Why Is The Good Economic News Always Unexpected When A Republican Is President?

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the July Retail Sales Report.

The article reports:

The Commerce Department – Economic and Statistics Administration – released the figures from July 2018 retail sales today (full pdf available here), showing an incredibly strong .5% increase in spending in July, bringing a 6.4% increase year-over-year;  and the results have dropped the jaws of the “experts”:

“Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales nudging up 0.1 percent in July.” (link)

“Retail spending in the United States increased a half-percent during the month of July — well beyond what experts predicted.” (link)

“U.S. retail sales rose more than expected in July as households boosted purchases of motor vehicles and clothing, suggesting the economy remained strong” (link)

The article explains the reason for the growth:

As a direct result of President Trump’s multifaceted economic strategy, manufacturing companies are having to look at TCO which is “Total Cost of Ownership”. You see, President Trump is not only approaching manufacturing growth policy from the trade-agreement and investment side, his policies also approach the larger impacts on raw material, energy and labor.

This multi-pronged policy approach forces companies to look at transportation and location costs of manufacturing. In combination with more favorable tax rates; if domestic costs of material and energy drop, in addition to drops in regulatory and compliance costs of operating the business, the total operating cost differences drop dramatically.

This means labor and transportation costs become a larger part of the consideration in “where” to manufacture. All of these costs contribute to the TCO. Transportation costs are very expensive on durable goods imported. If the durable goods are made domestically, the transportation costs per unit shipped drop significantly. The TCO analysis then further reduces to looking at labor.

U.S. Labor is more expensive, yes. However, if material costs, energy costs, regulatory costs, taxes and transportation costs are part of the TCO equation – then higher labor costs can be offset by the previously mentioned savings.

Economic policies matter. If you want to see this kind of growth continue, elect conservative Republicans to Congress in November. If you want to see this kind of growth come to a screeching halt, elect Democrats–they will take back the tax cuts, put back the regulations, and move to impeach the President. At that point, we will have at least two years of the same economic disaster we saw under President Obama.

Some Republicans Discover Their Spine

The war between the conservative Republicans and the establishment Republicans has been going on for some time. It has been obvious at all levels of the party. The problem is that most of the energy in the party is coming from the conservatives, so the establishment Republicans need them. The establishment Republicans love the conservatives when it is time to put boots on the ground during the election season, but other than that, most of the establishment simply wishes that the conservatives would go away. This is very evident in Washington when elected conservatives are stymied when they try to do what the people that elected them elected them to do. Sometimes being a conservative Republican can be very frustrating. I left the Democrat party because they had no room for conservatives. I can’t leave the Republican party because there is no place for me to go.

Today’s Washington Examiner posted an article that should provide hope for conservatives who wonder why they bother to elect Congressmen.

The article reports:

Dozens of members of the House GOP’s most conservative faction plan to meet Tuesday to discuss ways to counteract the decision of House Speaker John Boehner and other leaders to seek retribution against members who vote against must-pass measures.

The House Freedom Caucus, a GOP group made up of about 40 of the most conservative members, plans to hold the discussion some time after Tuesday’s evening votes, according to lawmakers familiar with the initiative.

It’s about time.

The article explains what caused the House Freedom Caucus to go into action:

The latest punishment was handed down to Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., for voting against an important procedural resolution to advance “Fast Track” trade legislation the GOP is eager to pass. Meadows last week was stripped of his chairmanship of the House Oversight Government Operations subcommittee.

“So, Mark Meadows, a good man, a good friend, and what they did to him is exactly wrong, and there are a number of us who are fed up with it,” Jordan (Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio) said on the Laura Ingraham show. “And we are looking for ways that we can say, hey, we are going to stay with Mark and be as helpful as we possibly can.”

The first mistake the conservatives made at the beginning of the legislative session was to reelect the previous leaders. If you want serious change, it is a good idea to change leaders.

