I seem to read articles all the time about how President Trump and/or the Republican Congress is stupid, or incompetent, or dead in the water. And not just from the usual lefty Democratic operatives with bylines in the fake news media.

Now there’s a piece from Roger L. Simon complaining of the GOP Congress’s “ineptitude.”

No doubt, but what President Trump and the Republican Congress are trying to do is hard. In the first place, they are trying to dial back just a little bit of free stuff. That goes against the basic principle of all politics from time immemorial, which is “sign on with Captain Flint and he’ll win you loot and plunder.” Only now it is “vote for me” instead.

In the second place, as revealed by the Voter Study Group, Trump’s voters are all over the map on the issues. They come in every combination of economic belief and social belief. But Democrats are pretty well all economic statists and social progressives. So Republicans have a much bigger cat-herding problem than Democrats.

Then there is the Deep State. You never heard the Congressional Budget Office predicting that ObamaCare would double health-insurance premiums back in the day. How come they still have jobs? You never heard info babes sneering at President Obama’s prediction, as in “I can’t believe he promised to lower premiums by $2,500 per year.” Of course not, because that would have been racist. But the CBO can sure do a good number on the number of people losing health insurance due to eevil Republicans. Yet this number includes people dumping health insurance when it is no longer mandatory, and those being removed from Medicaid, which according to a study in Oregon is just like Folger’s Coffee: no difference in health outcomes between Medicaid recipients and nonrecipients.

You tell me: what is your brilliant strategy for persuading the American people to give up just a little free stuff when you lead a coalition that is all over the map, and you are having to deal every day with a media that thinks you are all racists sexists and homophobes, and that gets brownie points from its peers for insulting Trump and the Republicans in the most creative way?

The only thing that makes sense to me is the “in spite of” strategy. In spite of the predictions of millions (or even billions of deaths from philosopher Maxine Waters) you push through an ObamaCare reform that starts to get health care costs trending down. In spite of accusations of favoring the rich and CEOs, you push through tax rate and loophole cuts that gets us back to 3 percent growth. In spite of predictions of runaway global warming you drive a stake through the heart of the global warming zombies by taking away their funding and subsidies, and hug a fracker every day of your life. In spite of partisan judges lusting after their fifteen minutes of fame, you push through immigration restrictions on jihadi friendly nations. And then you hope that people notice a change by November 2018.

But the bigger problem is how to persuade the liberal world that their ideas stink and ought to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Here is Schopenhauer admitting the size of the problem.

[T]he errors of great minds extend their influence over whole generations… and finally degenerate into monstrosities. All this arises from the fact that, as Berkeley says, “Few men think; yet all have opinions.”

This was published in 1818, the year in which Karl Marx was born.

Yes, and there is no better proof of Schopenhauer’s notion than the proliferating “We Believe” yard signs (available on Amazon!). Ever thought that “Science is Real” is the medieval science of St. Thomas Aquinas? Or considered that if “Kindness is Everything” then the vile accusations of racist, sexist, homophobia have to go?

Not at all, for the “We Believe” yard sign is merely living proof that “all have opinions.”

But the errors! The monstrosities! How about Marx’s idea that labor in exchange is slavery compared to labor in use? If that is true, how come people are still migrating in their tens of millions each year from the farm to wage labor?

Then there’s the monstrosity that the economy can be organized like an army in a socialist or semi-socialist administrative state, disproved a century ago, and tested to destruction in the Soviet Union and Maoist China.

There’s the idea that people should be organized politically by class, by race, by gender, and taught to hate identities different from their own.

There’s the idea that, during a blessed interglacial in the middle of an Ice Age, climate warming is a problem.

How do we even imagine rolling back these monstrosities?

Let’s give our GOP leaders less criticism and more encouragement. They need it.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.