Is the idea that Americans who value free markets and small government should vote Republican still valid?
A viral idea is doing the rounds that calls on Americans who are about to vote for Democratic Party candidates in that country’s looming mid-term elections to reconsider, and heed the warnings posed by the bloated, bureaucratic, debt-laden welfare states of Europe. Here’s one posted from France, with 2.8 million views.
“Before you vote,” it cautions, “ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France? Trust me. You don’t want to be France.”
Here’s an echo from a South African free-marketeer. “This is what happens when you hand your country to economically illiterate progressive fools with catchy slogans. Don’t do it.”
This raises some questions worthy of careful consideration.
Agreement
I largely agree with the authors that left-wing economic policies are well-intended but in the long-term sap economic vitality, progress and growth, and that the more socialist they get, the more dire the economic outlook becomes.
“The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline,” the French commenter wrote. “Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.”
I quite concur, and I also agree that South Africa is an example of a socialist-leaning government that – generously assuming its good intentions, despite being overshadowed by grand corruption at every level of government – has been even more destructive to economic growth and prosperity for all.
This is why I have always favoured explicitly libertarian or centre-right politicians. In the US, I have never supported a Democratic Party candidate for president, even when it was very popular to bash George W. Bush.
Never, that is, until the most recent presidential election, when a bumbling, fairly moderate Democrat would have been a far better choice than Trump, despite my documented issues with her policies. (In 2020, I didn’t write in support or opposition of either candidate for US president, and in 2016, my unpublished opinion amounted to “I’m not happy Donald Trump won, but I’m delighted Hillary Clinton lost”.)
Caveats
The general observations about the dangers of left-wing economic policies that the above commentators make clearly come with important caveats, and it’s worth trying to make clear what they are.
One is that the US Democratic Party is not the ANC. It isn’t even the socialist French governments of François Mitterrand or François Hollande. It has its green-socialist wing, and socialists have done alarmingly well in recent elections – largely thanks to Trump making Republicans look like far-right lunatics – but the governing record of the Democratic Party is at worst centre-left.
The upcoming election isn’t for the president. It is for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives (the lower house of the US Congress, often just called “Congress”, or the “House”), and about a third (35 of 100 seats, this year) of the Senate (the upper house). For context, each of the 50 states elects two senators, and each voting district within the states elects a congressional representative, so different states have a number of congress critters roughly proportional to their population.
For a guide to the likely consequences should the Democrats flip the House, the Senate, or both, we can look to history.
US Congressional history
The US performed variably when Democrats had a majority in both houses. Before 1979, the only look-in the Republicans got was control of both houses between 1947 and 1949, and again between 1953 and 1957. The broad post-war arch was one of considerable success, followed by progressive decay, culminating in the stagflation of the 1970s.
For the first three Congressional terms (two years each) of Reagan’s presidency, Republicans controlled the Senate, and Democrats the House. Democrats retook the Senate in 1987.
Democrats controlled both houses until the Gingrich revolution of 1994, which flipped both houses to the Republicans from 1995.
Republicans mostly retained control of both houses until the end of the G.W. Bush presidency. (The Senate changed hands a few times during the 107th Congress, their first term under Bush Jr.)
Since then, Democrats held both houses in their first term under Barack Obama, the Republicans took the House for their second and third terms, and added the Senate in the final Congress of Obama’s second term.
Halfway Trump’s first term, the House flipped back to the Democrats, and at the end of his term, the Senate flipped back, too. Halfway Joe Biden’s term, the House flipped Republican again, and the Senate followed at the end of his term.
In no case in recent history, whether the president was Democratic or Republican, whether both houses or just one house was controlled by Democrats, did the US enter a spiral of socialist collapse.
Advantage Democrats
Published economic research suggests that control of the houses of Congress has a mixed and fairly minor impact on America’s economic performance. Control of the presidency has far more impact. And that difference favours Democratic presidents.
I don’t read too much into that; I think the effects of many policies emerge only several years down the line, America’s strong private-sector economy is resilient and adaptable in general, and the Democrats probably had better luck of the draw with respect to business cycles, interest rates, oil crises and international trade conditions.
That said, I support smaller government, lower and flatter taxes, less industrial policy, less government spending, balanced budgets, sustainable public debt levels, freer trade, and a much-reduced regulatory burden. All of that is routinely part of the Republican Party platform.
On social and cultural issues, a classical liberal would be more inclined to side with Democratic Party candidates. Short of the authoritarian identity politics of the far left, US Democrats largely support individual freedom and keeping government out of what ought to be private choices about personal, moral or religious matters.
Since I place more weight on economic policy than on social policy as a rule (I have always felt that political and individual freedom flow naturally from economic freedom, while the reverse is not always true), I am biased towards Republican candidates in US politics, all else being equal.
