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Trump Agenda Survey

John Amendall

    The Trump Agenda Survey printed questionnaire was prepared and released in late September 2019 by the RNC. The survey’s purpose was to determine the level of support for Trump’s agenda which he could use to set and define issues that will dominate the 2020 re-election campaign.
    The questionnaire consisted of 14 questions two of which were administrative.
    Question 2 had 11 sub-questions and Other which you can rank according to the importance you believe they should have with “1” being most important.
    “Would you support a plan to bring together private, state, and federal funding to rebuild our country’s infrastructure of roads, ports, bridges, railways and airports?” This is a bipartisan issue as both parties use these facilities. When Eisenhower was president (1953-1961) as a former General he recognized the importance of transporting people, products and services throughout the U.S. Accordingly one of his major contributions was a strong commitment to building the interstate highway system. At first glance it would be easy to support this issue. However, railways and airports would require special treatment as many are private enterprises.
    “Do you support President Trump’s efforts to renegotiate trade deals and
treaties such as NAFTA to ensure American jobs and interests are put first?” We should support any president’s efforts to negotiate trade deals and treaties favorable to the U.S. However, Trump’s inconsistent, reversible, and heavy handed approach (trade war) to this task has not been as productive as claimed. His negotiation’s with China have played
havoc with the stability of our own stock market. While the puerile contretemps between the NBA and China hasn’t helped, Trump’s personal intrusion criticizing NBA coaches is bullying and uncalled for.
    “Do you support President Trump’s efforts to make the federal bureaucracy
more accountable and responsive to the needs of citizens, especially our great American Veterans?” We expect any president to make the federal government more accountable and responsive to our needs. Moreover we can not do enough to care for the men and women who’ve been putting their lives on the line for those of us at home. Difficulties experienced by veterans with the Veteran’s Administration System and Veteran’s Hospitals should be immediately resolved.
    “Are you proud that Trump gave our military the freedom, support and resources it needed to hunt down and destroy ISIS?” As Commander-in-Chief every president should be expected to re-equip and rebuild our military and regularly consult and cooperate with the Armed Forces. It is misleading to say that the Trump Administration has destroyed ISIS. It has reduced ISIS influence in the Mid-East but our recent military withdrawal in Syria his received serious criticism due to Turkey’s invasion of Kurdish populations.
    “Do you support efforts to eliminate the federal Common Core Education
Curriculum Program for K-12 public schools?” Some states clearly place greater emphasis on this than others. Accordingly a single federal fiat for all states is not feasible. Each state should be responsible for developing its own curriculum. I sought advice from primary and secondary school teachers for this question. Students should be
exposed to elements of STEM and social studies (literature, history, civics, sociology, political science ...). The teachers all agreed that students should be drilled in developing critical/lanalytical writing skills. This may be a difficult process but it must be addressed as a major goal of the educational process.
    “Are you in favor of President Trump using his executive powers to alter
and/lor cancel parts of Obama Care if Congress continues to fail to repeal and replace it?” Some people support Obama Care while others oppose it. Some segments of the population do not have the mental or physical capability of taking care of themselves or working to provide the resources for health care. These people will require aid to provide resources for this purpose. The challenge here is accountability for legitimate inclusion. However, Obama’s penalty clause for not having health insurance should be repealed. Both parties should propose a workable solution/lcompromise to resolve this issue.
    “Do you support President Trump’s promise to continue to nominate pro-Constitution conservatives to the federal courts, especially for the vacancies to the Supreme Court?” Ideally the Supreme Court should be apolitical. However, this is a myth. During FDR’s tenure he proposed to add 6 justices to the 9 existing Supreme

    Court Justices. Since he would’ve picked the justices, this would’ve assured a Democratic majority to push through his New Deal. Fortunately he was persuaded not to formally propose this proposition through the legislature. More recently some Democrats have threatened to pursue this practice to challenge the present 5/l4 ratio of conservatives to liberals.
    During his term of office Obama nominated 2 Democratic women candidates. Trump nominated 2 Republican male candidates. So much for an apolitical Supreme
Court. The most qualified candidates should be selected by the legislature.
    “Do you believe that Democrats in congress have any intention of working in
good faith with President Trump and Republicans to address the pressing issues facing our nation?” No. Both parties are divided and committed to obstructing the other’s agenda.

