Send American soldiers into Ukraine to standup and operate the Patriot missile defense system.
The Biden administration’s pending decision to send Ukraine a Patriot missile defense system encapsulates everything that is right and wrong about its policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.
The Biden administration is doing the right thing, but belatedly, reactively, and inadequately—and with catastrophic consequences because of its dithering and delay.
Providing Ukraine with a Patriot missile defense system is obviously the right thing to do. The Patriot is a defensive weapons system that will protect innocent Ukrainians against horrific Russian war crimes.
Russia is deliberately targeting Ukrainian residential building and civilian infrastructure.
The Patriot will enable Ukraine to intercept Russian missiles while they are airborne, well before they can slaughter innocent, men, women and children—and well before they can cripple Ukraine’s electrical grids and power supply.
Delay. The problem is: it will be months before the Patriot arrives in country. In the meantime, Russia continues to wage war against innocent civilians.
Why the delay? Because it will take months to train Ukrainians to operate the system, and the Biden administration won’t send American troops into Ukraine to operate the Patriot. That would risk “provoking Putin” don’t you know, and we can’t have that.
This is ludicrous and makes no sense. Protecting innocent Ukrainian civilians is hardly a provocation; it is humanitarian mission and clearly the right thing to do.
Putin can protest all he wants; but he knows, and the world knows, that shooting missiles out of the sky to save lives is not at all analogous to targeting Russian soldiers.
Conflict Deescalation. In fact, deploying the Patriot to Ukraine is a deescalatory measure, not an escalatory measure.
The Patriot is designed to contain and minimize the horrific costs of war. President Biden needs to recognize this and overcome his timid approach to aiding Ukraine.
His timidity is needlessly prolonging the war and worsening the horrific costs of war for those who can least bear it: innocent Ukrainian civilians.
Moreover, the need for a missile defense system in Ukraine was obvious within the first few months of the war. Russian military attacks on civilian targets have occurred habitually throughout the conflict. Yet only now is the Biden administration thinking about providing Ukraine with a Patriot missile defense system.
Predictably and sadly, this administration’s approach all along has been the proverbial day late and a dollar short. The truth is, this administration never expected Ukraine to succeed and has been forced to play catchup every single step of the way.
Act Now. Now is the time for Team Biden to get ahead of the curve for once. The administration should overcome its fear and timidity and immediately send an American military team into Ukraine to standup and operate a Patriot missile defense system.
The risk to our soldiers would be minimal, and relatively few soldiers would be required to standup and operate the system. We’re talking hundreds, not thousands, of soldiers.
Within several months, after Ukrainians have been fully trained on how to operate the system, the U.S. team can leave.
There is no reason to dither and delay. Do the right thing and do it now.
Feature photo credit. Another civilian target destroyed by a planned Russian military attack, courtesy of Ukrainska Pravda.
In his zeal to vilify Ukraine and malign the United States, Carlson betrays an appalling ignorance of the politics and history of both countries.
Is Tucker Carlson a knowing Putin propagandist or historically obtuse and ignorant?
It’s hard to tell, but that is the inescapable conclusion one must draw after listening to his myriad commentaries trying to portray Ukraine in the worst possible light, while saying little or nothing critical of Putin and Russia.
Most recently (Dec. 7, 2022), Carlson declared that Ukrainian President Zelensky is a Lenin-like dictator who is using American tax dollars to stamp out opposition parties and religious liberty in Ukraine.
Zelensky is a “dangerous authoritarian” who “has no interest in freedom and democracy,” Carlson intoned. And, for this reason, any comparison to World War II, the proverbial “good war” for freedom and democracy, is wrongheaded.
American support for Ukraine today does not mirror American support for Britain at the outset of World War II. No, Sir, said Carlson.
The Biden administration “baited” Russia into invading Ukraine: by “telling Zelensky to join NATO, which they, [the Biden administration], knew was a Russian red line. They, [the Biden administration], wanted this war,” Carlson said.
Russia Threats. Carlson then brought left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald on air to tell viewers that the U.S. government “actually doesn’t care about spreading democracy.” That is a “fairy tale,” Greenwald said.
