As the Republican National Convention begins in earnest, the GOP of 2020 firmly embraces its role as a political movement of American strivers. The Trump presidency and the America First movement represent an electoral revolt, one catalyzed by working-class citizens. These formerly forgotten Americans rose up in 2016 to assert their agency as citizens of this amazing republic, the country that represents, as President Trump correctly affirmed, “the culmination of thousands of years of Western civilization.”
Conversely, the dour and dismal Democratic convention last week offered only a future of grievance and globalism. The DNC gathering was notably short on policy and actual proposals but heavy on condemnation—both of our nation and of our commander-in-chief. Two messages resounded throughout the Democrats’ four-day diatribe. First, that we are a corrupt and racist society. Second, that our future lies not in American pride and nationalism, but rather in globalism.
While the Democrats staged a veritable circus of radicalism, which likely pleased elites in Brooklyn and Brentwood, their defeatism surely bombed in places like Battle Creek, Michigan. Consider an invented family there named the Nowaks, fictitious but hardly atypical. Melanie Nowak owns a small retail shop in town and her husband Jim works in a union factory job. They are dedicated to their parish church and love hunting. Their kids attend public schools.
The Biden-Harris Democratic Party delivered an all-out assault upon the Nowak’s way of life. For the “crime” of being white, the extremist Democrats indict them for assumed “privilege” and impugn their character in a supposedly systemically racist country. Biden threatens to close down Melanie’s store, again, as he suggests another nationwide shutdown, even though all relevant virus metrics thankfully trend aggressively toward health in recent weeks.
Disregarding clear scientific data regarding young people, the Nowak children have been used as political pawns by allies of Biden like Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Without medical justification, Jacob Nowak’s soccer season was canceled. His sister Sophia only has the option of remote school this fall. None of the Nowaks will be able to cheer on their beloved Michigan State Spartans on the gridiron, as the Big 10 has politicized college sports.
Biden also threatens Jim Nowak’s manufacturing job with misbegotten vows to re-enter terrible trade deals and to remove tariffs from China, without any demands upon the Chinese Communist Party to earn such relief. Kamala Harris endangers the whole Nowak family with her agenda to decriminalize illegal border crossings—even promising generous benefits like taxpayer-funded healthcare to those who trespass into our country.
Simultaneously, the Biden-Harris ticket in effect pledges to eviscerate the Bill of Rights, which protects families like the Nowaks, by placing radical gun-grabber Beto O’Rourke in charge of firearms policy, intent on confiscating—by force—the most popular rifles in America.
Thankfully, the Trump Administration offers a very different vision, one that prioritizes the prerogatives of American workers.
President Trump promised the workers of America that he would smash the Beltway paradigm that willingly exported American jobs all over the world, especially to China. President Trump pledged to end the American carnage of a hollowed-out industrial sector, particularly in our heartland. Unlike most politicians, President Trump stood up to the powerful interests of corporate boardrooms and K Street lobbyists and demanded fairness and reciprocity from the Beijing regime.
Trump’s efforts led to a surging American economy for labor, one where the economic underdogs—the strivers—leaped to the lead of income gains. In fact, the Trump boom’s wage acceleration mostly benefited previously lagging groups, as black wage growth exceeded that of whites; the pace of increase for blue-collar earners surpassed that of white-collar workers; and non-college grads saw bigger increases than those with degrees.
Unfortunately, that progress was suddenly halted by the willful deception and malfeasance of the Chinese Communist Party, which knowingly infected the world, smashing the global economy. While we cannot rewind the clock to change the dreadful behavior of the Beijing tyrants, we can determine how we renew and revitalize our great American comeback story. Clearly, everyone acknowledges that much more hard work lies ahead, especially for those still out of work through no fault of their own, but we can also rightly celebrate objective signs of an economic renaissance.
Our country has created over 9 million new jobs in the last three months. Manufacturing rises as industrial production metrics surged for three straight months. Just last week, the housing market achieved a new landmark record, establishing an all-time high for home sales. These data points reinforce that President Trump, the man who fostered the conditions for the first Trump boom, has already established the green shoots of the Trump boom 2.0.
In a second Trump term, this nascent economic rebirth is poised to accelerate, especially once our amazing medical researchers learn how to permanently mitigate the risks of the Wuhan virus. Years from now, when the coronavirus is a bad memory, the America First movement of economic nationalism will endure. In many ways, this political crusade fills a void left behind when the Democratic Party betrayed its roots and left millions of workers behind as electoral orphans.
With another President Trump term, the long-term trajectory of the Republican Party will cement and coalesce around an agenda that promotes American strivers and enthusiastically endorses American exceptionalism.