    
Regardless of your opinion of Republican President Reagan, he and the Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill regularly and informally met. The fact that two important party leaders regularly exchanged views was a valuable contribution to the nation’s stability and welfare. There’s a lesson here somewhere.
    “Has the media given fair and balanced coverage to the historic economic growth and record low unemployment brought about by President Trump’s polices and leadership the past two years?” If you favor news casts from CBS, ABC, and MSNBC your answer would be yes. It was fair and balanced. If you favor FOX or CNN your answer would be no. Our personal political attitudes and opinions determine which news
casts we favor. Trump inherited the upswing economic cycle of the Obama
Administration and readily assumed credit for it. Earlier Clinton inherited the
upswing cycle of Bush’s last years and readily assumed credit for it.
    “Do you agree that the Democrats have not said or done enough or to stop their radical Left-wing supporters and fringe groups from harassing and launching violent
protests against people with differing opinions?” Yes. Both parties have representatives and verbal warriors engaged in aggressively attacking the other party. This situation has stymied significant movement of important bipartisan agenda items.
    
“Are you worried that the hateful divisive rhetoric of many Democrat leaders against our President, his Administration, and conservative policies is fomenting political violence and undermining the foundations of our society and democracy?”
    I certainly am. Both parties have expressed hateful, divisive rhetoric. Many Republicans have either ignored or downplayed Trump’s role in this behavior.
    Two sub-questions from Question 2.
    “Build a border wall to stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling from Mexico.” Of course we should stop illegal immigration and drug smuggling from Mexico. The Berlin wall was manned 24/l7 with patrols, machine gun nests, and mine fields. Still, people got through to West Germany. When all the tunnels are destroyed on our border, new ones are being constructed. People are already testing (climbing) replicas of the Wall demonstrating Trump’s claim of virtual impenetrability as baseless. Building the Mexican Wall is a wasteful use of tax payers money which could be applied to more deserving issues. Trump has taken money from various departments transferring it to Homeland Security to fund his immigrant policies there and applying it to the Wall. We should increase our surveillance and enforcement by our agents there leaving the rugged, demanding terrain to serve as its own barrier. We should spend more effort on the disposition of undocumented migrants within the country and people hiring undocumented workers. Some of the heavy
criticism about Trump’s border practices are valid but Democrats were conspicuously silent about similar practices during Obama’s Administration.
    “Fully enforce our immigration laws and withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities.” We should do more than enforce our immigration laws. Sanctuary cities have become a beacon of light falsely encouraging illegal immigration.
    “Now that we’ve safely crossed the border where should we go? Why of course. Head for the nearest sanctuary city. They’ll take us in. Take care of us. And they won’t betray us to the federal agents.”
    Many large cities receive federal funding for the homeless. Sanctuary cities boldly boast an open-arm posture defiantly exclaiming they will not cooperate with federal agents to identify illegals or aid agents taking illegals into custody. But we should first take care of American citizens who are homeless rather than diluting funding to include illegals.
    
San Francisco’s failure to accommodate homeless populations makes their commitment to Illegals an empty promise. As they refuse to cooperate with federal agents, they still insist they deserve federal funding to accommodate the homeless crisis. American citizens? Illegals? Let them resolve their homeless problem without federal funding. Chicago is another flag waving sanctuary city, presently floundering looking for resources to pay future pensions for police, firemen, teachers and other public servants. Its sanctuary posture sure looks good to immigrants becoming potential voters.
    Other. The Trump survey included Other at the bottom of sub-questions in Question 2. Presumably Other offers the voter the opportunity to identify issues not
covered in the survey questions. There were a number of very important issues omitted from the questionnaire. In no particular order of importance.
    There was no question dealing with climate change and how we’ll (Republicans and Democrats) be affected and adapt to it. Fifty-five countries signed the Paris Accord and most of the world is dealing with this problem. Despite a whole host of scientific data, Russia and China, major polluters, don’t appear very concerned and Trump, the leader of one of the giant polluters (United States), left the conference.

