Sowell Shouts Into the Wind

Thomas Sowell recently came out of retirement with a short, sweet editorial that would save the Republicans in the upcoming elections if they could be bothered to follow its advice:

[W]hy is this election even close? Some Republicans may say that it is because the media are on the side of the Democrats and suppress or distort the facts accordingly. Others may say that the universities have become indoctrination centers, promoting the kind of ideologies that favor the Democrats' agenda.

But, even if we concede all that, the fact is that a similar situation existed back in the days when Ronald Reagan won two consecutive presidential elections by landslides. How did he do it?

He did it by addressing the voting public as if they were adults who could understand an issue -- if you explained it to them in plain English, instead of in political jargon or snappy quips.

There are some Republicans today who seem to understand that. But they are not running in this year's presidential election...

I would say that the bar is even lower than that, but it could still be too high for the Party of Trump.

A recent editorial in the Washington Examiner demonstrates as much when it bemoans the following policy positions it attributes to Harris/Walz:

• Spending cuts for the police;
• Sympathy for/leniency towards rioters;
• Questionable support for Israel;
• Antipathy towards school choice;
• Supporting medical "gender transition" below the age of consent;
• Sympathy for China or Communism/Socialism; and
• Support for abortion past 24 weeks.

The editorial correctly notes that these positions are very unpopular and should be problems for the Harris ticket. (Even if they don't actually hold all of them, any of them save abortion would be a big problem in the hands of a decent communicator.)

Perhaps if Trump could stop, for example, speculating on Harris's mixed ancestry as if that's novel in America, he could make headway with the voters he needs.

I'm not holding my breath.

Absent the approach Sowell advocates -- which I'm not sure today's GOP could pull off since it would require having rational convictions behind the positions -- what's left?

To paraphrase Brook: Neither party knows what freedom means, but one of them is running an optimistic campaign on it.

Vibes, for lack of a better word.

The party that can successfully pull itself together long enough to pretend it's closer to the center will win, all things being equal, and Yaron Brook explains better than I in the above video that, so far, the Democrats are doing a much better job of this.

-- CAV