“The Republican Party is the party of the American Dream.”
President Trump could not have presented the choice in the next election more clearly. Do we continue with the resurgence of the American Dream under the leadership and policies of the president? Or turn back toward an age-old socialist delusion, which has led to misery, destruction, and loss of freedom everywhere it’s tried?
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it,” Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote. “Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number … while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
Trump’s free-market policies have unleashed the individual. The American Dream is back. Unemployment has reached its lowest point in 65 years. Wages have reached the highest level in a decade and are continuing to climb.
After Trump took office, home ownership began rising again. Automakers are investing in America again. Jobs they told us were never coming back, unless Trump had a “magic wand,” are roaring back at the fastest rate in 14 years. Americans are confident again.
The “new normal” of sluggish growth and high unemployment turned out only to be normal for Democratic administrations. The “magic wand” was getting the government off the backs of the American people and cutting taxes to make America a great investment again.
The economic record of this president cannot be matched. If the radical left cannot attack the Trump administration’s record on its merits, they must change the topic of conversation. Democrats appear to have settled on the not-so-inspiring message, “Who cares about the booming economy, the world is ending in 12 years!”
“We have an expiration date,” declares New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Normally, the opinion of a 29-year-old democratic socialist who has spent all but three months in Congress might not carry much weight. However, in a party marching ever leftward, the 2020 Democratic candidates for president have all followed her lead to embrace the so-called “Green New Deal.”
Nancy Pelosi has called it the “Green New Dream.” A more fitting title would be the “Old Socialist Delusion.”
Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t have time for debate. She wants your car, your burger, and you to stop having kids, and she wants it now. Forget air travel, we’ll have high-speed rail to Hawaii. Meanwhile, the government will rebuild every single building in the United States.
Ocasio-Cortez’s first and second five-year plans come with other socialist policies like socialized medicine, reparations, and a heavy dose of “intersectionality.” The government would provide your food, your healthcare, your job, and your “access to nature.” All of this would require the “economic transformation” of the United States.
Of course, the millennial social planner is not alone. She’s just following the lead of Bernie Sanders, who has successfully dragged the Democratic Party to the radical left.
Sanders is a radical socialist who believes in nationalizing all “major means of production.” He didn’t earn a paycheck until he was 40. His first job was in government, as mayor of Burlington, Vt. Sanders has been in government ever since, where he ended up a millionaire, the very class he rails against.
His new socialized medicine plan unveiled Wednesday would “blow up” the health care of 200 million Americans. The rest of the Democratic field is fine with that. California Sen. Kamala Harris says we should “eliminate all” private insurance. It’s time to “move on.” Harris and Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) all endorsed the Sanders socialized medicine plan.
How far left the party has traveled. Barack Obama promised his health care plan was not a “Trojan horse for” single-payer. Obamacare was supposed to fix the problems of the health care system, while he promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
“When you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this — they are not telling the truth,” Obama said in 2009.
Ten years later, Democrats aren’t bothering to conceal their socialist ideals. Socialism is the party platform.
Government-run health care and a central-plan for the climate are not cheap. “Taxes would go up. A lot.” A conservative estimate of the Green New Deal tops out at $93 trillion.
It’s not just that the plan would bankrupt the country. The much more serious cost is the cost to freedom.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” Ronald Reagan said. We know where the Democratic Party wants to take us. They have never promised, as President Trump has, that “America will never be a socialist country.”
“America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and control,” the president said. “We are born free, and we will stay free.”
The choice is ours.
Elizabeth Harrington is national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
