The Myth That Republicans Won't Fight

What a revealing example from recent history tells us about today

My political lifetime essentially began in 1988 when I voted for the first time. I’ve voted for either Republicans or third-party candidates (1992 & 2000) at the presidential level and voted for the GOP almost as exclusively at House and Senate levels. Those votes have been cast with varying degrees of enthusiasm and since around the late 1990s, I’ve been searching for Democrats who might combine some economic populism with social conservatism. But they’ve been effectively purged from the party.

Anyway, while I might not identify as a Republican or even a conservative, I do fall into the general category of people that will vote this way. The people I discuss politics with are more or less in the same camp. And while there’s not agreement across the board on everything, there has been one overriding complaint that’s remarkably consistent and has been going on at least all the way back to 1988.

The complaint is that Republicans won’t fight.

Under this narrative, the Democrats take office and immediately dig in on behalf of those that put them there while Republicans do a little bit of griping about it and then roll over.

Evidence in support of this narrative would include George Bush Senior’s decision to abandon his no-new-taxes pledge and cut a deal with congressional Democrats—who gave him nothing in return. Or the fact Republicans routinely vote to confirm the judges picked by Democratic presidents, while Democrats not only refuse to return the favor, they launch all-out scorched-earth campaigns meant to destroy the lives of judges nominated by GOP presidents.

Those are just a couple of examples. And it’s understandable that repeated behavior like this might indeed lead you to believe that elected Republican officials are just scared to dig in and fight. I’ve believed it for a long time too. The fact it was Republican legislatures who immediately caved in to corporate media pressure and certified the 2020 presidential election could be seen as the final straw.

But upon further review—and in spite of everything cited here—I don’t think a reticence about fighting is the problem. I think it’s a myth that’s developed and a recent historical example is instructive.

The 2013 Budget Battle

Barack Obama had just won his second term by defeating Mitt Romney the previous November. One of Obama’s proposals was to raise the top marginal income tax rate from 38 percent to 41 percent for those making more than $250,000 a year. In other words, each dollar earned over and above a quarter-mil would be taxed at 41 percent.

Like most people who fall in the Republican Party’s natural voter coalition, I didn’t think this was a particularly inspired idea. I’m not into “soaking the rich”. I don’t think dragging someone else down makes my life better. Nor did I see Obama’s re-election as occurring because voters were specifically ecstatic about this idea. There was no “mandate” for the proposal.

But…we were facing a massive national debt. Something had to be done and that something was necessarily going to be either tax increases or spending cuts. Obama had been very clear about his proposal on the top tax rate for earners over $250,000. No one could accuse him of hiding his ideas. So, while voters may not have chosen the incumbent president because of this idea, they certainly weren’t scared off by it either.

Republicans had leverage. They had retained control of the House of Representatives, the body where all tax and spending bills must originate. It seemed to me that the GOP had an opportunity—as a condition for passing Obama’s tax increase, they would demand spending cuts along with them. House Republicans could further insist that Obama absorb the political heat from any spending reductions.

In short, each side could get something of what they wanted in an overall deficit reduction plan.

But it didn’t happen. House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner dug in. The tax increase proposal was declared dead on arrival. It never got anywhere close to passage. Spending also continued unabated. And the national debt, as of February 12, 2022 is at least $30 trillion.

Now, maybe you think Boehner was right to dig in. The merits of the policy proposal or the ideal deficit reduction program in a divided government are not the point I’m driving at.

The point is that Republicans dug in. They dug in hard. They built off their election-year messaging and portrayed the proposal on top marginal rates to essentially be a choice between capitalism and socialism. Personally, I found that to be more thana little over the top. But the GOP fought and they won.

But are you noticing a subtext to all this—who are they fighting for? The answer is that Republicans will fight like dogs to prevent people making over $250,000 from paying even a very modest amount in additional taxes, no matter the other policy gains that might be achieved along with it.

What It Means

If you’re like me—unwelcome in the Democratic Party and with an income that we’ll just define as something less than 250 grand, this means we are not represented in any real way by either major political party. We have no voice.

