America needs a Populist Republican Party


The Republican party has been slowly dying since 1988. In the 35 years that followed, the GOP has lost the popular vote in every Presidential election except for 2004.

In that time, families have shrunk, government has grown, debt has exploded, and corporations have devoured small businesses and shipped operations overseas. The Democrats offer to spend trillions more to solve the problem, and the Republicans object to Democrat solutions while failing to communicate comprehensive alternatives.

Hope drives people to choose proposals over objections, and that is probably one reason why Democrats have been steadily overwhelming Republicans over the past few decades. The Republicans need to adopt a comprehensive, broad solution that:

  1. Is simple to communicate. The media will not help message this, so the solution needs to be easy for the common person to understand simply by reading a headline or hearing about it in brief conversation.
  2. Can become law if a GOP President wins. Voters need to believe that this solution will actually happen if the GOP wins.
  3. Will solve a major problem while helping a large group of independent voters.
  4. Will not cause a strong backlash among the elements of the population who are not in favor of the solution.

Here is The Right Responses’ Central Proposal: Eliminate a household’s federal income taxes by one third for every child currently under 13.

This meets all four of the above criteria:

  1. It is simple. If you have one child, then your taxes are reduced by 1/3 until they turn 16. If you have two children under 13 and are pregnant, then you pay no federal taxes until you no longer have 3 children under 13.
  2. It is likely to become law with a GOP victory. All you need is a simple majority in the house and Senate (in the Senate the bill can pass with a simply majority through the reconciliation process so you don’t need the usual 60 votes to overcome a filibuster). And even if some Republicans won’t vote for it, this proposal would be very popular and doesn’t violate any principals of the Democrat party, so it would likely have bi-partisan support.
  3. This would solve the problem of falling birth rates, which threatens the future of our country. It also would massively stimulate the economy, since families with kids will spend every extra available dollar on their kids, pretty much immediately.
  4. Some people will of course not be happy about this solution because it puts money in their neighbor’s pocket but not in theirs. However, there is an indirect benefit to most of the people who don’t receive this tax break. For those whose children are over 15, there is the knowledge that their children will soon benefit from this solution, and will therefore be less likely to turn to them for financial support. Additionally, rising birth rates will assuage fears of Social Security running out. Lastly, this would lessen the amount of time that an older couple typically will have to wait before getting those prized grandchildren. Even for those who don’t yet have children, this would be popular because they would have a tax break to look forward to in the near future.


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