Republicans Under Trump Emerge as the Party of Fixing Things 

There is an enormous opportunity for an entrepreneurial, work-oriented, and aggressive Republican Party.

AP/Joseph Frederick
Senator Rick Scott speaks outside Manhattan criminal court, May 9, 2024, at New York. AP/Joseph Frederick

Senator Rick Scott is right. Republicans need to be the party of fixing things. On “Fox News Sunday” this week, Mr. Scott said: “We’re not going to repeal Obamacare. We are going to fix Obamacare.”

The Florida senator added: “You do have to protect pre-existing conditions. You have to make sure that it’s a fair system to everybody. So, this is all doable. There’s no reason health care costs what it costs. We should not give money directly to insurance companies.”

Mr. Scott’s positive, problem-solving tone is a remarkable contrast to the negativity, hysteria, and dishonesty the Democrats have embraced. 

This tonal and directional difference exists across virtually all major issues between the emerging Republican and Democratic parties.

Both are undergoing profound changes. The Democrats have moved to the left — and become virtually hysterical in their opposition to the direction of the country. 

The Republicans, drawn forward in large part by the sheer intensity and energy of President Trump, are becoming the party of governing and fixing things.

The Democrats have become an entrenched money machine. As a party, it is incapable of having an honest conversation about liberal policies and allied institutions that are not working. 

Similarly, Democrats cannot consider any reforms which would reduce the flow of money to their allies. Together, these have created a remarkable moment of change in American history.

This collapse of the Democrats as a problem-solving system really hit me when I read Chris Papst’s astonishing investigative book, “The Failure Factory,” about the Baltimore school system, which I wrote about last week. Mr. Papst spent eight years digging into the third-most-expensive big-city school system by pupil. 

He was trying to understand how four high schools in the system had no students who could do math. He concluded that the teachers’ union and the school bureaucracy focused on getting paid — and had no interest in educated students. Their attitude to taxpayers was essentially “shut up and sign the check.”

At my organization, Gingrich 360, Darek Silva used the Baltimore model and researched New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis. Every big city showed the same pattern. The schools were educational disasters. Hundreds of thousands of students were being cheated out of learning. The wealth and power of the tax paid teachers’ union machines made it impossible to fix things.

This institutional failure exists in every big Democrat-run stronghold at every level. New York City’s subway extension of the Second Avenue line is roughly eight to ten times more expensive than a similar project at London or Paris. The California high-speed  rail project to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco is absurdly unsustainable. 

Everywhere, layers of bureaucracy cripple small businesses and block would-be entrepreneurs from improving their lives and communities. The Democrats simply refuse to fix anything. They refuse to investigate their own absurdity. Yet, they demand more money for their allies and their failing institutions and programs.

There is an enormous opportunity for an entrepreneurial, work-oriented, and aggressive Republican Party that is committed to fixing things. There is a growing constituency of Americans who are over the political drama and just want things to work again. 

The next generation of choice in American politics may be between those who want to fix things and those who want to spend more money on what’s not working.

This may be the decisive choice in the 2026 election.


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