Where Is The Republican Howard Schultz?

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has engendered a lot of excitement, some positive and some negative, this week with his announcement that he will run for president as an independent Democrat. As Mr. Schultz talks about giving moderate Democrats an option that doesn’t advocate confiscatory socialist policies or, hopefully, the abortion of full-term infants, the question on the minds of many conservatives and moderates is, “Where is the Republican Howard Schultz?”

The Democrats and the Republicans are two very different parties, but they have similar problems. Both parties are ignoring the moderate and independent voters who decide elections and are catering to the fringes in their base. In both cases, the party leaders are pushing forward with unpopular and even destructive policies and doing their best to alienate swing voters. About the only thing that the two parties can agree on is to keep borrowing and spending.

Howard Schultz has stepped forward to tackle some of the most egregious economic proposals of the new left. So far, he has not waded the brewing infanticide debate, but he has sharply criticized wealth taxes and national healthcare, going so far as to call Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) tax plan “unamerican.”

President Trump has performed well in some areas, notably with judicial appointments and tax reform, but there are a number of areas where many conservatives would like to see a Republican version of Howard Schultz steer the party back toward its traditional conservative roots. Many conservatives would like to see an end to the trade war and removal of the Trump’s tariffs, a renewed sense of cooperation with our allies, and an end to America’s retreat from its responsibility as the leader of the Free World. We would like a candidate who understands that solving the immigration problem means more than just throwing up a border wall. Conservatives need a candidate who is a real dealmaker, not someone who played one on TV. Two years after Obama left the White House, Obamacare is still in dire need of reform and seemingly off the GOP radar.

Most of all we need a candidate who has the character and temperament to be president. Where Donald Trump has had some policy successes, he has been an abject failure at uniting the country and representing the conservative ideology. The president’s behavior, including his tweeting, has not only led to a number of humiliating legislative defeats and the blue wave in the 2018 midterms, but it is also convincing a generation of young voters that Republicanism is bigoted, meanspirited, hypocritical, and capricious. Trump is literally driving suburban moderates and independents into the arms of Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

To make matters worse, a merger late last year between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee will make it more difficult for potential primary candidates to challenge Trump. The move is similar to the Hillary Clinton’s takeover of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, a move which stacked the deck against other Democratic hopefuls and laid the seed for Donald Trump’s victory over the beleaguered, scandal-ridden Democrat. Not that Trump would be likely to lose the primary anyway. He is still overwhelmingly popular within the Republican Party, if not in the rest of the country.

Perhaps this explains why Erick Erickson wrote earlier this week, “The GOP is a party in decline and I think if anyone wants to challenge it, the challenge is best done with the establishment of a new third party.” Not only is the Republican brand damaged, possibly beyond repair, by President Trump, but the party has doubled down on Trump, time and again, to the point where few Trump critics are left.

There are a few, however. Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, has floated the possibility of challenging Trump, but few other sitting Republicans have broached the idea. Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska, is one of the most vocal Trump critics still in office, and has not ruled out a presidential run against Trump. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and fellow 2016 candidate Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) don’t seem interested in challenging President Trump.

The president’s stranglehold on the Republican base and the RNC would make a challenge from within the GOP tantamount to political suicide. Unless Donald Trump is severely weakened over the next few months, it seems unlikely that a serious candidate will emerge. Few sitting Republican officials would want to risk their next re-election in what would almost certainly be a losing proposition. Gov. Hogan, the term-limited governor of a blue state, would be better positioned than most Republicans to run.

If no Republican mounts a primary challenge to Trump or if the president wins the nomination, it would be up to an outsider. Conservative author Brad Thor announced his intention to run against Trump last year, but has since been quiet on the subject. John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio and a 2016 candidate, has hinted at a run as has former Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. Former Senator Jeff Flake, another Trump critic who was long considered to be a likely candidate, has already bowed out. Evan McMullin, who mounted a conservative third-party campaign in 2016, seems to have dropped out of sight but could reappear.

2020 will be the year when the Republican Party decides whether it wants to be a conservative party or a populist party built around Donald Trump’s ideas. In 2016, the Republican embrace of Trump was frigid and forced and was only accomplished through what many saw as the necessity of preventing a Clinton presidency. In 2020, we can expect the argument that the campaign against [insert Democrat here] is another most important election of our lifetime, but if Donald Trump is the Republican standard bearer it will be with the full complicity and cooperation of Republican voters and the party will be forever, irretrievably changed.  

