Reprogressive — A Hostile Takeover Of The Republican Party For and By Progressives

Adrian Alvarez
5 min readJun 26, 2021

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Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

Theodore Roosevelt was a “progressive” and a “Republican”. The two labels could not be more anathema to each other these days but the reality is that they are not mutually exclusive, and one of Mount Rushmore’s presidents proves it. Teddy created the National Parks system. He was an avid outdoorsman and wanted to conserve the planet and its resources. He was a trust buster, breaking up huge monopolies and corporations of his day. Why can’t we have that again? How many people, when you ask them, tell you that they are “fiscally conservative, but socially liberal”? Growing up in Miami, the majority of my peer group would fall into that category and I suspect many millions more around the country would as well. Yet, there is no political option for them at the moment because the Republicans are still enamored with Trump, who gives the corrupt media establishment enough rope to hang him every time in the woke public square. But that obsession just allows the other side to look past all the issues on their own team because they hate him so much. We need to give people options again. We need a viable party to counter the Democrats, who only won because Trump was so unpopular, and yet Trump still managed to get 10 Million more votes in 2020 than in 2016.

Why Not A Third Party?

In the U.S., because of the rules of our government, our society has organized itself around two viable political parties, both of whom should purportedly represent about half the country. Unlike a parliamentary system, ours naturally produces two parties that dominate, be it the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, The Democrats and the Whigs, or the Democrats and the Republicans, it’s always come down to two. The problem today is that neither of the parties represent half. And the only reason Trump won was that there were enough people, so exhausted by the system, so run down by it, so reticent to trust it, that they put the entire country in the hands of someone new just to see how it goes and “own the libs.” That’s not productive. However it does show that one of the parties is ripe for a hostile takeover, for a new direction that actually tries to capture more people, and one that represents values that the majority actually believes in as opposed to continuing to fight the fights of 50 years ago. If you’re going to gain power, you need to control one or more of the parties. Right now, both parties are controlled by mega corporations or entities, either the oil and religious right on the Republican side, or the Amazons, Blackrocks, and Googles on the other side. We need to take one of these back for the people, so why not try on the one that just showed it could be taken over by a charlatan?

The Plan

If you are a progressive, change your party affiliation to Republican, wherever you live. Tell all of your friends, tell anyone that is anti-woke but also isn’t a racist, anyone that believes in science and climate change but also in Jesus (or at least doesn’t hate people that do). Then encourage people to run for office that reflect YOUR values as Republicans. Espouse these views, get support, especially in small towns and districts, and we can build the movement from the ground up. Trump hijacked it once. If someone competent tried, we could do it again. And if it was someone that was actually awesome for the country and saves us from impending climate disasters, all the better.

The Platform

We believe in Climate Change and believe that science, technology, and brilliant business men and women will be the ones to save us. We are not interested in creating new government programs that are wasteful and inefficient. We want to incentivize businesses to push towards meaningful goals towards avoiding climate catastrophes and also want to encourage innovation on a scale never before seen to solve these issues.

We are pro SMALL business, mom and pops, and will incentivize our economy to elevate those businesses while making the Amazons, Walmarts, Facebook, and Googles of the world get in line with freedom of speech and get used to being knocked down several pegs. They will release the stranglehold they have on the American people and the world, or they’ll be broken up and forced to anyway.

We are secular but not anti-religious. We respect all beliefs and strive to make this a country that respects religion and religious people once again, not shunning them or mocking their faiths.

We are not racists. But we also abhor cancel and woke culture. We are sensitive to the fact that not everyone is up to date on the latest words for certain things, and will never standby for authoritarian censorship practices, regardless of who says it. We believe in the first amendment.

We believe in creating an equal playing field not an “equitable” one. Equitable is a zero sum game. We’re in the business of creating opportunities for anyone, ANYONE, to succeed and create a great life for themselves while providing value to society as a whole. That’s why we believe in capitalism, centered on humanity and small businesses. We should be empowering as many of our fellow Americans with the opportunities to contribute meaningfully and creatively to our societies. But we don’t believe in creating more bulky and wasteful government programs to do so. Instead, we believe in a government that is nimble but strategic. That uses its immense power to regulate business to encourage small business ownership and entrepreneurship, and to unleash the creativity within every American.

We believe in order to have a country, you need to know who is in it and who is coming and going. At the same time, people that come here to contribute should be able to. But at its core, immigration is an agricultural issue that must be dealt with by reforming our entire agrarian system and updating it to the 21st century. Why should humans labor and suffer in toil when the technology exists to harvest and create food in abundance today. Those farming jobs are the only reason some come. But automating away jobs should also come with the promise that those who were doing the jobs previously are given ample opportunities to sustain themselves after the fact. That is what we strive for with our economy. Anyone that wants to open up a business should be able to with little to no effort, to encourage people to create and fulfill their passions, share them with the world, and then pay a little tax on them to help pay it forward.

The Republican Progressive party can happen if we make it happen. If you’re interested in joining this movement, comment below, share this link, and let’s get this thing moving. Let’s move the Overton window enough to save the country. Thank you!

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