The days of Republicans being conservatives and Democrats being liberals are long gone. Donald Trump calls Vice president Kamala Harris a radical left, San Francisco liberal. And for good measure, a Communist. This is standard political speak for Republicans. In fact, in the video, (in the attached link starting at 12:33) Trump uses the exact same labels for President Joe Biden and for Harris. Not a lot of originality here. https://mashable.com/video/jon-stewart-trump-old-attacks

However, for the past 40 years, Republicans are the real big-government-liberals. https://www.frugalron.com/the-trump-disaster/

When Trump calls Harris a liberal, he is using a rhetorical tool called “projection”. He is trying to his biggest weakness to his opponent. Trump also claims Harris is “stupid’ and a “liar”. (For effective projection, there must be a minuscule of truth in the accusation. Trump is the least intelligent presidential candidate in US history.  He is also the most prolific liar in US political history. Consequently, his attempt at projecting stupidity and dishonesty to someone else doesn’t work.)

Defining conservative and liberal

In the U.S., conservatives believe personal decision making should not be dictated by a powerful government. Instead, decision making should be delegated to more local levels of government. Ideally, decision making should be left to individuals. The only exceptions to this rule are when the actions of an individual, or company, negatively impact others. For example, a company spewing large amounts of carbon into the environment that contribute to climate change demands strong government regulation. Ignoring pollution is not conservatism. It is negligence.

On the other hand, liberals want an all-powerful government that over-rules personal choice and freedom. They aim to impose the choices of the people in charge of the government on to all citizens. Liberal policy makers are typically arrogant in believing they know better than the individuals on how to run their lives.

Complicating this are fiscal conservatives that believe in less government spending and abhor deficits. Fiscal liberals believe a large government funded by deficits is essential for achieving their liberal goals.

What is liberal and what is mainstream?

Republicans spent the last nine years shutting themselves off from reality while deifying Trump as their living god. During this period, policies they called radical and left wing became mainstream. Republicans find themselves on the wrong side of these popular policies. Some examples:

• Seventy-four percent of Americans believe the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes. Seventy-three percent of Americans believe corporations should pay higher taxes. Twenty percent disagree that the wealthiest Americans and corporations should pay more taxes. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017c-0b90-d9ff-a9fc-3ffc91640000
• Sixty-three percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Thirty-six percent say it should be illegal in most or all cases. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
• Sixty-nine percent of Americans think marriages between same sex couples should be recognized by law as valid with the same rights as traditional marriages. Twenty-nine percent disagree. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

• Sixty-seven percent of Americans say we should prioritize developing alternative energy, such as wind and solar. Sixty-nine percent of Americans favor the U.S. taking steps to be carbon neutral by 2050. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change
• About guns:
  • Eighty-six percent of Americans favor requiring background checks for all firearm sales and transfers. Fourteen percent oppose this.
  • Seventy-three percent of Americans support requiring gun owners taking a test, getting a license and registering their firearms, just like they do for automobiles.
  • Sixty-three percent of Americans favor banning the sale and private ownership of semi-automatic firearms referred to as assault weapons. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/07/25/poll-majority–support-universal-background-checks-gun-licensing-assault-weapons-ban
  • Fox News poll on guns:
    • Eighty-seven percent of Americans favor background checks for gun purchases.
    • Eight-one percent favor requiring legal age of 21 to buy a gun.
    • Eighty percent favor requiring mental health check of all gun-buyers.
    • Seventy-seven percent favor requiring a 30-day waiting period to buy a gun. https://www.foxnews.com/official-polls/fox-news-poll-voters-favor-gun-limits-arming-citizens-reduce-gun-violence
    • On book banning:
      • Eighty-three percent of Americans believe books should never be banned for criticizing U.S. history.
      • Eighty-five percent of Americans believe books should never be banned for political ideas you disagree with.
      • Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe books should never be banned for depicting slavery.
      • Eighty-seven percent of Americans believe books should never be banned for discussing race.
      • Sixty-eight percent of Americans think teaching about race in America makes students understand what others went through. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-bans-opinion-poll-2022-02-22/
      • Eighty percent of Americans believe K-12 teachers are not paid fairly. Seventy-five percent say teachers are asked to do too much work for the pay they receive. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/02/1177566467/poll-teachers-underpaid-republicans-book-bans
      • Sixty-four percent of Americans believe racism against Black people is widespread in the U.S. https://news.gallup.com/poll/352544/larger-majority-says-racism-against-black-people-widespread.aspxSixty-one percent of Americans say there is too much income inequality in the U.S. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/views-of-economic-inequality/

