Victory is the only mandate Trump and the GOP need
You win. You govern. It works that way.
Dan Calabrese , Bio and Archives--December 21, 2016
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We believed the hype—both the media’s and our own—that we would win. I’m not blaming anyone else. I believed it, too. But just because you epically lost an expectations game doesn’t mean you epically lost an election. Let’s not fall victim to what Republicans are trying to do. They want us to forget what actually happened. That’s how they will build the perception of support for an agenda that voters rejected. President-elect Trump has already started to repeatedly claim a mandate for his agenda and a landslide for his win. Neither are true. Republicans have the right to govern but they don’t have a mandate for their policies. If we don’t start to make that point, each and every day, then we will wake up in a few months and find out Republicans have taken the country in a new direction. If we don’t fight back against unfounded claims of a mandate, or navel-gazing that this election was a total rejection of our party, we will be wondering why the Republican agenda has gained momentum in just a few short months.
The mind of Jesse Ferguson must be an interesting place. I'm trying to work out exactly how a party would govern when it sees needs the country has, and has the numbers to implement the policies that fulfill those needs, but nevertheless chooses not to do so because they buy into some political calculation that they lack a "mandate" to govern in the manner they believe is best. You would then do . . . what? Raise taxes instead of cutting them? Borrow more instead of less? Continue the regulatory assault on business instead of ending it? Keep ObamaCare right where it is, with all its inherent problems, instead of replacing it with something better? The idea of a "mandate" and possibly lacking one is strictly a political calculation. It's not based on the Constitution and it has nothing to do with anyone's real authority to govern. The Democrats want to imagine that the American people support their policies, even though:
- Their presidential nominee lost 30 states and 306 electoral votes.
- They haven't won a majority in the House since 2008, and in the Senate since 2012.
- Republicans now control 30 state legislature and 34 governorships.
- They argued that Donald Trump was an existential threat to the nation, and they still lost to him.
But they're all irrelevant anyway. The only mandate you need to govern is victory. Democrats had big ideas about not only keeping the presidency, but about hanging Trump around the necks of vulnerable Republican senators running for re-election. How did that work out? Voters had opportunities at many levels to give Democrats the authority to govern, and had they done so even by the slightest of margins, you can be sure the Democrats would have used 100 percent of their authority regardless of how narrowly they won it. Republicans will now do the same, and they should. The only mandate you need to implement your policies is the ability to do so within the constraints of the Constitution. Trump and the Republicans have that. They not only can, but must, implement the solutions they believe are best for the country - and of course, be prepared to defend those actions. And in the future, if Democrats want to deny Republicans a mandate, they should try beating them.
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Dan Calabrese——Bio and Archives
Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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