River News: Our View

While President-elect Donald Trump’s victory came as a surprise to many liberals and conservatives alike, others on the right were confident all along of a Trump victory.

To be sure, the signs of a shift to the right were everywhere. In states that register by party, Republicans had made huge gains compared to Democrats over the past four years, erasing substantial party identification gaps and in many cases surpassing Democrats.

Then, too, both the venerable Gallup organization and the left-of-center Pew organization had surveys this year showing that more Americans now identify as Republicans than as Democrats. That’s first time in the Gallup survey since the 1950s.

And then, as the elections got underway, Republicans were early voting at a blistering pace, virtually wiping out that natural Democratic advantage. 

Still, people were nervous. Democrats are known to steal elections, and they are masters at the art of ballot thievery. Fortunately, this one was watchdogged and it wasn’t close enough to steal, anyway.

Then, too, there were signs that a blow-out could occur in the opposite direction. In 2022, polls had actually underestimated the Democratic suburban vote driven by the abortion issue, and there were legitimate fears that an undercounted women’s vote was still out there and still being missed by pollsters.

Wasn’t to be, and the landslide was on.

Now that he has won, Trump has hit the ground running, and that’s an understatement. His early appointments show that, this time, The Donald means business, and he won’t be bamboozled by establishment Republicans pretending to be his friend to get power and then thwarting his agenda.

Already the president-elect has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, and both have promised to take a wrecking ball to the federal bureaucracy. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is sure to take an axe to public health agencies and take on Big Pharma.

The neoncons will have no role, but the incoming leaders of our defense forces and security state have a strong record of supporting military strength while staying independent of the military-industrial complex. They believe in peace through strength. 

Trump has also made clear that he will issue sweeping directives preserving free speech, ending the Biden administration’s reign of terror and oppression. In addition, the president-elect has said he wants the Department of Education shuttered — it would be nice to see it taken apart brick by brick — and well, on the border, it will once again be closed.

Other radical and needed moves are afoot. Trump will again withdraw from the globalist Paris climate accords. He wants the Federal Reserve — which exists only to ensure that big banks control the economy — returned to democratic control, one way or another.

As important as anything else, Trump plans to end the forever wars. The only war Pete Hegseth will undertake will be against woke military generals who have sacrificed America military readiness for diversity and equity. 

Not that the president is assured of getting all that he wants. In fact, he almost assuredly will not. Republicans will have a razor-thin majority in Congress and there remains some moderate establishment types among their ranks.

The GOP is an unruly bunch anyway — which is of course another name for democracy. It’s funny to us that Donald Trump is supposed to be a tyrant, when it was the Democrats, even the left-wing squad, who marched in lockstep to every command the Biden White House made to them. The Biden White House said jump, and the leftists, including Bernie Sanders, asked ‘How high?’

You can’t count on GOP lawmakers to march like zombies like Democrats do. The Republicans are people; the Democrats, programmed Borgs.

No doubt, though, the president’s agenda will come through just fine, not tattered but maybe only nibbled at the edges. 

And that brings us to our next point: What does this all mean for state and local governments?

We don’t know — state and local bureaucrats who run the state are notoriously resistant to change and as equally resistant to reality. They may just burrow into the sand and keep on trying to regulate and spend.

We would advise them not to. Given all the aforementioned signs and then the actual election outcome, officials on the state and local level should seize this historic opportunity to cut the size of government once and for all.

We have no faith that Gov. Tony Evers will try to do this, and so the voters will have to render judgment in the 2026 election.

For now, the GOP has retained control of the state legislature, and the Senate especially is on the line in 2026. There are two ways the legislature can go: They can continue their historic spinelessness and try to appease Democrats to show that they are not so right-wing (meaning fiscally responsible and democratic) after all and so, wink, wink, just re-elect us and you will get your big government.

Or, they can wake up and smell the Trumpism and realize that’s not what the voters want. They can take a cue from Donald Trump and begin to pass legislation to actually reduce the size of government. Cutting taxes is all well and good, but at the end of the day what matters is the amount government spends and the size and scope of the regulatory state.

The legislature needs to tackle it as hard as the Trump administration is preparing to do.

They should resist the temptation to be spineless and take the historic opportunity that voters are giving them. Or they will pay a historic price come 2026.

The same thing goes for our local government in Oneida County. The just-passed budget by the county board is a great start, cutting not only the tax rate but the actual amount of taxes being collected. And the board has repeatedly acted sensibly in other areas, too, such as in reorganizing social and human services. 

But there are also things that still must change, and now is the time to make those changes, while the political winds are blowing at their back. 

For starters, rogue supervisors need to reeled in and defeated in the next election. Most supervisors are responsible, but when wild resolutions advocating unlimited spending for the highway department keep popping up, you know a house needs to be cleaned.

They know who they are, and they can expect the voters to be soon paying them a visit at the ballot box.

Second, for years we have heard moans and groan about how supervisors are going to cut spending. But they never make serious cuts. Now is the time. We do not need to repeat which departments need to be deleted and which need to be downsized and stripped of regulatory authority. 

They know which ones they are. They should make those cuts before the voters step in and do it themselves.

And, finally, the county needs to take control of its public health apparatus, which is right now controlled by left-wing partisans and federal ideologues. With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. moving into a key role in the new administration, this will make the task a lot easier. 

As Kennedy shows the ideologues and posers the door at the federal public health level, Oneida County should do the same here.

It’s time for a new day. The voters have told us what they want. The incoming Trump administration is acting quickly to significantly reduce the size and scope of government,

It’s time the state and Oneida County do the same.