trump, ever-increasing numbers of voters have gone to the polls and done precisely that.
No doubt some of Trump’s supporters like the ugly parts of his message — e.g., the attacks on immigrants or free trade.
But undoubtedly there are also lots of people who are just sick and tired of where the mainstream party establishments, experts, pundits, commentators, and editorial boards have taken our country for the past several decades — down the dark road to torture, assassination, death, destruction, bombing, regime changes, invasions, occupations, forever war, refugee crises, secret surveillance schemes, new enemies, ever-increasing budgets for the Pentagon and the CIA, and ever-increasing spending and debt that is bringing our nation ever closer to bankruptcy, just like Greece and Puerto Rico.
People are also figuring out that Social Security has been a fraud and lie since its inception. There never was a fund and there never will be one. It’s a straight socialist program that turns on seniors making life ever-more miserable for young people by taking ever-increasing portions of their paychecks to fund their retirement.
People are discovering that Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare are also nothing but socialist programs, variations of which are embraced by the people of Cuba and North Korea.
The drug war, which has been near and dear to the political elite for decades, is now teetering, owing to ever-increasing support for ending this failed, destructive, and racist program.
The fact is that mainstream statists have destroyed freedom, prosperity, harmony, and peace for the American people. And many voters are undoubtedly figuring it out.
Now what? Now that Trump is virtually guaranteed to win the nomination, what do mainstream Republicans do? Do they vote for Hillary Clinton? Quite possibly, since she shares their commitment to empire and intervention in foreign affairs and socialism and interventionism domestically.
One of the funniest proposals by a mainstreamer — an obviously desperate proposal — appeared yesterday in the Washington Post. It’s entitled “Trump’s Impending Nomination Means It’s Time for a Third Candidate”by Eliot A. Cohen, who served in the “Defense” and State departments in the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. It would be difficult to find a better model of the mainstream political elite than Cohen.
Guess what he is exhorting his fellow elites to do. Yep, form a third party!
That’s really funny, for two reasons.
One, it will never happen. Why? Because for years the Republican and Democratic establishments have made it extremely difficult to form third parties, especially by requiring tens of thousands of signatures from registered voters to get a third party or independent candidate on the ballot.
Can you see Cohen standing in front of a Giant food store or some Post Office asking people if they would like to sign a petition to get some mainstream Republican third-party candidate on the ballot? Can you envision his elitist cohorts doing so across the country?
Nope. It aint’ gonna happen. These people are getting hoisted on their own petard. It’s a good thing to see.
The second reason Cohen’s op-ed is so funny is what his new political party will stand for. Here is what he writes: “reverence for the Constitution; serious grappling with the domestic problems associated with economic opportunity for all, education and affordable health care; and commitment to the internationalist tradition of the post-World War II consensus. It would advocate a federal government that can energetically do the things it should, but would limit the role of unaccountable regulators and bureaucrats and push to states and local governments every function that is not clearly a duty of the federal government. Above all, it would be committed to liberty in every sphere of personal and public life.”
Can you see why that paragraph is so funny? In fact, it pretty much sums up why the Republican Party is such a disaster today.
Notice the last sentence—“Above all, it would be committed to liberty in every sphere of personal and public life.”
Oh, really? How about the liberty to keep everything you earn and decide for yourself what to do with it? How about abolishing the income tax and IRS and replacing them with nothing? How about no more socialism of mandatory charity — i.e., repealing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, and foreign aid? How about full and complete legalization of all drugs? How about unilateral free trade and open immigration? How about repeal of all economic regulations, including the minimum wage? How about dismantling of public (i.e., government) schooling? How about a dismantling of the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the rest of the Cold War-era national security establishment? How about ending the war on terrorism? How about closing all foreign military bases? How about no more torture, assassinations, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, partnerships with dictators, and regime-change operations? How about ridding our nation of the socialist, interventionist, imperialist scourge known as the welfare-warfare state?
Indeed, if it’s a third party that is “committed to liberty in every sphere of personal and public life” that Cohen genuinely wants, why doesn’t he just switch to the Libertarian Party, a third party that has been in existence since 1972 and that is on the ballot in all 50 states? The LP has long been “committed to liberty in every sphere of personal and public life.”
Interestingly, Cohen doesn’t even mention the LP in his op-ed. Why not? Surely he’s aware of its existence.
Here’s the reason: Cohen’s concept of liberty is the concept that Republicans have held for decades, a concept that embraces all those programs I just mentioned — the programs that are antithetical to liberty and that libertarians would repeal and dismantle. His concept of liberty is a statist one — one that embraces statism under the rubric of “liberty” or under such mantras as “free-market-oriented.”
That’s what Republicans and conservatives have been doing for decades. They’ve been living the life of the lie, the life of deception, the life of delusion — the life that relies on freedom mantras and embraces practically every statist program within the entire welfare-warfare state paradigm.
Consider Cohen’s coded language:
- “serious grappling with the domestic problems associated with economic opportunity for all, education and affordable health care.” That’s code for keeping Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public schooling in existence. Never mind that they are the nation’s biggest socialist programs, with the possible exception of the military establishment.
- “commitment to the internationalist tradition of the post-World War II consensus.” That’s code for continued empire and intervention, led by the national-security apparatus that was grafted onto the federal government to start the Cold War against America’s WWII partner and ally the Soviet Union and which has now given us foreign interventions, regime-change operations, wars of aggression, regime-change operations, torture, assassination, indefinite detention, Gitmo, partnerships with dictators, and foreign aid.
- “It would advocate a federal government that can energetically do the things it should.” That’s code for letting the federal government do whatever it thinks is in the interest of “national security.”
- “would limit the role of unaccountable regulators and bureaucrats and push to states and local governments every function that is not clearly a duty of the federal government.” That’s just meaningless conservative pabulum, much like getting rid of the “waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs.”
A new political party? Why? Because Cohen and his elitist cohorts are sore losers and just don’t like the candidate who Republican voters have elected — and who, by the way, shares the same commitment to statism that Cohen and his political cohorts have. There’s already a political party in existence that embraces all that statism, Cohen. It’s called the Republican Party, the party that made peace with the New Deal, the garrison state, and the Great Society a long time ago. You don’t need a new party to advance your false, deceptive, destructive, and immoral statism. You just need a new nominee. Thanks to democracy, however, you’re not going to get what you want.
And take my word for it: If you were to go to all the time and expense to form a new political party, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. The electorate would reject you and your establishment cohorts with a slap in the face, just as they have done by making Donald Trump your party’s nominee over your objections.