Building the Big Tent

Ten Elements of a Winning American Platform

We’ve grown very tired of “Washingtonian” Republicans lecturing everyone about needing to build the big tent and be more inclusive, without ever offering a single specific policy proposal to illustrate exactly what they mean. There’s always a derogatory reference to Rush Limbaugh (the substance of which only confirms that the critic has never listened to Rush Limbaugh), and there’s some sense that building a big tent means having ‘more good guys like me in the Party’. But Colin Powell, Tom Ridge and others like them never put their positions clearly on the line in specific and complete terms.

Well, we’ll spare them the hassle. Here’s the platform for the next President, for a sweeping overturning of control of Congress, and the creation of a big tent for the Republican Party:

1. State unequivocally that it is not possible for man to control the climate of earth, so it not necessary or wise to try. Clean air and water are desirable goals, as is an ethic of non-wastefulness. That’s enough.

2. Remove all oil drilling and nuclear power restrictions in America, immediately. Open up oil exploration and nuclear power plant construction to create American jobs, and provide American energy.

3. Repeal all CAFE standards, and impose a twenty-year moratorium on any possible reintroduction of them. Free the car companies to make cars that people want to buy, not death-cages that environmental Marxists want to force people to drive.

4. Disband the UAW and all other unions (including teachers unions and government employee unions), and impose a five-year moratorium on any union organizing. Unions have long since outlived their once valid purpose of protecting workers from exploitation; now they are nothing but collection and corruption channels for union bosses and their Democrat Party cronies. Union workers know this; most have no need or desire for the union; they just want a job where they can advance on their own merit.

5. Divest all government ownership of all private industries. Let free people in free markets take them over, and live with the good and the bad of their decisions.

6. Repeal any portion of the stimulus not already spent; repeal the trillion dollar deficit budgets and start over.

7. Abandon any notion of nationalizing healthcare; advance an agenda of individualizing healthcare—where individual Americans are encouraged and rewarded for responsible health decisions through greater choice of care and insurance. There is no successful model for socialized medicine, though many have been tried. It is the height of stupidity to pursue a proven failure.

8. Commit to the rule of law—to live within it; to appoint judges who do not ignore it; and to affirm its ideal in the blindfolded ‘lady justice’.

9. Repeal the income tax in favor of a national sales tax or flat tax. The income tax is an incomprehensible monstrosity that is nothing but a political playground that serves no productive purpose for the people.

10. Phase out Social Security and Medicare. They represent commitments undertaken in a different era by politicians who did not have to live with the fact that the commitments could not be kept over the long term. The bankruptcy of these programs is beyond question and beyond salvage—they need to be made the object lesson for out-of-control politicians spending other people’s money. Never again.

And last but not least, mandate in grades 7-12 study and testing on the content of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.

Yes, we know the ‘too controversial’ warning attached to several elements. But that’s just more “Washingtonian’ blather. Ironically, Rahm Emmanuel’s desire not to waste a good crisis may come back to haunt him. The Obama White House is radically overreaching and creating the most catastrophic social, civil, economic and national security crisis in American history, and this result might finally provide the clarity to set godless liberalism back for half a century or more.

Individual freedom and responsibility under God is the American ideal; it is the model for humanity; it is divinely inspired; it is anchored in truth. Both George Soros and Obama believe they have the ability and power to repeal or change truth. They don’t.

And don’t believe America’s Pravda media. This economy and the mood of Americans is not turning around—it is getting worse by the day. No big tent is going to be created by moving in the direction of Soros and Obama. But there is a big tent just waiting to be created around the 10 'tent-poles' outlined above. Let’s find some candidates willing to step up and say so.

Paul Gable

Posted May 28, 2009