All else is not always equal, however.
Big talk, big spending
So far, the view that Americans ought to prefer Republican candidates in the coming election over their Democratic counterparts, which our viral commentators recommended, is supported, albeit weakly.
The problem is that Republicans talk a good line on small-government economics and free markets, but never deliver. Donald Trump in particular has violated just about every economically conservative plank in the stock GOP platform.
Trump’s record contradicts the Republican Party’s rhetoric on almost every measure.
In his first term, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed without matching spending restraint. He signed the 2018 and 2019 budget deals that lifted the statutory spending caps. The deficit grew from about $585 billion in FY2016 to nearly $1 trillion in FY2019, before the pandemic. He imposed Section 232 steel and aluminium tariffs and Section 301 tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports, and handed out $28 billion to farmers to make up for losses from his trade war with China. Public debt rose by $7.8 trillion over the term (though, to be fair, the pandemic accounts for much of that).
The second term went further. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $3.4 trillion to federal deficits from 2025 to 2034, and later raised that to $4.7 trillion through 2035. Despite the DOGE cuts, spending in FY2026 rose from $7.0 trillion to $7.4 trillion. The deficit totalled $2.0 trillion, $218 billion higher than in FY2025
“We’re on track to surpass $2 trillion in borrowing this fiscal year despite not being in a recession. That is not normal,” Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in a statement. “Incredibly, such an enormous level of borrowing barely scratches the surface of our fiscal deterioration. We are about to hit the sobering milestone of $40 trillion in gross national debt, and things are only likely to get worse.”
Protectionism and actual socialism
On trade, the “reciprocal” tariffs pushed rates to levels described as the highest since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which ushered in the Great Depression.
After the Supreme Court ruled that Trump did not have the authority to impose many of the original tariffs, used other laws to reimpose as many duties as he could, many with no statutory expiration date. A second farm bailout followed, of $12 billion.
The state also took ownership in private companies. The administration converted $11.1 billion in CHIPS Act funding into a 10% stake in Intel, took stakes in MP Materials, Lithium Americas and Trilogy Metals, and acquired a “golden share” in U.S. Steel giving Washington veto authority over key corporate decisions. That golden share was used when the Commerce Secretary pressed the company to keep an Illinois plant running. The total now amounts to roughly $26.7 billion across 30 equity or quasi-equity deals.
Republican congressman Thomas Massie posted: “Republicans decrying communist involvement in the Democrat party just looked the other way when this administration nationalised ownership of these private companies.”
The state owning the means of production is the very definition of socialism.
Friends and foes
Trump has treated democratic allies not as economic partners, but as rivals to coerce. Authoritarian strongmen, on the other hand, he saw as partners to court. Against Venezuela and Iran, he has acted forcefully (albeit with even a concept of an outline of a plan, in the latter case), but his pattern with Russia, China and North Korea has been more than a little accommodating.
Most egregiously, he has accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia, and did a deal with Russia to buy diesel in return for ordering Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, to halt attacks on Russian infrastructure that supports its illegal war of conquest.
The purpose of this deal is to have something positive to say about fuel prices in advance of the mid-term elections. His predecessor, Joe Biden, whom Trump has falsely blamed for economic hardship, left the fuel price at $2 a gallon. It recently peaked at $3.70 a gallon and is still selling at well over $3, thanks to an ill-conceived war on Iran that achieved little other than handing Iran an iron grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
This venal betrayal of Ukraine, which is all that stands between Russian imperial ambitions and NATO, should be enough reason on its own to impeach Trump (and boy, are there many reasons to do so).
The painful irony is that it probably won’t even work. Fuel prices, like food prices, and healthcare prices, will still be unacceptably high to ordinary Americans by the time the election rolls around in early November.
Most corrupt administration ever
The Trump administration is the most corrupt ever. He doesn’t even hide it. His family benefits massively from government contracts, and Trump himself made over $2 billion in just the first year of his second term.
He’s even gone as far as selling prioritised access to Trump’s post on the Trump-owned Truth Social platform, which would allow subscribers to make trades on insider information not available to the general public.
From selling Trump Bibles, to selling pardons for donations, to accepting aeroplanes from terrorist-supporting autocracies, to handing lucrative government contracts to relatives, to suing companies to extort concessions, to suing his own government in his personal capacity, to gutting the investigatory agencies that exist to prevent executive branch corruption, to securing himself and his family immunity from prosecution no matter how greedy they get, Jacob Zuma has nothing on this guy.
Moral depravity
Donald Trump has coarsened public discourse, and taught his base of supporters that that cruelty, lying, grifting, indecency and even outright crimes carry no political cost.
