House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy released the House GOP’s election agenda this week—and it’s a major dud.
The plan, dubbed “Commitment to America,” doesn’t mention immigration or law and order at all. While it mentions the party opposes defunding the police, the plan endorses Sen. Tim Scott’s police reform bill that tries to appease Black Lives Matter. The plan promises to uphold free speech, but offers no means to do so. The rest of the plan is all about economic plans, school choice, and Opportunity Zones. The populist proposal is a call to end America’s dependency on China. ABC News claimed it resembled Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda of 2016. That shouldn’t serve as a compliment [Republicans unveil agenda aimed at winning back the House in November, by Benjamin Siegel and Mariam Khan, ABC News, September 15, 2020].
America is under attack, our history is being destroyed, cities are facing skyrocketing crime rates, Antifa sow destruction with impunity, conservatives are silenced and persecuted, and mass immigration threatens the historic American nation. McCarthy’s plan offers no solutions to these problems. There’s nothing to excite the Silent Majority—it’s all boring Business First talking points.
The House plan serves to compensate for the lack of a formal party platform this year. The RNC instead reaffirmed the 2016 platform while the Trump campaign released a pared-down “Core Priorities” agenda as a substitute. The Core Priorities plan is far superior to the lame Commitment to America. It explicitly backs law enforcement and has a whole section dedicated to immigration. As I wrote two weeks ago, the immigration section of Trump’s agenda is the best immigration plan the GOP has released in years. The section vows to “End Illegal Immigration and Protect American Workers”—a solid message.
McCarthy’s agenda shows what a Trump-less GOP looks like. It has far more in common with Paul Ryan’s globalist agenda than anything that could be called America First.
