Bad GOP with No Viable Alternative

Republicans deserved to lose control of the House of Representatives in 2018.

When running for office, Republicans promise fiscal responsibility, limited government, and competitive trade policies. Instead, they have delivered reckless spending, expanding government, and protectionist trade policies that harm both domestic producers and our consumers.

The GOP used to be “cautious internationalists,” supposedly interested in consensus with allies over either dangerous isolationism or more dangerous interventionism. (Sadly, both parties end up engaging in interventionism while promising isolationism… as we know for history.) The nations Trump seems to favor are led by authoritarians: Russia, China, and North Korea. That’s disturbing, as someone who believes we should support and promote republican forms of government globally.

Even without Donald Trump leading the party over a fiscal cliff via illogical tax and trade policies, the party hasn’t acted “conservative” since Bill Clinton’s administration.

As an (almost) classical liberal, a small-l libertarian with sympathies for the libertarian left, I wish we had a viable Libertarian Party that wasn’t something of a bad joke.

We desperately need an alternative to the GOP.

The Democratic leadership and voters are mostly what we’d consider center-left by international standards. Yes, there are some Democratic Socialists of America activists in the Democratic Party, but they don’t represent the heart of the party.

However, I’m far from where the Democrats are on most issues.

I don’t believe in “positive rights” as the proper role for our national government. Limited, but effective and essential government remain my ideal. I believe in the primacy of the legislature over the other branches, not a strong executive and entrenched civil service.

However, voters had to ask themselves what was better: center-left Democrats with some morals and a set of coherent policies or Republicans with no moral clarity or coherent governing philosophy.

The Constitution places the legislature first, for good reason. The people and their representatives should oversee policy. That’s why the House oversees the budget: the House speaks for the people most directly.

I won’t vote for Republicans unable or unwilling to limit the Imperial Presidency. The Republican Party deferring to the presidency, especially this president, troubles me greatly.

Many voters are stuck, trying to vote for the lesser of two undesirable and distrusted parties.

It will not happen, but if the GOP could become introspective enough to realize its flaws and admit to them publicly, the educated suburban voters might return to the party. For decades, the GOP owned the suburban college-educated elites, but it lost them during the presidency of Barack Obama.

The GOP embraced the social conservatives, miscalculating that there were sufficient religious conservatives to form a winning coalition. In the late 1990s, the GOP sought to appeal to conservative Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and others who favored socially conservative policies. Today, that focus under Donald Trump has narrowed to exclude non-Christians and some Christian sects.

Fiscal conservatives are not all religious or socially conservative. The GOP has alienated those secular voters.

I should be, in theory, a potential GOP voter. Not a consistent GOP voter, but at least one to whom Republican candidates might appeal on issues of taxes, regulation, and trade.

There’s no way I’m voting for a spendthrift, protectionist, anti-immigration, racists, sexists, and complacent GOP that won’t restrain a reckless presidential administration.

The GOP deserves to keep losing, for now. Maybe right into 2020 and beyond. If the GOP won’t reform, it needs to be destroyed and replaced with a party more focused on economic renewal and progress.