    There was no question dealing with immigration reform. During the 2016 campaign Senator Mark Rubio clearly and distinctly laid out several steps to achieve citizenship for immigrants. His effort did not receive the attention and support it deserved. Deported immigrants have repeatedly returned causing some serious problems, including killings.
    There was no question concerning the need to develop fossil fuel free sources of energy. For years presidents have given lip service to developing alternate sources of energy (solar, wind, tidal, hydroelectric) but nothing has come of it. For decades U.S. dams have been constructed for production of fossil free energy. Attendant environmental problems make dams less favorable. Attempts to maintain nuclear energy sources should not be abandoned but this will require costly reconstruction and controversial site selection for waste disposal.
    Alternate energy sources presently can’t economically compete with fossil fuels but these sources are becoming more efficient. The Manhattan Project during World War II proved that if the government wanted to do something, it could do it very rapidly. The space program is another example where various administrations over decades committed resources to accomplish a space mission. This mission still enjoys support today. Development of alternative energy sources and the infrastructure to support them is long overdue. Some states have disregarded the government’s failure to make this commitment and are presently exploring these sources on their own.
    There was no question addressing the federal deficit. The Obama Administration doubled the debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. Obama’s budgets were the largest of any president’s to date. After two years at this writing Trump’s budgets has pushed the deficit to $23 trillion. While Democrats have jumped all over the Party that has prided
itself for its frugal discipline in spending public money, they were noticeably reticent to criticize Obama’s budgets. Regardless either Party will have to make some unpopular decisions about spending to reduce the deficit. A number of other nations are floundering with government debt losing internal investors and external ones. Unless we reduce the deficit we may experience similar problems (recession?).
    There was no question concerning environmental issues. Certainly environmental issues may be significantly influenced by climate change. Still management decisions also can influence environmental ones. The Trump Administration has removed protected species status for a variety of endangered species.

    The Trump Administration has challenged California’s fuel emission standards and ban on the release of methane due to human activities. As Arctic permafrost thaws it naturally releases methane which is one of the gasses contributing to the greenhouse effect which is presently denied by the Trump Administration.
    There was no question about gun control. The majority of Americans support some form of gun control. Some cities and states have already promoted stronger laws
than the federal government. While background checks are consistent with this goal, this would only be a first step. Trump initially gave lip service to this but failed to follow it up. Committed attention to extracurricular gun sales outside of gun shows should also be conducted. The common denominator of U.S. massacres involves automatic-semi-automatic weapons (rifles and pistols). Both political parties have danced around this issue for fear of provoking the NRA. What federal department does the NRA belong to? While the Republican Party receives the most attention for its support of the NRA, Democratic representatives have also taken NRA contributions for their campaigns.
    NRA’s knee-jerk response and mantra is that if you take away automatic weapons, this would provide a precedent to take away all weapons. Automatic weapons were designed for military purposes. The NRA has consistently opined the canard that if we take away automatic/lsemiautomatic weapons only the predators will have them. There is majority support for having a weapon for the safety of home and family. The commonly cited Second Amendment covers this. In regards to hunting, a rifle is necessary for large game and shot guns for bird hunting. A competent hunter shouldn’t need an automatic weapon to bring down his/lher prey. People belonging to target shooting clubs might have a rifle, pistol or both.
    Some of the questionnaire questions concerning highway infrastructure, veteran’s care, maintaining a strong military, public school education would undoubtedly receive
bipartisan support. However the omission of some very important issues (climate
change, alternate energy sources, federal deficit, environmental changes, immigration reform, gun control, Ukrainegate, national impeachment fever) seriously weakens the credibility and integrity of the questionnaire. The RNC survey could’ve been more comprehensive and pertinent.
     Readers may think of other topics for rightful inclusion in such a questionnaire, but I hope they will find some important issues which any administration should address and attempt to resolve.
    I missed the requested RNC 7 day returning period of the Questionnaire. Haven’t seen the Democrat’s Questionnaire yet as I wasn’t on their mailing list.

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