Populism is the Answer, Not Amnesty

Photo Credit: APSean Trende, RealClearPolitics.com’s senior elections analyst, rattled Washington this month when he challenged the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party must give citizenship to current illegal immigrants if it ever hopes to win a national election again.

Trende argued that instead of pandering to every demographic group, Republicans should instead adjust their agenda to better appeal to Reagan Democrat/Perot Independent voters who stayed home last November.

“Ultimately, the basic prescription for the GOP is a healthy dose of economic populism,” Trende writes. “This includes a lot of changes Democrats would presumably enjoy, such as jettisoning the pro-big business, Wall Street-style conservatism that characterized the Romney campaign.”

Here is what such an agenda might look like:

– Rollback the surveillance state: The government is collecting too much information on law-abiding citizens. The National Security Agency must be reined in…

– Break up the banks: Big banks are not a product of the free market. They are a product of over-regulation and regulatory capture. Dodd-Frank has only made the banks bigger. It’s time to cut them down to size.

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