Desperately Seeking a Pro-Growth Democrat

   The most recent Wall Street Journal political poll shows that Democrats have swerved into a deep ditch. 

 Only three of 10 voters have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, and that is the lowest this number has been for Democrats since Bill Clinton's first term in office. Republicans aren't very popular either -- but they have a big lead over the donkeys.

   I'm not a cheerleader for the Republicans, and it's clear the GOP is not the solution to all our nation's problems. Republicans have been coconspirators in the runaway spending and debt crisis in Washington.

   What is concerning is that the Democrats have become what might be called a donut party: They have no middle. Around 2000, the progressive Left started capturing all the important leadership seats in their party. It began with the elevation of Nancy Pelosi, and the full-scale takeover of the party happened with the election of Barack Obama. Since then, the commanding voices of the party have included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders.

   Even as the Trump policies have taken root and, so far, are working, Dems in Washington today are opposed to nearly every Trump policy -- even policies that they once supported, like trade protectionism. Every Democrat voted against making the Trump tax cuts permanent -- apparently, they were fine with the typical American family paying about $2,000 a year more in taxes.

   OK, fine. We know what they're against. But what exactly is the Democratic economic message?
   Here are a few of their rallying cries:

   -- Raise taxes on the rich.

   -- Destroy America's energy capacity due to climate change religiosity.

   -- Businesses are evil.

   -- Expand welfare payments.

   -- Grow the government.

   -- Defend rotten schools and put teacher union interests above parents and kids.

   -- Put diversity over merit selection.

   The modern-day Democrats have sprinted away from the John F. Kennedy agenda of free trade, lower tax rates and balanced budgets. Can you imagine ANY Democrat today saying, as Kennedy did in 1963, that "tax rates are too high today, tax revenues are too low, and the fastest way to balance the budget is to lower rates now."

   In the late 1980s, a tax reform bill signed into law by Ronald Reagan lowered the highest tax rate to 28%. That passed 97-3, with 44 of 47 Democrats voting yes. No Democrat today would support a 28% tax rate.

   Even more recently, we had the Clinton market-friendly centrists who were the "New Democrats" and rose to ascendancy in the Democratic Party. The 1990s were years of balanced budgets, abundant jobs, falling government spending, free trade, a technology boom, lower capital gains taxes and a mighty stock market surge.

   The era of big government really was over -- temporarily.

   Now it's back.

   The latest wisdom of the congressional Democrats is to simply oppose everything Donald Trump is doing. They want to run on repealing Trump's tax cut bill, which would be a giant tax increase.

   This is not an economic philosophy; it's a pathology.

   It's not healthy that one of the two political parties has belly-flopped off the shallow end. We need a war -- or at least a competition -- of good ideas and solutions.

   I'm hard pressed to name even one Democrat in Washington -- just one -- who has a pro-growth, pro-America agenda.

   In 1980, Democrats got shellacked by Reagan. They moved left with Walter Mondale and lost 49 states four years later. And then even when Reagan was gone, they went further left with Massachusetts liberal Michael Dukakis and lost again in 1988. It was only THEN that they went with pragmatism and won with Clinton. Dems may have to take another beating at the voting booths in 2028 to see the errors of their ways.

   Stephen Moore is a cofounder of Unleash Prosperity and a former senior economic adviser to Donald Trump. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is "The Trump Economic Miracle."

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