The voters have spoken. It will be Trump, with his record as President, vs. Biden, with his record as President. The negatives? Bad tweets vs. bad policy and dementia. It would be great for America to have a perfect candidate for President. That will not happen.
Dr. Colman is right; we need a Margaret Thatcher type as candidate. Now is the time, to find and develop that candidate for 2028.
We need to start now in planning for the 2028 election, replacing Trump as President.
REPUBLICANS NEED A MARGARET THATCHER
By Richard Colman, Exclusive to the California Political News and Views, 3/11/24 www.capoliticalnewsandviews.com
Margaret Thatcher won three consecutive British general elections.
She was a member of the Conservative (Tory) Party.
She was very tough on labor unions and tried to aim for economic growth and lower taxes. She stayed away from social issues.
In her successful 1979 campaign, she had a clever slogan: “Labor (Labour) is not working.”
In America, the Republicans had a Thatcher-like candidate in Nikki Haley, a Republican, a former governor of South Carolina, and a former ambassador, under former president Donald Trump, to the United Nations.
However, Haley, in the primaries held so far, was not able to dethrone Trump.
Haley won only two Republican presidential primaries: Vermont and Washington, D.C. She did badly in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, and the vast majority of states that had primary elections on Tuesday, March 5, 2024.
Overall, Haley took, when she lost, between 20 percent and 35 percent of the Republican vote.
To win the presidency, Trump must figure out how to recruit and retain Haley’s votes. Trump’s task will not be easy.
When suspending her campaign on March 6, 2024, Haley did not endorse Trump for president.
On March 7, 2024, President Joe Biden gave his State of the Union Address to Congress. Biden, despite his age of 81, appeared to be vigorous. He articulated traditional Democratic positions on such issues as Social Security, Medicare, the environment, education, and universal health care. Democratic presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton could easily have given the same speech that Biden gave.
Democrats are probably saying that Biden’s speech was, in baseball terms, a triple or a home run.
Biden’s speech was political -– highly political. The speech was forcefully delivered. If Biden can keep giving similar speeches, he might just get re-elected. The challenge for Biden is to win such states as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He might also win Arizona. Biden’s biggest problems are his age, his stance on illegal immigration, and the perception that the American economy is not performing well.
On March 8, 2024, the federal government reported that the American economy in February created 275,000 new jobs and that the unemployment rate was at 3.9 percent.
Trump should be concerned about winning the November election. He has been indicted four times, but many American voters seem to be unconcerned about Trump’s legal problems.
Trump lacks the persuasive optimism of another Republican president: Ronald Reagan.
Reagan won two consecutive presidential elections, in 1980 and 1984, overwhelmingly. In the 1984 election, he won 49 of 50 states.
While more amiable than Thatcher, Reagan had policies that were similar to Thatcher’s. He supported a strong defense, he abhorred communism, worked reasonably well with America’s allies in Europe and Asia, and was not tolerant of strikes by labor unions. In August 1981, Reagan told striking air-traffic controllers that they would be terminated if they did not return to work.
Reagan was also an advocate of free trade. He did not embrace the protectionism and isolationism of Trump.
In recent months, Trump has proposed a 10 percent tariff on imports into America. A tariff is a tax and would be inflationary. Other nations would retaliate, lowering the volume of world trade among allies.
By not giving Haley enough delegates in recent primary elections, Republicans may have made a mistake.
If Trump cannot corral enough Haley supporters, he might lose the 2024 election.
Trump is well known for being obnoxious. He insults other Republicans. He has been very critical of Democrats and foreign leaders. As for Haley, Trump has called her a “birdbrain.” When running for president in 2016, Trump claimed that the late Senator John McCain was not a Vietnam war hero. McCain, a military veteran before becoming a senator, was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain received blistering criticism from Trump, who argued that war veterans who are captured are not heroes. Trump could simply have thanked McCain for his military service.
Haley may not have been, at current time, a candidate appropriate for most Republican primary voters.
But Haley showed enormous vitality as a presidential candidate.
A good guess is that Haley, as the Republican presidential nominee, would have been able to defeat Biden.
As indicated, she was and is America’s version of Margaret Thatcher.
