Richard Manning: Former G.W. Bush appointees supporting Biden have embraced socialist policies – why?

Several hundred out of the thousands of political appointees who worked for President George W. Bush have endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president. They’ve done this even though Democrat Biden has promised to undo President Trump’s enormously beneficial tax cuts, empower the administrative state, and adopt harmful socialist policies on health care, the Green New Deal and other areas.

Biden’s polices – heavily influenced by radicals like socialist Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez of New York and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont – would be an unmitigated disaster for our country.

As a former political appointee of President George W. Bush who proudly served as the chief of staff for the Labor Department’s Office of Public Affairs for more than two years, I am also a proud supporter of President Trump. He has in many ways advanced conservative principles farther than any president in my lifetime.

FORMER GEORGE W. BUSH OFFICIALS FORM NEW GROUP TO BACK BIDEN

Yet Biden would undo every one of President Trump’s most important accomplishments. In fact, Biden is embracing radical policies far to the left of any previous Democratic president in American history.

There are three possible reasons to explain why disgruntled dissidents who were part of the George W. Bush administration have thrown their support to Biden this year.

First, they could have been lying for all these years when they claimed they actually supported the mantra of lower taxes and less regulations that has been the core of GOP economic principles and embraced by the George W. Bush administration.

Second, they could have become so entangled in the D.C. swamp – as advocates for corporations and others with a vested interest in using government regulations to choke smaller competitors – that they have lost their former limited government moorings. It is obvious that President Ronald Reagan himself would be cheering President Trump’s successes in undoing the all-powerful administrative state – even at the peril of offending those who have become enriched by it.

This year’s presidential election is a battle for the soul of America

Third, the anti-Trump Bush appointees may want to go back to work in government and think a Biden administration would give them the opportunity, in an effort to claim it was embracing bipartisanship and moderation. They may have concluded that socialism is the wave of the future and they need to embrace it to get back in government.

President Trump’s accomplishment are too numerous to list here in full, but to highlight just a few:

Trump has lowered taxes for 83 percent of Americans in ways that encouraged investment in America and job growth. What’s not to like about that?

The president has been untying the regulatory knot that was strangling our nation’s economic growth and job opportunities at a pace that any former GOP president would envy.

And Trump has established Opportunity Zones that have helped businesses in largely African-American communities thrive, bringing to life the dream of the late Jack Kemp, who served as a Republican House member from New York and as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Trump got us out of the disastrous Paris Climate Accord and eliminated unnecessary and harmful regulations to boost American energy production, achieving the 50-year dream of energy independence for our country.

Who in their right mind could complain that in the eight months prior to the arrival of the China-originated coronavirus fewer people were unemployed than at any time since 2001? And in the past two months, about 8 million people have gone back to work as the economy rebounds.

Hope and opportunity are campaign slogans for politicians of all political parties. President Trump’s policies have made these slogans a reality as the unemployment rate for blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and whites all reached historic lows before the world was hit by the coronavirus. At the same time, Trump policies achieved the largest wage gains for the lowest-paid workers.

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On top of this, Trump has replaced the failed North American Free Trade Agreement with the much-improved U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, confronted China’s unfair trade practices, placed 200 conservative judges on the federal bench, and taken actions to protect religious liberty against the left-wing mob – to name just a few of his other achievements.

Trump is oftentimes coarse rather than erudite, but the world is a coarse place. China, Iran and others dedicated to our nation’s destruction need to be met with toughness, not with polite meetings over tea with understanding nods.

And Trump is right that those who would harm our nation domestically through violence and attacks on our law enforcement officers need to be dealt with severely through our legal system.

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I am proud to be both a former political appointee of George W. Bush and a strong supporter of President Trump’s reelection.

This year’s presidential election is a battle for the soul of America. Anyone who seriously believes in Republican principles of government and wants to see our economy boom again should not favor turning over the reins of power to a barely functional and easily manipulated Joe Biden and the radical mob he would bring to power with him.

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