Opinion: Strong and Wrong – Hulk Hogan, Trump’s GOP, and Project 2025

Donald Trump’s GOP projects a message of strength and unity. With dissenting Republicans capitulated or exiled, it’s more purified than unified. But unity is being sold. In politics, unity is strength. For a large part of the electorate, Bill Clinton’s dictum that voters prefer “strong and wrong to weak and right” has never been more appropriate.

Call it the Hulk Hogan-ization of the GOP. Hogan, the former pro wrestler, gave his full-throated endorsement of Trump at the Republican National Convention. He was there to show off his biceps and project strength rather than detail Trump’s wrong-headed policy proposals.  

Democrats face two major challenges this election cycle: 1) uniting behind Vice President Kamala Harris to sustain success and write a new chapter of progressive governing, and 2) ensuring voters understand the profoundly different visions for America on the ballot. Strong and right must prevail over strong and wrong.

Campaign strategists know most voters care about the future more than the past. What else explains a nominee with two impeachments, a felony conviction for hush money payments to a porn star, and adjudication for defamation and sex abuse (which a federal judge called rape)? In normal times, this would be disqualifying. For one party, elections must only concern the future.

So what does that future look like? The next Trump Administration would not be as dysfunctional as the last. More than 140 former Trump aides have been busy since the early 2023 writing Project 2025, the country’s guiding document should Trump be elected. Produced by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 demands attention because it would fundamentally alter life in this country.

A vote for Trump, or a third-party candidate, is a vote for this plan. If you read it and like it, vote for it. But be aware that Project 2025 includes truly radical conservative directives on immigration, climate change, education, health care, taxes, justice, abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, and civil rights.

Arguably, the most disturbing part concerns the politicization of the federal workforce. The Heritage Foundation is obsessed with the Reagan-era slogan “personnel is policy.” A crusading right-wing agenda like Project 2025 requires hyper-partisan appointees for implementation. Project 2025 is already pre-screening 20,000 workers to be ready on Day One. This is not a drill. It is happening.

Project 2025 recognizes that nonpartisan, skilled, and competent civil servants must go. It’s commonly said the systems held in the last Trump administration and damage was limited. We didn’t nuke a hurricane, pull out of NATO, or shoot protesters in the knees, as Trump wished. With a fully politicized federal workforce, guardrails will be gone and Trump’s whims will be commands.

At Project 2025’s core is a plan to revive Schedule F, a category of federal appointees created in the last two months of the Trump Administration. President Biden promptly abolished Schedule F. Project 2025 could convert some 500,000 nonpartisan civil servant positions to Schedule F partisans. Schedule F eliminates civil service protections for anyone in a policy related role.

The civil service is a hallmark of our system of government that hires and promotes workers based on merit, not partisanship. Project 2025 reinstates an inefficient nineteenth-century system of political patronage that ended badly. President Garfield was killed by an angry job applicant who didn’t get an expected job, amplifying calls for reform. The spoils-system spoiled government with corruption and incompetence; it surely would again.

The right-wing has bashed civil service for over forty years. Project 2025 is the culmination of a long game. It pushes the meritless idea of a deep-state cabal running government and rejects the idea of a merit-based, nonpartisan workforce.

History shows that politicizing agencies and centralizing control are hallmarks of populist, anti-democratic states. Authoritarians require administrative acquiescence. Project 2025 embodies the playbook of authoritarian autocrats.

Predictably, Trump is distancing himself from Project 2025 while his campaign attempts to soften his image with an ironic message of unity. At the RNC, Trump defensively asserted, “I am the one saving democracy,” while accusing Democrats of the opposite. But make no mistake: as he said of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

Project 2025 is on the ballot this November. Project 2025 dims the lights of democracy. We must  ensure that strong and right beats strong and wrong. We must vote like democracy depends on it.