For decades, Washington acted like they knew better than the American people. Politicians and unelected bureaucrats took voters’ hard-earned money and used it to crush American businesses, keep American workers from moving up, and hinder American families from living their own lives. The perspectives of those outside the Beltway bubble were cast aside and ignored by those elected to represent them.
But over the last four years, Republicans flipped the script.
We delivered historic tax reform allowing middle-class Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money. We repealed cumbersome regulations and saw businesses flourish. We passed comprehensive reforms to a justice system which spent more time and money creating new criminals than actually protecting our communities. We empowered American scientists to deliver a vaccine to combat the most dangerous virus in modern memory in record time.
We understand people, not politicians, should be in control of their money, their work, and their lives. With this message, we have an opportunity to grow our party to new heights.
The American people seized this opportunity with both hands. For the first time in our nation’s history, there were more jobs available than there were workers to fill them.
Businesses of all sizes grew in both number of employees and cash flow. Companies which fled overseas during the Obama years brought jobs and billions of dollars back home. Unemployment reached historic lows across the board, including among women and people of color. Working Americans saw their wages and benefits go up for the first time in decades.
We embraced entrepreneurship, freedom, and economic prosperity.
This is a vision of America which voters of all backgrounds can get behind, an attractive alternative to the increasingly radical, government-controlled vision of the Democratic Party.
We understand people, not politicians, should be in control of their money, their work, and their lives. With this message, we have an opportunity to grow our party to new heights.
We also must renew our focus on the American people and not one person, but on all Americans who feel left behind. Americans want to be sure they can find a good job, send their kids to a good school, keep more of their hard-earned money, and live, work and retire in the greatest, most free country in the world.
We can either cling to the personality-driven, conflict-oriented, us-vs-them tactics of the past, or we can look forward to a party based on our future.
Ideas like limiting the size of government, common sense, freedom, and entrepreneurship are principles almost any American can see the value in. Whether you’re a single mother forced to send your kids to a failing school because some bureaucrat says so, or an entrepreneur who can’t grow their business because some politician is playing games in Washington — these are real concepts Americans can rally behind, but not if they can’t see past the divisive and toxic rhetoric attached to them.
We sit at a crossroads: one that could determine not only the future of the Republican Party, but the future of our country. We can either cling to the personality-driven, conflict-oriented, us-vs-them tactics of the past, or we can look forward to a party based on our future.
Nancy Mace represents the 1st District of South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives.