Trump and the Party of Yes

by Dr. Ellen Brandt



Out of the ashes of rancor and discord, can the GOP rise phoenix-like, a true Party of Yes?


If any political entity has ever experienced a Trial by Fire, the Republican Party has certainly done so this primary cycle. The rancor, rowdiness, discord, and pure angst have been extreme.


But now the burning questions become: Can we find the courage and the chutzpah to crawl our way out of the ashes? Are we brave enough and confident enough to proclaim the recent Past as (mere) Prologue? Can we embrace the fact that it has made us stronger, not weaker? And will we reassert our basic principles, ideas, and ideology - provided we can figure out what they are?


As for the mourning period that some Republicans are going through now: Look on it as a welcome luxury the Democrats do not have. There are a full six weeks before the GOP convention in Cleveland, almost a glacially long period, in political terms, for Republican factions and candidate splinter groups to assert their continued importance to the Party and voice what they need from our nominee and our platform in order to cement their continued allegiance.


I fully admit that my own mourning period, after the momentous events of last week, has been quite brief. That's because I am very much an Economic GOP voter. And I am rather encouraged both by what did and did not happen in the markets last week and by some savvy initial moves the Trump camp has been making to reassure advocates of the "Texas Triad" - gold, oil, and manufacturing. (This almost certainly explains why Governor Rick Perry, a sincere and avid Cruz supporter, had a similarly brief mourning period.)


But it will take other kinds of GOP loyalists - those whose main orientations are either Security and Geopolitics or Social Issues - to switch their allegiances and worldviews from #NeverTrump to #NeverHillary.


GOP loyalists like me, whose main focus is Economics, understand what a disastrous mess the Limousine Liberals have made, both of our domestic economy and of the world economy, in which, reluctant or not, all humans including Americans live.


And as horrid as the Obama years have been for most of us, Barack Obama is not the living, (fire)-breathing exemplar and apotheosis of Limousine Liberalism. Hillary Clinton is.


Those parts of the GOP base whose major focus is either Security and Geopolitics or Social Issues (collectively or individually) will come to the same conclusion we Economic voters have reached first.


The Limousine Liberals and their Anointed One, Hillary Clinton, need to be stopped in their (Evil) tracks.


I think we all, as Republicans, understand intuitively that this historic election cycle of 2016 was supposed to be the cycle in which we knocked Limousine Liberalism to its knees and began to eradicate its disastrous influence on every part of our economic, social, and cultural life.


Well, that's still true. And we still need to do it, whoever is at the top of our ticket.


A Party of Yes Worldview


As we mentioned in our last piece, we believe there are at least 5 very specific groups of GOP voters and influencers our Presumptive Nominee needs to court, woo, and assuage for past misdeeds as rapidly as possible.


We will devote a separate article to each of those 5 GOP voter interest groups and also publish a (partly tongue-in-cheek, partly dead serious) story revealing our choices for Trump's vice-presidential running mate.


But first, one thing candidate-into-nominee Trump can - and should - do immediately: Embrace a Party of Yes worldview and a Party of Yes theme for his subsequent candidacy, correcting those aspects of his rhetoric and his public persona that have seemed to promote GOP disunity, rather than Republican Party unity.


From here on in, Trump needs not only to respect but to put into unerring practice President Ronald Reagan's "Eleventh GOP commandment," Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.


We know this is difficult for candidate Trump, whose personality is - to use a pretty and charitable word - volatile and whose self-censoring mechanism sometimes appears to be nonexistent.


No matter. From this point until November: Eleventh Commandment, Republicans Good, Democrats Bad.


The second thing that needs to be at least tinkered with, if not totally changed: Which supporters candidate-into-nominee Trump should accept wholeheartedly; which he should accept only warily; and which he should not accept at all.


By all means, our Presumptive Nominee should continue to court and woo "lunchbucket" citizens and, especially in the case of union members, encourage them to cross over from the Independent or even Democrat ranks, as Reagan did in 1980, an historic election which has much in common with this one.


But he needs to be wary about some of the crossovers which seemed to occur in open primaries or anywhere, frankly, which is typically a Blue State. There is the possibility - perhaps the probability - that a fairly large number of those who crossed Party or historically ideological lines to vote for Trump in the primaries did so as a form of protest about the status of the (predetermined-years-ago) race for the Democratic nomination. Will those voters stay with Trump in the general election? And if they may not, how far can Trump go to woo them, without going against the wishes and wisdom of longtime Republican Base loyalists?


Then there is the point where the quest for "new voters" becomes ugly and unacceptable. As we have said in previous stories, the GOP is simply uninterested in potential new voters who are blatant Misogynists, White (or Black or Purple) Supremacists, or come under the general heading of Thugs.


This last group, overwhelmingly young white males, have behaved a lot like those soccer hooligans who've plagued Europe and Latin America the past few decades, addicted to bullying and chaos. We in the GOP don't need them and don't want them. Let them join the Democrats. Or better yet, let them stay home.


On the other hand, there is one kind of political activity which Donald Trump and his closest advisors have handled very well - superbly, in fact. That political activity, of course, is gaining the near-constant attention of the Mainstream Media.


Even with our absurdly concentrated and absurdly biased MSM now firmly in Democrat-leaning hands, Trump has somehow managed to bend them completely to his will, promoting his political interests, while effectively thwarting the interests of even his strongest and brightest primary opponents.


Maybe it is high time for the rest of us Republicans not only to learn from him on this (media-can-be-positively-manipulated) count, but also to start mobilizing his strategy and tactics, in order to accelerate the desperately-needed transformation of the MSM into a collective entity that is far more GOP-friendly.


This has also been our number one agenda item at Party of Yes. (see our story Shaping the Stream)


And in the spirit of promoting (Red) Team Play within the GOP, I invite Trump supporters at our home base, LinkedIn, to join the Party of Yes Group, provided they promise to play nice with the other kiddies in the political sandbox and refrain from knocking tiny women reporters to the ground or running stories in the National Enquirer claiming that we've a) had passionate affairs with aliens from another galaxy or b) are aliens from another galaxy.


I urge the Presumptive Nominee's close advisors and allies to read our ongoing commentary on the GOP and the MSM, starting with the Shaping the Stream story above. I think they will wholly agree with our basic premises: That we need to challenge the existing MSM to embrace Republican voters, candidates, ideas and ideology, while also working towards the establishment of a bigger and stronger Republican MSM, which we ourselves control and promote.


Candidate Trump and his advisors will agree that we need to do this especially on the Internet and within Social Media, putting an end to the harmful, one-sided bias towards Democrats and the Democratic Party, which has turned our once vibrant and exciting political Media into a bullying and biased Metaphorical Megaphone spouting nonstop partisan Propaganda for the Democrats.


On the brighter side, one thing this raucous primary election cycle has demonstrated in spades: The GOP is clearly exactly what we said it was when our Party of Yes effort was initiated several months ago. We are the Party which tolerates discussion, debate, and ideological dissent - even when rowdy or messy - in a way the Democrats and their anointed candidate have seemingly forgotten how to do.


That is a gigantic Plus for Republicans, certainly not a negative. And it is what truly makes the GOP, in contrast to the Democrats, the real American Party of Yes.