OPINION:
Republicans are starting to sound like a broken record, or in more modern parlance, a corrupted music file. Speeches, interviews, social media screeds and advertising all harp on the same mantra about the state of the nation. To one measure or another, they’re all missing the bigger point.
Republicans and conservatives continue to tell the public things they already know. That’s not necessarily a winning strategy, even if the majority of Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction. Agreement on issues in politics does not automatically translate into support.
For instance, here are five topics that the public has made up their minds about already, but Republicans continue to spend precious time restating the problem as if the nation needed convincing.
1. President Biden’s mental capacity is diminished to the point he should not serve a second term. Some 80% of us in recent polling believe Mr. Biden is some combination of woefully debilitated, uninspiring, weak and unfit to serve a second term in office. It’s a staggering number. Americans don’t need to be convinced of this point, and calling for cognitive tests is a publicity stunt.
2. Hunter Biden leveraged his father’s position to make money. Republicans got off message quickly when it came to Biden family corruption. The story has too often been framed by the soap opera of sex, drugs and guns when it should have been more about how the Biden family business was selling influence for decades. Either way, Americans realize that Hunter Biden is a mess.
3. President Biden intentionally used his public office to enrich his family members. Public polling also suggests that the majority of Americans are smart enough to appreciate that in some fashion, legal or otherwise, Mr. Biden used his position in Washington to make business deals. What will Republicans do to really drain the swamp? No one knows.
4. The southern border is a major concern, and the Biden administration is not controlling it. We’ve never seen numbers like this on immigration. According to Pew Research, 78% of Americans see the border as either a crisis or a major problem. Members of Congress talking about the Secure the Border Act is a waste of time.
5. The Inflation Reduction Act was an excuse to expand government, not put money in the pockets of hardworking Americans. Trillions were spent. The government got bigger, and the middle class shrank under Mr. Biden. The voters see it and feel it.
Americans are smarter than the politicians and the media think they are. They experience the symptoms, but many don’t understand the disease.
Mr. Biden is a sideshow to the larger threats to American freedom from the far left that now controls him and the Democratic Party. Whether he’s the nominee or not, the infiltration and operational control by socialists of every major American institution will remain until we resolve to win that ideological battle.
Instead of talking about issues about which Americans have already made up their minds, Republicans need to reintroduce the dangers of socialism and Marxism to the public. We need to recall the words of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about the creeping assault of the government on working people and how the state is a direct threat to liberty.
All Americans need to understand those ideologies, how to identify them when they see them, and what to do about them. The systemic threats we face as a nation from these radical beliefs must be infused into the rhetoric of this campaign. Americans need to understand the linkages between the spreading cancer and what we see happening in this country today.
This campaign isn’t a campaign against President Biden. It is a campaign against the real threat to democracy — the left-wing socialism that has embedded itself into government, education, the media and corporations.
It is a campaign against a Marxist-inspired movement in America and its real power to strip away the privacy and the personal and economic freedom of every American.
Leftist billionaire and campaign donor George Soros is buying 200 radio stations. Marxists are infiltrating the libraries. Government-run schools are hubs for radical social engineering that aims to eliminate the family as a social unit. Cities and suburbs are going bankrupt over the costs of exploding welfare programs and paying off the unions that administer them. Even churches are being vandalized and scandalized by left-wing ideology.
Do we think that queer theory and the transgender agenda are achieving cult status by accident? No, it’s an effort to diminish science, parental rights, traditional family structure and biblical truth.
Do we think the open border is an accident? No, it’s part of an effort to expand the unaccountable administrative state and diminish the value of citizenship.
Do we think the irrational fear of impending climate change catastrophes that are repeatedly proved wrong are just innocent misjudgments? No, they are a deliberate technique to force people to submit to more government spending and regulation.
Republicans need to stop repeating the “Biden is old” and “the border is broken” talking points and create a broad-based movement to fight American socialism. That movement cannot be about one person or one label but a sustained message, drawing from facts and history, about reclaiming the America we once knew.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and a columnist for The Washington Times.
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