GOP 2024: 'Crack down even harder on abortion'
The GOP Presidential Field’s Brightest Ideas
Your retinas may never recover from taking a look.
THE FIELD OF CANDIDATES RUNNING FOR the Republican nomination for president is, if not set, then at least coming together. More than a dozen candidates have announced, all brimming with bright ideas. What ideas are they brimming with? What would they like to see happen? Here’s a look at some of the goals being advanced by the men and woman who would be president.
Stop Whining About Racism
It’s no wonder the GOP candidates for governor think it’s great that the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, because they all agree: Racism in America is a thing of the past. (You might even say it’s a thing for the history books, except that it’s being removed from those, too.)
For proof, one need look no further than the fact that three of the presidential contenders (Tim Scott, Larry Elder, and Will Hurd) are black, two (Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramswamy) are Indian Americans, and one (Francis Suarez) is of Cuban descent. That leaves just seven white guys (Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, and Perry Johnson) in the race, making them practically but not really a minority.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has been especially ardent in insisting that the nation’s original sin is now all atoned for, declaring flatly that the United States is not a racist country. In a June 21 op-ed in the Daily Mail, she took Barack Obama to task for having taken her to task for saying such a thing.
“How far have we come?” Haley demanded. “So far that Barack Obama was elected president. So far that I am now running for president. If America was racist, none of this would have happened—full stop.”
If only all the nation’s problems were this easy to solve.
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Restore Tribute to Despised General
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence are both up in arms over the recent decision to give the North Carolina military base Fort Bragg a new name: Fort Liberty. DeSantis decried this move as “political correctness run amok” while Pence vowed at the state’s GOP convention that, when he is president, “North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg.”
As Washington Post contributor Ronald G. Shafer has noted, apart from the obvious wokeness-baiting, it’s a strange cause. Bragg is widely regarded as the Confederacy’s “worst and most hated general,” one known for being a virulent racist and “merciless tyrant.” A dozen of Bragg’s own officers petitioned Jefferson Davis to replace him. Bragg ultimately did have to resign, after a humiliating battlefield defeat.
In a letter written after the war, Confederate officer William Dudley Hale described Bragg as “obstinate but without firmness, ruthless without enterprise, crafty yet without stratagem, suspicious, envious, jealous, vain, a bantam in success and a dunghill in disaster.”
Boy, it would sure be grand to get his name back on that base.
Turn the Whole Country into Florida
This is the heart and soul of DeSantis’s bid for the nation’s top job—the idea that what he has achieved in the Sunshine State can be replicated across the land. As he recently tweeted: “We cannot allow our country to descend into a woketopia where freedoms are infringed and the truth is discarded. Florida is proof that America can do better.”
Government control over what teachers can teach and local cranks with veto power over what students can read. Endless divisive bickering over hyped-up culture war causes, like CRT (critical race theory) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investment. Know-nothing defiance of public health measures. Draconian restrictions on reproductive choice. Job-killing clashes with Mickey Mouse. What’s not to like?
Crack Down Even Harder on Abortion
Speaking to other Christian conservatives in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the anniversary of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, Pence opined, “Every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortion before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard.” He probably meant “after” 15 weeks, but that’s not what he said, and you never know. What Pence made clear was that he wants access to legal abortion to be further constrained: “We must not rest and we must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in this country.”
At the same event, DeSantis hailed Florida’s signed-into-law-but-not-yet-implemented ban on abortion after six weeks as “the right thing to do.” And South Carolina Representative Tim Scott put it like this: “Thank God almighty for the Dobbs decision.” The actual God almighty had no comment.
Stop Giving Money to Countries that Hate Us
Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has made this a centerpiece of her campaign, pledging at a recent town hall meeting, “When I am president, we will no longer give money to countries that hate America.” She mentioned in particular Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and Cuba.
Yes, she said, “We give money to Communist Cuba, who we named a state sponsor of terrorism.” This refers, presumably, to the $2 million in emergency relief that the Biden administration provided last fall to Cuban victims of Hurricane Ian. Can you imagine how much safer we’d all be if this rare humanitarian gesture were thwarted? Perhaps the money could be redirected to our friends, like Saudi Arabia—the intensely repressive country that most of the 9/11 attackers called home, which has received tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid in recent years. Yes, tens of billions is way more than $2 million.
Pardon Donald Trump
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, hoping to make a name for himself, is leading the pack of GOP presidential contenders in how fervently he is promising to forgive Donald Trump for any and all transgressions against democracy and the Constitution.
“I commit to pardon Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, and to restore the rule of law in our country,” Ramaswamy proclaimed shortly after the former president was indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents. He went further, calling on “candidates in both parties, regardless of our political interests, to either stand against what I see as a politicized prosecution and say so and commit to a pardon or else explain why.”
A few other Republicans, eager to please the man they must defeat to become their party’s nominee, have indicated that they, too, are leaning to a pardon, as Trump has demanded. These include Haley, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, and conservative talk-radio host Larry Elder.
Meanwhile, Pence, DeSantis, Scott, and North Dakota Governor Burgum have all sought to straddle the fence, suggesting there is something wrong with what Trump did but something wronger about prosecuting him for it. Pence, for instance, has said, “This indictment contains serious charges, and I cannot defend what is alleged,” but also that he “can’t believe that politics didn’t play some role here” and that he will, if elected, “clean house” at the Justice Department. On this issue generally, Pence has said a lot of things.
Blame Immigrants for Fentanyl Deaths
All of the candidates for the GOP nomination for president are pretty worked up over illegals in our midst, but none more than Scott.
“On my first day as Commander-in-Chief, the strongest nation on Earth will stop retreating from our own southern border,” he bellows from his campaign website. “If we want to prevent deadly drugs like fentanyl from infiltrating our communities, we need to stop the illegal immigrants who bring them across our borders . . . either with a strong border wall or by military force.”
The only problem with this analysis is that it’s wrong. As the Washington Post reported earlier this year, “U.S. citizens comprise 86 percent of fentanyl trafficking convictions in 2021, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency of the federal judiciary branch.” The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, reported that just 0.02 percent of illegally crossing immigrants arrested by border agents had fentanyl on them. Moreover, the Post found that “[Customs and Border Patrol] data show the drug is overwhelmingly smuggled through U.S. ports of entry—the official crossings—which account for more than 96 percent of fentanyl seizures along the border since the start of the 2023 fiscal year on Oct. 1.” Nearly all border smuggling is happening in California and Arizona, not the entire Southern border.
