Lots of irony is hidden in Republican doom, gloom

Is America in decline? It certainly is, to hear the Republican presidential candidates tell it. The front-runner, Donald Trump, has built his campaign around the proposition, and his pitch is that only he can “make America great again.”

Trump’s only explicit policy proposals so far — building a wall and deporting immigrants — if carried to fruition would make America decidedly ungreat by ballooning the budget deficit and tanking the economy, not to mention the humanitarian outrages that would accompany mass deportations. Which is why they will never happen. But that’s Trump for you, selling the sizzle on a steak that isn’t there.

The others have a song and dance about national decline, too. Obamacare is job-killing tyranny. President Barack Obama’s a weak leader. Social Security is going broke; we need to act now to trim benefits. High taxes and regulations are choking the economy.

Yawn. Nobody believes this drivel except other Republicans, and a good number of them don’t buy it, either. Polls have shown, for example, that more Republicans prefer increasing spending on entitlements to cutting them. A recent Pew poll found that half of Republican respondents thought free trade agreements have hurt jobs and driven down wages.

No one on the Republican stage has taken notice of these contrapuntal sentiments within the party — no one, that is, except Trump. Which is another reason why he is killing it in polls.

He has called out the corrupting influence of big money. He has denounced bad trade deals. And he had this to say about entitlements: “All the Republicans are talking about, ‘We’re gonna cut, we’re gonna raise the age, we’re gonna do this, your Medicare, your Medicaid, your Social Security.’” His plan? “All I want to do is make us rich, save your Social Security (and) stop having everyone rip us off.”

This isn’t how Republicans talk. Hell, it’s not even how most Democrats talk.

The Establishment types of each party would do well to acquaint themselves with the state of the nation as the average American experiences it. They could start by consulting an analysis released in July, “Is the United States Still the Best Country in the World? Think Again.”

The paper, by two New York business professors, assessed how the U.S. measured up on indicators such as median wealth, poverty rates and income inequality.

The picture isn’t pretty. The U.S. is no longer the largest economy when adjustments are made for purchasing power parity. China overtook us in 2014. We rank 35th out of 157 countries in poverty rate. We are first for incarceration rates, ahead of China and the Russian Federation.

But the biggest indicator of our problems, the one that Republican candidates tend to only nod at, is that the U.S. is the fourth-worst for income inequality, behind Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

One of the ironies of this presidential campaign is that the Republican front-runner is pushing this theme. Too bad his most salient message is “Kick the immigrants!”

Voters must judge the candidates by their policy proposals. But the first test is how honestly they account for how the nation reached its sad state of affairs.