Originally published on The Resurgent

Abortion, Socialism, and Howard Schultz

The Democrats are apparently trying to make a liar out of me. Last week I wrote that support for abortion, while abhorrent to me, didn’t necessarily mean that Democrats were bad people or unchristian. This week Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said, “Hold my beer and watch this” before proceeding to make comments that come dangerously close to advocating infanticide.

While speaking to radio station WTOP about his third-trimester abortion bill, Gov. Northam said, “When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician, by the way. And it's done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that's non-viable. So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. So, I think this was really blown out of proportion.”

Yes, you heard that right. Virginia’s Democratic governor spoke about the right of mothers to decide to kill their children after birth. This is a far cry from the old Democratic line that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. It should not only be difficult for Christians to support Northam’s bill, which would allow abortion up to the point of birth according to its sponsor, it should be difficult for any human being to support.

The recent outbreaks of open Democratic extremism in New York and Virginia are a symptom of a party that has given itself over to its fringes. Every day seems to bring a new story of Democratic insanity from Kamala Harris’ plan to eliminate private health insurance to Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s proposal for a 70 percent income tax rate. Giddy with the results of the 2018 blue wave and already tasting victory over Donald Trump in 2020, prominent Democrats seem to have gone completely off the deep end.

From stage left, enter Howard Schultz, the former Starbucks CEO. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who is familiar with Starbucks that Schultz is no conservative, but he could help to steer the Democratic Party back in a more conservative direction.

The Democratic left is screaming bloody murder, not about the proposed laws to allow the killing of full-term infants, but at the possibility that Schultz might split the liberal vote and help to re-elect Trump. But maybe the real problem is that Democrats are rallying behind candidates that are far out of the American political mainstream.

Schultz is an attractive candidate precisely because the Democratic leadership is catering to and chasing after the radical fringe. Polling shows that voters are alienated by both the Democrats and the Republicans and Schultz apparently believes as I do that there is an opportunity for a centrist party that can inhabit the middle of the political spectrum between the fringes of both major parties. With an unpopular Republican incumbent, Schultz could fill a niche similar to the blue dog Democrats who were socially moderate and fiscally conservative and possibly carry some states with a platform similar to that of Southern Democrats such as Sam Nunn, Zell Miller, and Bill Clinton circa 1996.

Schultz won’t win over much of the Republican base. His positions on gun control and abortion, although moderate compared to many Democrats, are still unpalatable to conservatives. Schultz’s ideas on fiscal policy, however, could appeal to many conservatives who are unhappy with President Trump’s trade war, spending, and hard line on immigration, but Schultz’s real target base is center-left Democrats who feel as left behind by Democratic extremism as many Republicans do by the Trumpist GOP.

I’m happy that he has called out Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Elizabeth Warren for their radical economic policies and I hope that he will speak similar truths to the Democratic powers that be on abortion. Even though he’s pro-choice, I haven’t seen any evidence that he is part of the radically pro-abortion movement that has made it a priority to be able to abort babies that have already been born.

Schultz might be able to accomplish his goal of steering the Democrats back toward the center without even mounting a real campaign. The very threat of a centrist insurgent taking votes from the Democratic nominee may be enough to influence Democratic primary voters to eschew the radicals in their party for moderates like Joe Biden, John Hickenlooper, or Amy Klobuchar. If a centrist Democrat wins the nomination, Schultz could quietly fade into the woodwork and back the party nominee.

Many Republicans won’t like a move back toward the center by the Democrats. The more extreme the Democratic candidate, the more likely President Trump is to be re-elected or so the theory goes. As a former Republican, I disagree and would welcome more moderation by both parties.

For most of my life, I’ve had the choice between what I considered to be a good candidate and a horrible one. That changed in 2016 when I was given the choice between two horrible candidates. For once, I would love to have a choice between two (or more) candidates who are good people who I believe would be good leaders, even if they don’t check every box on my list of policy preferences.

Besides, I’ve seen unelectable extremists get elected too many times to wish for another radical candidate from either side. Our last two presidents were both considered unelectable on the grounds of inexperience, radical policies, dishonesty, and divisive politics. There are plenty of unelectable people in Congress as well.

I’m not endorsing Howard Schultz and I don’t have any plans to vote him at this point, but I do wish him well. If he can help to bring the Democratic Party back toward the center, it will benefit the country as a whole.

Originally published on The Resurgent