What Republicans Got Wrong

 The original intent of this blog was to produce conservative and libertarian thought pieces with a bit of an original twist.  As I saw Reagan conservative losing steam with the passing of Reagan and William F. Buckley, it was my intent to write pieces that refreshed conservatism and libertarianism, and to do so in an interesting way.

To do that necessarily means that I would have to bring things current, to match the era.  The problems facing Reagan’s America are different than the problems we face today.  Second, I would have to critically analyze some of the things that conservatives and libertarians got wrong.   Both parts are necessary so that one does not simply become a tired, old, ossified ideological crank, yearning for some long past golden era.  How boring.

Today, I’m going to lay out the principal things that I believe conservative Republicans got wrong, and we’ve all paid a terrible price as a result.

Assuming trade would moderate China.
John Mersheimer is a controversial speaker and writer, but in his Foreign Affairs Essay, he wrote:

Beguiled by misguided theories about liberalism’s inevitable triumph and the obsolescence of great-power conflict, both Democratic and Republican administrations pursued a policy of engagement, which sought to help China grow richer.  Washington promoted investment in China and welcomed the country into the global trading system, thinking it would become a peace-loving democracy and a responsible stakeholder in a U.S.-led international order.  Of course, this fantasy never materialized.

It was a horrible mistake, and one some of our brightest minds sold to us (hence, my skepticism about the judgment of “experts”).    As recently as four years ago, Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama was touting this line, that a middle class would bubble up in China, demand more freedoms and the CCP would have no choice but to grant them.  The Becker-Friedman Center at The University of Chicago is STILL having its China Biweekly Seminar on Public Economics, and Chicago Booth STILL has a Hong Kong campus, despite the brutal crackdown in Hong Kong, the internment of the Uhgyers, threating Taiwan, and the obfuscation of the origins of COVID.   What more evidence do you need to convince you that all of their basic premises about China were dead wrong?  They all acted as if Tiananmen Square never happened.  As long as cheap goods flowed into the Western companies, and Chinese students paying full sticker price at universities, they all refused to see what was happening—China was becoming a major geo-political rival, and instead of China becoming more like us, our society was becoming more like theirs.

Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.
Among other blunders of the George W. Bush administration was this pithy slogan.  While the U.S. was justified in a response to 9/11, our goals never critically evaluated and the net outcome was trillions added to our national balance sheet, expanded influence of Iran in the Middle East, thousands of needless deaths in Iraq, an expensive 20 year fiasco in Afghanistan that culminated in turning the keys back over to the Taliban and arming them with $80  billion in advanced U.S. weaponry.

Not only did these misadventures divert resources from a military that badly needs to be upgraded (our navy needs 50 more ships and our nuclear forces need serious modernizing), we gave our adversaries a free look at our command structure, our tactics and our technology. 

Foreign intervention by platitude was among the worst blunders by the conservative establishment.  Interestingly, the maverick Republicans—Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump were very judicious and surgical in the application of military force.

My contrarian view is that the spectacular success of the 1991 Gulf War harmed the U.S.   Wiping out the world’s 3^rd largest army in 100 days created an air of hubris and invincibility that led to some very bad decisions later on.

CEO pay
As CEO pay reached the stratosphere, proponents of the free market like Steven Kaplan at The University of Chicago cheered it on, claiming that these executives are a rare breed and are like free agent athletes and should be able to garner these incredible pay packages.   CEO pay is now  299 times more than the average worker.

Advocates like Kaplan failed to take into account the corrosive effects on society these packages would have on our society.   CEO pay has ballooned $1,332% since 1978.  These executives live in rarified, gated communities completely segregated from the workers that they supposedly “lead” leading to what Charles Murray called “unseemliness.”  I don’t mind people getting wealthy when they actually create value and take on rise, but most of these arrangements limit their downside risk.  The CEO of Boeing walked away with $60 million even after the 737 Max killed two planeloads of people.   Few companies have instituted or exercised clawbacks after spectacular failures.

While it is consistent with free market principles, the  pay extravagance has become, according to Charles Murry, “unseemly” and corrosive to social cohesiveness.  The book “Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town” documented how private equity firms pillaged Anchor Hocking, and left the company and the town an empty shell.  That book, more than anything began to nudge me to evolve my views.

Focus on tax cuts and judicial appointments

Republicans put their sole focus on tax cuts and judicial appointments.  While those priorities were important, they completely neglected two others—the Administrative State and local politics, particularly school boards.   The radical Left seized upon that, and as a result, we have and IRS, FBI and DHS that have become enforcement arms of the DNC.  We have a CDC that is not only obscuring and misrepresenting data, it is making proclamations that de facto have the force of law.  And we have local school boards pushing the transgender agenda and CRT.  It will take a generation to reverse all this.

There are more stumbles, of course.  Republicans misunderstood how determined the radical Left was to manipulate and violate the rules to gain and keep power.   They falsely believed that the radical Left wanted to maintain a viable, democratic, two-party system.  They want nothing of the sort.  I have yet to see definitive signs (other than a few like DiSantis) that they have awoken from their slumber.