FNC’s Hilton: Future of the GOP Is ‘Positive Populism’

On Sunday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “The Next Revolution,” host Steve Hilton urged Republicans to embrace what he called “positive populism,” which he argued would carry the day when contrasted to Biden administration’s policies.

Hilton argued the left and the Democratic Party were more focused on the message and not the anticipated outcome.

Transcript as follows:

HILTON: Put yourselves in the shoes for a moment of Joe Biden, well, perhaps not shoes, slippers, maybe. When you were 22 years old, you told the woman who would become your first wife that you would be President when you might have family in response to that obvious question, President of what? You clarified, President of the United States.

So you’ve been thinking about this for a long time, like a really long time, more than 55 years. In your mind’s eye back in the mid-1960s, you pictured those early moves in the Oval Office, on the first day, making sure biological men could play girl sports, tear down this wall you had proclaimed, no, not that Iron Curtain in Berlin, but the one protecting America’s southern border, even though you once supported it.

Making sure Federal employees can be indoctrinated with racist, Critical Race Theory.

And then on to the really big issues. If you follow the President, who had increased economic opportunity for blue-collar Americans, that’s no good, it must be destroyed. Force every small business everywhere to pay the same minimum wage, even if that cost millions of jobs, open the borders immediately to low wage economic migration, so even more jobs are lost and America goes back to the years of wage stagnation, especially for black and Latino workers.

If you followed the President who would achieve near energy independence, and lower carbon emissions, you can’t have that, kill domestic energy projects and the jobs that go with them, block fracking, even though it’s the main reason America’s carbon emissions have fallen. Who needs energy security, when you’ve got John Kerry on a private jet?

And if you followed the President who finally put America first and confronted China for the first time in 50 years, well, that’s got to be stopped, obviously. So it’s back to the Iran deal, sucking up to Xi Jinping, snubbing Israel, losing respect on the world stage. Somehow, I don’t think any of that is what the 22-year-old Biden was thinking about doing. But is there anything the young Joe Biden or even the middle-aged Joe Biden, ever thought about doing that President Biden is now actually doing?

You can say, well, the issues have changed and so the policies change, but what kind of 22-year-old announces he is going to be President in the first place? The kind of person who actually doesn’t care about what he does? Biden is not in politics to do something, he just wants to be something.

And so the young Joe Biden set about being President, local council, Senate, three presidential campaigns, a lifetime as a machine politician, and that is the central point about him, and the gang of charlatans around him.

As we told you before the election, Biden, Harris, they are machine politicians. They don’t believe in anything except their own personal advancements. So they will say anything, do anything in response to political pressure.

And right now, all the pressure in the Democratic Party comes from two places, the woke left and the government unions. That’s why we’re subjected to all the nonstop infantile wittering about historic this and historic that. Who cares whether the Treasury Secretary is totally corrupted on a key policy question? She’s a woman. Historic.

That’s why we have the total disgrace of America’s schools being shut. Who cares if science, data, facts from around the world show that schools can safely open? Who cares if children and families are suffering? The teacher unions are our donors, they must be obeyed.

Unlike principled progressives like Bernie and AOC, the Biden-Harris gang aren’t really interested in substance, the real-world impact of what they do. They care about the message they’re sending, not the lives they’re affecting.

And that is part one of the huge political opportunity for the Republican Party right now. Relentlessly, remorselessly highlight the real-world effect of Biden’s bosses, the woke left and government unions on real Americans.

But part two is vital as well. The media is trying to make out the GOP is divided. They want a Republican Civil War. Why give them the satisfaction on ideas, policy and substance? The Republican Party is united behind the new conservative populism pioneered by President Trump.

It was an intellectual revolution as deep and lasting as the Conservative Revolution led by Goldwater, Buckley and Reagan over half a century ago.

In economic policy, pro-business on tax and regulation, pro-worker on trade and immigration. In foreign policy, America First, China confronted, endless wars ended and it worked. Peace deals in the Middle East that long evaded Trump’s predecessors.

Poverty down, inequality down, wage growth for the lowest-paid, higher than for the rich throughout the Trump years. Record numbers in work, the lowest black and Hispanic unemployment rates in history.

The border protected, trade deals renegotiated.

Trump’s conservative populism worked in political terms, too. Republicans won the highest share of the non-white vote for 60 years, turning the GOP into a multiracial working-class coalition. Gains in the House, gains at the State level, vital for the next round of redistricting.

Who really thinks we should go back to the establishment economics, endless wars and sucking up to China? Certainly not Republican voters. They are overwhelmingly for Trump’s new conservative populism.

This is the future for the GOP, positive and optimistic. As we say at the start of every show, positive populism: pro-worker, pro-family, pro-community, pro-America.

So build on Trump’s foundations, then add new elements to add more people to the coalition. On the big issues that animate younger voters, show that we have the solutions not the left; on race, it is decades of Democrat policies and Democratic leaders that inflicted poverty, inequality and injustice on black Americans. And it is conservative ideas, like school choice that can turn things around.

On climate, it’s not that Democrats’ empty gestures and destructive ideological zealotry that will make progress, but conservative ideas, harnessing the power of markets and innovation. Matt Gaetz is here to talk about that later tonight.

We should also build on Trump’s foundations with conservative ideas to solve big, long-term problems, like the collapse in family formation and family stability, and the growth of unaccountable centralized government power. More on that tonight, too.

But it’s not just about policy. The GOP needs to fight for democracy itself, to fight the Democrats, Nancy-meandering, their brazen attempts to rig election rules for partisan gain, less ballot integrity, more ballot harvesting. The GOP must unite to stop it. And perhaps, above all, to win back the House, the Senate and the White House, Republicans need Trump’s fighting spirit, standing up for the decent working-class Americans, failed and dismissed by condescending elites.

Standing up for freedom of speech, even freedom of thought against the menacing onslaught of woke supremacy. Put all of that together and it’s a winning combination, ideas and attitude that the vast majority of Republicans can enthusiastically get behind.

That is the future of the GOP: positive populism.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor