I’ve always thought political movements are a lot like the Earth’s tectonic plates. They constantly grind against each other, creating pressure and heat. The opposing forces build conflict over long periods of time until their stress exceeds their strength. Then the plates slip, the ground shakes, and a new landscape (political or geological) emerges.
The Democrat and Republican plates have been grinding against each other for generations – creating distrust, polarization, and even hatred. Then in August, the plates slipped when the unthinkable happened. A liberal (as in classic liberal), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., endorsed Donald Trump for president. One need only observe the reaction of the Democrats to know that their political ground has become unstable.
Political parties are a microcosm of their voters. For the Democrats that includes liberals, radicals, and what the poli-sci professors call “low information voters.”
Conservatives tend to speak pejoratively about liberals, but only because of their association with the false liberals in the Democrat party. Actual liberals (e.g. Alan Dershowitz, Jonathan Turley) are those who promote liberty and the values which enable it: civil rights, free markets, equality under law, limited government, and individual autonomy. RFK Jr. is a liberal in the classic sense, just as his father and uncle (the presidential one, not the mistress murdering one) were before him.
The low information voters are the “hope and joy” useful idiots. They’ll vote for whomever the gals on The View say the cool kids support. They obediently provide their votes, in exchange for treats – like student loan forgiveness – without a care in the world about the future they’re facilitating.
The radicals are the party ideologues. They pretend to be liberal but give liberalism a bad name. They have zero interest in promoting liberty. They work from within the Democrat party to advance communism. They want to lead a system of centralized control in which they dictate every aspect of our lives – down to the foods we eat, the products we buy, and the prices we pay. Their sales pitch is: Give up your freedom, and we’ll provide social justice – though they don’t say it quite so clearly.
In the last two decades, the radicals have managed to consolidate control over the Democrat party. They’ve taken the party of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy (Sr.), and Joe Lieberman; and turned it into the party of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now the liberals find themselves unwelcome in the Democrat party. They’ve lost their home, just as Ronald Reagan did before them.
The Republican party of 2024 is made up of conservatives, populists, and establishment politicians.
Conservatives are the party ideologues who want to preserve America’s traditional founding principles. They are the liberals of the Republican party – but avoid that word because it has become associated with the bat-crap crazy radicals of the left. However, conservatism and classic liberalism have never been polar opposites. They may differ on specific policy issues, but they agree on the core tenets of liberty.
Populists, like Donald Trump, aren’t animated by ideology. They want to improve the lives of average working Americans – those who don’t have an army of lawyers or a government bureaucracy representing them. They want to empower the citizens who have been left out of the political discussion. Populists want to provide for their families, worship as they choose, have a say in their government, and otherwise be left alone. Even though they aren’t consumed by ideology, populists recognize that their objectives are best served when liberty is protected.
The establishment republicans (AKA RINOs) don’t disagree with the big government objectives of the radicals. They just claim they’re better managers. Their sales pitch is: Give us a big government and we’ll run things better than the other guys. The RINOs don’t play well with the conservatives or the populists. Senator John McCain famously called members of his own party “wacko birds” for not embracing big government.
But in 2016 a brash billionaire from New York showed up in the Republican primaries representing the guys in hard hats, factory coveralls, and farmer boots; and the RINOs got a big surprise. The common people who keep the country running, far outnumber the elites who insist on telling them how to do it. It has taken over a decade, but the populists are now solidly in control of the Republican party. On the Republican side of the aisle, it’s the RINOs who are finding themselves homeless (e.g. Dick and Liz Cheney).
Suddenly the liberal refugees from the Democrat party have a place to go – though it has taken them a few years to come to grips with the idea that Republicans aren’t the party of Adolph Hitler. Classic liberalism and conservatism have always had common ground. The two groups just couldn’t get past the “D” or the “R” behind their names – until the populists came along.
The populists don’t care much about party affiliation, they just want results. So, Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy Jr. sat down and did something totally unexpected. They talked and discovered the common ground which had always been there. The populists get the outcomes they want by embracing the ideology that the liberals preach. The liberals get affirmation that their ideology really does make for a prosperous America. When people from the party of Reagan, discovered that they have common ground with people from the party of Kennedy, the outcasts from the Democrat party found a new home, and the political tectonic plates slipped.
- Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump and bought Twitter to advance freedom of speech – a core liberal and conservative value.
- Tulsi Gabbard dropped her Democrat party membership and endorsed Donald Trump – to keep Americans safe.
- Former California Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romer switched her party membership from Democrat to Republican, because her old party had become the champion of radicalism and authoritarianism – which liberals and conservatives abhor.
- The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Donald Trump – as the “equality under law” choice.
- Daniel Klein, a professor at George Mason College, and a self-declared liberal, organized a group calling themselves the “Lesser Evil” movement. They support Republicans as the party more likely to preserve fundamental freedoms (i.e. classic liberal values).
- Alan Dershowitz cancelled his Democrat party membership over its emerging antisemitism – which violates the liberal principle of equality under the law.
- The President of the Teamsters union isn’t taking sides – yet. But he spoke at the Republican convention and is publicly frustrated at being shunned by the Democrats – a censorship issue for him.
So far, the political tremors are small – a few people here and a few people there. But what it says about the future is huge – sorry, yuuge!
Do you feel the ground trembling? The radicals and the RINOs are both losing. The RINOs have lost control of their party, and the radicals are losing their party membership. That’s what the formation of a new political landscape looks like.
Donald Trump demonstrated how to deal with people who negotiate in bad faith. He cut the Palestinians out of the middle east peace talks and made progress where others had failed. Will the populists and the liberals finally get something done by cutting the radicals and the RINOs out of the political debate? That would certainly be a seismic landscape change, no?
Author Bio: John Green is a retired engineer and political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He spent his career designing complex defense systems, developing high performance organizations, and doing corporate strategic planning. He is a contributor to American Thinker, The American Spectator, and the American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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