Russia, he scoffed, is no threat to the United States. Russia is not our enemy. Presidents Obama and Trump didn’t see Russia as an enemy and neither should we. Only crazy left-wing Democrats who still cling to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax think that, Greenwald said.
As Luke Coffey observes, “Tucker would make a fantastic spokesman for the Kremlin.” And, in fact, as The Guardian points out:
Carlson’s commentaries on the Ukraine war generally reflect Putin’s speeches and claims. Russian television then plays back the monologues as evidence that Putin is right because the same is being said by “the most popular television presenter in America”.
But while Americans of all political stripes do not accept the lies spewed by a Russian dictator, American conservatives are inclined to accept the falsehoods spouted by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, and therein lies the problem.
Carlson is opposed to U.S. aid to Ukraine, which is a legitimate, albeit wrongheaded position.
What is illegitimate is deliberately lying about the United States and Ukraine, and deliberately defaming and demonizing these two great countries, to try and make your case for cutting off American aid dollars.
Zelensky v. Lenin. First, to compare Zelensky to Lenin is obviously idiotic and slanderous. Lenin seized power in a violent Communist revolution and was guided by dictatorial Communist ideology. Zelensky was elected president peacefully and democratically, and is guided by the broad-based concerns of the Ukrainian people.
As for religious liberty, it is guaranteed in the Ukrainian Constitution, and it is, in the main, respected and protected. However, because Putin has weaponized the Orthodox Church and manipulated the church to try and conquer and subdue Ukraine, matters are considerably more complicated than Carlson acknowledges.
Ukraine is fighting for its very survival and has a legitimate interest in rooting out spies, traitors, and saboteurs.
Perhaps Zelensky and his government have overreached. But if that is the case, they did so as a wartime exigency and not out of any ideological desire to stamp out legitimate democratic opposition and dissent.
Let us remember: the United States, too, has sometimes stifled dissent and infringed upon liberty while at war.
Lincoln. During the Civil War, for instance, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus to ensure that Union commanders could arrest and detain people seen as a threat to military operations. Yet, only the historically illiterate would suggest that, because of this, Lincoln was a “dangerous authoritarian” opposed to democracy.
Instead, historians understand that Lincoln was a wartime leader trying to preserve the union and save his country.
This doesn’t meant that Lincoln was right to suspend habeas corpus. That is a legitimate historical argument to have. But any fair-minded historian will place Lincoln’s suspension of the writ into historical context to arrive at a judicious and fair-minded conclusion regardless of whether he thinks what Lincoln did was right or wrong.
So, too, with Zelensky. Political and wartime context is required to understand his actions vis-a-vis the Orthodox Church. Yet, Carlson eschews such context precisely in order to demonize Zelensky and portray him as a cartoonish political villain.
Ukraine. What is beyond dispute and debate is that Ukraine is a burgeoning democracy that aspires to be part of the West. The Ukrainians wish to share in our political and cultural patrimony. They wish to be a free, sovereign, and independent country.
Russia, by contrast, wants to dominate and subjugate Ukraine. They want to isolate Ukraine from the West and make it dependent upon and subservient to Russia. And, more ominously, in so doing, they want to wipe Ukraine off the map and destroy its culture and its nationhood.
American support for Ukraine is thus morally just and righteous and something all Americans ought to be proud of—Carlson and Greenwald to the contrary notwithstanding.
But make no mistake: America supports Ukraine not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it serves the American national interest.
Russia. Again, Russia is an avowed enemy of the United States that has spent the better part of two decades undermining American national security interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. So any opportunity to bloody and weaken Russia is a good and welcome opportunity for the United States.
This doesn’t mean that the United States baited or lured Russia into waging war on Ukraine, as Carlson and Greenwald idiotically assert. To the contrary: the United States and its European allies went to great pains for many years to allay Russian concerns.
The problem is that Putin has been hellbent on resurrecting a new Russian empire and could not be assuaged by anything less than utter appeasement and surrender.
Putin launched a war on Ukraine not because of anything the United States or NATO did or did not do. He launched a war on Ukraine because he wants to conquer and subsume Ukraine.
The United States is supporting Ukraine because it recognizes that Russia success there will threaten peace and stability throughout Europe, while inspiring dictators worldwide to redraw national boundaries and rewrite the wold map.
In other words, American support for democracy is no fairy tale; it is reality, hard-headed realism in a dangerous world. And the only lies being told are those by Carlson and Greenwald, who portray an illiberal, authoritarian Ukraine that doesn’t exist.
The bottom line: Ukraine is a good country and its president, Zelensky, is a great wartime leader, despite whatever mistakes he might have made and, undoubtedly, will make in the future.
Ukraine and Zelensky, in fact, can be compared, favorably, to Great Britain and Winston Churchill as they heroically fought back against Nazi Germany at the onset of World War II.
Russia, by contrast, is a bad country and its dictator, Vladimir Putin, is a bad man. Russia and Putin can be compared, unfavorably, to Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler as they savagely tried to conquer Europe during World War II.
And then, as now, the United States is doing the Lord’s work in supporting the forces of freedom and democracy. May it always be so.
Feature photo credit: Fox News’ host Tucker Carlson and left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, courtesy of a Fox News screenshot.
Humiliating, not appeasing, Putin is the only way to restore peace and stability in Europe.
One of the big lessons of World War II is that a policy of appeasement toward dictators hellbent on conquest and subjugation is morally repugnant and strategically wrong. Appeasement only wets a dictator’s appetite for domination. Dictators must be confronted and defeated, not appeased.
The French in the 1930s were big appeasers of Hitler’s Germany; and all of Europe, especially European Jews, paid a horrific price as a result.
Had Hitler been confronted and defeated before amassing a fearsome military and before he annexed the Sudetenland and invaded Poland, World War II would have been averted.
One would think the French had learned this history and internalized its lessons. France, after all, was occupied by Nazi Germany and liberated only by the force of American and British arms.
French Appeasement. Yet, fresh from his visit last week with President Biden in Washington, French President Emanuel Macron renewed his longstanding call for appeasing Putin and giving the Russian dictator “security guarantees.”
According to The Telegraph, “this means,” said Macron,
that one of the essential points we must address, as President Putin has always said, is the fear that Nato comes right up to its doors and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.
That topic will be part of the topics for peace, so we need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.
In July, Macron, likewise warned: “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels.”
NATO Again. Excuse me, but this is dangerous and ill-informed nonsense. Macron has it exactly backwards. Russia, not the West, must provide “security guarantees”: to Ukraine and its East European neighbors. Russia is the clear and obvious aggressor. Russia, not Ukraine or NATO, started this war.
NATO never threatened Russia, and Putin knows it. The idea that NATO, or any one NATO country, has designs on Russian territory is ludicrous and laughable, and Putin knows that, too.
NATO is a defensive alliance designed to protect against longstanding Russian aggression and imperialism.
As former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has observed, Putin never raised a concern about NATO expansion with her or former President George W. Bush until very late in Bush’s second term. He belatedly raised the issue only as convenient excuse or cover for his attempt to create by force a new Russian empire.
Humiliation, Not Appeasement. In truth, Russia must be humiliated. It must suffer a complete and devastating military defeat precisely to disabuse it of its historic and deep-seated imperialistic ambitions.
Otherwise, as with pre-World War II Germany, a barbaric and authoritarian Russia will regroup and rise again to threaten the peace and stability of Europe.
A defeated and chastened Russia, by contrast, creates the possibility of liberal change and reform. As Anne Applebaum explains:
The only solution that offers some hope of long-term stability in Europe is rapid defeat, or even, to borrow Macron’s phrase, humiliation.
In truth, the Russian president not only has to stop fighting the war; he has to conclude that the war was a terrible mistake, one that can never be repeated.
More to the point, the people around him—leaders of the army, the security services, the business community—have to conclude exactly the same thing. The Russian public must eventually come to agree too.
Win, Not Tie. Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems to be playing for a tie, not a Ukrainian win; and this is resulting in a long, drawn-out war, which allows appeasers like Macron to strut about the world stage foolishly warning against an “escalation” of the conflict.
Veteran foreign affairs analyst Robin Wright, for instance, urges the Biden administration to pressure Zelensky to negotiate with Putin. Otherwise, she warns, the war could reach “horrifying levels” and result in the utter destruction of Ukraine.
Wright is right to worry about a prolonged war, but wrong to push for appeasement.
Instead of playing for a tie, the Biden administration should be robustly arming Ukraine with America’s best weapons—drones, tanks, fighter aircraft, long-range artillery, air defenses, et al. precisely to bring this war to a swift and successful conclusion.
That’s the lesson of history; that’s the lesson of World War II; and that’s what French President Macron should be saying and acknowledging: NATO and America will ensure that Ukraine wins and Russia loses.
Feature photo credit: President Biden and French President Emanuel Macron yukking it up at the White House Dec 1, 2022, courtesy of USA Today.
By needlessly withholding from Ukraine crucial and much-needed weapon systems, Biden is prolonging the war and perpetuating the suffering of innocent Ukrainian civilians targeted by the Russian war machine.
President Biden is getting unwarranted credit for navigating between two dangerous and alternate policy options in Ukraine: diplomatic appeasement or military escalation, betray Ukraine or risk a wider-scale war with Russia, accommodate Putin or give in to Zelensky.
“The Biden administration has tried to strike a balance between strong military support for Ukraine and avoiding anything that might trigger a direct Russian-American conflict,” reports Washington Post foreign policy columnist David Ignatius.
But this is attempt to strike a balance is utterly misguided because there is no reason to think that more robust U.S. military aid would somehow “provoke Putin” into a suicidal attack on the United States or NATO.
In the meantime, the absence of critical weapon systems in the hands of the Ukrainians serves only to prolong the war and the suffering.
Nuclear Weapons. In truth, it is Vladimir Putin and Russia that have every reason to fear a wider-scale war with the West, given that they are vastly outmatched, militarily and economically, by the United States and NATO.
And Russian nuclear weapons do not change or alter this overwhelming, one-sided imbalance.
Nuclear weapons obviously can inflict horrific civilian and collateral damage, but they are not a military game-changer in Ukraine; far from it. And, diplomatically, Putin’s use of nukes would be the ultimate act of self-sabotage.
“He would lose his Chinese patrons; he would terrify his own population; and he would plunge his country into economic isolation of cryogenic ferocity,” explains former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
For these reasons, the risk of nuclear war, or “World War III,” has been vastly exaggerated by the president and his mediacheerleaders to make Biden administration policy choices seem better and wiser than they actually are.
As Johnson points out: a nuclear war “isn’t going to happen. We should stop talking about it,” because it serves only to promote Russian fear-mongering.
Russia’s “constant, repetitive nuclear signaling, which long predates the current war,” writes Anne Applebaum, “has a purpose: to make NATO countries afraid to defend Poland, afraid to defend Ukraine, and afraid to provoke or anger Russia in any way at all.”
“The off-and-on talk coming out of Moscow about using nuclear weapons is largely just that—talk,” add Eric S. Edelman and David J. Kramer. “It is consistent with long-standing Russian ideas of ‘reflexive control’ and is meant to deter the West from providing further assistance to Ukraine.”
America Deterred. Unfortunately, loose Russian talk about “nuclear war” has succeeded in deterring the Biden administration from providing Ukraine with more advanced weapon systems that would hasten the end of the war and relieve the suffering of innocent Ukrainian civilians.
The United States, for instance, refuses to provide Ukraine with ATACMS, the Army Tactical Missile System, that would allow Ukraine to strike much deeper into Russian tactical formations, but at a safer standoff distance.
“The Ukrainians need longer-range weapons,” notes Max Boot. The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) that they now have has a range of about 45 miles versus 190 miles for ATACMS.
“Why no airplanes? Why no advanced tanks?” asks Applebaum. “Because the White House, the Germangovernment, and other governments are afraid that one of these weapons would cross an invisible red line and inspire a nuclear retaliation by Russia.”
Misplaced Western fear, she adds, “also shapes tactics.
Why don’t the Ukrainians more often target the military bases or infrastructure on Russian territory that are being used to attack them? Because Ukraine’s Western partners have asked its leaders not to do so, for fear, again, of escalation.
But again, this fear is misplaced given the correlation of forces between Russia and NATO.
