Where’s the Beef?

Way back in 1984 the fast-food chain Wendy’s had a very successful commercial starring two women asking another fast-food chain “Where’s the beef?” when they couldn’t find any meet in their hamburger.

I am reminded of that plea for some substance when I look at the Democrat party’s flailing attempts to thwart the actions of President Trump and his minions.

The political party whose recent campaign for President seemed to consist of the message “we’re not him” and “he’ll ruin this country”, seems to be mired in the same quicksand now they are the minority party. As an aside, you can see previous editorials of mine which should tell anyone that my leanings are decidedly conservative, but I have been and am deeply concerned about where this country is headed. Having said that, I do think it is way past time for someone to address the issue of the massive debt we have incurred and are continuing to incur. It is tempting to blame any of a number of factors, parties, and individuals for how we arrived at this point, but that is pointless. The question facing us is not “how did we get here”, rather it is “how do we fix this?”

I think that anyone other than the most diehard republican, can see that the chainsaw approach taken by Mr. Musk, with the enthusiastic endorsement of Mr. Trump, has a very real risk of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. Such an approach as cutting jobs, programs, and even departments without careful study has too many risks in too many areas.

Having said that, when I look at the opposition’s response to this approach, all I see is a repeat of the recent political campaign. I see any number of elected officials of the party saying a variation of the theme of “this is terrible, this is disrupting lives, this is destroying valuable programs, etc.”. And while that is blatantly true, I am missing finding any alternative approach to solving our debt crisis. The democrats are merely repeating the theme of last year of “we’re not him” without any “beef” that I can see. Where are the plans to undertake this gigantic task of reining in our careless and rampant spending? Where is the “beef” that says that this is specifically what we will do to address this crisis without the senseless chainsaw?

The democrats seem to be counting on the midterm elections in 2026 to return them to some measure of power. It appears to me that they are banking of there being so many negative effects of tariffs and government shutdowns that people will turn to them because there is such discontent and no alternative. I would suggest that they take a page from Newt Gingrich in the midterm election of 1994 when he came up with his “Contract with America” (Contract with America – Wikipedia) in which he specifically said what the republican party would do if they became the majority party in the congress for the first time in 40 years. The result of this strategy saw the 1994 mid-term elections result in Republicans gaining 54 House and 8 Senate seats, flipping both