Being a Better Republican: My New Year's Resolution for 2024

Cutting out the Neocon Cancer

Democrats for the last several decades have accused Republicans of being the party of dark money, preemptive war, terrible trade deals, the abolition of Social Security and Medicare, Wall Street bailouts, and mass surveillance.

And to be honest, they're partly correct.

Partly correct.

From the late eighties under Bush Sr. until the mid-2010s under Trump, Republicans genuinely were the party of all of those things. Bush's disastrous eight years in office solidified that stereotype. After all, he was a globalist who launched preemptive wars against Iraq and Afghanistan without even trying for a peaceful solution, advocated for privatizing Social Security and Medicare, bailed out Wall Street, and signed the PATRIOT Act, an abomination that made a laughing stock of our Constitution.

McCain and Romney, our nominees in 2008 and 2012, ran on similar platforms.

This all changed with the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016 (well, most of it). Trump advocated for a reduction in American meddling overseas, protectionist trade policies, keeping Social Security and Medicare, and generally opposed dark money and big banking.

This change was a shock to the political establishment, who thought they'd be catered to regardless of who won, expecting the ultimate victor in 2016 to be Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton. When they realized their gravy train would end, they lashed out brutally. With the sole exception of Bob Dole, our nominee in 1996, every single former Republican president, vice president, or failed nominee for either of those positions alive said they would not vote for Trump. Former President George H.W. Bush even suggested he may vote for Hillary Clinton rather than his own party's nominee.  In Congress and in the states, similar story. Longtime Republican operatives like Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, and Steve Schmidt left the party altogether, forming anti-Trump PACs like the Lincoln Project and voting third party or for the Democrats. A former Republican from Utah even ran a third party candidacy, hoping to throw the election to the House of Representatives. 

Longtime conservative firebrands made up every possible excuse not to vote for Trump. His vulgar words were and still are a common talking point of these scumbags. Some claimed he wasn't a true conservative while others claimed he went too far.

Here's what you won't hear about the "Never Trump Republican" from the mainstream media, who promotes them as "true conservatives": These people oppose Trump because they are not conservative at all; they're neoliberals (often referred to as neoconservatives or neocons, which is their preferred term) and Trump is a populist conservative. Neoliberalism/neoconservatism is simply the dead corpse of the anti-Stalinist left from the Cold War era. That's why they support things like preemptive war (a holdover from the Cold War), mass surveillance (a holdover from the days of mass surveillance on Communists), dark money (to increase their control of politicians) and Wall Street bailouts (a big government measure that expands control over the economy). In short, it's a form of leftism that opposes full-blown socialism and Communism.

With the downfall of global Communism, these neocons didn't want to give up their easy money. After all, preemptive war, mass surveillance, and dark money are big business. So instead of mass surveillance and preemptive war against Communism, they turned to the American people and Middle Eastern boogeymen.

Neoconservatism/neoliberalism has nothing in common with actual conservatism, which is a philosophy of limited government, keeping your earnings, and preserving America's founding institutions. They don't believe in any of that. That's why we've seen an exodus of them from the Republican Party.

As these maggots have left the Republican Party for the open arms of the Democratic Party one after the other, the Republican Party hasn't gone away. Far from it. We simply traded one group of voters (wealthy liberal internationalists) for another (conservative working-class patriots). That is why Republicans are rarely ever competitive in New Hampshire, Virginia, or Colorado anymore, while they've made slow (and sometimes rapid) progress in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Pennsylvania. These are all places where people have been royally screwed over by decades of wealthy elitists in both parties shipping their jobs to China. Trump appealed to these people because he promised to fight for them and not the Bill Kristols of this world. As a result, he won those states and the 2016 election.

The problem is that we still want the support of wealthy globalist elites at all. Even Trump has pandered to them, sometimes successfully (which makes the average American not want to vote for us), and sometimes unsuccessfully (which takes away valuable time and resources we could be using to get our new base out to vote).

So what's the solution? Simple: unless the neocon candidate is running in a heavily neocon state like some Northeastern states who elect neocons and no other Republicans (like Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, or Massachusetts), refuse to vote for them. Don't support them in primaries and don't reelect them in the general. We'll suffer temporary losses of some neocon seats while improving with blue collar workers, who are much more likely to vote for us longterm. This is the bottom-up approach. Republicans have been doing that more and more lately, to their credit.

The top-down approach (which must happen simultaneously or else the elites will sabotage "our guys" like they did to Joe Kent, Kari Lake, and Herschel Walker in 2022) is to elect true dyed-in-the-wool Trumpers to every party position we can. Trump has done this as of 2024, nominating the popular party leader from North Carolina for the RNC's top job. Already we're seeing the party move in a more populist direction, while also embracing early voting and ballot harvesting where legal (see next chapter). 

Combined, both of these plans will chip away at voters' preconceived notion that we're the party of neoliberalism and Mitt Romney, making us more popular with the average American.

The next part is for Trump himself. If you're reading this, Mr. Trump, start highlighting.

You should unequivocally say you are for protecting Social Security and Medicare. You have been historically; make that even clearer. Promise that instead of trimming back benefits for the midwestern grandma, you'll cut them for the ultrawealthy who don't need them while growing our economy so more people can pay in. You've made statements in the past that have contradicted this position. Take those back. NOW. Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Like a 50,000 volt rail on a New York subway, touching it will kill you.

Continue to be anti-war and anti-unfair trade. In fact, you should up the ante on those issues. Not one more dime should go to Ukraine, and we should not increase spending on Israel (though we should give some military and financial support to Israel, but no boots on the ground that aren't already there).

Also, make it unequivocally clear that no more bailouts are coming, not for banks or for the average company. I realize that COVID and the deep state forced your hand in 2020. Ignore them this time. Don't let them goad you into any further bailouts. Instead, flip the script and tell banks and companies that they must be good at business, or go out of business.

Finally, government surveillance and persecution of whistleblowers ends now. The CIA, the TSA, the FBI, the IRS, the NSA, the PATRIOT Act, and any government agency whose purpose is to conduct surveillance is to be abolished for good. We do need a federal law enforcement agency and we need to have intel on foreign threats for sure, but the current organizations should be entirely liquidated and a new agency for true law enforcement and foreign intelligence that leaves law abiding Americans alone is to be established. It is to be incredibly limited in scope, prosecuting genuine threats to national security and prosecuting federal crimes such as illegal internet smut and human trafficking. Anyone who served in any of these organizations should be fired, rehired only if they did not commit ANY abuses of power in their career. Julian Assange, Ed Snowden, and their compatriots should be pardoned and rewarded with medals for their heroism. Imagine how Americans would feel about you if you promised that they'd never again have to worry the government was watching them or worry about their children being fondled at the airport by a rapey TSA agent. You'd win forty-plus states if you had another run at it left after 2024.