For more than five decades, conventional wisdom and political consultants have insisted that without the Independent voter, the Republican Party is doomed. We have seen all the statistical charts and heard all the analyses by some of the most vocal political strategists, such as Establishment faithful Karl Rove and old school Democrat Doug Schoen. They hammer the desk and assure the television viewing audience that if we deign to try to win an election without “wooing” the Independents, we will lose the election.
I have heard these stories about the Independent voters for as many years as I’ve been interested in politics and I realized over time how very wrong these analysts appeared to be, rendering advice that seemed off-base and slightly suspicious. It was difficult to wrap my mind around how someone who was politically savvy could be that confused about which party better represented their core values and point of view. I wondered how accurate all the information out there in the consultant class strategy books was and if they were perhaps misinterpreting the statistics.
In the 2000 election, after George W. Bush defeated Al Gore, I got my answer. The loss of the election and the subsequent recounts and court cases involved in that election outcome were so dizzying that it was difficult to understand just how the Florida operations had become muddled to the point as to appear to be a documentary written about some third world nation.
It seemed the younger the voter, the more apt they were to merely accept the media’s loose interpretation for what the parties espoused.
The final outcome was devastating to the Democrat voter and many of the people that I was friendly with were adamant about abandoning the party and seeking a third-party alternative. I found that when I spoke with many of those same friends over the next year or two, they frequently insisted that they were not Democrats, but Independents. Being the natural predator of Democrat thought processes that I am, I would then ask what about them had changed. In other words, “What are the platforms upon which you now stand that are different from that of the Democrat Party?”
The answer to this question was either a blank stare, a stuttering question in answer of “Like what, specifically?” or they outright admitted that the Democrat Party was no longer a viable option because they allowed the Republicans to walk all over them.
When it came down to brass tacks, the fact remained that these newly minted Independent voters had not changed their political outlook, nor had they really sought to examine the types of platforms that were associated with the Democrats or the Republicans. It seemed the younger the voter, the more apt they were to merely accept the media’s loose interpretation for what the parties espoused. Typically, this was the breakdown in the mainstream press:
The Democrat Party stood for the middle-class family, the working class people, unions that protected the worker, social safety net programs that were put in place to save people from devastating losses, increased environmental regulations to keep your drinking water and food products safe and free from poisons/pesticides, staying out of foreign wars and the freedom to express yourself in any way you deemed necessary in order to make your voice heard.
The Republican Party stood for the wealthy millionaire and billionaire class, Wall Street bankers, were against the unions that protected the working class, wanted draconian cuts in funding of vital social programs that were designed to save Americans from harm, decreased environmental regulation to poison your drinking water and food products, waging war on foreign nations and the shutting down of the 1st Amendment, especially when it concerned the defacing of the American flag.
Today, these mainstream media assessments of both parties remain identical, despite a clear delineation of some of these issues where the stated platforms by the press appear to be in diametric opposition to such policies.
For instance, today there are many more wealthy Democrat politicians in the millionaire/billionaire range than there are Republicans. Even though this is a statistical fact, the mainstream media continues to beat the drum that the Republicans only serve the very wealthy in society.
In the 2016 election, millions of former Democrat voters jumped from that party to the Republican Party in order to vote for the candidate Donald J. Trump. Why did this occur? They believed that the Democrat Party, by and large, had completely abandoned the working-class families. In Pennsylvania alone, an estimated 30K registered voters in the Democrat Party had jumped ship and registered as Republicans.
Unions have all but abandoned any pretenses of being for the worker. A couple of years ago, a resident of Chicago, Mark Janus, took up a major lawsuit against the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, specifically against Chicago local government for which he worked, in an effort to protest the fact that he did not believe his membership dues should continue to be collected as a mandate. He believed that the union bosses were affiliated and aligned with a political party he did not support. The case found its way up to the Supreme Court and he was successful. The case was a precedent in the US, but stunningly, that which is still only upheld in just two states; Illinois and Alaska. The Supreme Court decision majority opinion stated that the government worker would have the right to agree or disagree to union membership dues, rationalizing that if the union was doing its job to represent the worker fairly and justly, there would be every reason in the world for the worker to wish to continue to pay his/her dues. That decision is a bitter pill for the Left to swallow.
Each time President Trump attempts to pull back from these deployments, he is met with a cacophony of heckling, insults and dire warnings, all designed to frighten or bully him into allowing the allotments to continue.
