Let me paint a picture for you. America is suffering under
the weight of eight years of failed liberal policies. Government has expanded
and the people are ready for change. A liberal Democrat president is replaced
by a candidate running as a strong conservative Republican. If you were to guess
what time I’m talking about, you might guess February 2017, and you
would be right. However, you could say the same about February 1969, when the Phyllis Schlafly Report headlined with
“Patronage Is the Name of the Game.” Phyllis knew electing the right people is
only the first step to real change. The next step is to surround the right
person with a strong and competent team of staffers and advisors who turn the presidency
from a one-man crusade to an unstoppable war machine for the conservative cause.
Unfortunately,
the Democrats understood that fact too. That is why they attacked Nixon’s ability
to fill positions in the executive branch when he was first elected in 1969.
Their strategy was to confound the efforts of Republicans at every turn by
making them work in opposition to the very people tasked with carrying out
their policies. Immediately after the election, Democrats began to shout about
the supposedly unethical practice of replacing executive branch employees from
a previous administration with new ones. That practice is commonly known as
“patronage.” They said that President Nixon could not make sweeping employment
changes because appointing his “friends” to political positions would not be
fair to “more qualified” people who were not his “friends.”
However,
the Democrats failed to mention that choosing conservative replacements would
make them “more qualified” for the positions. The replacements would believe in
the conservative agenda Nixon campaigned on. The many bureaus of the executive
branch all serve a singular purpose: to enforce the law under the discretion of
the president. If a bureaucrat does not agree with the president’s agenda, they
should not want to keep the job anyway. While Democrats were quick to call foul
on Nixon for using patronage, they weren’t so eager to do so when Democrats
like Johnson, Kennedy, or Truman were doing the same thing. As Phyllis pointed
out: “The Democrats have never permitted Civil Service to impede their
political objectives.” Clearly, Democrats never consider patronage to be a
moral issue until a Republican gets in office.
The
same thing can be said of the Trump administration today. Democrats have
cleverly realized that the best way to attack President Trump is to impede his
ability to surround himself with conservative people who want to help him
achieve his conservative policy goals. When President Trump appointed Jeff
Sessions to the post of Attorney General, the Democrats would not rest until he
recused himself. Jeff Sessions was one of Phyllis Schlafly’s favorite people
because he is a man of strong principles, easily one of the most honorable men
in Washington, DC. For Democrats to attack his character shows that this is really
about attacking President Trump via his like-minded confidants.
Phyllis
Schlafly warned President Nixon in the February 1969 PS Report that he should not discount the importance of the staff
he surrounds himself with. As she recounted in the 50th anniversary
edition of A Choice, Not An Echo,
Nixon “froze out the conservatives who had nominated and elected him” when he
“appointed Henry Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller’s protégé, to be national
security advisor.” As a result, Kissinger convinced Nixon to continue the
failed foreign policy of Robert McNamara. President Trump should not make the
mistake Nixon made. He should fight against the Democrats in the Senate and
elsewhere who would hold him up from putting good people in place who want to
help him make America great again. As Phyllis Schlafly did in 1969, we should
remember the importance of patronage. It truly is the “name of the game.”
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