For me personally, it’s why, in 2016, I was so desperate to leave the two-party system that I came within 24 hours of making what would have been a disastrous decision to do a write-in for president. But I follow this stuff closely enough to have figured out that the Republican nominee—a man named Donald J. Trump—was really not a Republican in the classic sense. He was effectively running a third-party insurgency under the GOP banner. So I gave him a shot. And—to what remains my amazement—he fulfilled a promise made at the 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland when he said “I will be your voice.”

After his upset victory over Hillary Clinton, I told my then-girlfriend (now wife) to watch closely—that the hidden story of the next four years would be Republicans behind the scenes working to undermine Trump.

The reason that Republican officeholders and big donors were in such angst is not that Trump fought or even how he fought. It’s what he fought for. He fought to confront China’s economic destruction of the American middle class. He fought to revamp our trade relationship with Mexico and Canada in a way that benefitted the working classes, rather than multi-national corporations.

Trump fought to bring our troops home from Afghanistan—the fact the withdrawal turned into such fiasco lies on his illegitimate successor, along with the bumbling buffoons of the GOP who led us in there to begin with.

The GOP’s elected class—including those who give speeches in support of Trump and his voting base—wanted him gone. So did their own voting base of $250,000-plus a year earners. It’s not they necessarily approved of Joe Biden, but they were willing to live with him for four years.

That’s why, in the face of coronavirus shutdowns and electoral fraud, the elected Republican leadership all quickly gave in. The speed with which they folded made the Afghan Army look like models of tenacity by comparison. And it gave rise to the shouts of voters like myself that “Republicans won’t fight.”

But we know that’s not true. Republicans will fight. They’ll do it for the voters they care about. Those that pull down a quarter-million dollars annually. Our liberal friends were not wrong when they called the GOP “the party of the rich”. Or when they said to be a Republican you had to be either a millionaire or a sucker—and to check your wallet to see which you were. Our liberal friends were not necessarily right about their own party and candidates, but that’s a subject for another day.

In retrospect, we should have known it. Does anyone think Mitt Romney—a man who ruthlessly used his ownership of Bain Capital to gut companies across the country—was really terrified of a Democrat? Or that John McCain, a true war hero (sorry President Trump, he was) imprisoned by the Viet Cong suddenly couldn’t handle some nasty words from Chuck Schumer?

Of course they, and other establishment Republicans could have taken the heat. If they wanted to bad enough. The hard reality is that we just don’t matter them as much as those earning 250,000-plus.

Actionable Steps

Politics is not for the faint of heart. Pat Buchanan, my first political mentor, used to quote what Vince Lombardi said about football “It’s not a contact sport, it’s a collision sport.” Steve Bannon, on his War Room show today, regularly tells us “There’s no crying in the War Room.”

So let’s absorb this reality—that the people we have given our votes too have more than enough spine. They simply don’t like us. Let’s do something about it. There’s nothing saying we have to bend over backward for the Republican class. We can choose to stop letting them play on our fears of the elite Democratic class. And we can start right now.

The primary season is upon us and the anger of the 2020 election has brought out ordinary citizens ready to overthrow the Republican Establishment. There are good candidates getting onto ballots across the country, to earn nominations to open seats and to challenge incumbents who don’t speak for us.

This is the defining political battle of 2022. Don’t get caught up in bashing the Biden regime. Keep your eyes squarely in the ball of shattering the traditional Republican way of doing things. Make the entire spring and summer, when primaries are held, a real uprising of normal people who want control of the political process that governs us.

The first primary of the year is in Texas on March 1. A good attorney general, Ken Paxton, has to face a primary challenge from someone in the Bush Family. A good gubernatorial challenger in Allen West is going after incumbent governor Greg Abbott. Early voting starts on Monday.

It’s the first shot of 2022’s great Republican Civil War. Big battles are ahead in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, South Carolina and around the country. Don’t miss it. We need people who’s fighting spirit is used on our behalf.