The article concludes:

Lawmakers who are being punished say the leadership is trying to force them to vote against what they believe is best for their constituents, who have flooded their offices with calls and emails in opposition to the trade legislation. Meadows and other Republicans opposed to the trade bill believe the trade bill would cede too much power to the executive branch and would facilitate trade deals that would cause U.S. job losses.

“There is no honor in bowing to a bully,” Meadows told the Examiner. “There is only fighting the good fight and whether you win or lose, I am willing to do my best to represent the people who elected me.”

It is definitely time for new Republican leadership in Congress.

 

The Fight To Be Heard

One of the frustrating things about watching the political scene right now is the feeling that only rich people and lobbyists are being heard by our elected officials. I am willing to admit that I often have that feeling. However, sometimes the obstacles that keep average Americans from being properly represented come from the parties that claim to represent them.

I spent today in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the state legislative buildings. I was part of a group that spoke with a number of state representatives and senators. I also attended a committee hearing on education issues. So what did our group accomplish? First of all, I need to explain that we were a group of eleven Republicans from the 3rd Congressional District of North Carolina. We went to Raleigh to talk to our representatives about a number of issues.

The North Carolina legislature is structured in such a way that if a House of Representatives or Senate bill does not make it out of its committee by April 30th, the bill will not be heard in this year’s session. Because it is April 28th, the legislative building was a very busy place. There were an awful lot of lobbyists running around. We were a group of unpaid, ordinary citizens. However, we did speak to a number of legislators.
One of the issues our group was concerned about was the date of the Republican Presidential Primary Election in North Carolina. The primary was originally scheduled for one week after the South Carolina primary, which would have put it in February. The Republican National Committee told the State of North Carolina Republicans that if their primary was held before March 1st, they would have 12 delegates attending the Republican National Convention, rather than the 72 they were originally assigned. The State Republicans were told that if they held their primary before March 15th, the delegates would be distributed proportionally according to the results of the primary election. If the primary were held after March 15th, it would be a winner-take-all primary. Currently a bill has passed out of committee in the North Carolina House of Representatives to hold the Republican Primary on March 8. Many North Carolina Republicans are hoping the date on that bill will be changed to March 22–the first Tuesday after March 15th. So what is this all about? An article posted by National Review on September 3, 2014, explains exactly what is going on in its headline, “Proportional allocation of delegates in early-voting states will make it hard for non-establishment candidates to rack up leads.”

That is the game being played, and that is the reason that grass-roots candidates are having such a hard time in the Presidential primaries.

The article reports:

This is a potential death sentence for the conservative candidate. Most of the highly conservative southern states traditionally hold their primaries inside of the March 1–14 window. If that occurs again in 2016, a conservative candidate will probably not gain many delegates over the establishment choice by winning the states in his base. Even if a southern state in the window allocates, as many non-southern states do, three delegates to each congressional district on a winner-take-all basis, the proportional allocation of the statewide delegates will place a conservative statewide winner at a severe disadvantage. He or she will then have to compete in less hospitable states that have the freedom to select all of their delegates by winner-take-all methods.

The article shows how the new rules could prevent a conservative from winning the nomination:

The 2016 preliminary lineup already foreshadows this danger. According to the website FrontloadingHQ.com, ten of the 15 southern or border states (including Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina) are currently scheduled to hold their contests before March 14. Three other caucus states where conservatives traditionally do well (Iowa, Minnesota, and Colorado) are also scheduled to hold their contests before the window closes. Conservative Utah is also in this group, as are the two midwestern states where Rick Santorum did best in 2012, Michigan and Ohio.
 
Under the RNC’s new rules, a conservative could run the table in these events and yet barely open up a delegate lead. The establishment choice could easily make up ground and then some in less conservative states such as Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

The Republican Party is signing its death warrant if it continues to attempt to shut out conservative voters and conservative candidates. The energy in the party has come from the conservative movement, and the boots on the ground have generally been conservative. The establishment wants to hold the power, but they are not generally the ones doing the groundwork.

I am hoping the North Carolina legislature will move the Republican primary to March 22, but I am not optimistic.