What the president should fear is that if the war drags on because of his reticence to fully arm Ukraine, popular support in the West will dissipate and more innocent Ukrainians will be killed as a result.
“I’ve just spent a fascinating few days in Ukraine,” tweets Luke Coffey.
The Ukrainians will win. How long this victory takes will be decided by USA. The sooner we give Ukraine long-range fires, more 155mm rounds, main battle tanks and F-16s, the faster the war will be over.
The bottom line: President Biden deserves credit for supporting Ukraine militarily, but not for withholding crucial weapon systems because he fears “provoking Putin” and starting “World War III.”
These fears never made any sense and they are needlessly prolonging the war and the suffering of innocent Ukrainians. The sooner Ukraine wins the war by reclaiming all of its lost territory, including Crimea, the better off all nations will be.
President Biden can ensure that this happens by fully arming Ukraine. Now.
Feature photo credit: Presidents Biden and Zelensky, courtesy of Maldives News Network.
Republicans will win in 2024 if they eschew Trumpian populism and embrace Bush-Cheney conservatism.
Although former President Trump is obviously responsible for the Republican Party’s disastrous and historically unprecedented subpar performance in the 2022 mid-term elections, his diehard defenders and apologists are warning the GOP not to abandon the “populist agenda” that supposedly made Trump, in their view, a successful politician.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for instance, credits Trump with energizing and “reinventing the GOP,” while setting it upon the path toward becoming a “multiracial working class party.”
In Ingraham’s view, Trump rejected the “pro-war” and “pro-CCP” (Communist Chinese Party) establishment GOP epitomized by former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and 2008 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Ingraham warns Republicans against reverting back to the establishment’s supposed love for amnesty, open borders, endless wars, and unfair trade with China.
She essentially acknowledges that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee and warns him against being cooped by the dreaded GOP “establishment.”
Of course, this is a badly distorted and self-serving analysis that ignores many inconvenient truths.
For starters, Trump’s supposed political success is far less impressive than Ingraham suggests. The man won one fluke election (in 2016) against a very weak Democratic opponent (Hillary Clinton), and he did it by narrowly winning three states—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—with a large contingent of white working class voters.
Since then, thanks to Trump, the Republicans have been decimated in two of these states (Michigan and Pennsylvania), while barely hanging on in the third (Wisconsin).
Biden won all three states, of course, in 2020; and all three states have Democratic governors who just won election or reelection.
Pennsylvania and Michigan have two Democratic senators; Wisconsin has one. The sole Republican Senator, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, barely won reelection against an extraordinarily weak Democratic opponent.
Dems, meanwhile, flipped both houses of the Michigan state legislature for the first time in nearly four decades, while apparently winning control of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives.
The bottom line: the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin is in far worse shape, thanks to Trump, than it was seven years ago before he came on the political scene.
Michigan’s reelected Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, would be a very formidable Democratic presidential candidate in 2024. Ditto Pennsylvania’s newly elected governor, Josh Shapiro.
As a result, it is difficult to see how any Republican can win these states in 2024. And without winning at least one of these three states, it is difficult to see how any Republican can win the White House in 2024. The Electoral College math simply does not compute.
George W. Bush. In fact, to win in 2024, the Republicans’ best bet might be to essentially update or tweak what George W. Bush did in the Electoral College when he was elected and reelected president in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
That is, sweep the South and the West, while winning Iowa and New Hampshire, but losing Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. That would give the Republican presidential candidate 271 Electoral College votes: one more than necessary to win the presidency (see the Electoral College map below).
That, of course, is precisely how Bush won the 2000 presidential election (see the Electoral College map above).
The Likely 2024 Electoral College map, courtesy of 270ToWin.com.
Yet, ironically, Ingraham derides Bush as the exemplar of all that is wrong with the Republican Party: because he was committed, supposedly, to “endless wars,” open borders, and trade with China.
Bush’s Policies. But while the Iraq War may have been a mistake, it was essentially over and won by the time Bush left office in 2008, thanks to “the surge” of U.S. troops and adoption of a winning military strategy.
