Whatever you think of Bill Clinton, he could read a room. Faced with midterm swamping and a determined Republican coalition in the House, he changed his approach. And it worked. After saying “The era of big government is over” during his 1996 State of the Union, he easily won reelection with some help from Reform Party candidate Ross Perot. The modern Democrat Party bears no resemblance to the party headed by Clinton, and it only listens to the left flank of its base.
While history does not repeat itself, it often rhymes. According to a new poll from Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group, Americans believe federal agencies like the EPA, CDC, and IRS are too big and politicized. Overall, 58.5% of voters believe that the bureaucracies in Washington, D.C., have grown too large and only serve their own political interests. Only 33.1% believe they serve the American public and are a useful and effective way to implement the laws Congress passes.
It’s no surprise that 89.9% of Republican respondents believe the federal agencies have expanded to the point of becoming politically corrupt. Likewise, it’s not a shock that 72.7% of Democrats think the agencies are a good way to implement the laws Congress passes and that they serve the American people. A majority of independents (54.7%) agree with Republicans.
Another emerging trend is also evident in the results. Hispanic voters align more closely with the Republican point of view. Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action, noted, “A majority of voters now fundamentally believe that the very federal government which exists to serve and protect citizens is no longer on their side. They see the government as too large, too invasive, and an obstacle to their living the American dream. Nearly two-thirds of sought-after Hispanic voters agree. This represents a major shift in the political landscape,”
Public relations executive and commentator Giancarlo Sopo offered a possible explanation for the Hispanic view of the bureaucracy and the more significant trend. Sopo began a Twitter thread noting that a CBS News poll showed Democrats and Republicans are in a statistical tie with Hispanic voters. He compared this to 2018 when Democrats won the demographic by 40 points. He called the poll results a seismic shift in American politics, even if the results were off by 10 points.
Sopo provided three reasons for the shift:
- Political: The Democrats are incompetent.
- Economic: Hispanics are upwardly mobile, don’t buy “inequity” nonsense.
- Cultural: No somos woke.
To explain upward mobility, Sopo shared that the median Hispanic household earns about $55 thousand per year and has experienced significant declines in poverty. Between 2010 and 2019, the poverty rate among Hispanics fell from 24.3% to 13.9%. In that timeframe and certainly since Biden took office, Sopo observed, “Democrats shifted their messaging from pro-growth to ‘inequity.’ Hispanics are upwardly mobile. The ‘inequity’ framework just doesn’t appeal to us.”
Then he shared his personal experience. “My family, like many, worked its way out of borderline poverty,” Sopo wrote. “I remember those years. My mom was focused on providing a better life for us, moving us out of a tiny duplex, launching a business, etc. The Democratic message is not appealing to people with those priorities.” The Democrats can’t even stop using “Latinx,” which the vast majority of Hispanic Americans can’t stand. It’s not clear Democrats can comprehend an identity group that they see as victims fully embracing the American Dream.
Sopo’s experience is quite common. The Small Business Administration shared the following statistics:
- Latinos are starting businesses at a faster rate than the national average across almost all industries.
- The number of Hispanic business owners has grown 34% in the last ten years.
- An estimated 4.65 million Hispanic-owned businesses are in the U.S., making them the fastest-growing segment of U.S. small businesses.
- Before the pandemic, Hispanic-owned employer businesses generated nearly $500 billion in annual revenue and employed 3.4 million people.
The sounds of construction fill my office today as a Hispanic-owned construction LLC replaces my wind and hail-riddled roof. Hispanic Americans have high rates of entrepreneurship and business ownership. Owning a business becomes more difficult with burdensome tax rates and regulations. There are several ways the Democrats’ green dreams could hurt this growth as they push their climate agenda through every federal agency.
If the Bureau of Land Management continues to punish the oil and gas industry, the asphalt shingles the LLC is putting on my roof will become scarce and prohibitively expensive. If the EPA decides to charge this business a fee to dump my old asphalt shingles, the owners and employees will suffer. If the business must provide a climate impact score, as the SEC wants to require, it will cost them dearly to comply.
The Democrats’ agenda can only hurt the men on my roof and their families. It will not help the business grow or repair the broken supply chains they are dealing with for the essential supplies to do their job. Ultimately, the agenda hurts the consumer with the leaky roof who will not be able to have it repaired. Republicans must find a way to tell these stories and provide real solutions to roll back the administrative state.
Source: PJ Media