He routinely insults his political opponents. He calls them “vermin”. He publicly ridicules people over disabilities or other misfortunes. He calls African nations “shithole countries”. He is an outright racist, depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes and warning that immigrants “poison the blood” of the country.
Just the other day, he posted a video of a man being mauled to death by a tiger, despite the family’s pleas not to distribute the disturbing footage. Trump followed it up with an AI video of himself wrestling and beating the tiger. How morally bankrupt do you have to be to exploit video of a gruesome death for personal aggrandisement and political gain?
Trump’s sense of humour is limited to gratuitous cruelty. He is a despicable bully, and expects everyone in his orbit to be loyal not to the constitution, but to him personally. He is “honoured” by demonstrative obsequiousness.
The administration’s approach to suspected illegal immigrants violates every norm of civilised conduct. In the US of 2026, anyone with a dark complexion – citizen, legal visitor, or otherwise – can expect at any moment to be accosted by masked, armed men in civilian clothes, without any identifying marks or body cameras, in a scenario no South African would be able to distinguish from a carjacking or an armed robbery. And when they try to escape, they get shot for resisting lawful arrest.
When a mentally ill, drug-addicted Nick Reiner murdered his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, three former presidents expressed their condolences. Trump mocked them, saying they died “reportedly due to the anger he [Rob Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome”. What sort of heartless, deranged ghoul says something like that?
Trump’s defence secretary announced that the US will soon rejoin the very select group of countries (limited to Iran and Afghanistan, and maybe North Korea and Yemen), to hold public executions, when he said a convict’s execution by firing squad would be live-streamed in December. The latest news is that in a rare capitulation to domestic and global outrage, Trump has called the live-stream off (though the firing-squad execution will go ahead). That the idea was even floated, however, is proof of the barbarism at the heart of this administration.
Flagrant disregard
It is abundantly clear that whatever America is under Donald Trump, the word “great” does not apply.
The biggest error in the 2006 documentary film Idiocracy was to set it 500 years in the future. It came true in only 20 years.
The moral fabric of American society is being ripped apart. Its allies do not trust it. Its enemies gleefully watch its self-immolation. At home, the president gives political and often legal cover to assorted racists, fascists, frauds and insurrectionists. Abroad, he hobnobs with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. He projects malevolence, and normalises grift and graft.
And none of this flagrant disregard for every principle of Western civilisation, Enlightenment values and liberal democracy buys what Trump promised he’d deliver: liberation from the corrupt establishment swamp and a revitalised economy based on honesty, small government, free markets and a revival of American industry.
So, one can’t even argue that these terrible costs at least buy something positive.
Must be stopped
This is a president that must be stopped. It is an administration that must be held accountable. And the only way to do that is to deliver the US House and Senate into the hands of the opposition.
The Republican Party needs to have a long, hard think about how it allowed itself to be taken over by a depraved, narcissistic and corrupt megalomaniac, who has done more advance socialism and protectionism than anyone since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has done more to discredit free market capitalism since Richard Nixon, has mired America in yet another quagmire of a war, and has lost all respect for human values and even human life.
It needs to do some introspection how it allowed religious fundamentalists, xenophobes, racists, homophobes and authoritarian bullies to gain control of the party machinery.
The Grand Old Party used to be a big tent that united economic libertarians, religious conservatives, and foreign policy hawks. It has betrayed all three by electing a corrupt, profligate and incompetent grifter, an immoral sexual predator and convicted felon, and a commander-in-chief who thinks he’s Rambo.
It deserves to be out of power for a long, long time, while it works to return the party to the values embodied by great Republicans like Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, and Ronald Reagan.
Make America great again
In the meantime, Democrats are not that scary, for the most part. Granted, they’re all politicians, and all politicians are to be distrusted. Sure, a few among them are woke neo-Marxists and radical socialists.
But once they’re in power, they generally govern as a fairly responsible centre-left party, and the American economy generally performs anywhere between adequately and extremely well while they’re in charge.
Most importantly, however, they can begin the process of holding Trump and his cronies responsible for the myriad offenses they have committed while in office.
They can begin the process of putting a damper on the hate, cruelty, division and discrimination that the MAGA movement has unleashed.
They can begin to mend relations with allied liberal democracies, and get a better handle on the true dangers to world peace. They can restore America’s place as leader of the free world. They can resume its role as a superpower that is not always, but most of the time, a force for good in the world.
They can begin to do what Trump and his followers will never do, and that is to make America great again.
[Image: No Kings.webp]
[Caption: A large crowd gathers in a No Kings protest against Donald Trump in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 18 October 2025. (Photo: Chad Davis. CC BY-SA 4.0)]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend