Virginia’s Youngkin shows Republicans how to win in the midterms – Washington Times

OPINION:

Glenn Youngkins success in Virginia lights a path for Republicans in the midterm elections.

Every GOP candidate must address President Trumps grip on the party base without repelling swing voters. Mr. Youngkin welcomed the former presidents endorsement but finessed the 2020 stolen election issue by emphasizing election integrity.

Nothing is more corrosive than the 1619 Project and critical race theory narratives that the Republic was founded to perpetuate slavery and Americans require a state-enforced cultural root canal. By that kind of thinking, Italians should be sent to rehabilitation camps for the Roman conquests of Gaul, Palestine and Carthage.

We should offer children a reasonable account of the nations founding, the shortcomings of our past and progress toward greater equality. CRT and 1619 Project narratives have as much place in social studies classrooms as does eugenics in the biology curriculum.Republicans should not genuflect to the racism and sexism peddled by radical progressives, feminists and black activists. Cultures in some minority communities need as much fixing as white middle-class structural racism.

Go to college campuses and, through private conversation, learn that the next generation is quite comfortable with our evolving diversity. Self-defeating obsessions with victimization are a more significant challenge for minority advancement than prejudices long abandoned with de jure segregationbut every child deserves an equal opportunity for success.

Eschewing identity politics obsessions, Mr. Youngkin promised to ban critical race theory from schools. He talked about generally failing schools, rising crime, the high cost of living and inflation and faltering economic growthand tax relief.

Defunding the police is morally bankruptrising murder rates in American cities are terrorizing minority communities.

The George Floyd tragedy compels focus on better-trained police officers, not handcuffing or taking them off the streets. Racial disparities in enforcement are not addressed by refusing to enforce shoplifting laws and other misdemeanors. Those policies just provide street academies for young criminals and deny the elderly reasonable access to groceries, drug stores and prescription services.

Free community college and college admissions without objectively applied academic standards do a disservice to childrenbright or ordinary, black or white. Requiring that college admissions and credentialling return to sound evaluations of aptitude and achievement and abandoning gender, transgender and racial quotasand whatever else the intellectually dispossessed left can dream up to fuel the injustice industrywould force elementary and high schools to better prepare students or be deemed failures themselves.

Republicans need to address that colleges produce too many ill-prepared graduates and get behind alternatives like apprenticeships that provide shorter and less costly paths to rewarding careers.

Reckless spending in Washingtonparticularly the corrupting $1.9 trillion American Rescue Planrequires the Federal Reserve to print too much money to enable too much borrowing.

As practiced by a politically compromised Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, printing press monetary policy does nothing to create new chipmaking capacity, unlock overcrowded ports, or otherwise unclog supply chains.

The stimulus package has left a huge overhang of unearned purchasing power that drives up the prices for everyday essentials like gasoline, groceries and restaurant meals, as do Biden Administration policies that curb oil and gas production and drive up agricultural fertilizer and transportation costs.

No-work-required Child Tax Credit checks, bigger food stamps and health insurance subsidies make America the first civilization with a leisure class at the bottom and chronically short of workers.

Republicans should affirm that the transition to a carbon-free economy at midcentury requires adequate sources of fossil fuels today and for all Americans to pitch in and work. Not bask in the largess of reparations from a government that confuses printing money of rapidly declining value with redressing the sins of folks who lived seven generations ago or in biblical times.

Democrats are all about the negative. Whites are endemic racists, markets and society are rigged, and American power in the world is a force for evil. The horrific conditions that will beset Afghanistan this winter is a stain on the souls of President Biden and the progressive foreign policy establishmentthey knew what would happen and withdrew American forces anyway.

The world is a nasty place. Open borders will only overwhelm and impoverish Americans who must compete for jobs and educational resources with mass migration of unskilled workers that flood labor markets.

At every opportunity, Republicans should pound Democrats for their irresponsible defense and open-border policies. Those self-serving progressive peddlers of national doubt, guilt, weakness and appeasement deprive the world of some shield against evil and Americans of the security and opportunities for decent lives they deserve.

Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland and a national columnist.

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Virginia's Youngkin shows Republicans how to win in the midterms - Washington Times