I’m not a fan of Democrats. Once the façade dropped and Democrat-led cities began letting criminals run the streets without facing any sort of charges, it was obvious that Democrats had become the party of lawlessness. Once the abortion debate took a nasty shift into infanticide, where people literally said that a baby could be born and then the doctor would have a conversation with mom on whether to keep it alive murder it, Democrats became the party of killing innocent kids.
But I’ll be damned if I’m excited about Republicans. I watched Republicans at the federal level own the House, Senate and Presidency, but then fail to fix health care and Social Security (you know, those programs that are going to eat us alive in the long run!), fail to fix our defense spending and actually get the quality and quantity we need for the price we’re paying, and fail to, well, really stand for anything. At the state level, things were better in some areas, but even plenty of Republican Governors and state legislatures have been complacent, allowing all sorts of silliness to run amuck in their states.
So yeah, Republicans will still be the party of losers, even if they win in 2022. After much angry thinking, I think it boils down to a few key problems:
- Republicans don’t ever make progress on anything because they are the party of NO.
- Republicans can’t fundraise from normal people.
Let’s start with the party of NO. Republicans seem to always fight to return to the status quo, like somehow things were so much better in the 80s under Regan, or Bush, or the 1950s, or insert your own time period here. They remind me of some of the old people at my church that only seem fit to complain about how things were so much better under a different Pope and in a different time. As you read this, can’t you hear these people talking? Doesn’t it sound like nagging to you, like something your aunt or uncle that you hate spending time with would do?
Let’s contrast that to Democrats. Everything is about “progress.” Now, I laugh at the term “progressive,” and to me its a negative thing, but Democrats are always progressing towards something, typically Communism in some other form. But I give them credit, because they are on offense. All the time. They are focused on scoring points in the game we call politics. That means they push for things like $15 dollar minimum wage, or free health care, or abortion access to everyone, or letting men compete in women’s sports. These are all terrible ideas, but that misses the point, because they are on offense, over time offense conquers defense.
You can’t simply be the party of NO and expect people, especially young people, to be excited about voting for you. I’ll write more later about progress that Republicans should be making, but I’ll pick one here: adoption. If you’ve ever tried to adopt a US baby, it is an expensive and frustrating process, where the state is happy to charge someone thousands of dollars, let some low life state employee rummage through your home and find “issues,” and in the end only have at best a 50/50 chance of adopting a kid. If I was running for office, I’d make “Free adoption” one of my rallying points, both as a counter to the abortion culture and as a way to start dismantling some of the ridiculous bureaucracy that plagues our country and squanders our tax dollars. That puts me on offense, and if it gets repeated enough, it’ll be part of a larger winning package.
Now what about fundraising? Well, go back to 2016, where Donald Trump totally did not raise as much as Hillary Clinton. I saw this at the local level here in Virginia as well, where Democrat candidates at all levels outraised Republicans nearly two to one. Money matters. It buys you ads, gets your name out there, sponsors events, lets you send flyers and lets your candidate travel. Rallies, events, dinners, interviews with local news and shaking hands all matter. They build excitement and help the buzz about a candidate, especially by word of mouth, spread quickly.
Republicans fail here for two reasons. First, they make it hard to donate. Every Democrat candidate has a Paypal, Venmo and Cashapp donation button. Republicans? Here in Virginia they want everyone to go through some stupid WinRed website. Churches got it right when they made it easy to throw a twenty dollar bill in the collection envelope, or donate automatically online with about 3 clicks of the mouse. How are Republicans so far behind on this?
The second reason is failing to excite young voters and get small donations. One might blame this on demographics, but unexciting candidates are a bigger reason. Bernie Sanders might be crazy, but he’s damn persuasive in person. So is Donald Trump, and so was (and is) Bill Clinton. That’s why they can get young people excited to throw 20 dollars at them. That money adds up. Most Republicans seek to kiss the ring of some person working the local GOP party infrastructure, which gets some big business donations, but not the tidal wave of money we see Bernie able to bring in.
As a conservative, I’m frustrated with the party that I tend to vote for. I want to be excited to vote for Republicans at all levels, but until they start becoming a party of YES, and make it easy to fundraise, they are always going to be losers no matter what election cycle we are in.
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