Paul Hickman -- John McCain Alum
Why he supports Harris-Walz in 2024
As Republicans, we’ve got our litmus tests for our presidential candidates: fiscal responsibility; an internationalist foreign policy; a strong and well-equipped military; reasonable tax and regulation policies; and commitments to free trade, law and order, and the rule of law.
If these are the prisms through which we are evaluating the 2024 candidates for president, the Harris-Walz wall ticket clearly meets those criteria far and away better than Trump-Vance. Let’s start with the debt and the deficit. While both candidates would add to the cumulative public debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Trump’s plans for our economy would add more than twice as much as Harris would to the national debt, $7.5 trillion vs. $3.5 trillion over ten years.
With respect to foreign policy, by all indications from his actual performance as president, as well as his rhetoric on the campaign trail, Donald Trump would pretty much surrender the world stage to Russia in Europe and China in Asia. During his administration he repeatedly threatened to pull the United States out of NATO, and he and his sidekick J.D. Vance would clearly end any more material support for the Ukrainian patriots fighting the Russian invasion of their country.
As Vice President, Kamala Harris has shown aptitude and strength on foreign policy, particularly with respect to Russian hegemony in Ukraine. She has built a relationship of trust with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whereas Donald Trump as president tried to bribe him to influence the 2020 U.S. election.
Trump’s concept for the use of the military appears to be modeled on fascist Nazi Germany of the 1930s. According to The Atlantic he told his longest serving Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, that he wanted generals of the type who served Adolf Hitler. And Trump has strongly suggested on the campaign trail recently that he would not hesitate to use a U.S. military led by a sycophantic flag officer corps against the American people on U.S. soil.
With respect to taxes and regulation, Trump clearly favors a totally fiscally irresponsible tax policy, extending the 2017 tax cuts for the super-wealthy while ignoring the much larger cohort of middle-class Americans who are the engine of economic growth. Harris wants to target a $100 million tax cut on those Americans, while at the same time acknowledging a need for fiscal sanity, as mentioned above.
Trump also wants to add what would essentially be a huge national sales tax that would fall hardest on the middle-class by implementing a 10 to 20 per cent universal baseline tariff on all imported goods, and a 60 per cent tariff on all products emanating from China. This would usher in a return of mega-inflation reminiscent of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. It would also almost certainly send the U.S. and most of our trading partners into a steep recession. And it would shoot unemployment to Depression-era highs.
With respect to law and order and the rule of law, we have a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist running against a former prosecutor. And don’t forget that Trump incited an insurrectionist riot on the U.S. Capitol to violently overturn a legitimate national election.
In the closing days of this election, where every day from now until November 5 is an election day we need to call three friends who are equivocal on the choice for president and ask them to partake in one 90-minute exercise before voting. Get on YouTube and watch one recent Trump rally. And then ask, ‘does this man have the cognitive ability to be trusted with the nuclear codes?’ He clearly and objectively does not -- and putting him back in the White House is dangerously irresponsible.
Finally, we all need to remember the contrast in life experiences of the two candidates. On the one hand, we have a super-rich, spoiled brat who never wanted for anything, and has been surrounded by yes-men and New York mob figures all his life. On the other hand, we have a very bright and energetic candidate whose single mother struggled to raise her and her sister with conservative values of honesty, hard work, and empathy. A woman who became the chief law enforcement officer of the largest state in the country, before being elected to the United States Senate, and then Vice President of the United States. Enough said.
Paul Hickman was Arizona State Director for Senator John McCain.