Have you ever had to choose between paying an electric bill or having enough food for the week? Have you been forced to drive your 12-year-old beater of a car one more year? Have you ever been faced with moving to another state for work when your employer shuts its doors?
Hundreds of stump speeches include verbiage about plans to adopt "fair" tax policy, to encourage "business-friendly environments" for new job creation and to increase access to additional educational opportunities for adults to enhance their job skills. These stump speeches turned out to be nothing more than empty promises, and now a large segment of Americans are feeling betrayed and abandoned.
As the costs of living have increased, the value of our homes (the largest investment most make) has plummeted; wages have stagnated in the lower and middle classes; and workers have had to reinvent themselves every few years to just keep a job.
As "free trade" has been winning policy in the halls of Congress, America's competing nations don't have the heavy-handed EPA, OSHA, IRS, ACA (or any other mandatory government program) that become bureaucratic hurdles to employers eager to contend in the global market. America's trade agreements create an unlevel playing field that penalizes American companies while allowing the importation of goods manufactured in countries that do not have burdensome regulations. This idiocy explains the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
America is the target of radical terrorists and identified as the "Great Satan," with more than 50 recorded acts of terror or terror-related events inside the U.S. since February 2008, and hundreds of other plans disrupted by law enforcement. America's immigration and guest worker system is completely out of control with laws ignored and, until recently, federally approved sanctuary cities harboring individuals here illegally.
Yet, law-abiding citizens must strip to our sock feet at the airport to take a flight for business or a family vacation, have our belongings searched to enter most government buildings and peer through the fence surrounding the White House while illegals take American jobs through companies allowed to ignore the e-verify system and guest-worker rules and regulations.
For any who find such disdain for and disbelief in the anger that fuels the candidacy of Trump and Sanders, spend a little more time at the lunch counter and talk with a worker from a manufacturing plant instead of listening to well-coiffed, 20-something talking heads on cable news broadcasting their opinions from the Beltway.
A whole lot of workers in rural America have been patient but disappointed. A whole lot of these folks have stood behind any number of candidates over the last two decades who pledged to deal effectively with important issues such as national security and sovereignty but were too fearful to stomach the possibility of elitist criticism. Which country do they represent?
Most "country conservatives" still say grace over their meals and pray for their families, attempt to save a little money from one paycheck to another and believe in a strong, safe America. What they've recognized as a betrayal is the ease with which a poll is run to grasp the priorities of voters and match a message to that data but completely ignore those priorities once the politician in question is elected.
The ruling elite have done harmful damage not only to both the Republican and Democratic political parties, but, most importantly, to our nation of workers.
Robin Smith, a former chairwoman of the Tennessee Republican Party, owns Rivers Edge Alliance.