. . . "Well, I’m gonna remind you. For those of you new to the program, that’s not a sentiment with which I disagree. I just disagree with the timing. I don’t think the Republican Party lost its way with Trump. Trump is the result of the Republican Party having lost its way. And do you know when you can trace Republican Party having lost its way? Where do you think, Mr. Snerdley?
"If you were playing Jeopardy! right now and the big $25,000 prize hinged on you answering this question correctly, when did the Republican Party of the modern era lose its way? (interruption) Exactly right. In the post-Reagan era. And why did the Republican Party lose its way? (interruption) No, because they abandoned conservatism! They abandoned conservatism and pretended to be conservative and dibbled at it and dabbled at it. They talked about it, but they never implemented it — or rarely.
"They promised to during campaigns, but once they got elected there wasn’t any. It fooled people for a while, but that’s when you trace the Republican Party having lost its way. And it’s always been frustrating. Ronald Reagan shows the way: Straight-down-the-middle conservatism. He won two landslide elections in 1980 and 1984, proved a whole bunch of conservative theory that you can cut taxes and double the size of government.
"You [create] revenue that Washington would otherwise never get by cutting taxes, that you can create new jobs and lower the deficit and lower inflation by cutting taxes, eight years of it — well, six. It took a couple of months to get the tax cut passed and then another 18 months for it to kick in after it was implemented. But all during this time the Washington establishment, including both Republicans and Democrats, did not like Reagan because they didn’t like conservatism.
"They don’t like anything that deemphasizes the role of government on a day-to-day basis, and they don’t like anything that deemphasizes or shrinks the size of government. So they pretended to love Reagan and they all wanted to be in the spotlight. But privately, they were plotting how to take control of the party once Reagan’s two terms were over and get it back on track to where it was the Harlem Globetrotters… Well, the Republican Party was the Washington Generals to the Democrat Party’s Harlem Globetrotters." . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment