The famous debate and Project 2025

by Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, Hamilton

First, the debate: No, I didn’t watch it. Why would I spend my evening watching a convicted felon and showman in any sort of public meeting with an experienced statesman with a cold? If enough people in this country actually vote for a smirking, fast-talking liar rather than a considered, knowledgeable, well-meaning negotiator respected by the world at large … Well, we deserve what happens next.

Second: Project 2025, which is what MAGA Republicans apparently believe is what should happen next. If you’re not aware of and pretty well acquainted with this “Presidential Transition Project,” you should be, no matter your party (https://www.project2025.org/). From their “Playbook”: “The time is short, and conservatives need a plan. The project will create a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of the new Administration to bring quick relief to Americans suffering from the Left’s devastating policies.”

Rather than quoting from the document, since you can look it all up yourself, I will list some of “the Left’s devastating policies”:

As of the end of June, the Biden Administration has created 15.7 million jobs and unemployment continues at historic lows. That 15.7 includes 6.2 million jobs that are definitely not just “bounceback” from the Covid pandemic.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Dow is up 45% since Biden defeated Trump in 2020. At the equivalent point in Trump’s term, it was up 34%.”

Although all Republicans in the Senate and the House – including Montana’s own Daines and Zinke – voted against Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure act, Montana is expected to receive about $23 million over 5 years. Our newspapers regularly report another $5 million here and $5 million there, and the people who voted against the bill are trying to take credit for it.

”A study published…  in the pediatrics journal of the American Medical Association … shows that the idea of returning women to roles as wives and mothers by banning abortion has, in Texas, driven infant death rates 12.9% higher.” (Heather Cox Richardson, 25 June 2024).

The Senate spent months hammering out a bipartisan immigration bill, but MAGA Republicans in the House, at Trump’s behest and led by Speaker Mike Johnson, refused even to let it come to a vote.

That’s just a start, and if you can’t see beyond the price of gas and the cost of groceries, which are dependent not on the President, but on the greedy corporations backing Project 2025 … well, we as a country deserve what happens next.