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Monday, May 7, 2018

Is Mueller A Secret Weapon for GOP and Trump?

There's an interesting article a PJMedia by Roger Simon in which he postulates that the special prosecutor is causing the demise of the Democrats.  His thesis is that the Democrats and their media allies (which is most of the media) are so wrapped up in the probe by the special prosecutor that they have missed the obvious fact that the rest of America no longer cares about that investigation.  As a result, the Dems prattle on about Russia-Trump or non-existent obstruction of justice while only the Republicans are coming out with a program to move the country forward to better days.  Put differently, if voters have a choice between finding a better job or finding out if someone threatened Stormy Daniels, they will pick the job every time.

I think there is a lot of merit in this thesis, but it overlooks a key fact:  the Democrats haven't had any real policy proposals since they foisted Obamacare on the nation in 2010.  Think of the 2016 election.  That was before the Mueller probe and before anyone was talking about supposed Russian interference in the election.  What was the Democrats' economic policy proposal?  It was "more of the same" or "no change".  In other words, the Democrats and Hillary Clinton were basically supportive of anemic growth that would border on stagnation.  During the Obama second term, what was the Democrats' main economic policy proposal?  If you recall, president Obama used to call for universal pre-K as the biggest part of his new economic plans.  Seriously, getting three and four year old kids into nursery school was going to help the economy, or so he claimed.  Of course, it would take about 20 years until these kids hit the labor force, but Obama was taking the long view.  No rational American would consider that much of a plan.  It was just something Obama could say when asked about the economy.

And it's not just the economy, although that is the most important part of the equation.  Think about foreign policy.  Obama and then Hillary had no plan to stop North Korea from getting nukes aside from continuing to do the things that had always failed in the past.  Trump changed policies and now we may soon have denuclearization in Korea.  We can't know yet if Trump will be successful, but we do know that he has been much closer to success than the old failed policies that the Dems still support.

And what about trade?  For a great many years, the Democrats presided over the departure of wealth and jobs from the USA.  It was just the way things were, we were told.  It was the "arc of history", we were told.  Now, in a year and a half, the policies have changed.  Again, we don't know if they will truly be successful, but they seem to have had a salutary effect thus far.

So, it's true that the Dems and the media have focus on the Russia - Trump nonsense to the exclusion of all else of a positive nature.  Sure, they have opposed Trump in all regards.  They have even delayed confirmation of some rather good nominees for no apparent reason.  They convinced millions of people that the tax cuts would raise their taxes, something that is now understood by millions to have been a Democrat lie.  But there has been no positive proposals from the Dems.  This may come back to bite them big time, but it wasn't just Russia Trump.  It has been a decade or more in the making.  The Democrats have thought that just by holding their various "victim" groups, they could win forever.  The truth, however, is that even victims like to get results. 

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