I was having a conversation with one of my work colleagues the other day, and we were talking about the proposed tax plan.
After a brief discussion about the tax plan itself, I blurted out the following, “I don’t really care what’s in the tax plan, I just don’t want to see Trump get a win.”
As soon as I said it, I realized I sounded like John Boehner back in 2010 when he was quoted with regards to his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”
At the time, and for the next several years of Obama’s Presidency, that type of attitude really bothered me. I felt that the vast majority of Republicans had little interest in the actual merit of anything that Obama was proposing, they were just focused on making sure that his agenda went nowhere.
And so after my one-liner earlier this week, I started to worry that I was turning into someone with a similar poor attitude – someone who couldn’t think for himself, someone who got easily distracted by nonsense, someone who couldn’t keep his eye on the big picture.
The big picture of course is what’s good for America and its citizens. It’s certainly possible that the next great idea for our country and its people could come from the Republicans, and I can’t be ready to dismiss such an idea merely because it came from Trump’s party.
Now in the case of the tax plan, from what I’ve read, it does not seem like a good plan. But I should have been able to state that as the reason for my non-support, and not use my dislike of President Trump as the basis for making such a decision.
And so even though it appears as if the new tax plan will go into effect, the silver lining for me is that it has taught me to judge a proposal on its merits, and not the merits of those who have made the proposal.
After all, clearly Democrats do not have the market cornered for good ideas, and Republicans are certainly capable of coming up with an agenda that will benefit most Americans.
I hope that the two parties can work together to keep the U.S. as leader of the free world.
God Bless America!
Borden's Blather 