Seven Months Later, Why Did Voters Choose Trump?

Economics and faith. Between a downtrodden middle class and "deplorable" Christians, Trump found enough support

The reasons voters supported Donald Trump in November 2016 instead of Hillary Clinton are still the reasons President Trump’s agenda remains supported. We’ll focus here on two reasons — one economic, and the other religious.

Sure, there are myriad distractions, but Americans are seeing effective policy implemented by a guy who’s on track to keep more campaign promises in 20 weeks than many in the GOP have kept in 20 years of starch-collared incumbency.

There remains an elevated level of incredulity among Democrats that their nominee was so terribly flawed. Clinton’s reputation preceded her as an opportunist whose wealth was the result of “public service” and the clear pay-to-play philosophy of the entire corruption Clinton cabal. The collective disdain by the Democrat Party for the average working American was only surpassed by their nominee, whose volcanic spew scorched the “deplorables” and “irredeemables” who support legal immigration, strong national defense, actual health insurance versus Medicaid-for-all and an opportunity to work instead of fearing unemployment due to job elimination following burdensome regulation.

Yet results are funny things. After decades of promises to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, the abysmal standing in the world after the lead-from-behind approach of foreign policy, and an overregulated economy that killed jobs, pushed record numbers onto welfare and turned our health insurance plans into worthless policies with high premiums, Americans abandoned tradition and common thought related to politics. Voters rejected the policies and promises of the previous eight years. Americans want to work for their wealth and see their government serving their interests, not the bureaucracy itself.

A recent Wall Street Journal analysis took a large bank’s annual report presented by M&T Bank CEO Robert Wilmers and validated the case. Without mentioning presidential politics or politicians, the report noted that a “declining share of households even consider themselves to be part of the middle class; 63% did so in 2001. By 2015, that number had fallen to just 51%.” Citing stagnant wages that have only increased 13% since 1973, poor returns on more traditional investment tools such as savings accounts and other bank deposits, and the fact that only half of Americans invest in the stock market versus 72% in 2008, Wilmers makes a declaratory statement: “No wage growth. No investment earnings growth. No wonder families are stretched and stressed.”

And no wonder they dumped the establishment candidate.

The full M&T Bank’s Message to Shareholders bemoans flawed monetary policy and excessive regulatory burdens that have been the anchors for lending institutions. These same anchors indiscriminately weigh down any forward movement toward growth. And, again, that’s where Trump’s campaign promises turned into a presidential win.

Using the Congressional Review Act, President Trump has reversed 14 regulations that will save $3.7 billion in regulatory costs and $35 billion just in compliance costs. According to the conservative think tank American Action Forum, a total of $86 billion will be saved by Trump’s repeal and elimination of just these few regulations.

Make no mistake: these costs are taxes. These regulatory costs kill jobs. And while leftists still erroneously believe that only dumb white people elected the 45th president, voters chose to pursue a much-needed economic turnaround — one that’s already occurring. The Hill featured a story Sunday declaring the economy as a “bright spot” for Trump with the Standard & Poor’s up more than 12%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 16%, unemployment at a 16-year low, and an expected 2.3% growth in GDP.

A second reason Trump upset Hillary and the status quo was faith-based issues. The promise of an originalist to fill the vacancy of deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was reason enough for many voters to look past the imperfections of a massive personality named The Donald. That promise has already been fulfilled with the brilliant appointment of Neil Gorsuch.

Leftists perpetually shame Christians for their supposedly intolerant, bigoted ways. The Rainbow Mafia is particularly ruthless in “correcting” this “wrong.” But the reality is that Christians don’t want a theocracy. Nor, however, do we want to be sued into oblivion by a tiny minority for not baking a wedding cake for a homosexual redefinition of marriage.

Understand that while Trump was the recipient of votes as the candidate for president, it was the full rejection of the open assault on those of the Christian faith by brazen leftists that moved Bible-believing Christians to support a very imperfect man. Just this weekend, the same leftist activists demanding free health care, free birth control, debt forgiveness and any other socialist agenda item marched in the streets with Sharia Law proponents who seek a parallel judicial system that places Islam’s teachings as the basis of law, not our U.S. Constitution. Square that circle with the homosexual agenda.

Be advised that the hectoring of evangelicals for their support of Trump by those who obsess on the “right” to kill babies in the womb, to pick-a-gender-of-the-day and marry whomever, to enable Sharia compliance that permits so-called “honor killings” is transparently pitiful.

Conventional wisdom told us that the 2016 election was supposed to be another Bush-Clinton face-off. Conventional wisdom was rejected repeatedly because those entrusted with leadership to right the ship of state have failed to stand erect with an intact spine to fight against Democrats’ efforts to “fundamentally transform America.”

Despite the pigpen politics, Donald Trump won and, yes, America is winning.

SOURCE

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Nothing great about the welfare state

In The Welfare of Nations, the decade-later follow-up to his The Welfare State We're In, James Bartholomew - former leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail - takes us on a tour of the world's welfare states.