The war in Afghanistan was still in a low boil, but if he had a third term, Bush almost certainly would have replicated “the surge” in Afghanistan to successfully end the war, or at least make it manageable without an abject American defeat and withdrawal.
It is true that Bush tried to solve the immigration crisis, but it is not true that he was committed to amnesty and open borders.
Unlike Trump, Bush did not support building a wall along the southern border, but remember: Trump himself never really built the wall either. He talked a good game, but failed to deliver. Just ask Ann Coulter.
Bush did try to engage China; but so, too, had every American president, Republican and Democrat, since Richard Nixon. This was a good-faith, decades-long effort that had to change as China’s adversarial posture vis-à-vis the United States became increasingly clear and transparent.
Thus a President Romney or a President McCain would have confronted China, but in a far more effective way than Trump: by better leveraging the strength of our allies in the Pacific—and without the collateraleconomicdamage that resulted from ill-advised tariffs or taxes on American manufacturers and consumers.
Trump’s Policies. Moreover, Trump’s political success, such as it was, resulted from traditional conservative Republican policies, not newfound populist ideas.
Corporate tax reform, for instance, ushered in the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 50 years and the lowest black unemployment rate in recorded history. And energy deregulation resulted in American energy independence for the first time in our nation’s history.
Trump also stopped the flow of illegal immigrants pouring across the U.S.-Mexican border, albeit without the wall or in spite of the wall.
Trump accomplished this belatedly in his administration by finally adopting regulatory reforms, such as a “remain in Mexico” policy for would-be asylum seekers and DACA restrictions, that effectively secured the border.
On the international stage, Trump definitely was not an isolationist or a non-interventionist. He ordered ISIS destroyed and Iranian General Qasem Soleimani killed, and he achieved both of these objectives quickly through the use of American military power.
Bush v. Trump. Yet, despite these policy successes, Trump failed to win a majority of the popular vote in both 2020 and 2016. As David Frum points out:
He lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the House in 2018. He lost the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2020. He lost the Senate in 2021.
Since 2000, there have been six presidential elections, and thus 12 presidential nominations by the two major parties. In his share of votes cast, Trump finished tenth and 11th out of the 12: behind Mitt Romney, behind John Kerry, behind Al Gore.
In fact, the only Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote in the past 32 years (eight presidential elections) was George W. Bush, in 2004.
So let’s not pretend that Trump achieved unparalleled political success when he clearly did not. And let’s not pretend that he outperformed his Republican predecessors at the ballot box when the facts show otherwise.
In truth, Trump achieved some political and policy success by forthrightly addressing, or trying to address, new problems that had arisen in the new millennium.
For the most part, he adopted traditional conservative policies that proved successful. When, on occasion, Trump deviated from these conservative policies to embrace Ingraham’s preferred populist positions, he was far less successful.
Trade is a good example. As Douglas A. Irwin explains, Trump’s ill-advised tariffs increased the trade deficit; eliminated tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs; reduced household incomes; and were a drag on economic growth.
“Numerous studies, add Jeb Hensarling, the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2013-19), “have shown that almost all the costs of tariffs initiated under the Trump administration were paid by American consumers and businesses.”
Conservatism, Not Populism. The truth is Trump’s political success has little to do with populism and everything to do with conservatism.
Populism, in fact, got Trump in trouble. Jan. 6 populism, for instance, was an unmitigated disaster. It haunted Republican candidates nationwide in the 2022 mid-terms, while destroying whatever chance Trump had to win a second term in 2024.
Ingraham, then, has it precisely backwards. The danger for Gov. DeSantis and the Republican Party is that they try to ape Trump’s populism while giving short shrift to the conservative policies that actually proved successful, substantively and politically, for Trump.
Conclusion. In other words, contra Ingraham, we need a more conservative and less populist Republican Party.
We need a Republican Party that applies tried-and-true conservative principles to modern-day problems. We need a Republican Party that believes in markets, American military power, and parental sovereignty and choice.
Therein lies public policy success. Therein lies political victory—in 2024 and beyond. Populism is a mirage that will only lead Republicans astray down the primrose path to defeat and permanent minority status.
Feature photo credit: the 2000 presidential election Electoral College map, courtesy of 270ToWin.com.
