American political campaigns can really be off-putting, either because they are too sleazy, too shallow or just too dumb.
Let’s start with dumb. Just how dumb does President Trump think we are when he offers each American about $5000 if Republicans win both houses in Congress Nov. 3?
Some call it bribery using government money to buy votes. I buy that perspective. But here’s the really dumb part of it: It’s money in one pocket and out the other. If the $5000 check ever arrives (his previous promises of payouts never happened), where does the money come from? You, the taxpayer.
Because the federal government is broke – it has a $2 trillion budget deficit and $40 trillion in debt – it will have to borrow the $5000 from you and other taxpayers.
In effect, you will be borrowing the $5000 as a citizen to pay yourself $5000.
Yet it is not a zero-sum game; the country will go another $1.2 trillion in deficit and debt to pay for the proposed cash outlay.
Further, that borrowing will be inflationary, today’s number one economic worry.
What else to say, but “dumb, really dumb!”
At the same time, none of the seven Republican congressmen, including Tiffany, have called for an end to Trump’s war in Iran. (It is a war, JD: Civilians and warriors are dying; valuable stuff is getting blown up — every day). GOP congressmen like Glenn Grothman and Scott Fitzgerald act like the war doesn’t exist.
They have gone tongue-tied on $4 gas and $6 diesel due to the war.
The literature they send out to homes and the messages they project have little to do with the over-riding issues that should be at the center of their mid-term campaigns, such as:
- Soaring health costs and the screaming need to regulate the oligopolistic health care industry. What would Republican icon Teddy Roosevelt of yesteryear be campaigning on?
- Trump’s obsession with tariffs as a way to exert American economic muscle. He has listened not a whit to the business and consumer objections to his decisions to slap on tariffs and then back off. In the tax chaos, businesses can’t find solid ground to stand on when taking positions on prices, expansion and job creation. Every day is a new dance card.
- Making enemies instead of friend Is there any country except Russia and North Korea that he hasn’t turned off? How can we justify alienating Canada, our best ally and trading partner?
- Debt and deficit escalation. The GOP candidates, like Fitzgerald and Grothman, were once fiscal conservatives. They now say nothing about our hemorrhaging deficit and debt. Why would any right-of-center citizen vote for those Trump-hobbled congressional candidates? Congress is supposed to control the purse strings.
- The war is not winding down; it’s escalating.
Enough already. The campaigns are supposed to lead to a political consensus for the solid center of our citizenry. I don’t see that happening this fall.
I put most of the fault on the once reliable Republican Party. For lack of real strategy, they talk only of lesser issues like fraud control and deportation of immigrants, most of whom our labor- short economy needs to prosper.
The election will be: Are you for or against Trump and his cult?
