Costly GOP Errors
Two strategic errors over the past half century caused the majority of the problems America faces today.
Republicans (the party) have made two strategic errors since 1969 that have cost America dearly.
The first mistake was when Nixon opened China to the world. Economists of that era looked at China as 1) a massive, untapped market for Western goods and 2) the largest cheap labor supply in the world just waiting to be exploited.
The perspective of China within the business community that lasted for over thirty years was that these backward communists would welcome capitalism with open arms because becoming the world’s workshop would create prosperity in China, providing the money to buy Western goods. When the prosperity became evident, the Chinese people would understand that capitalism supported individual freedoms and the government would have to change to protect the prosperity.
In short, they would see how great Western civilization and culture was and they would change their evil ways and play nice.
Well, that didn’t happen – and it didn’t happen for the same reason there are drug dealers.
Money.
Drug dealers are drug dealers because they make lots of money, they make it fast, and they don’t pay taxes or follow regulations. They also know their business model is based on an addicted market.
The Communist Party of China made much the same calculation.
I spent a lot of time in-country, and I can say without fear of contradiction that there is nobody who understands capitalism better than a member of the CCP.
China didn’t play by the rules, stealing technology left and right, never allowing an outside company to control a company in China (JVs were always 51/49 with the CCP always on the 51 side), dumping cheap goods on the global markets in defiance of global trade agreements (destroying entire industries in the West) and getting the West hooked on cheap labor and cheap products.
Why democratize a society that is already controlled when you can let the state run the entire country as a corporation? All the new money stays with the government, the government can decide how much the people get and because they only know China traditions, they are unlikely to start an independence movement. If they do, the government can just crush them.
The second mistake was when the GOP, having learned nothing from the experience with China, treated the Democrat Party the same as we treated China as Democrats began their full ideological turn toward collectivism and China-Lite state-run capitalism (public/private partnerships).
Democrats didn’t play by the rules, he most egregious example in recent memory was the passage of Obamacare.
The Senate passed it but shortly after, Teddy Kennedy died. Since the passing of the Senator from Chappaquiddick and his replacement by Republican Scott Brown ended the Democrats’ 60 vote supermajority, so to pass the Act, Senate Democrats decided to change the rules. They declared that they could use the “Reconciliation Rule” (this is a different “reconciliation” than the House bill) that was only to be used for budget item approvals needing only 51 votes in the Senate, not the usual 60. Reconciliation was never intended to be used for legislation of the magnitude of Obamacare.
Democrats didn’t care. Their eye was on the prize.
They game the system by releasing thousands of pages of legislation and setting a vote in 24-36 hours and they even change rules when it suits them (removed the filibuster on judicial appointments, for example) and they abandoned regular order for budgets under Obama.
They pass and change laws that give them an advantage, they buy votes and support their constituencies with taxpayer money, they set up kickback schemes with NGOs, pressure/grievance movements, and even national governments (Ukraine before the war with Russia) where federal aid was funneled in and money is flowed back to Democrat coffers Planned Parenthood is a good example of how this works – they receive $500 million in federal grants and almost exclusively donate to Democrats.
More recently, the GOP displayed their “virtue” when they kicked George Santos out (knowing he would be replaced with a Democrat) while Democrat Senator Gold Bar Bob Menendez is working his way through the court system and still casting Democrat votes.
The GOP thinks if it is good, follows the rules and takes principled stands, the Democrats will respect the GOP and imitate them.
Didn’t work with China.
Ain’t gonna work with Democrats.
YES, and YES.
Reading this, I feel a wearying realization of exactly how irretrievably lost we are. I’m guessing many others “on this same page” have tried for a long time to point out the brutally obvious to too many who refuse to see, and you’ve nailed it, yet again, Michael. Why are you not a guest speaker on one of those great shows discussing such matters?? Better yet, a host thereof.
As many in this country spiral down the drain of despair, they are quick to turn on each other, pointing fingers of blame at anyone the left is only too happy to identify as the cause of their miseries. We’ve become Victims United, and a villain can be found for each woe.
As for the causes of our undoing, I’d have to add two:
Johnson’s Great Society, and
The Unleashing of HRC on the pharmaceutical industry in the early ‘90’s, when she was hungry to make a name for herself and ready to exploit an entire industry sector with mob-boss rules.
Many of our current widespread fiscal And social ills (and physical ills!) have resulted from the destruction she authored.
Just when you think there’s nothing left for them to wreck, they surprise you again.
I'll add a third plus a corollary: The 1965 Immigration Act and the 1986 Amnesty follow up. Neither was necessary, both were the product of lies and treachery, and both dynamited the relative demographic stability that made much of the United States possible. We can solve the problem of overseas manufacturing, the overspending, the stupid policy, and all of that, but we can't solve the problem resulting from a nation of hostile factions, dissimilar cultures, and colliding peoples who neither understand nor value the founding principles.