Let’s look at Evan McMullin’s priorities if elected:
1. Strengthen our democracy and stand up to extremist - This included a few specific items. These are as follows:
a. Ensuring voting rights for all eligible Americans
b. Ending partisan gerrymandering, and other election corruption
c. Toughen transparency and ethics laws
d. Reducing the influence of money in politics
e. Uniting Americans on common ground.
Ensuring voting rights is (on its face) a sentiment that most people would obviously agree with. However, given the current election conspiratorial beliefs of the Trumpists in the GOP, this is likely a position that may be viewed with suspicion by those pseudo-conservatives. I cannot fault this position. If an individual meets the requirements of citizenship and legality to vote, government has the responsibility to make voting accessible.
Ending partisan gerrymandering is wishful thinking. Defining voting boundaries is a state’s right, and this right benefits Republicans in red states as much as it benefits Democrats in blue states. Would stiffer rules be a good thing? Sure. However, he will be hard pressed to win a vote on this issue. The other portion of the second item is vaguely defined, and I assume it is up to individual voter interpretation. Yes, ending election corruption is ideal.
Toughening ethics and transparency rules (especially with members of Congress) should be pursued. From the 1/6 committee hearings, it has been revealed that a gaggle of Senators and Representatives requested pardons for their participation in Trump’s post-2020 election strategy. This could be a sign that there are not clear boundaries for elected officials on things they can and cannot do within the bounds of propriety. Ideally, we would elect individuals that have internal ethical compasses – but in post-Clinton and post-Trump America, we cannot rely on this.
Democrats would likely support controls on money in politics more than McConnell’s GOP Senate, but this is something I would have to say I support. It is good centrist policy, policy that John McCain and Mitch McConnell parted ways over many years ago.
Uniting Americans on common ground is flowery language without substance. How will you accomplish this Mr McMullin?
2. Lower health care costs – The McMullin campaign are fans of bullet points. On this subject, there are six items
a. Negotiating lower drug prices
b. Promoting competition in the prescription drug market
c. Improving patient choice in insurance and care providers
d. Requiring hospital price and quality transparency
e. Cutting administrative waste
f. Expanding telemedicine
His healthcare priorities seem to be a smorgasbord of ideas from the right and the left that have been offered in the past. Of these suggestions, negotiating lower drug costs and promoting competition in the drug market are two popular items. However, both items are difficult to accomplish without stifling innovation. If drug innovators are not allowed just profits for the pricy R&D they put into new drugs, how can we expect the medical innovations of the last century to continue? These two items are a tough quandary to solve. I hope he would support capitalistic models to accomplish this, but time would likely tell.
There is not really a clear view on how he would improve choice in insurance options. Some would argue that ACA has accomplished that feat, but those same people would need accept the fact that the cost has been very high to try and do so with the Obamacare model. Health insurance across state lines or other forms of health care cost sharing might be more innovative, but the website doesn’t expound on these ideas.
It is my understanding that a recent bipartisan law that has come into effect has already accomplished much of the goal of hospital price and quality transparency. I’m sure improvements can be made, but this new change is a leap forward.
Cutting administrative waste sounds good, but again no real substantive explanations of how he would accomplish it and he is not clear on where the waste is coming from – hospitals and doctors, or the government?
Not sure how I feel on whether telemedicine is as helpful as the McMullin campaign believes. I cannot believe that it accomplishes qualify healthcare better than an office visit and it seems like it is more of a band aid to make healthcare seem more efficient.
3. Reduce Reckless Government Spending and Inflation – 5 more bullet points:
a. Finding consensus solutions to overcome the pandemic
b. Supporting Americans return to work
c. Encouraging the return of critical manufacturing to America
d. Passing balanced budget legislation
e. Avoiding unnecessary wars.
To start, the McMullin campaign started with a blurb that the national debt tripling since 2010 to 30 trillion. Clearly a not too subtle jab at one of Lee’s core appeals to conservative Utah voters – mildly amusing.
Finding consensus solutions to overcome the pandemic seems like a priority that may have outlived its relevance. It seems that the consensus has been achieved organically, Americans will live with the virus in all its ever-changing forms. However, I suppose the campaign could mean establishing consistent plans for future pandemic control we could do better on establishing laws that require states to follow CDC and NIH guidance with less politics?
The idea of supporting American’s returning to work sounds great. I would love more details on how he plans to achieve this goal. This was one of the strong suits of Bernie Sanders’ campaigns – very clear details on how he would run an administration. This sounds great, but what will he do about it?
Encouraging the return of manufacturing has been a long-time goal of politicians on the left and the right. Again, it would be wonderful if there was clearer information on how he hopes to accomplish the goal.
