Republicans Can Still Win - News With Views

by Dennis Cuddy, Ph.D.

The most recent poll shows Biden with 50% and Trump with 43% of the vote. However, with only 2 months to go before the November election, there is still a chance for Republicans to win if they employ the strategy of Ronald Reagan in whose administration I served.

The 1960s were dominated by Democrat presidents with the exception of Richard Nixon, who was not all that conservative, telling newscaster Howard K. Smith on January 6,1971 that he was “now a Keynesian (Socialist) in economics.” Ronald Reagan went beyond the usual Republican fiscal conservative base and emphasized social issues like education, court-ordered busing, school prayer and abortion. This appealed to many independents and socially conservative Democrats, and gave Reagan the margin of victory in 1980 and 1984.

In 1982, I was teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill and was asked to come to Washington where I became a problem-solver for President Reagan, for example solving the problem of racial-balance busing by showing it resulted in massive discrimination against African-Americans, and solving the problem of school prayer by presenting it as an issue of free speech.

I wrote the first draft of President Reagan’s published essay on education reform, and today, Republicans can offer positive new initiatives like voluntary compilation of successful new teaching methods and activities organized by subject matter and/or grade level for others to use. This could help reverse the downward slide in education since National Education Association president Catherine Barrett in February 1973 wrote that by the year 2000 “basic skills” would be reduced to just one-quarter of the school day so teachers could instead become “change agents” regarding students’ values. In higher education, there should be the introduction of “Contemporary Cultures” at the freshman level so students can learn about one of more foreign countries’ language, history, economics, culture, etc. This, in turn, should help universities seeking foundation grants and also help graduates seeking employment with multinational firms. Next, Republicans could call for a major RIF (Reduction in Force) in the U.S. Department of Education, because Washington bureaucrats do not solve educational problems, classroom teachers do. And monies saved from the RIF could be sent by Congress to the states specifically designated to increase teachers’ salaries.

Regarding abortion, I explained in The Washington Post (“The shaky Roe v. Wade is destined to fall,” May 19, 2019), that the “Achilles heel” of Roe v. Wade and its companion Dore v. Bolon was the Constitutional conference of personhood at birth because it makes no sense to say a child born prematurely at 5 months after conception is a “person,” but a 9-month old preborn child is not! Pursuing an abortion case before the Supreme Court on this basis would have an excellent chance of overturning Roe and Doe. President Trump could win the 2020 election on the basis of abortion alone. While the country is split on whether women should be able to have abortions, the overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to having their tax dollars used to pay for them. In 2019, Biden changed his position from opposing tax funding for abortions to now supporting such funding, which is an imposition of a pro-abortion morality upon American taxpayers who do not want their tax dollars used for killing preborn babies. This includes a large number of people who would otherwise vote Democratic. Now, as single issue voters, they would vote for Trump, and he should encourage them to do so in this campaign.

In foreign relations, we always have traded and always will trade with other nations, but when we gave the World Trade Organization (WTO) the authority to force our Congress to change our laws (e.g., the WTO gave Congress until November 1, 2000 to change our foreign sales corporation laws, and the House complied on Set. 13 and the Senate on November 1), we went too far in undermining our national sovereignty. We also went to far in outsourcing so many manufacturing jobs, like pharmaceuticals and critical airplane parts to China, which is no friend of the USA, thus posing health and national security risks. According to an early 2011 CNN report, “The United States has lost a staggering 32% of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000—Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.” And also by 2011, we were already losing ownership of many of our major companies—-sound recording industries were 97% foreign-owned, metal or mining 65%, motion-picture and video industries 64%, book publishers 63%, plastic products 51%, etc. Amoco’s profits were going to England, Purina’s and Gerber’s profits to Switzerland, Transamerica’s profits to The Netherlands, etc.

How prescient was A. M. Rosenthal when he wrote “The New World Order” in The New York Times (May 5, 1998) and warned: “The U.S., its democratic allies and major dictatorships are rapidly building a new world order….The U.S. gets to sell strategic material to China, offering as an extra a visit by the U.S. President to honor the Communist leaders and expand their power and political life span. Religious and political mavericks in the totalitarian partners of the new world order get prison, or death, or both. The press of the democracies get to say costs of imported goods are down, how nice. Americans and Europeans may come to object for political or moral reasons, or because the new world order may after all cost them their jobs….”

When all else fails, remember that Democrats seem to have a unique ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Biden currently seems unable to give intelligent answers to spontaneous questions unless the answers have been provided for him on a teleprompter or unless he has memorized them in advance. At some point, the American public may ask itself, “Do we really want to place our lives in the hands of someone like this?”

Republicans from the president to the Congress to the governors have a chance to change this, but they must act soon before it is too late!

E-Mail Dennis Cuddy: recordsrevealed@yahoo.com