Donald Trump: The Leader the GOP Needs
Nobody predicted this, and those that did were stripped of their title as a somebody. Donald Trump will be the 45th president of the United States of America.
Despite accusations calling Trump a racist, sexist, xenophobic bigot temperamentally unfit to be president, one could easily plead the case Trump is going to guide the GOP in the right direction. It’s no secret that Trump is one of the more liberal Republicans to run for office in the modern era. Here are some examples of how:
Free Trade
Simply put, Trump doesn’t believe in it. He has been a leader in the opposition for trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He often cites examples like Carrier Air Conditioning and Ford Motor Company packing up and moving to Mexico as the leading forces stealing American jobs.
Health Care
Despite vowing to repeal and replace ObamaCare throughout his campaign, Donald Trump admitted to discussing keeping parts of the policy (such as children being able to stay on their parents’ healthcare plan till 26) and implementing revisions during his meeting with President Obama on Thursday.
LGBTQ Rights
In his “60 Minutes Interview” on Sunday, when asked about Supreme Court justice selections, Trump unleashed no plans to overrule the 2015 gay marriage ruling saying, “It’s irrelevant because it was already settled. It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And I’m fine with that.”
Furthermore, Trump promised LGBTQ citizens protection under his administration many times throughout his campaign, most notably at the Republican National Convention in July.
Child Care
Donald Trump has proposed child care tax deductions including cost of care and write-offs for day care tuition. Along with his daughter Ivanka, Donald Trump has vowed to add six weeks of paid maternity leave to federal policy.
These are exactly the policy implementations the new leader of the GOP needs to be presenting to the new government. Republicans now control both the legislative and executive branch, and it is expected conservative-leaning justices will be added to the Supreme Court. It would be extremely easy for radical, right-wing conservatives to lead the charge into overstepping their bounds. It is crucial that Republican leaders do not misinterpret Trump’s victory as some sort of redneck revolt or “white lash” as CNN contributor Van Jones called it. This simply and statistically is untrue. Of the over 700 counties that voted for the nation’s first African-American president in both 2008 and 2012, over 200 of them flipped for Trump in the 2016 election. Without these votes, Trump doesn’t come close to winning.
Any logically-thinking person knows these voters didn’t flip because Trump called illegal immigrants “rapists”. It surely wasn’t because an inexcusable video released exposed him making absurdly vulgar remarks about his relations with women.
No, these voters flipped because they trust Donald Trump to bring back jobs and to end the government corruption being brought about by special interests and a lack of term limits. It’s happening on both sides: Republican and Democrat.
For example, Republican Senator James Inhofe has spent four terms in the Senate and four in the House of Representatives. He is a leading voice in the denial of climate change declaring, “man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith.” It turns out he has accumulated $16.2 million, largely from energy interests like the oil firm Koch Industries. It is estimated that now over half of Republicans (and 80% of America) acknowledge human-induced climate change as fact.
On the contrary, Democrat Senator Charles Schumer of New York on his second term in the Senate after 9 long terms in the House, has earned $62.2 million defending Wall Street. We all know how those Bernie supporters (who represent 43% of Democratic voters) feel about Wall Street.
Unlike most of his Republican counter-parts, Trump shares beliefs with those from both sides of the aisle. The last thing this divided country needs right now is some crazy pushing his rightist agenda, and despite what people think, this is not Donald Trump.
Even Trump’s immigration policy, which has taken the most heat, really is not all that insane. In 2006, even Hillary Clinton acknowledged the need for a “physical barrier” along the Mexican border.
In “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Trump tweaked his deportation policy saying, “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” and added “After the border is secure and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that they’re talking about who are terrific people, they’re terrific people but we are gonna make a determination.”
Trump undoubtedly used rhetoric about many of these undocumented people that was offensive and crude towards the beginning of his presidential campaign. But it’s time to focus on policy.
Yes, there are so many things that everyone is simply unsure about how Trump will handle such as foreign policy and our current agreements and treaties but one thing is for certain: Trump is going to shake up Washington. The people wanted change and you can bet they’re going to get it.
I’m rooting for you President Trump.