He would support balanced budget legislation. This is something I think the right still generally supports. One of the main arguments against it, is that it would prevent the government from using spending as an anti-recession tool and that the government could not intervene in markets unless the budget balanced. Personally, I am not sure market intercessions by the federal government have really been wise. All of us experiencing the pains of inflation are enduring a side effect of the stimuluses of 2020 and 2021. Pumping 900 billion dollars (payments to individuals alone) into the money supply has economic consequences.
Avoiding unnecessary wars. I think this priority may have been written pre-Ukraine war. McMullin seems to have a lot of issues with Putin, and I wonder if this priority holds water if things heat up on that front. War with Russia would be horrible. Putin has tried to play the mad man for years regarding his nukes, and calling his bluff is not something I hope we try. However, if there has been any worthy causes for the US to go to war over the past 50 years (save for the initial invasion of Afghanistan) the invasion of Ukraine may actually be one of those worthy causes.
4. Protect Our Air and Water. There are 5 more bullet points here, but I am only going to comment on one.
a. Improving western forest management
b. Developing water conservation practices and infrastructure
c. Investing in innovations that decrease harmful emissions
d. Encouraging job-friendly conservation in industry
e. Strengthening diversified economic development in rural areas
All these items sound good and important, but only one item is critical. Improving western forest management is needed to reduce the wildfires that seem to plague the mountain west every year. Increasing spending on solar and (dare I say it) nuclear energy would be solid investments in clean energy (yes, nuclear energy can be a great source of clean power). Finally, diversified economic development in rural areas and business friendly conservation sound good (but not a lot in the details).
The critical item is water conservation. This is my third or fourth straight year where we have gone several months without a good rainstorm (even a hard short cloud burst) in St. George. Yet, there is not one single water restriction in place (that I know of). Golf courses and lawns are all still green. Jon Oliver put out an arguably fair (but extremely offensive) critique of the situation a few weeks ago. He targeted Utah, and he has a point. The Colorado River Compact needs to be fixed to accurately handle water usage, and states need to take action to deal with water shortages. How Mr. McMullin will affect change on this front is another question.
5. Keep America Safe. Last 5 bullet points
a. Modernizing and reforming the military
b. Strengthening alliances with other free nations
c. Protecting funding for police funding, accountability, and safety
d. Countering violent extremism
e. Securing borders and treating immigrants humanely
f. Improving digital safety for children
The first bullet does strike an important chord. China has surpassed the US in the size of its Navy, and it may be surpassing the US in some of our technological superiority as well. It has been most of a century since there has been a major war between large powers, and there is more saber rattling every year between NATO bloc countries, Russia, and between Pacific Asian nations. The US and, now that our NATO seem to be awaking to Russian dangers, our allies need to make sure the military edge is held by liberal democracies and not the autocratic nations who seem to grow more confrontational each year.
Trump made a lot of problematic moves in relation to allies during his tenure. However, the largest gripe of his may be remedying itself due to Putin’s Ukrainian aggression. Strengthening our alliances with NATO in Europe and Japan, South Korea, and other free nations in Asia is crucial. Russia and China have been seemingly flexing martial muscle, a weak alliance between the NATO alliance is a weaker deterrent to keep China from following Russia’s lead in its desire to annex Taiwan.
The police bullet point is oddly phrased. You could read it as a call to protect police funding, or as a call to devote funding to increase police accountability. Meant to appeal to voters on both sides of the political spectrum. I think it leans more towards protecting police funding, but it also may call for some desired reforms to help reduce shootings.
Countering violent extremism is a large grab bag of things that can be included. In the first part of the century thus far, we would have mainly considered Islamic extremism. Post-Trump era, I think most would agree we should include political extremism of all kinds. Pre-January 6th right wingers would point to BLM/ANTIFA protesters as the real political extremist problem in America now. Sure, it can be granted that the instances of arson and vandalism were damaging to the cities where they occurred. Post-insurrection, I would have to say the BLM protests don’t hold a candle to damage that January 6th did. That extremism had the potential to end free and fair elections as we know them forever, and it did become the poster event for autocrats for how liberal democracies are failing. All violent extremism needs to be countered, but we need to be vigilant of the kind of extremism that seeks to overthrow the constitution.
On some level, I would say the 4th bullet point is a good contrast (as well as can be with short bullet points) to Mike Lee’s view of immigration. Securing the border is a good thing, but so are reasonable immigration statutes. I could almost have supported a wall, if the wall was coupled with simplified immigration procedures – immigration that doesn’t cost a fortune and exclude the poorest and most needy. The worst part about excessively harsh immigration is that is leaves the poorest at the mercy of exploitive profiteers who often lead them to their death (as we saw in San Antonio a few weeks ago).
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