As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has dramatically shown, even when a politician at first uncritically follows others in government and their cronies, if he later takes strong corrective actions, voters will respond with strong support.
Good Boundaries Protect People and Facilitate Good Relationships
When you have good boundaries, you just take care of the things that are under your control. You leave it to the other party in the relationship to make his own choices. The other party’s choices determine where the relationship goes.
Last week, a majority of Republicans passed a bill that would increase the debt limit. Almost certainly, that isn’t the final word on the current fight. Also, down the road there will be new fights.
From now on, the Republican constitutionalists in the current house of representatives should steadfastly vote down any increase in the debt ceiling. Then the Republican Progressives in the current house would have to evaluate their political futures by taking into consideration whether they can withstand primary challenges from Republican constitutionalists. This calculation would be their call.
But consider if they would choose to also vote against any increase in the debt ceiling. Then the Democrats in the current house would have to evaluate their political futures by taking into consideration whether they could withstand general-election challenges from Republican constitutionalists. Their actions would be their call. They would vote to increase the debt ceiling. But they are in the minority, so they would fail.
Next, the Democrats and Republican Progressives in the current senate would face a similar choice. A majority would vote to increase the debt ceiling. But they would not control the current house, so they would fail.
Next, the current president would face a similar choice. He would suspend operations in whichever way he would calculate would cause maximum pain to Republicans.
But finally, voters would face their own choices. Voters would choose incumbent Republican constitutionalists.
Also, voters would appreciate that many Republicans who had in the past been solid Progressives had changed under pressure. But voters would still hold them accountable for their past spending, and would also not trust that this recent change would be lasting. So voters would welcome constitutionalist challengers.
Where constitutionalist challengers wouldn’t step up, the former solid Progressives would win. But where constitutionalist challengers would step up, the challengers would win.
Political consultants who impress and frighten politicians are peddling self-fulfilling prophecies. If politicians don’t take action to use their constitutional powers, there ends up being no proof that the consultants are wrong, and the consultants claim they are right.
If politicians just tepidly test the waters, then there is blowback from Progressive media and politicians. The tepid politicians back off, there ends up being no proof that the consultants were wrong about what the final outcome would have been, and the consultants claim they are right.
But when politicians stand their ground, using their strong constitutional powers (here, sponsoring, cosponsoring, and passing bills), the final verdict gets rendered by voters. And voters show that this action that’s morally right is also politically wise.
If any Republican Progressives choose to continue to not use their constitutional powers to enforce the debt-limit boundary on governments, then good riddance.
Shutting Down Unconstitutional Government Operations Is Nothing to Fear
Voters actually want a deep, deep, recession. In fact, we want it to be permanent. We just want it to be localized so that it only decimates our governments’ administrative states.
If a president would choose to not pay interest on government debts for some period of time, what would get ruined would be the government’s credit rating.
For the rest of us, that would be outstanding. The less that government people could borrow, the less they could spend, and the greater would be our freedom to keep our own money and choose for ourselves how to spend it.
All that debt that’s hanging over us now was incurred by politicians, spending on themselves now and sticking us with the interest payments and inflationary devaluation later. The best course for freedom would be to repudiate that debt and interest.
(There would be one exception: the portion that’s owed to retirees. Government cronies in finance have pushed government Treasury bonds on retirees as safe, treating it as a foregone conclusion and a positive good that government people will extract future payments from taxpayers, using force.)
If a president would choose to stop retirement income payments and retirement health payments, that would not be congresspeople’s choice, that would be that president’s own deliberate choice.
Progressive politicians have long carved away slices of taxpayers’ current income in exchange for promising future income and health payments. Actually, all those promises can readily be kept.
Progressive politicians, with no constitutional authority, have taken for the USA government the ownership of vast quantities of assets. These can be sold, and taxpayers can be made whole on the retirement dependence that was forced on them by denying them the opportunity to use these funds themselves to make better plans for themselves.
Both these promised future payments and private individuals’ future costs can and should be greatly lessened. All that’s needed is to end the many privileges currently shoveled out to government-crony pharma companies, providers, and health-payment organizations. Get governments out of the way, and product innovation will accelerate, service will improve, quality will rise, and prices will fall.
Any pain that we might experience in a government shutdown would result from deliberate choices by politicians to further control us. The politicians who most blame others are projecting—telegraphing that they’re hellbent on hurting us to benefit themselves.
Voters are plenty smart. We won’t get fooled again.
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