Republicans are, generally speaking, wonderful people.\u00a0 But what I dislike most about them is their inability to address the most critical issues of our time in such a way that the \u201caverage man\u201d can know and make sense of them\u2026 in the same way that Governor Chris Christie is able to get his point across to all those liberals and Democrats in New Jersey.\u00a0 Of course, this is nothing new for Republicans; it\u2019s something I\u2019ve known about them since the day I first realized that I was a Republican, and that\u2026 ethically, morally, and ideologically\u2026 I could never be a Democrat.<\/p>\n
For example, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> decision in 1954, it was immediately evident to almost everyone that African Americans would be a decisive factor in American politics for generations to come.\u00a0 As the \u201cseparate but equal\u201d concept in public education was abandoned it was only a matter of time before our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our shops, restaurants, and other public facilities would be desegregated, as well.<\/p>\n Republicans may have assumed, and rightly so, that since the Republican Party was born out of opposition to slavery; that a Republican president fought a bloody civil war, in part, over the slavery issue; that it was Republicans who wrote and passed the 13th<\/sup>, 14th<\/sup>, and 15th<\/sup> Amendments to the Constitution, outlawing slavery and giving blacks citizenship and the right to vote; that blacks would have felt a degree of loyalty to those who had fought and died for their freedom.<\/p>\n Republicans may also have assumed that black Americans would know that it was Democrats who had fought and died to maintain the institution of human slavery; that it was Democrats who created the KKK, a paramilitary auxiliary that murdered and maimed thousands of black and white Republicans; and that it was Democrats who had devoted an entire century to denying them access to the American Dream\u2026 after they had cast off the bonds of slavery.<\/p>\n If they assumed all of those things they were dead wrong.\u00a0 After being the black man\u2019s worst enemies for more than a century, Democrats quickly developed a broad array of social welfare programs designed to keep blacks happy and content and out of the competition for jobs held by whites in the industrial plants and the construction trades.\u00a0 As Republicans stood idly by (sucking their thumbs?), blacks were led, en masse, into the Democratic Party where they were promised an endless assortment of \u201cfree lunches,\u201d and where they were \u201cbrainwashed\u201d into believing\u2026 as Herman Cain suggests\u2026 that Democrats were their friends and their saviors.<\/p>\n Republicans had a far better story to tell, and it was a fairly simple message.\u00a0 They needed to get the message across to blacks that, in a free market economy, there are no \u201cfree lunches.\u201d\u00a0 In order to share in the American Dream, black children must get out of bed each morning and get to school on time\u2026 every day.\u00a0 It was important that they pay attention in the classroom, behave themselves, and always have their homework done on time.\u00a0 And when it was time for them to enter the workforce, it was important that they be at work on time, every day, and that they give their employer eight hours of their best effort in exchange for eight hours pay.<\/p>\n Instead, for more than fifty years, as Democrats squandered trillions of taxpayer dollars in their cynical effort to buy the black vote and keep it bought, Republicans assumed that the battle for the hearts and minds of black people was a lost cause.\u00a0 They assumed that the American people were totally sanguine with the notion that, as Democrats spent trillions of taxpayer dollars tying up the black vote, they were actually trying to improve the lives of black people.\u00a0 Nothing could have been further from the truth, yet they sat silently by, saying nothing.<\/p>\n And now, as the nation rushes headlong toward economic oblivion, a lot of things that need to be said\u2026 so that the economically illiterate can grasp what is happening\u2026 are not being said.\u00a0 As Barack Obama met with congressional leaders, trying to find a way to extend the national debt limit while reducing the size of the federal government, growing the economy, and creating jobs in the process, Democrats insisted, every day, that we must load a heavier burden of taxation on the wealthiest Americans.\u00a0 They believe government knows better how to spend our hard-earned money than we do.<\/p>\n So what did Republicans say?\u00a0 They gave us the Milton Friedman Chicago School of Economics argument that the worst thing we could possibly do in the midst of a major economic recession is to raise anyone\u2019s taxes.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.\u00a0 That\u2019s all they said.\u00a0 They assumed that all the public-school-educated Kool-Ade drinkers out there actually understood how a free market economy works.<\/p>\n What they should be asking the people is this: \u201cWould you rather have a rich man keep his dollar in a bank account so that it can be loaned out to someone who wants to buy a new car, build a new house, or start or expand a business\u2026 all of which create jobs and wealth for others?\u00a0 Or would you rather have that dollar taken away at the point of a gun so that some lame-brained senator can use it to help fund a Cowboy Poetry Festival in northern Nevada, or give it to some pinheaded college professor who wants to find out how much \u201cgreen\u201d energy can be generated by shrimp shackled to tiny treadmills?<\/p>\n Democrats have insisted over the past two years that all we had to do to get our economy moving again was to borrow another $787 billion from the Chinese, spend half of it on \u201cshovel-ready\u201d projects that turned out not to be quite so \u201cshovel-ready,\u201d and turn the other half over to federal bureaucracies and the states so that they can dole it out to unionized public employees\u2026 regular supporters of the Democrat Party and its candidates.<\/p>\n The point that Republicans needed to get across was that it is only the private sector that creates wealth as it grows the economy.\u00a0 It creates products and services that consumers want to buy, while the public sector (government) creates nothing of value.\u00a0 The stimulus money went to pay federal workers whose bloated salaries average $123,000 per year, compared to $63,000 for similar work in the private sector.\u00a0 That would have angered even economic illiterates, but again, Republicans failed to understand exactly what the people fail to understand.<\/p>\n American businessmen, large and small, are sitting on tons of cash\u2026 not expanding, not hiring, and not modernizing.\u00a0 Democrats see that as un-American because, as Michael Moore explains, that money is a \u201cnational resource,\u201d to be spent on projects that make Democrats feel good about themselves.\u00a0 What Republicans should be stressing every day, in every way, is that the one thing that is most essential to business planning and decision-making is certainty, and that the one thing that Obama has actually done best in the past two and a half years is to create uncertainty.<\/p>\n Republicans should be stressing to voters that Democrats are so blas\u00e9 about the profit motive, and so wedded to the notion of \u201cwealth redistribution,\u201d that they see the businessman\u2019s desire for certainty as just another lame excuse for not making \u201cfeel-good\u201d investment decisions.<\/p>\n Everyone is concerned that the unemployment rate has risen to 9.2%, but no one, especially Republicans, is tying the unemployment rate to increases in the minimum wage.\u00a0 Since gaining control of Congress in 2006, Democrats have pushed through a forty percent increase in the minimum wage, from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour.<\/p>\n What impact does the minimum wage have on unemployment?\u00a0 Studies show that, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, the overall number of jobs available decreases by about\u00a0 2 percent.\u00a0 The impact on entry-level jobs is even greater.\u00a0 For each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, the number of entry-level jobs for teenagers and the unskilled decreases by 4 to 5 percent.\u00a0 So who is taking the lead in educating the people on the role of the minimum wage in our high unemployment rate?\u00a0 Certainly not Republicans.<\/p>\n Few employers are anxious to pay $7.25 per hour to entry-level employees with no demonstrable skills and no prior work experience, yet Republicans avoid the minimum wage issue like the plague.\u00a0 The fact is, many families would be happy to have their teenage children working at $5.15 minimum wage jobs while their father is unemployed.\u00a0 It\u2019s the way families used to deal with hard times way back in the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n Barack Obama never fails to mention in his speeches that the reason he is unable to produce jobs is because congressional Republicans refuse to meet him half way.\u00a0 To uninformed voters, that argument tends to make a lot of sense.\u00a0 However, what Republicans should be pointing out at every opportunity is that Obama\u2019s jobs bill is actually a job killer and that, in order to meet him half way, they would have to consciously support policies that kill<\/em> jobs.<\/p>\n When liberals, Democrats, and their toadies in the mainstream media suggest that Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, or Michelle Bachmann are far too inexperienced to serve as president, Republicans have an obligation to point out that each of those individuals are far more experienced, far better prepared for the presidency, than Barack Obama was when he was elected\u2026. but they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n I have always suspected that Democrats have a \u201cspin\u201d school where they learn to say things that sound good<\/em> to the \u201cgreat unwashed,\u201d but which have little basis in fact or truth.\u00a0 It\u2019s time that Republicans learned to do the same.\u00a0 I\u2019m tired of sitting in my living room, shouting words at my flat-screen TV that Republicans should have sense enough to say on their own.\u00a0 So, Republicans, it\u2019s time to get with the program.\u00a0 Toughen up!\u00a0 Don\u2019t make me come out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republicans are, generally speaking, wonderful people.\u00a0 But what I dislike most about them is their inability to address the most critical issues of our time in such a way that the \u201caverage man\u201d can know and make sense of them\u2026 … Continue reading