McLean County Times

    Every four years, before presidential elections, the Republican and Democrat National Committees produce a platform on which their parties run. This year is no different. I tend to go through party platforms to be an informed voter. Frankly, as in the past, this year’s Republican platform is filled with a lot of flowery language and platitudes. Here are some of the things that the Party promises:

• Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion.
• Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.
• End inflation and make America affordable again.
• Make America the dominant energy producer in the world by far
• Stop outsourcing and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower.
• Large tax cuts for workers and no tax on tips!
• Defend our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our fundamental rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.
• Prevent World War III, restore peace in Europe and in the Middle East, and build a great Iron Dome missile defense shield over our entire country – all made in America.
• End the weaponization of government against the American people.
• Stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders.
• Rebuild our cities, including Washington, DC, making them safe, clean, and beautiful again.
•  Strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world.
• Keep the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
•  Fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age.
• Cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations.
• Cut federal spending for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.
• Keep men out of women’s sports.
• Deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.
• Secure our elections, including same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship.
• Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success.

    The Republican Party Platform was approved and made public by the platform committee on July 8, 2024, and formally adopted at the Republican National Convention on July 15, 2024. Each of the above 20 points is clearly articulated in the body of the text. You can read the RNC’s national platform by following this link.

   While these twenty lofty goals are wonderful, we must remember that they must pass through both houses of Congress before becoming law. This means lots of compromise, especially with the parties roughly matched in number: Republican vs. Democrat, Right vs. Left, and conservative vs. progressive.

   Given a narrowly split House and Senate, what might we expect from a conservative Trump administration? While we cannot be sure where the Trump-Vance team will lead us and where Congress will permit us to go, we have reasonable expectations given our prior experience with the first term of President Trump (2017-2021). Here are some of the main themes we should expect to see if Trump and Vance are elected:

• Securing America’s borders – The fiasco caused by the Biden-Harris administration was initiated when executive orders were signed by President Biden, effectively opening up the floodgates to immigration along with all the attendant problems – invasion of prospective terrorists from nations that hate us, human trafficking, drugs, disease, sickness, and death. Before that point, President Trump had effectively closed the border by giving support to border agents and building the wall.
• Reducing crime—One of the things that has happened during the Biden-Harris administration is the growth of crime on nearly every front and location, but especially in large cities. Crime grows when the economy turns sour and when there is no deterrence. Many progressive prosecutors have ignored crime, refusing to prosecute the perpetrators. Jails have been outfitted with revolving doors with the passage of such laws as Illinois’ SAFE-T Act, which is anything but. Also, defund-the-police movements supported by progressives have exacerbated this problem.
• Holding free and fair elections – There can be no doubt that progressive Democrats want to take power in this nation and do everything they can to retain it. Free and fair elections are a hallmark of this effort. Consider the many things that Democrats have done to ensure elections are anything but fair: prohibiting a requirement for voter identification; bringing in illegal immigrants who, when they vote, tend to favor the Democrat party that nurtures them; gerrymandered legislative districts do ensure small Democrat majorities in most districts while relegating high concentrations of Republicans to districts where they number the vast majority thereby almost guaranteeing an elective majority in legislatures; and unconstitutionally banning political parties from slating candidates if none have run in a primary election. This is just a sampling of some one-dozen approaches Democrats are using.
• Reducing government regulation – Democrats believe that the government is better geared to making decisions about every area of life; Republicans believe that the individual should have freedom of choice. Democrats believe in regulations and laws, taking the decisions out of the hands of the little guy because “government knows best.”
• Keeping inflation low – We have experienced some of the worst inflation on an annual basis (exceeding 9%) of any time in history under the Biden-Harris administration. Various factors cause inflation, but one of the main contributors is unbridled government spending. The national debt is now over 34 trillion dollars, and the present administration produced over a quarter of that debt. How have taxpayers benefited? They should be concerned with this question because they have also been saddled with a debt that now amounts to more than $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
• Ensuring educational choice – The U.S. Department of Education has done nothing to improve education quality and accountability. Today, one can argue that a majority of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. We continue to throw more and more money into education as though it will solve all the problems. The fact is that the more we spend, the worse the results get! Social warriors from the progressive Left are ruining our educational practice and destroying the futures of our children and grandchildren. It is any wonder when we are spending more and more time socially engineering our youth with DEI, gender ideology, revisionist history, and such at the expense of reading, writing, science, history, and math. Democrats have taken away school choice; Republicans will restore it.
• Countering the CCP – We are selling our land to the Chinese Communist Party and energizing their economy while, at the same time, sending our manufacturing jobs to foreign shores. We hardly produce anything in America anymore. It’s a wonder that unions still lean progressive in light of the wreck and ruin produced in this nation by progressive Democrats.
• Holding Big Tech and Pharma accountable—The progressive Left has taken advantage of positions of ownership to control the information and spending habits of people in this nation. Billionaires Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and George Soros (Open Society Foundations) are doing what they can to reshape society in their image. The same can be said with the highly biased mainstream media, who serve as nothing less than a mouthpiece of the Democrat party.
• Protecting the unborn – Trump admits that he has given the nation what it wanted by assisting with overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing the choices associated with “women’s fertility” (a euphemism meaning abortion) to be returned to the states. Now that as many as half of the states have passed laws restricting abortion and protecting children in the womb, progressive Democrats want to enshrine the “right to abortion” into national law. While Trump opposes abortion past a certain point except for cases of rape, incest, and the mother’s health, and supports in-vitro fertilization (not a solidly pro-life position), rest assured there will be fewer abortions under Trump than under a vehemently pro-abortion Harris.
• Supporting the family – The cost of most things that influence family life – inflation, taxes, housing, education, food, insurance, interest rates, etc. – has increased under the Biden-Harris administration, far outstripping our slowly rising incomes. Society has become increasingly polarized and divisive. Crime has become rampant. Schools are failing our children. Outsiders are overrunning our communities. The detrimental things affecting our families have only gotten worse.

We should keep in mind that “the past is prologue.” Things that have happened in the past set the stage for the present and future. It suggests that past events provide the context, background, or foundation for what is happening and what will happen next. In other words, history is a precursor that influences and shapes the current situation. We can only expect things to change if we replace the Biden-Harris administration with Trump-Vance.

Frequently attributed to Albert Einstein is this saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Regardless of the source, the statement is true. If we elect Harris over Trump in the November 5th election, we can be sure things won’t change. Things will likely get worse with her socialist agenda, which includes things like price control, wage control, and even capital gains tax on unrealized income! If we revert to Trump, we can expect the better life we had four years ago to return. The moral of the lesson is to vote for Trump.