Written By: Anton Sawyer
Jumping in, I do not think the last two Presidents Of The United States have been mentally competent to serve as the leader of the free world. Yes, both have said things—both intentionally and otherwise—which has cast doubt as to their ability to govern, and I could put a bunch of different quotes to illustrate this, but that would be too easy. At its core, I do believe one of the biggest enablers to allow this problem to flourish is the American people themselves.
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As much as our regular readers have become accustomed to seeing quotes and actions of those in power being ran up the flag-pole, you have to realize that someone put those people in charge. I truly believe that the lack of mental acuity demonstrated by both ex-President Trump and our current leader Joe Biden, brings to light a couple of questions. Have both political parties become infallible in their abilities to lie and mislead the general populace with pin-point accuracy? Or is the overall lack of basic political understanding by the masses in such a degree that perhaps all of the incompetence in Washington is a direct reflection of the citizens en masse—i.e. “low-information voter?”
Though it may seem at first glance that this piece is dedicated to trying to take down the conservative movement, or is pro-Democrat. Let’s squash that real quick. The DNC are just as guilty of using various manipulation tactics to ensure the candidate they think represents their best interests gets the brass ring. I had known about their deception tactics for years, but I still held on to one shred of the idea that they truly care about their base and the opinions that comprise the core of their beliefs. With the 2016 Wikileaks dump of the DNC emails showing the lengths that the liberal leadership went to ensure Clinton would get the nomination by minimizing the national exposure of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, that last shred died. The liberals are more subversive in their actions, making it a bit trickier for the average American to find out where the breadcrumbs lead. It usually involves looking at Congressional Budget Office, financial allocations, and legislation on the state level to see where they are navigating the party towards. A good example of this was in the DNC talking point about income equality and growth. They’ve been hyping it up for years, but when it came time to vote, they couldn’t get enough to surpass the threshold. They could have gone nuclear and passed it with a simple majority, but didn’t, thereby ensuring the wage gap will grow over the next four years at least (you can read about that here). This is just one example of many. Don’t kid yourself, they only care about maintaining a narrative and public perception.
That is one thing I will give the GOP credit for; they listened to their base constituency and have moved the party in that direction. Say what you want about Trump and the conservative movement overall, but once the leadership found that the inmates had taken over the asylum, they went quietly into that dark night. Now, I’m not saying that Biden wasn’t what a majority of the liberal base wanted, but he’s definitely not what the American people deserved. He’s really just a figurehead. After four years of Trump being dovetailed by Covid-19, millions of Americans just wanted to return to a sense of normalcy—and this is what Biden offered. Sure, whenever you would see Biden go off-the-cuff, which was incredibly rare, he would meander a bit and often lose his train of thought. Before his first debate against Trump, aides worked with him tirelessly to ensure that it would go as smoothly as possible. You can watch a plethora of videos on YouTube where you can see Biden misspeak, stutter, stammer, and have a hard time. The ONLY benefit that Biden had when it came to this faux-pas was in the fact that once he got back on track, he’d be OK. If Trump went off the rails, any number of horrific scenarios would be played out when the ex-President would muse to himself aloud (see the “injecting bleach” controversy). This made Biden a clear choice for many simply off that fact; he surpassed the bare minimum. The major hypocrisy in this situation is with how much/often the Democratic leadership tried to sway former Vice President Pence and GOP leadership to enact the 25th Amendment. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives even brought about a (mostly symbolic) resolution in early January 2021 calling to remove Trump after inciting the January 6th insurrection at the nation’s capital. It went nowhere, but it showed just how serious they were about his mental competency. Speaking of the January 6th insurrection …
In a Yahoo News poll done at the end of May 2021, 73% of Republicans blame “left-wing protestors” for the attack in Washington. Only 23% blame Trump. I understand them not taking responsibility for the attack itself somehow by trying the defense that Trump’s verbiage was legally dubious and didn’t force anyone to do anything. Listening to conservative talk radio on a fairly regular basis, during the month after the attack, Hannity and others focused on the words Trump said specifically. Over and over they would repeat the “peacefully” part. It was around this point that the narrative started to shift saying that “many of the people in attendance, were clearly Antifa.” Keep in mind that there are no pictures or videos of hundreds of Antifa members attacking the police. Using common sense, the numbers of MAGA-people would overpower the Antifa by at least 50-60 to 1. And I can guarantee with heightened emotions and rage coming from the protesters, we would have read about some Antifa members being killed during the skirmish if they were truly there. But slowly, since the end of February, the narrative has been shifting to say that the only violence enacted that day was done by “socialist liberals” that want to destroy America and our way of life. It’s clearly working. The GOP-faithful have now adopted the thought that though there may have been was violence on the day a piece of our nation died, but since they are the law and order party, it could not have been them. This thought has been so pervasive, even trying to get legislation put through to look at everything that transpired that day in an attempt to hold people accountable is being killed. At the end of May, there was an attempt to put together a “January 6th Commission” to investigate what happened. The “law and order” party; the party that refuses to negotiate with terrorists and claims to have a stronghold on real American values killed it with a filibuster. Even keeping in mind that six Republicans broke rank to join every Democrat in favor of the bill which would create a bipartisan probe into the riot. By doing this, they are truly going to test what the DNC and their resolve is going to be. Will the DNC do what their base wants by going nuclear to make this probe a reality, or are they going to cower as they have with everything else.
