By Steve Levy
Prices are too damn high. Democrats are pouncing. And the Republican response has been lame.
The president’s tactic for the longest time was to deny there was an affordability problem, mirroring the same mistake of his vanquished opponent, Kamala Harris, during the 2024 campaign.
The economic strain on average Americans has opened the door for progressives and socialists to acknowledge the problem and claim that they have a better way — move further to the left. Tax the rich and give it all to everyone else
Usually, a campaign is run on what a party will do for you in the next year. This is a different environment, however.
The Republicans’ best messaging would instead center on what they’re NOT going to do.
They’re not going to revert us back to the policies promulgated by the Democrats from 2021 to 2025 that put us in this mess in the first place.
Republicans must respond to the socialists by noting it was not capitalism that caused this unaffordability crisis. Rather, it was anti-capitalist measures put in place by the leftist Dems who despise the free market.
Let’s look at the facts.
Rising inflation
Democrats are trying to blame the high cost of groceries and our other products on Trump‘s war in Iran and his tariff policies. Certainly, while these measures promoted by the president prevented a return to the more prosperous economic numbers of the first Trump term, they are not the reason we are in this inflation mess today.
Republicans must remind voters of the economic windfall we had in the Trump years as a result of the tax cuts and deregulation that gave us inflation under 2%, and interest rates well under 3%, as noted in a Congressional Budget Committee report:
The officially reported poverty level fell to its lowest rate in 50 years and unemployment rates for minorities and those without a college degree hit all-time lows. Real median household income rose by $5,000, and wages went up by nearly 5 percent. Americans earning under $100,000 saw an average tax cut of 16 percent. And while the tax burden on low-income families went down, the top one percent saw their share of federal taxes go up.
Capitalist policies provided the economic boom of the first Trump term, just as they did after the Kennedy tax cuts in the 60s and the Reagan tax cuts in the 80s.
It was Biden’s socialist policies of exploding the federal budget by spending trillions unnecessarily during his tenure that exploded the budget to over $7 trillion, which is now the new normal.
It led to inflation spiking to 9% in one year and 20% over Biden‘s term.
This is what Trump inherited in 2025.
Here is what Republicans must say they will NOT do.
They will not pass Medicare for All (more aptly, Medicare for None) that some have estimated would cost $25 trillion over the next decade and would force long lines and limited choices.
They will NOT undo the tax cuts for tips, for seniors on Social Security, or for overtime, as the Dems will.
They will NOT eliminate the middle-class tax cuts that would otherwise place a burden of almost $2,000 on each American household, as the Dems will.
Rising housing costs
Perhaps even more concerning to average Americans than their grocery bills are the ever-increasing rent and mortgage payments. This new generation is believing that their reach of the American dream is a mirage. Hard to blame them since the increased mortgage rates resulting from Biden’s inflation led to an additional $14,000 in annual payments on a $500,000 mortgage.
But these increases were not caused by a failure of capitalism. If capitalism was unhindered from doing its thing, far more housing would be constructed to meet the needed demand. It’s the anti-capitalists who have prevented this housing from being built with their over-regulation and environmental entanglements.
Meanwhile, a recent federal study notes that 20% of recent rent hikes and 30% of home price increases were the result of the millions of illegal aliens the Biden administration welcomed over the border.
This dramatically increased demand without helping on the supply side. That’s anti-capitalism.
On energy prices
If capitalism was allowed to do its thing, investors would have been drilling here, there and everywhere to meet higher demand. However, the anti-capitalists in the Biden administration stopped drilling cold. They declared war on natural gas and nuclear power plants, while ridiculously claiming that inefficient windmills and solar would do the trick. Their interference with the market caused electric rates to soar by 30% in the Biden years.
Unfortunately, the intervention of the Iran war has spiked gas prices, mitigating the benefit that the Trump administration would’ve gotten with its “drill, baby drill” policies that brought gas down precipitously in his first administration.
Republicans must remind voters that while the Iran conflict is essential, and hopefully short-term, the Democrats have a long-term plan to revert to Biden‘s insanity of declaring war on fossil fuels and making these high energy prices the new normal.
Most importantly, Republicans must remind the voters that it’s the Democrats’ anti-capitalist policies that got us into this mess. Why would we want to go back to that?
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of the “On the Right Side Podcast.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, steve@commonsensestrategies.com.