I had to stop watching the Republican Convention. Actually it wasn’t a convention at all but a nightly two-hour propaganda show boasting about (and lying about) Trump’s accomplishments and also a competition to see which speaker could best demonize Biden and the Democrats. For example, Larry Kudlow’s claim that Trump’s economy was “a roaring success” compared to Obama’s term was a lie. Trump’s annualized GDP growth of 2.5% (before COVID) was about the same as it was during Obama’s second term (2.3%). More jobs were created in the final 31 months of Obama's presidency (6.91 million) than during the first 31 months of Trump's presidency (5.85 million).
Last week, Nikki Haley said “ America is not a racist country” but moments later said she and her parents, who had emigrated from India , faced discrimination. Then on Tuesday a Black man was shot in the back 7 times by a white policeman in Kenosha , Wisc. , and Republican convention speaker, Mary Ann Mendoza, was cancelled hours before she was slated to speak after she tweeted an anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracy theory.
Kayleigh McEnany said, “I can tell you that this president stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions.” This press secretary who said she would never lie apparently doesn’t know that Trump has worked tirelessly in both the courts and Congress to repeal the ACA, the very law that protects 130,000,000 Americans who have pre-existing conditions.
In the demonizing category, Biden has been accused of being a radical socialist, a man who plans a war on God and religion, a man who wants to ban fossil fuels leaving us in the dark, a man who will demolish the suburbs, and a man suffering from dementia. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee , in her RNC speech, accused Biden and Harris of wanting to defund the police, the military and ICE. As NBC News pointed out, none of these things are true. Even Leslie Marshall of Fox News said “The Republican caricature of Biden and the Democrats is so extreme and detached from reality that it could pass for a sketch on Saturday Night Live.”
At the convention there was no talk about the Republican platform because there isn’t one. The RNC decided not to publish a 2020 platform but simply endorse whatever Trump decides to do. This might lead you to believe that the Republicans have no plans for America ’s future but you would be wrong. Basically the plan is to undo all the benefits that Americans have enjoyed from Roosevelt ’s New Deal and the progressive years that followed. Here are just a few examples:
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- Privatize Social Security
- Dismantle Medicare
- Repeal the Affordable Care Act
- Eliminate most environmental protections
- Cut taxes for the rich and cut benefits to pay for the tax cuts.
- Discourage or prevent workers from organizing to get higher wages
- Ignore calls for dealing with climate change because it isn’t happening.
In the current situation the Republican plan would add “Don’t close any schools or businesses or restrict freedoms just to save a few lives from COVID-19.”
As you might expect, the Republican agenda is not popular with a majority of Americans so they have to resort to a negative campaign of fear and falsehoods to frighten voters into supporting them. Trump firmly believes his dark rhetoric of fear will have a much greater impact on voters than the message of hope that came from the Democratic convention. Hopefully when (and if) all the votes are counted Trump will be proven wrong.
