For the past five years Americans for a Free Republic (AFR) has been
working to mount an independent political challenge to the power elites of
Washington who dominate our lives with a hideous regulatory state that one
finds in dystopian novels.
We felt compelled to mount such a challenge because for many decades now
both Democrats and Republicans have been part of this despotic process. They
have created a monopoly in the political system that gives us only “bigger
and bigger government.” Our once staunch and self-reliant people capitulate
more and more ignominiously with each passing year to demanding more out of
life than they are willing to put in. Our resplendent freedoms are wilting
like severed orchids in the scorching sun.
We at AFR realized that to stop this dictatorial process of American
collectivization, the statist grip on the political system must be broken. We
reasoned that the Republican Party must be replaced with a “freedom party”
that upholds the original vision of America’s founders.
We reasoned that in order to do this, a third political party must be
launched to do to the Republican Party what the Republican Party did to the
Whigs in 1856. But this past year has brought about a shift in our thinking.
We still believe that the salvation of America depends upon replacing the
Republican Party with a true “freedom party.”
But perhaps such replacement does not need to be brought about by sledge
hammer blows from a third-party movement. Perhaps this crucial GOP
transformation can be done by sledge hammer blows from within. Perhaps a
candidate can be found who is strong enough in mind to strike fear in the
crony capitalists so heinously plundering personal wealth at the expense of
the principles of freedom. Perhaps a candidate can be found courageous enough
in heart to challenge the sickly pundits who have no idea what “federalism”
is and think, with George W. Bush, that the Constitution is nothing but a
piece of paper.
Out of the Blue
Often in history, revolutionary reform appears out of the blue in a way
that is totally unexpected. We at AFR believe such a revolutionary reform may
now be upon us despite the comedy acts and insults that dominate this 2016
election season. Squeamish complainers about the insults need to read the
history of politics in the days of early America. Our Founders were no
strangers to insults. Ridicule and scurrility saturated their campaigns for
office also.
The all-important issue is that the radical transformation of the
Republican Party appears to be underway, and the dramatic catalyst is
the political campaign of Donald Trump.
If this is so, then the old, established Bush-Dole-McCain-Romneyized GOP
is going to collapse. We welcome such a collapse because we know that just as
nature abhors a vacuum, so too does society’s established politics. This
vacuum will be filled with a new paradigm, a new coalition of American
voters. This new coalition will be comprised of patriot conservatives,
libertarians, and disgusted independents, bolstered by millions of
blue-collar Democrats who will permanently depart from their traditional home
on the left.
This epochal migration will make life unbearable for the old guard
Republicans – the Bush-Dole-McCain-Romneyized mindset. They will find
themselves without a home and will gradually over the next decade slide over
to the Democrat Party. It will be done without a lot of fanfare, but it will
be done because the Party of Liberalism is what this mindset is truly about
and has been about for over 50 years. But the Democrat party will hemorrhage
even larger numbers of defectors who will slide over to the new Republican
Party, and herein lies the revolution.
The issues fanning this revolt are numerous, but the primary catalyst is
“open borders” and the perfidy of Washington’s egregious toleration of
illegal immigration. The blue-collar Democrats who have always cast their
vote with the party of FDR out of loyalty to their parentage will never again
vote so uncritically. It has finally dawned on them that their party leaders
care more for ideology than jobs, more for multiculturalism than patriotism,
more for power than principle. This realization will drive massive numbers of
these disenchanted Democrats into the “new Republican Party” that Donald
Trump tells his followers he will fashion should he win the presidency.
The new Republican Party, unlike the present pretender, will be a party of
low taxes and freedom, sanity and productivity, military strength and peace.
It will be a party that begins the long return to what the Founders intended
this country to be. It will be a party of the past in principle and a party
of the future in hope. It will transcend what the administration of Ronald
Reagan brought about (and then lost so quickly) because this time the crisis
of the country has reached earthquake proportions where it was only a series
of tremors in 1980. Thus the voters are quite a bit more steely-eyed this
time around.
A Modern Day Cyclops
The minions and millennials of the odious Clinton camp are about to be
blindsided. The reverential legacy of FDR that they love so dearly has turned
into a monster. Americans no longer believe the Federal Government is their
friend. They see it for what it truly is – a beast, a modern-day Cyclops with
one eye and a stunted brain, grunting and belching, taxing and spending,
transforming a once productive marvel and manufacturing leader of the world
into a decadent debtor nation hell-bent to follow Rome into the dustbin of
history.
Huge numbers of Americans now grasp this. They may not be able to
verbalize their realization of it, but they realize it on a subconscious
level. And they have picked up their pitchforks to march for Trump because,
unlike the craven Rinos of Washington, he is willing to touch the third rails
of politics in unequivocal language. He shows no fear of the morbid disease
of political correctness that has obliterated our splendid culture of unity
in a swamp of guilt and conformity.
The Republican Party establishment, though refined and elegant on surface,
functions like a ruthless Mafia gang. What’s worse it is aged and stilted, no
longer capable of facing reality and forging a charismatic vision for the
future. It has aped the liberal vision for so long that it has lost its
ability to think for itself, to challenge the ever-present perils of life and
fashion a philosophy of freedom that represents the meaning of America.
Consequently it has lost its reason for being and is ripe for revolution.
The paramount question is this: Is Donald Trump a bold, visionary patriot
who will lead the Republican Party back to what the Founding Fathers
commissioned the American people for? Or is he a modern day Cleon, the
warrior-statesman of ancient Greece who rose to power with rough and
bombastic demagoguery rather than wise and prudent policies. The free-market
conservative mind like myself believes the former, of course. But human
nature and politics are strange bedfellows. Massive crises await us just over
the horizon. Will these uncertainties dominate, or will Trump’s better
instincts prevail? Stay tuned. The upcoming years are going to be tumultuous.
