Consider it the “Common Sense/Common Ground Manifesto.”
Longtime Democrat hedge fund manager and philanthropist Bill Ackman recently explained, in a 33-point post on X, why he’s breaking precedent and supporting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – as are growing numbers of other current and former Democrats.
And while his post is a scathing indictment of the Biden-Harris record – which he calls “the actions and policies that unfortunately our most aggressive adversaries would likely implement if they wanted to destroy America from within, and had the ability to take control of our leadership” – it’s also just simple common sense for anyone who sincerely loves this country.
It’s also good business sense, he argues, noting, “I am an investor who manages funds that own some of the best, principally American, businesses in the world. In a better governed and managed America, these business[es] will do better and increase in value faster.
“Because I strongly believe that a Trump administration will be better for the country and the world than a Harris administration, I think it is important to share my thinking to the extent it helps others come to the right conclusion.”
Even more importantly, by all rights, his list should also act as a boundary survey of what we used to think of as common ground. But alas, it’s hard to find common ground when the political landscape has shifted so tectonically to the far left.
Bizarrely, Ackman’s fair-minded, spot-on observations on the Biden-Harris administration’s abject failures, such as the following, are disparaged as “far right” thinking (much like the Constitution):
- open borders
- massive increases in spending “without regard to their impact on inflation and the consequences for low-income Americans and the increase in our deficit and national debt”
- the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, “abandoning our local partners and the civilians who worked alongside us in an unprepared, overnight withdrawal that led to American casualties and destroyed the lives of Afghani women and girls for generations, against the strong advice of our military leadership, and thereafter not showing appropriate respect for their loss at a memorial ceremony in their honor”
- mass release of violent criminals without bail
- legalizing shoplifting under fairly high thresholds
- sharply limiting U.S. energy production
- promoting “DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed”
- indoctrinating the youngest of schoolchildren into believing gender is fluid, “something to be chosen by a child”
- encouraging and celebrating “massive protests and riots” and “anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning” by leftists
- shutting down “free speech in media and on social media platforms that is inconsistent with government policies and objectives”
- using the justice system in an “attempt to jail, take off the campaign trail, and/or massively fine candidates for the presidency”
- defunding the police and promoting anti-police rhetoric
- seeking to ban gas-powered cars and stoves
- endeavoring to “lie to the American people about the cognitive health of the president and accuse those who provide video evidence of his decline of sharing doctored videos and being right wing conspirators”
- failing “to provide adequate Secret Service protection for alternative presidential candidates”
- actually trying to criminalize requiring proof of identity and citizenship to vote
In today’s tempest of blind partisanship, here is the eye of the hurricane – a list of 33 policy points all Americans could, and should, agree on. Surely they would’ve been shrugged at as common sense no-brainers 15 years ago.
Sadly, not today.
“Bill,” retired Gen. Mike Flynn wrote under Ackman’s post, “I am a former democrat and now a registered Republican but my views haven’t changed that much. The Democrat party changed significantly – lost me almost a decade ago for a number of reasons. …
“The most important line I took away [from Ackman’s post] is: ‘I have always believed that the best way to get to the truth is to hear the best arguments on all sides of an issue.’ This is what we need all Americans to do and then make their decision for POTUS based on finding that truth. So important.”
Common sense.
Even if it isn’t common ground anymore.
