These are the big ideas Republicans are pushing for 2024

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Change the Constitution! Touch the third rail! Think big and make things better!

It’s the big-ideas season in American politics — a time that occurs roughly every four years in the run-up to a presidential election — when candidates push big proposals, often short on details.

While big ideas often have little chance of becoming law, they say what the people who want to be president think will move primary voters.

With President Joe Biden now a lock for the Democratic nomination, much of the intellectual action this year will be with Republicans.

Below are some of the big ideas of the moment, which are often unique to one or two candidates that run counter to the party’s standard positions. I look at it differently from everyday political issues — things like abortion rights, foreign policy, border security and gender rights, where there is a sliding scale of positions.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki HaleyWHO is 51, wants to impose a “mental competence” test for older candidates over 75.

With two of the current leading candidates – Biden and former President Donald Trump – more than most people considering retirement, age is already a big issue this year.

It’s a clever way to tap into fears that Biden, in particular, has lost a step. But it’s hard to think actually used. Who will administer this test? Who will assess the results? Why not all candidates?

The point of a democratic system is that voters should be able to choose. This proposal should limit their choices.

On the other hand, age limits are not a completely crazy idea. Corporations impose them on executives, for example. Pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65, although that may be raised in the future to address the pilot shortage.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech founder, want to raise the legal voting age to 25. Hard to imagine how this would work since the current voting age of 18 is guaranteed by the 26th Amendment.

Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in recent years have pushed to go in the opposite direction, arguing to lower the voting age to 16.

Ramaswamy said there are exceptions to raising the voting age, such as people who have joined the military or otherwise meet a “national service requirement.” Some may pass the same test given to naturalized immigrants.

“I want more civic engagement. My guess is that if you include more action value, we’ll see more 18-to-25-year-olds actually vote than today,” Ramaswamy told The Washington Post.

Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence one of the drivers of change is the age at which Americans can access retirement benefits.

While Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis swore an oath that they will protect these important parts of the social safety net, Haley and Pence called for a more honest discussion about the nation’s finances.

As they say, raising the retirement age will only affect the youngest Americans – people aged 20 and younger, generations who are certain to live and work longer than their ancestors.

But specifics are hard to come by, as CNN’s Jake Tapper found when he asked Haley at a CNN town hall in early June what retirement would be like. age he proposed. He said more calculations are needed to come up with a specific retirement age for people who are currently in their 20s.

In the meantime, he said, “Let’s tell them ‘Times have changed.’ I think (Trump and DeSantis) dishonest to the American people.”

New Hampshire’s DeSantis recently acknowledged that Social Security will “look a little different” for younger generations.

Pence, in his own CNN town hall in early June, said raising the eligibility age for Social Security is an option to have a tough conversation about national spending, but not the only one. .

“This could also include allowing young Americans to invest a portion of their payroll taxes in a mutual fund, such as the TSP (Thrift Savings Plan) program of 10 million employees it’s federal now,” he said.

Both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to revoke birthright citizenship, or the right of every person born in the US to become an American citizen.

They complain that even children born to people without documents become a citizen. Birthright citizenship was guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, the key post-Civil War amendment intended to protect former slaves.

Trump has been touting an end to birthright citizenship for years, but there is currently no meaningful effort to change the Constitution.

Trump has promised to sign an executive order. DeSantis said he will trust Congress and the court system. Real change to the Constitution is almost impossible in today’s political environment.

Former President Donald TrumpMost out-of-the-box ideas have a futuristic “Jetsons” feel.

He wanted to build new “freedom towns” on federal land to reopen the American border and give people a chance at home ownership. He argued that the plan could revive American manufacturing.

And he envisioned liberating Americans from hellish journeys by looking at the sky, taking the initiative to change vertical-takeoff vehicles. CNN’s report on Trump’s proposals says the technology is already underway in the industry, but is still far from being available to consumers.

A government-planned city seems like an odd proposition for a candidate whose party has long embraced free-market values. But the idea of ​​a planned city is not entirely foreign – just see Washington, DC.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to repeal Trump’s biggest bipartisan achievement: The First Step Act, a criminal justice and sentencing reform law.

The product of intense bipartisan negotiations during Trump’s time in office, the law was praised for rethinking harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

But the political landscape has changed since 2018, when Trump signed the law as president and DeSantis voted for it as a congressman. Today, DeSantis is calling the law a “jailbreak bill.”

Both men want to impose the death penalty for drug offenders, an especially awkward pivot for Trump, who has boasted about his clemency in giving free rein to drug dealers like Alice Johnson when he commuted his sentence. The case helped build support for the First Step Act. His crime would have made him eligible for the death penalty under his new plan.

Trump still touts the First Step Act, and repealing it will require help from Democrats in the Senate.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has moved to the right of Trump on crime and even vetoed a bipartisan criminal justice bill in Florida that quickly passed the Republican-dominated legislature.

Pence also said in his town hall on CNN that “he’s going to back down” from the First Step Act — though it’s unclear what that means in practical terms.