• • • Fifty-three percent of Americans say religion is an important part of their lives (2023 survey). This is down from 72 percent in 2013. From the same survey, twenty-six percent of Americans call themselves religiously unaffiliated. This is a 24 percent increase from 2023. Among unaffiliated Americans younger than 30, 60 percent cite the treatments of LGBTQ people as a reason they stopped going to church. The rise of Christian nationalism and GOP state legislators pushing anti-LGBTQ+ laws also is leading young people to turn away from organized religion. https://www.axios.com/2024/03/29/americans-lose-religious-affiliation-survey

Republicans, out of touch

When Republicans claim Democratic support for gun control, Gay rights and fighting climate change are fringe left-wing, liberal policies, most people’s eyes glaze over. These and the other policies listed above became mainstream years ago.

There is a lot going on with this data that illustrates the United States may be one country but is made up of two different worlds. For example, the Gallup poll that found 64 percent of respondents believe racism is widespread, also found 68 percent of Republicans are satisfied with the treatment of Black people. This is versus 14 percent of Democrats. Many of the other surveys have similar splits.

Note: One might logically question why something like universal background checks of gun buyers, with well over 85 percent support, isn’t reflected in our laws. There are two reasons.  First, the plus 85 percent of voters that support regulation are not evenly spread across the U.S. Second, the U.S. is “kind of” a democracy. Gun advocates, concentrated in low population states that each get two seats in the Senate, have outsized influence. Also, 41 senators mounting a filibuster can stop any bill from becoming law, regardless of its popularity. However, for the purposes of this article, a Democratic presidential candidate speaking to an urban audience in a swing state is going to get votes when advocating for gun control. https://www.frugalron.com/the-united-states-of-america-kind-of-a-democracy/

 Who is the fiscal liberal?

In the US, we generally define a fiscal liberal as someone who spends government money prolifically with a “deficits be damned” philosophy. This describes Donald Trump’s record as president perfectly.

Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama each increased annual federal government spending by three percent annually. Trump set an all-time spending record in 2020 and averaged 20 percent annual spending increases during his term as president. This wasn’t all due to Trump’s bungled mishandling of COVID. Between Trump’s first and second year in office and between his second and third years in office, Trump’s annual percent spending increase was more than twice Clinton and Obama’s average increases. President Joe Biden cut spending by over $100 billion from when Trump left office.

Trump, the ultimate liberal, broke every imaginable deficit spending record. Trump increased the size of his annual spending deficit each year he was in office. Unless Trump is elected again, his record spending deficit of $3.02 trillion in 2020 will hopefully stand for decades.

Since President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, every Republican president, during their terms, has dramatically increased their annual spending deficit. Conversely, the real conservatives, Democrats, during that period dramatically lowered their annual spending deficits. Joe Biden’s most recent (2023) deficit is over a $trillion lower than the deficit Trump left him with.

Source: https://bea.gov, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures, line 43, “Total expenditures” and line 49, “Net lending or borrowing”. Last revised July 25, 2024.

Source: https://www.frugalron.com/why-democrats-economies-flourish-and-republican-economies-fail/

Examples of Trumpian and Republican big government/liberalism accomplishments and proposals

While Republicans criticize Democrats for liberalism, they have their own list of big-government plans. Most of these take away individual rights and freedom.

• Deprive women making their own health care decisions (abortions).
• Blocking bills protecting the right to contraception on the federal and state levels.
• Disallow health insurance paying for birth control pills, etc.
• End no-fault divorce.
• Deprive transgender people of the right to clinically approved treatments.
• Deprive childless women of full citizenship rights.
• Banning access to “unapproved” books.
• Prevent weather reporters from mentioning ”climate change”.
• Deport U.S. citizens whose parents are undocumented.
• Restrict travel of people from predominately Muslim countries.
• Prevent schools from teaching about slavery, Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction discrimination.
• Stop the dismantlement of statues glorifying Confederates guilty of treason and sedition while attempting to maintain slavery in the U.S.
• Prevent schools from teaching about American Indian genocide and discrimination against Japanese and Chinese Americans/
• Impose tariffs on imported goods. These tariffs are paid by U.S. consumers.
• Threaten to suspend the Constitution.
• Outlaw pornography*
• Threaten to suspend First Amendment rights to religious freedom by making the U.S. a Christian nation.

*Rather hypocritical for Republicans to outlaw pornography considering their presidential candidate had sex with a porn star, Stormy Daniels. Trump also solicitedJessica Drake, another porn star, offering her $10,000 and the use of his private jet to have sex with him. Drake turned him down.

Where this takes us…

Republicans generalize in calling Democrats leftist liberals. Yet, they are very careful where and when they talk about their big-government proposals like banning books or banning TV weather forecasters from mentioning climate change. Donald Trump tries to hide his record on abortion by leaving the decision to states. J.D. Vance mimics Trump. But in his next speech, he’ll claim abortion should be outlawed in all circumstances, including rape and incest.

Trump’s campaign staff tries to focus him on immigration and inflation. Both are problematic. When Trump scuttled the Republican immigration legislation, his actions showed “the invasion at the border” was far less important than having a political talking point. Democrats are doing a great job pointing this out. They could also point out there were more illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. in the last months of Trump’s term than when he was inaugurated

Inflation is also a problem for Republicans to blame on Democrats. The question Democrats can counter with is, ”what inflation?” Annual inflation in the U.S. is 2.9 percent. More recent month on month inflation is even more of a Democratic success. June’s inflation rate was only  0.1 percent higher than May. July’s inflation rate is an identical only 0.1 percent higher than June’s.

Trump needs to be careful when he talks about bringing prices down to pre-pandemic levels. Since 2019, consumer prices rose 22.6 percent. However, in the same period, hourly wages are up 25.3 percent and non-supervisory workers’ wages are up 28.2 percent. Most voters aren’t willing to give up their wage increases to deflate consumer prices.

For Trump, when all else fails, lie and make personal attacks

What we will be treated to over the next two plus months is Trump continuing to rant about the terrible crime wave in the U.S. (All crime, and especially violent crime, are down dramatically since Trump left office. This is despite Trump’s convictions.) Trump will continue focusing on racist attacks on Kamala Harris. Vance will continue being weird and seemingly trying to lose the race by saying the most inopportune things.

To win, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz need to ignore the personal attacks and continue focusing on outlining an upbeat future. Let Trump and Vance lose the election on their own.

Harris and Walz’s populist solutions for the economy may not work. However, they may get votes because they are at least proposing something. Their ideas make more sense than Trump’s proposals of putting the president in charge of the Federal Reserve and backing the dollar with gold.

Wrapping this up…

Republicans will continue stereotyping Democrats as liberals. Logically looking at the facts, this just doesn’t stick anymore. For the most part, the liberal, left wing, Communist policies Republicans accuse Democrats of promoting have become mainstream. Most have overwhelming support of over 65 percent of voters.

What is important for voters is recognizing how dangerous Republican big-government plans are. Suspending the Constitution, installing a state religion, dictating what books we can read and what schools must teach  are right out of Joseph Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union.

Don’t be fooled by Republican projection. The real big-government, liberal dangers to our liberty are Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and the Republican party.