America Needs a Common Sense Party

AI Overview defines common sense as “the basic, practical judgment and everyday reasoning that people use to navigate normal life without needing special training.”

Common sense is plentiful across America’s fruited plain, but not so much inside the Washington Beltway. For whatever reason, lawyers and businessmen who were successful in their previous vocations go to our nation’s capital and within a matter of months, they have lost complete touch with reality.

Maybe there’s something in the drinking water that makes them lose the ability to think rationally.

Sure, there are a few relatively sane members of Congress like Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, John Kennedy, and Tom Cotton in the Senate and Jim Jordan and Chip Roy in the House, but most of the rest of them have lost their cotton-pickin’ minds.

(By the way, AI warned me about using that “older regional idiom” because its “historical connection to enslaved labor in the American South carries strong racial overtones… making it deeply offensive to many.” My response is that AI has lost its cotton-pickin’ mind, too! It’s time Americans said goodbye to political correctness and stopped walking on eggshells around each other.)

Back to the blowhards on Capitol Hill…

The Democratic Party was founded in 1828 by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, and preceded by the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Initially, the Democrats supported an agrarian society and geographical expansion while opposing a national bank and high tariffs. This platform enabled them to win six of the eight presidential elections from 1828 to 1856, losing twice to the Whigs.

In 1860, the Democratic Party split in two over the issue of slavery, with liberals in the north and slaveowners and segregationists in the south. As a result, the divided party only won the presidency twice between 1860 and 1908, both times by Grover Cleveland.

In 1912, it was the Republicans turn to split, with former President Theodore Roosevelt and his Progressive or Bull Moose Party outpolling the incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft, allowing Woodrow Wilson to reclaim the White House for the Democrats. Wilson pushed through a series of progressive reforms – including a graduated federal income tax, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, and a series of labor laws – that greatly increased the size and scope of the federal government. Wilson was also a closet racist who turned a blind eye to the KKK and Jim Crow laws in the South.

With his election in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt built on Wilson’s foundation and expanded Washington’s control over everyday Americans, using the Great Depression and then World War II as an excuse. By the end of his 12-year presidency, there was no turning back.

When President Kennedy, a fiscal conservative, was assassinated in 1963, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as America’s 36th president. LBJ lost no time introducing his Great Society and his War on Poverty, two colossal failures that have saddled future generations of Americans with mountains of debt because of unfunded mandates.

Today’s Democratic Party is no longer the party of the working man, but rather the party of the lunatic left.

As for the Republican Party, it was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist party and by 1860, had managed to elect Abraham Lincoln as president. During America’s Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the Republican Party became associated with robber barons and the monied elite until Teddy Roosevelt became the party’s standard bearer after William McKinley’s assassination in 1901. Unfortunately, Roosevelt’s populism was short-lived and the Republicans’ reputation as the “rich man’s party” returned under Presidents Taft, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.

(For the record, I think Calvin Coolidge was an excellent president. Taft, Harding, and Hoover, not so much.)

To its credit, the GOP gave America the two best presidents of the second half of the 20th century – Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. “The Gipper” proved to be an especially hard act to follow as subsequent Republican presidents fell short of his lofty standard.

However, Donald Trump is a different story. He has resurrected Teddy Roosevelt’s populist coalition but the accomplishments of his first term – and those of the first six months of his second term – now seem a somewhat distant memory.

Which brings us to the clown show that passes for the 119th Congress of the United States. The Republicans currently control the White House and both chambers of Congress, albeit by a slim margin in the Senate and a microscopic one in the House. And yet, they still can’t seem to walk and chew gum at the same time, making endless promises but delivering few tangible results.

The best thing you can say about the Grand Old Party these days is that they have managed to keep the Democrats out of power. The Republicans may be incompetent, but the Democrats are batsh*t crazy.

So, what is the answer, my fellow common sense Americans? How about a Common Sense Party?

Here is my proposed platform for the Common Sense Party of America…

It is common sense that you cannot indefinitely spend more money than you earn, so pass a balanced budget amendment and stick to it.

It is common sense that anything with a beating heart is alive, so stop killing innocent preborn babies.

It is common sense that there are only two genders and that boys and men are generally bigger and stronger than girls and women, so stop having them compete against each other athletically. And while you’re at it, stop performing body-mutilating surgery on sexually confused minors.

It is common sense that nations without strong borders invite terrorists to cross into them undetected, so keep our borders secure and immigration closely regulated.

It is common sense that people who are paid not to work will often choose not to work, so limit welfare benefits to the truly needy. The same goes for subsidizing out-of-wedlock babies. Anyone can make one mistake, but Uncle Sam (i.e. responsible taxpaying Americans) shouldn't have to pay for a house full of kids sired by multiple different dads.

It is common sense that criminals will continue to commit crimes unless the punishments are made severe enough to act as deterrents, so increase penalties for all felonies and issue life sentences without parole for habitual offenders. And yes, the death penalty is warranted for premeditated murder, sexual crimes against children, and the killing of law enforcement officers and other first responders.

There are a lot more common sense proposals that the vast majority of Americans can agree on, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling for now. Let me know what you think…