It's fair to say he isn't a fan. He argues that the welfare state undermines old values and `crowds out' both our inner resourcefulness and our sense of duty to one another - including our own families. Instead of aspiring to be self-reliant, the welfare state makes us self-absorbed. People aren't encouraged to exercise responsibility anymore; instead, they are handed a plethora of `rights'. Welfare states `have diminished our civilisation', Bartholomew concludes.

The welfare state has always been a problematic entity, from its modern beginnings in the nineteenth century with Bismarck's cynical `state socialism'- built as much to placate the increasingly politically active masses as to attend to their welfare - to the vast systems maintaining millions of economically inactive citizens across the world today. The welfare state, as its advocates contend, always promises a better society, with higher levels of equality, but, as Bartholomew counters, it also tends to foster unemployment, `broken families' and social isolation.

Some versions of the welfare state are better than others. Wealthy Switzerland has a low unemployment rate despite generous social insurance-based benefits. But, at the same time, the Swiss state imposes tough conditions: there's no minimum wage and workers can be fired on the spot. Sweden's benefit system is generous, too, but if you can't afford the rent on a property, you have to move out.

In the UK, matters are equally complex. For instance, shared-ownership schemes, `affordable housing' and planning regulations contribute to distinctly unaffordable house prices. Indeed, housing costs have risen from 10 per cent of average UK household income in 1947 to over 25 per cent. For the poorest sections of society, it is worse still. This is despite the fact that the state subsidises dysfunctional, workless households on bleak public housing estates.

And what of state education? Nearly one-in-five children in OECD countries is functionally illiterate. The best performing advanced countries have autonomous schools, `high stakes' exams, quality teachers and a culture of discipline and hard work. Compare that to the US, where you can't get rid of bad unionised teachers in the state schools.

Bartholomew convincingly argues that state schools' `shameful' inadequacy, for all the rhetoric to the contrary, breeds inequality. He fears that the success of the free- and charter-school movement is at risk, too, from `creeping government control'. Bartholomew is upfront about his own old-fashioned conservative views. He's a kind of evidence-based Peter Hitchens, using `bundles of academic studies' to show what he suspected of the welfare state all along. The care of `strangers', he argues, is bad for children and aged parents alike, and damages the social fabric. Over half of Swedish children are born to unmarried mothers, whereas the family in Italy, he says approvingly, is `the main source of welfare', with charity-run `family houses' (no flats or benefits) for single mothers. At a time when Conservatives aren't really very conservative, it takes Bartholomew to ask important questions about social change.

Again, southern Europe offers a useful contrast to the situation in northern Europe. Over half of single people aged 65 or over in Italy, Portugal and Spain live with their children. Just three per cent of single Danes do. Should individual autonomy trump the burden of caring for children and family members? What role should the state play? UK social workers are office-based, writes Bartholomew, and contracted care workers follow `rules rather than doing things from an impulse of loving care'.

By 2050 over a third of the European population will be aged over 60. Even though the age at which people are eligible for pensions is increasing, state pensions can't be sustained, says Bartholomew. In Poland, Greece and Italy, pensions account for more than a quarter of public spending. The UK spends nine per cent of its national income on healthcare, the US an insurance-fuelled 18 per cent, and Singapore just five per cent (though Singapore has to put twice that into `personal' health-savings accounts). `Wealth leads to better healthcare', says Bartholomew, but the monopolistic UK system, despite the NHS's officially cherished status, is one of the worst of the advanced countries for health outcomes, including, for example, cancer-survival rates. `Obamacare' notwithstanding, millions of uninsured Americans - neither poor enough for Medicaid nor old enough for Medicare - struggle to pay for healthcare.

Democracies, says Bartholomew, are susceptible to the fantasy that welfare states can solve our problems without consequence or cost. This is despite US public spending increasing from seven per cent of GDP in 1900 to 41 per cent of GDP in 2011. In 2012, France revealed that public spending accounted for 57 per cent of its GDP.

But it's Bartholomew's critique of the wider welfare culture, rather than his carps at benefits systems, which provides an important corrective to what can be a narrow and mean-spirited discussion. He also offers practical solutions: let's increase housing supply but abolish public housing; let's have a system of `co-payment' for healthcare between state and individual; let's allow schools and hospitals to compete in markets; and let's give individuals the opportunity to save and insure themselves to pay for social-care needs and pensions (albeit through Singapore-style compulsory bank accounts).

So what do we do with the welfare state? As Bartholomew puts it, the welfare state, rather than capitalism or communism, was `the ultimate victor of the turmoil of the twentieth century'. But Bartholomew makes clear that this is a hollow victory with many millions left idle and communities undermined. So yes, let's cut the welfare state down to size and stop infantilising its dependants. But we also need to get more ambitious than Bartholomew allows. He thinks it's too late to get our freedoms back and argues for a minimal `welfare' state only. But why stop there? If the architects of the welfare state have anything to teach us, it is to be bolder in our visions.

SOURCE

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