ncsualum05 said:
griff in my opinion and if you paid attention to things other than the noise Trump actually took a lot of those stances.
Regarding point #1 the GOP as a whole was a big part of the problem and still are. You have some conservatives, some populists, and some "establishment" politicians. Trump was not good at being fiscally conservative but would it have mattered if he tried harder? I mean congress is the main problem here passing the type of bills and budgets they do. Seems neither party will ever give up their big huge swamp spending bills. You can't even get a majority of GOP to agree on fiscal responsibility and you're never getting 1 democrat vote.
Point 2: This is where Trump broke with a lot of "conservatives" in which he did prison reform. He also encouraged better working conditions through the magic of a strong economy. Wages were on the rise before covid, and employment was at an all time high, particularly in minority communities. The GOP has more and more become the party of the working class. There are some though that just need to get out of the way. Once again where Trump fails is welfare reform. But Trump is not a fiscal conservative nor does he believe it would ever be a winning issue. That's where I disagreed. No politician ever wants to touch it.
Point 3: Trump was pulling us out of being world police. He got many people out of the Middle East and even achieved historic peace deals there. We crippled Iran, stood by Israel, sucked up a little to NK to keep crazy ass calm, and hurt Russia and China economically. We made nations up the anty on these damn bills for things like NATO and the UN. Organizations that were becoming anti-America, accomplishing nothing, and we were propping up. Trade deals were huge. So we weren't being isolationist... we were just looking out for America's interest more than others. Most politicians and the people we have in power now would sell us in a heartbeat for an extra dollar. We have been selling out to foreign countries for decades to screw our own people over so they could get personally richer.
That was kind of my point. Trump is just not the face you want on that, though. Not now. I would flush EVERYTHING about Trump being associated with the party because, like it or not, he is branded a certain way now. My point was that if you take those items for what they are, it's very moderate, middle of the road policy that appeals to A LOT of people. But Trump doesn't. So, the GOP needs to decouple itself from him, take that sort of road map a bit, and become a voice of the people that feel like they're not being heard in NYC, LA, Chicago, and the like. I also think you need to deescalate the race baiting and provide a counter-point that it's actually class that is separating everyone right now. Classism is much more dangerous for poor to lower-middle class families right now.
Welfare is a great one that I like to start off with. Pubs hate it and Dems love it. Pubs want them off asap and Dems want them on it as long as they can. I'd love to start out with an offer of a one-time chance to be on welfare for 3 years. In those 3 years, you also have community college paid for. If you graduate, you get to stay on welfare for 2 more years and then you're on your own. That does a couple things, imo. You get more people contributing to society, they get a purpose and direction in life, AND you've just lightened the welfare burden as well as made a new tax payer. With those last two things, you can then offer childcare for kids 2+. That takes away an excuse to stay on welfare for single parents.
Now, that's probably not a big thing that uber conservative people want to hear, but I think it's a compromise that meets both extremes in the middle. It's difficult for either side to argue with it because you're getting them "off the books" in 5 years at most for staunch Pubs and bleeding heart Dems still get to bask in the glow of their empathy.
We don't have enough compromise in DC and I think the heart of that is the absence of term limits. If you knew you had a max of 12 years in the Senate or House, I think you would work to enact things that best serve you when you return to the private sector. Right now, the best thing they can do is to serve their re-election hopes, however damning that turns out to be.