By Bobby Jindal I The Wall Street
Journal
Primary voters chose him
because he promised to fight. Party leaders need to learn to be less timid.
You hear it all the time from Trump
supporters: “I like a lot of what he’s done, especially the judges and tax
cuts. But I wish he’d stop tweeting and picking fights. I wish he acted more
presidential and stopped insulting reporters, entertainers, senators, foreign
leaders and Gold Star families.”
Sounds right, seems smart. Yet for
millions of Trump voters it misses the point entirely. Mr. Trump’s style is
part of his substance. His most loyal supporters back him because of, not
despite, his brash behavior.
He would not be in the Oval Office today had he
followed a conventional path or listened to the advisers telling him to tone
down his rhetoric and discipline his behavior.
If Republican primary voters had
wanted a border wall, tax cuts and sound judges without the drama, they could
have picked Ted Cruz. Instead they elected Mr. Trump for exactly the reasons
that the mainstream media, late-night comics, and party elites cannot stand
him.
GOP voters have traditionally
demanded their leaders demonstrate fealty to conservative principles through
life experience: by offering a spiritual conversion story, standing with a
supportive spouse and children, talking about the deer bagged during last
year’s hunting season.
The apparent authenticity mattered, given that many
competing politicians converged around the same policies. Hence the damage when
a candidate came across as inauthentic, as in 2007 when Mitt Romney said he had
hunted “a number of times,” mostly “small varmints.”
The reality was that voters trusted
candidates who were like them in beliefs, habits and appearance. Knowing this,
candidates tried to find common ground with regular people.
That’s why
Democrats in red states cut ads showing them shooting guns and professing their
faith.
It’s why Marco Rubio repeatedly told the story of his father, the
immigrant bartender, and why John Kasich offered paeans to his father, the
mailman.
But what was really achieved by all
those years of supporting politicians with perfect church attendance and
lifetime memberships in the National Rifle Association? Relatively little in
enacted legislation.
That’s why in 2016, after years of broken promises about
repealing ObamaCare, balancing the budget and imposing term limits,
conservative voters decided they’d had enough. They decided to support someone
whose primary virtue was that he would not back down from fighting for them.
Mr. Trump may not have grown up in a
log cabin, and he has at best a mixed record on conservative social issues. But
he delights in taking on the Washington elites, the mainstream journalists and
the Hollywood sophisticates who mock his voters and their cherished beliefs.
Mr. Trump may not actually succeed in Washington, but how could he do any worse
than the Republicans who paid lip service to conservative goals only long
enough to get elected?
Many Trump voters are unapologetic
social conservatives who reject secularism and multiculturalism while embracing
patriotism.
At the same time, they are economic populists. They want to cut
federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but don’t share Paul Ryan’s eagerness
to limit the growth of their Social Security and Medicare benefits.
They don’t
view Mr. Trump’s break from Republican orthodoxy on legal immigration and free
trade as problematic.
They cheer his denunciation of kneeling football players.
These voters suspect, with not
inconsiderable evidence, that the GOP’s leaders have less in common with them
than with the cultural elite. In their lifetimes, they have watched both
parties, all three branches of government, and the popular culture move from
embracing many of their core values to, at best, tolerating them.
In the same way that feminists like
Gloria Steinem were desperate enough for victories to give Bill Clinton’s
boorish behavior a pass, many conservatives are now willing to overlook each
new revelation about Mr. Trump.
After all, he is delivering wins: withdrawing
the U.S. from the Paris climate deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership; moving
the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Yet this conservative coalition,
built on a potent combination of anger, frustration and resentment of its
previous leaders and the cultural elites, may not be sustainable. These voters
will not abandon Mr. Trump as long as they believe he will not abandon them,
but they also won’t attract many new adherents.
There must be a path forward
that restores conservatism’s natural optimism, confidence and universalism.
Republican leaders can start by
being honest with voters.
They pretended for eight years they were going to
repeal ObamaCare, even when they had no realistic plan to do so.
For years they
promised simple solutions and blamed others for America’s problems.
The Chinese
are indeed exploiting trade and intellectual property to their advantage, but
China isn’t to blame for the appalling state of many urban schools.
The GOP needs to spend political
capital accomplishing the priorities not merely of its donors but also its
voters—for instance, by protecting religious freedom.
Finally, Republican
leaders have to lead.
They have to persuade instead of pander, to expand the
conservative coalition by building bridges where possible and evangelizing
where not.
Simply making another Trump joke may help party bigwigs feel good
about themselves, but it only enhances the resentment that put him into office.
Mr. Jindal was governor of
Louisiana, 2008-16, and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination
in 2016.
_______________________
The 'crumbs' pile up: Feds rake in record tax haul
File photo shows image of IRS Form 1040 tax return (Photo:
Getty Images)
The stock market has been heaving
out of fear of higher deficits as a result of the vast tax cut law signed by
President Trump and of course the left is angry about tax cuts just on
principle, and both have forecast lower federal revenues as a result of the
change.
But, well, now we have
headlines like "Feds Make History With Record Taxes in First Month of Tax
Cuts" and "Monday's Tax Receipts Would Pay For Entire Border Wall."
It goes to show that in the first
readings in the contest of whether tax cuts mean more
federal revenue or more federal deficits, those who say the latter are losing,
squarely.
According to IJR:
The Treasury brought in approximately
$361 billion in total tax revenue for the month of January and managed to
only spend roughly $311.8 billion. This means it ran a surplus
of over $49.2 billion.
Turns out tax cuts bring more money
to the federal government, not less, going completely against the conventional
wisdom about tax cuts creating deficits.
And to follow on from that,
if we have a responsible government, it means we can close the deficit in
spending and can retire more of the national debt from the enhanced revenues –
and pay for social services for the truly needy. That's a beautiful
thing.
It also goes to show that a whole
lot of "crumbs," as Nancy Pelosi sniffingly called the tax cut gains,
are piling up.
Nancy Pelosi's sour face during Trump's SOTU speech goes VIRAL!
Let's look at some of those
"crumbs" as they now stand: we have workers left and right taking
home bonuses.
We have businesses once again forming, which is
something that extends the tax base. We have consumers spending,
which fills state and city coffers some more.
We have individual
jobs forming at companies of all sorts, which lards up the federal and state
coffers even more.
We have more people entering the workforce, with
some dumping welfare and SSI, to get into the arena again, also contributing to
the tax base.
Don Trump, Jr., on his Twitter
account, sums it up best:
Those crumbs
are really starting to add up...https://t.co/THZWWk4BTZ
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 14, 2018
Here's the best thing: the crumbs
aren't done piling up. The knock-on effects from the long overdue
tax cuts are only just beginning.
________________
IN OTHER NEWS
Multiple
immigration plans blocked in Senate, after Trump calls one proposal a 'total
catastrophe'
By
Alex Pappas| Fox News
[Excerpts:]
Senators
on Thursday blocked all four plans dealing with immigration as President Trump
torpedoed one proposal as “a total catastrophe” and his Department of Homeland
Security lambasted it as the “end of immigration enforcement in America.”
During
a series of afternoon procedural votes, no immigration amendments crossed the
60 vote threshold that would have cut off debate and paved the way for final
votes.
The
effort to pass immigration legislation comes as Democrats insist on protecting
young illegal immigrants brought to the country as children and Trump demands
funding for a border wall.