The last, and most quantitative example of how the RNC base gets what it wishes for in the most negative of ways, is former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. I have mentioned him before briefly, but with this topic, he is the epitome of convincing people to do what is not even close to their best interest. Though Brownback had served in public office for the US House of Representatives in the 90s, the Senate for 15 years, it was during his tenure as the governor of Kansas that is the most telling. Running in 2011, he adopted the conservative ideals with such fervor that he made the entire state buy in. I have to admit that he is the most impressive governor of the 21st century so far. At the time he ran, America was still dealing with the fallout of the Great Recession. With the legislation that was passed at the end of the Bush administration/beginning of the Obama administration, the recovery was happening, though slowly and laboriously. When Brownback ran, he made it clear that the entire recovery plan brought forth by Obama was destroying America. He ran on the ultra-conservative platform of not taking government handouts, cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and cutting spending on programs deemed “unnecessary.” The people spoke and he was in. And yes, he did everything he promised his citizens he would do. In 2012 and 2013, at the urging of now-Governor Brownback, lawmakers cut the top rate of the state’s income tax by almost 30% and the tax rate on certain business profits to zero. Under “supply-side” economic theory, these deep tax cuts should have acted—as Brownback then predicted—like “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” stimulating strong growth in economic output, job creation, and new business formation. It didn’t. In fact, the results were pretty catastrophic.
Kansas under performed most neighboring states and the nation on all of those measures after the tax cuts. One example was done by a 2018 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that Kansas’ 4.2% private-sector job growth from December 2012 (the month before the tax cuts took effect) to May 2017 (the month before they were repealed—more on this in a moment) was lower than all of its neighbors except Oklahoma and less than half of the 9.4% job growth in the United States. They also found that Kansas revenues plunged, leading to cuts to education and other vital services and downgrades in the state’s bond rating. Though this economic plan was a total failure, he ran on the same platform for his second term. He said he would continue what he had been doing in helping to save Kansas. Though his second-term victory wasn’t as massive as the first time around, he did get re-elected. Eventually, his plans became so devastating to Kansas, that on June 6, 2017, the legislature terminated what Brownback had termed a “real live experiment” in supply-side tax policy, repealing the business profits exemption and moving income tax rates back toward where they had started. Keep in mind this state legislature was Republican-controlled; even they knew how bad his policies were.
And that is where we are at. We know that both the leadership of the RNC and DNC only care about power and maintaining it. This is nothing new. But we, as citizens, really need to take a look in the mirror. Like with Brownback, he said he was going to do something and did it. He’s one of the few politicians I know that made promises and then made them a reality. His actions were detrimental to his citizens and he knew it, they didn’t. I've referred to the Pew Research and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation polls during the last 15 years and how only 30-35% of Americans can pass the immigration test on any given year. This means two out of every three Americans voting have no idea if what the candidate they are voting for can even do half of the things they’ve promised. And then, even if that candidate can fulfill his wishes, it could be horribly detrimental to those he’s trying to help. I know that there are always going to be people who are clueless as to how the world works. They live in a fool’s paradise. But I think we should all take a step back before throwing our support behind ANY candidate. If everyone could look at just one promise made by the candidate they favor and ask “but can that even be done realistically,” it would help more than you can imagine. It’s like the old saying goes “garbage in: garbage out.”
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