In It to Win It - Economics Voters

by Dr. Ellen Brandt



There Are Five Groups of Republicans Candidate Trump Needs to Make Nice-Nice With Now

 
With the luxury of having several weeks before the GOP Convention in Cleveland, Presumptive Nominee Trump has more than enough time to reconcile his interests with those of the loyalist GOP base.

 
But he and his various advisors now need to posture themselves, if not as overly apologetic and cringing, at least as decent and magnanimous and - dare we say it? - kind. 

 
They need to express their eagerness to put the bitterness of the primary season behind us. And they need to embrace both Ronald Reagan's Eleventh GOP Commandment - "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican" - and a Party of Yes attitude, demonstrating that Republicans can debate issues, opinions, and ideas, but finally emerge as a unified Team - a Team which can put aside personalities and petty differences for the good of the Party as a whole.

 
We believe there are at least 5 distinct GOP Loyalist Base constituencies Trump needs to court, woo, and make nice-nice with immediately.

 
This is not, by the way, the same list of interest groups many other commentators have been stressing as important - which is fine. One of the GOP's main strengths is that we - not the Other Party - embrace and include a wide range of free-thinking individualists, both among our intellectuals and among our rank-and-file.

 
But the constituencies we'll be talking about in this brief 5-part series are those we see as  the most important - and also perhaps also the easiest - for Trump to come to a political understanding with quickly and efficiently.

 
Here then, the Top 5 Groups of Loyalist Republicans our Presumptive Nominee should reach out to now - and what they will want in return:

 

First Up, Economics Voters
 

This is a key group within the GOP Base that I find easy to characterize, because I'm one of them myself.

 
And while Republicans may agree to disagree on some issues - like how to tweak the tax code and what sort of social safety net needs to be retained to protect the Widows-and-Orphans among us (I'm in that group, too) - I believe there's a general consensus among Republicans about various economic ideas and issues.

 
To be frank, we think Trump has been doing really well with Economics Voters, embracing many issues and initiatives Republicans consider vitally important. Here are some of them:

 
***** The "Texas Triad" of Resources, Oil, and Manufacturing: Guess which sectors of the economy the Limousine Liberals have been trashing into near oblivion the past eight years? Guess which Party's investors have been hurt most by this trashing? And guess which States and regions have suffered immensely because of it?

 
Although he makes his home(s) in a Blue state (New York) and a Purple state (Florida), Trump has echoed Heartland, Red State voters' concerns very nicely when it comes to the Texas Triad - and he needs to keep it up.

 
Trump already seems to be strongly pro-Resources, pro-Oil (favoring the U.S.'s return as a major energy exporter, in fact), as well as pro-ramping up our Manufacturing base and getting back - forcibly, if necessary - those Manufacturing jobs lost via outsourcing and some downright horrible trade pacts.

 

***** Competitiveness and Currency Manipulation: Trump's entire campaign, some might argue, has been about restoring America's competitive stance against other nations, which he says have "taken advantage of us." This theme clearly resonates among many Republicans - and Independents - as well as a large cadre of crossover Democrats.

 
A key part of this loss of American competitiveness has been the inexorable worldwide "Currency Wars," in which nations devalue their currencies against other currencies for competitive advantage.
 

And this is where many clueless pundits, including one from the Chicago Tribune a couple of days ago, misread Trump's commentary on the strong dollar versus weak dollar.

 
He has repeatedly said that if other countries continue to devalue their currencies aggressively as competitive tools, the US needs to do the same - i.e. to favor a Weaker Dollar - as a competing tool against other countries' aggressive manipulation. 



In this case, a Weaker Dollar would be a show of Strength in the ongoing Currency Wars. 

 

***** Capital Allocation: Related to both of the topics above - the Texas Triad and the Currency Wars - is what Trump and many other Republicans consider the disastrous interference of Limousine Liberals in how world capital has been allocated under their "Strong USDollar" and "Kill Oil, Resources, and Manufacturing" mantras.

 
These mantras and the incessant propaganda proclaiming them started becoming part of the Limo-Liberal agenda during Bill Clinton's adminstration and have reached an absolute zenith during Barack Obama's terms in office, particularly during his second administration.

 
Among the major problems with these sacred mantras of the Limo-Liberals is that they have favored exactly those industries and sectors employing the fewest number of people and with the least amount of positive impact on most regions and States.

 
They have also had a disastrous effect on the 43 percent of the population - and fully one-half of all voters this election cycle - who are age 50 and over. 



We "Gray" US citizens - who, not coincidentally, skew heavily towards the GOP - have been the major victims of the Limo-Liberals' ersatz Ponzi-scheme economy, in which a "favorable job picture" has depended largely upon eliminating the jobs - and stealing the life's savings - of people over 50, then "redistributing" them to groups which tend to vote for Democrats - the very young, so-called minorities (although every American is part of one or more minorities now), and even illegal immigrants.

 
This is why labor participation rates are at all-time historical lows. The long-term unemployed and under-employed primarily come from just one group: "Gray" Americans - the more than 2 in 5 of us who feel we have been shafted. (More about this in our next story.)  

 
***** Rebuffing the UltraGreens: Republicans favor a cleaner environment and expanding the use of renewable energy as much as anybody else does.

 
But under the Obama-ites, an UltraGreen, low-growth agenda has held sway, much more aggressively than in any prior Democratic administration.

 
Not only does much of the GOP rank-and-file consider a lot of UltraGreen dogma "junk science," we also suspect that during the Obama years an extraordinary amount of Federal money has been wasted on make-work projects, make-work jobs (mostly going to "Youth"), and make-work regulatory bodies, which have seemed to favor lower forms of life over humans - particularly Republican humans.   

 

***** Immigration: Since this is one topic every political pundit talks about constantly, I'll give it just a few sentences here.


While it is also a Security and Geopolitical issue, excessive Immigration is at its heart an Economic issue - and clearly, among Trump's favorite ones.

 
Again, good for him! Note that a large proportion of new immigrants allowed into this country on work visas are Young - and generally Male - hired into Tech jobs which supposedly cannot be filled.

 
This is ludicrous - and literally scandalous - when my own generation, the Baby Boomers (which is also both Trump's and Clinton's generation, Americans who are currently age 52-70) invented much of modern Tech, have been Tech-savvy since we were in junior high school/grade school (depending on whether we are older or younger Boomers), and are by any and every metric the best-educated generation in modern history, before or since.

 
Offer those "un-fillable" Tech jobs to us, and we will gladly take them.
 

 
***** We Need More Growth, Period: Trump seems to agree with the majority of Republicans that we need much more economic growth, after an extended period of virtual stagnation, during which supposedly "strong job creation" and the fairytale myth of "full employment" have only been achieved by knocking close to 40 percent of Americans - most age 50 and older - out of both the workforce and the recorded jobs statistics forever.

 
Meanwhile, we've seen such a "hollowing out" of the historical US economy - manufacturing, resources, Main Street small business - that regions and (mostly Red) States thriving just a few years ago are now teetering on the brink of full-blown economic disaster.

 
Most in the GOP believe that rather than pit interest group against interest group, constituency against constituency, for crumbs of a shrinking economic pie, as the Democrats have been doing, we need to focus on growing our economy as a whole, so there is more to go around for everybody, not just a favored few.


 
***** Smaller Federal Government, And Much More Power to the States: Although a smaller, less-intrusive Federal government has been the stated goal of Republicans for most of the Party's existence, Trump is right to eschew the lure of too much austerity too quickly, which some in the Party have been calling for. Go too far, and you choke off growth - which is what kowtowing to the UltraGreens has caused under the Other Party's aegis.

 
But more innovation and economically stimulative programs should be permitted to come from the States, which have generally lost out during the Federal power grab of the past 8 years.

 
Candidate Trump seems to recognize this. And if he merges his ideas and agendas on the economic front with those held by the majority of Republicans - which he already appears to be doing - the large and influential group of Economics Voters within the GOP should be willing to sign on.


 
Next Up: Mature Voters, Bedrock of the GOP Base