The social safety net programs have long been believed to be a hand-out to those who require assistance, but that which perpetuates generational dependence upon government subsidies. As evidenced throughout the corporate world, government hand-outs tend to make very miserly owners and CEOs whose lobbyists inside the Beltway are well-suited to press the flesh and make the backroom deals with any legislator who appears to be responsive to greenbacks and perquisites. Turning Point USA and #Walkaway campaigns have raised an alarm at the cradle-to-grave approach of the Democrat Party and how these policies have sought to enslave rather than free people from dependence upon government.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Barack Hussein Obama was instrumental in building a solid wall of regulation so thick on every energy and raw materials industry that it appeared America was heading toward a GDP freefall into oblivion, beyond rescue. President Donald J. Trump has managed to turn that around by deregulation on a massive scale, but much of what had been done through the Obama administration remains in effect largely because unelected bureaucrats loyal to the ex-president remain obstinate, ignoring the abatement of laws and restrictions meant to stymie American industry growth and prosperity.
Under the current Congress and the former presidency, foreign wars remain a huge problem. These entities sought to continue the perpetual presence of United States troops in every corner of the world, ensuring that many arms corporations and technology companies would continue to be able to supply these ongoing wars with the needed logistical support; the very same corporations and companies with direct and indirect ties to very powerful Washington bureaucrats. Each time President Trump attempts to pull back from these deployments, he is met with a cacophony of heckling, insults and dire warnings, all designed to frighten or bully him into allowing the allotments to continue.
Finally, there is the American university crisis where Freedom of Speech is nearly non-existent, replaced instead with a permanent discontented army of Socialist-minded Democrats under the direct control of the Liberal professor establishment who see Republicans as Fascists and Trump as a racist autocrat. The freedom to express oneself is no longer an option, especially considering that the new inductees to college learning are so self-absorbed in fame-seeking on social media, keeping current on their latest FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) episodes, that they fail to see that the very people they call Nazis are the replacements for the Jews who were forced to wear a Star of David upon their overcoats. Conservatives will soon be mandated to show their political affiliation on campus by wearing a large “C” on their backpacks.
All these things have gradually become the norm in the political arena and they have pushed a lot of normal people to the fringes of electoral awareness. Many Independents today are merely that way simply because they are fearful of what will occur if they reveal their true beliefs.
In recent times, however, another more strident work is being engaged in on the Left that has been slowly taking advantage of the Independent voter through a bait-and-switch Alinsky-like tactic. The Independent voter is no longer independent in the traditional sense. While there remain the true Independents, weighing each of the issues of both parties in an effort to make the most informed decision in the voting booth on election day, the vast majority of Independents are already predisposed to a core set of beliefs being cultivated by the Democrat Party.
Many of the nations senators and representatives who are registered Independent, Undeclared, or Unaffiliated may seem to be Moderates right down the middle but are in fact voting nearly 100% of the time with the Democrat Party.
A very common tactic these days is for the Democrat Party to endorse an Independent, Undeclared, or Unaffiliated candidate, even affording these candidates funding from the Democrat National Committee coffers in order to push their candidacy forward against the Republican opponent. The reason is not very difficult to figure out when one considers that the Left appears to use changes and alterations on a frequent basis whenever the public begins to catch on to their tactics.
In this case, they are actually attempting to convince the voters that the person running unaffiliated will be voting in a traditionally independent manner. Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth. The moment that an Independent gains victory, they are subsumed by the Left. The tactic is being used with more frequency these days and the effort appears to be making some headway. Many of the nations senators and representatives who are registered Independent, Undeclared, or Unaffiliated may seem to be Moderates right down the middle but are in fact voting nearly 100% of the time with the Democrat Party.
That is going on throughout the country and the Republicans fear that this trend will continue to tear away bits and pieces of their foundation inside each of the state’s legislatures, the endgame of course being an eventual overturning of the Red districts into Blue.
In the old days, Independents were rare…an anomaly…precisely because the absence of opinion until the very last minute runs contrary to normal human social interaction. People inherently know the difference between good and evil, black and white, right and wrong. These inherent qualities and belief systems help us to make quick and sober determinations, especially when snap decisions must be made when perhaps life and death is on the line. Being truly independent in political thought may be an old-fashioned notion that has lost its relevancy in an age of hyper-sensitive political theater.
It’s long past the time that Republicans and Conservatives continue to consider Independents as a legitimate voting bloc, worthy of “wooing,” and get down and dirty with the guerilla tactics associated with the Democrat Party playbook. The Independents are no longer in the middle. They are synonymous with the Left and should be considered in nearly all circumstances as pure opposition to everything we hold dear.
For those of you still out there espousing the traditional ideals of the Independent Party…there comes a time when you just need to make the decision, one way or the other, and stick with that ideal.
No one likes a fence-sitter, but here's something to make things a little more clear: The grass is always greener on the Right side of the voting booth.