hear what we’re for, not what we’re against, and that we are focused on fixing the problems they face every day and making their lives better.” Goeas then took a number of questions from the crowd in attendance, including if he thought President Biden’s proposed tax plan will erode some of his support among more centrist and independent voters. “I think we have two major problems coming out of the Trump Administration,” he observed. “One is that because of the way he handled the pandemic, we lost something that we, as a party, had been living on ever since Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan wasn’t about having no government. He was about having a leaner, more efficient, more effective government. It was about how we can make government do a better job. “The other problem is that Trump spent money like a drunken sailor – something we used to say about
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the Democrats. So he took away not only the image that we manage government better, but he also took away our ability to bring the money part of it into the equation – in terms of spending it on the right things and spending it effectively. That is going to make our tax argument that much tougher.” Finally, Goeas was asked about Trump’s “America First” primary candidates for Congress and their likelihood of success at the ballot box next spring and summer given that their strategy seems to neglect civil political discourse and instead prioritizes aggressive and inflammatory rhetoric. “I worked with Michelle Bachmann and her presidential campaign,” he stated. “I had no relationship with her before then and I was just astounded with the conversations I had with her early on, by how smart she was. But what I later found out was that she had learned all
RIPON FORUM July 2021
the wrong lessons in her congressional years of how to act out there and she didn’t check facts. She said whatever she felt in her gut was the right thing to be saying to get attention. She had built her whole Washington presence on Fox News where she was never contested. You always have to look at these guys and say ‘In a different arena, how are they going to do?’ “I think if they end up being a bunch of candidates that feed on each other, trying to come out on top the way that Trump did, I think they’re just going to cannibalize each other and be in deep trouble. The only one that seems to be moving more in the right direction is the Governor of Florida. He seems to have softened his rhetoric and softened his anger that he showed in the early days. Maybe he’s got it, but I would say he seems to be the only one showing any signs of kind of tracking in the right direction.” RF
