FDT has talked about China and he has talked about Mexico.
He hasn’t yet mentioned NAU or ‘free’ trade because those things are academic.
Instead he talks about China’s military buildup and our funding of it, and he has addressed leaders and ‘friends’ in Mexico about their misguided notions of America as the catchbag for their impoverished indigents.
FDT is a federalist. He has always voted federalist. Once people understand the tenets of federalism they will immediately understand FDT.
FDT’s folksy charm and simplified speech masks a great intellect. When people read his legal briefs and analysis, they realize he is on par with Lincoln.
His intellect can wrap itself around any complex issue and break it down to simple components that everyday Americans can relate to. That’s his greatness.
The NAU and Free Trade are subjects of the literary class. FDT can certainly hold a conversation with any class of academic but then he can turn around and put that discussion in a framework that ordinary folks can understand clearly.
As I mentioned in the example previously, FDT addressed Free Trade with China not as an academic economic issue but directly to ordinary Americans as a simple ‘we buy their goods, they accumulate dollars, they fund a military buildup with those dollars’, ergo ‘Americans are paying for China’s military buildup via our Free Trade policies’. It’s simple, and that is what he has to say about Free Trade.
In all issues that the literazzi like to circulate for days and weeks on end, FDT always approaches those issues from an American Federalist viewpoint and delivers a perspective in terms of a folksy populist perspective that seems to genuinely have the American people as the group he supports and defends.
Lastly his record in the Senate of often being the single lone dissenting vote on a piece of legislation indicates he has core convictions that will not be watered down.
However, he has always said it is the American people that guide his perspective insofar that it stays within the realm of federalism. In other words if a super large majority of the American people wanted something that went against federalism, say for example universal healthcare run at the federal level, then we can expect FDT to announce that he could not support what the American people wanted because he took an oath to defend the US Constitution, and that the issue is unconstitutional and he would be right. Whereas when an issue such as war is in discussion, we expect that FDT would realize the Constitutional provisions and imnmediately seek to find out what Americans are willing to commit to. He would not keep the discussion holed up in White House briefings, he would actively seek input from Americans.
Whereas GWB appears to assume that the American people are behind their elected representatives, thus GWB thinks it necessary to go only to the representatives for consensus, FDT on the other hand would be expected to seek to get support from Americans first and direct before announcing his decisions. He has always said it is necessary to have the support of the People, not necessarily the aristocracy that occupies Congress.
Let's take this country back!
A thoughtful and informed post.
BTTT!
Plain speaking, honesty to the point of bluntness...that’s what the voters are looking for and desperately need. If Fred lays it all out in policy papers and/or speeches, what’s going on, what he thinks we should do, calls for input...even if the pill is bitter, if we’re convinced it’s right, we’ll take it. One big problem with this ‘amnesty’ bill is Ted Kennedy. If he’s in favor of anything, you automatically distrust it. Or should.
Fred Barnes on Fox’s Beltway Boys last night said GW had lambasted Kyl, repub. sen. from Arizona, who’d been against the last immigration nightmare bill, but when he’d seen ground zero in Arizona, had decided we had to do something — the border was out of control —so he’d worked on this bill and gotten more concessions from Ted Kennedy than he’d given up. Well, Fred’s in favor of the bill.