Here’s where I struggle with 2024.
I’ll be as honest about it as I can. Some of this will resonate with people, some it will make angry, but I can’t be the only person in America who feels that way – and before you read past this opening paragraph, this is NOT an attack on President Trump, at least not the president he was up until a few months before the 2020 election.
First, a little background.
It seems clear to me that we are locked into a cycle of mutually assured destruction in our presidential election cycles that began with Bush v. Gore in 2000.
Sure, I am partisan, but it is not at all unclear who fired the first shot in this cycle. The media calling Florida before the polls closed in majority conservative panhandle of Florida when the outcome was trending toward razor thin, the selective recounts in heavily Democrat counties and none anywhere else, the ridiculously ambiguous standards (remember the “pregnant chads” and “discerning the intent of the voter”), and the ensuing lawsuits filed by the Gore campaign cement the Democrats as the aggressors.
With the war weariness of the final Bush term, people wanted something different and boy howdy, was Obama different. Accusations of racism had been a feature of presidential elections since 1964 when Barry Goldwater was tagged as a racist by the Democrat media, but with two white guys running every year, it didn’t get much traction. The 2008 election changed all that. With a multiracial man on one side and a WASPy honky on the other, race became the most important thing – and behind the smoke screen of race, came the most significant lurch leftward since the terms of FDR.
Leftist Democrats, all of whom railed against Dub for being an “imperial president” and employing the concept of the unitary presidency, understood how much open field a president had to just order things to be done. Of course, there would be constitutional challenges but by the time the Supreme Court hears the case, what the president wanted done would have been done.
And with that realization, presidential elections became a win at any cost proposition.
President Trump won in 2016, not so much by waves of popular support, but due to the absolute arrogance of the Hillary Clinton campaign. She believed was untouchable, had the media predicting a landslide for her, the Deep State backing her up and women were going to lift her to break the glass ceiling. She already had a plan to destroy Trump by linking him to Russia, a country she, as Obama’s SecState, pandered to with a red “reset” button. She was Madam President in waiting.
But they missed a small slice of Americans in key battleground states who had been hurt by Obama’s policies of subservience to globalist forces – and that cost Madam President the White House.
After that, Democrats resolved to never lose an election again and if they did, they would make governing impossible for any Republican president. They went to work on filing lawsuits, changing election procedures – even before the pandemic gave them a once in a lifetime opportunity to commit legal fraud by mail out ballots (something even Jimmy Carter believed would decrease election security substantially), and working within the Republican primaries to get Republican candidates nominated who a Democrat could beat.
That’s their game, pure and simple and they don’t care who and what they need to destroy to accomplish their goal of perpetual power.
Enough about them, back to us.
One thing I can say for sure is that over the past forty-three years of election cycles, there has never been a presidential candidate with whom I have agreed one hundred percent.
I have been a William F. Buckley/M. Stanton Evans conservative/classical liberal long before I cast my first national vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980. I supported HW, Dole, and Dub, McCain and Romney, not because they were the same as me, but because they were the lesser of two evils. In all honesty, Bill Clinton, bookended by HW and Dub, was not a lot different from either of them. All three were moderate to liberal, all three seemed intent on engaging in foreign entanglements (Gulf I, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq) they had no plan to win, and all supported big government programs as a means for economic development (Dub called it “compassionate conservativism” which, as it turned out, just meant bigger government with Republicans in charge).
I have never been a NeverTrumper but I was not an active supporter until he won the nomination in 2016. In all honesty, I didn’t trust him. I freely admit he was a far better president than I ever imagined but one of the big reasons I was against him, and I remember writing this during the primaries, was that because of who he is and was, because he had done the things he had done, and his renouncement of association with their causes, the left would never stop attacking him – ever.
Objectively, I think it is safe to say that is a prediction that has come true in spades.
And they are out for blood. They want to destroy President Trump even more than they want to win elections, even though to them, those two things are the same.
I firmly believe Trump is due some retribution.
I truly want to see him get it – but elections can’t just be about payback; they must be about true progress. The calculus of support for a candidate can’t be “blue, no matter who” or “better red than dead” and yet each side sees the other as being so bad, we fall into that binary and the flat spin that started with the 2008 election assures that sooner or later, we are going to have a kinetic meeting with the ground.
Trump will get the chance to nail the Democrats to the wall if he can get out of his own way. His unnecessary twisting of his and DeSantis’ history does not resonate outside the hardcore Trumpites. It’s not so much that people are sold on DeSantis, it is that they stand with mouths agape at the Democrat-like twisting of the truth and the outright lies the Trump people are telling. It’s turning off moderates and independents (and some conservatives), all of whom he is going to need to win.
He doesn’t need to do this. Something like 80% of Republicans and 60% plus of the general public see the collusion hoax that began before he was elected, constant lawfare that began immediately after he was inaugurated, the two engineered impeachments, and the recent federal indictments as illegitimate political persecution by the Biden/Garland DOJ. That people on the right want these forces crushed is a given. People don’t like arrogant assholes and know them when they see them, and the Democrats easily recognizable as assholes.
The votes of those people are in the can as long as Trump doesn’t give them a reason to leave him.
What he needs to do is to drop the “woe is me, they cheated” stunts (we get it, they did, he got screwed - but the clock can’t be turned back), the asinine revisionist rhetoric about the pandemic, the internecine warfare against anyone he feels is less than 100% loyal, and talk about things that matter in the here and now like reversing Biden’s horrific economic plans, his feckless foreign policy, truly cutting the federal government off at the knees (bye, bye Department of Education), cleaning out the DOJ and the State Department, engineering a veto proof CONSERVATIVE GOP majority in Congress, and more than anything, unifying the GOP behind a pro-constitution campaign to return the power to the people.
I want to vote for the guy, I really do. At his worst, he is still better than another term with Biden, one with Harris, RFKII, Newsom or any other Democrat.
But we always seem to find a way to lose elections that should be unlosable. The Democrats are so bad, this election is Trump’s to lose, and he seems to be finding every way possible to do just that.
While I don't disagree with some of that...we have to also realize that some who are supporting RDS (as a spoiler for Trump) are those #nevertrumpers like Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, Ed Rollins, Karl Rove et al. They don't care about the party, the citizens, the country and even less about RDS...they HATE DJT and will do anything and spend most anything to stop him. They will destroy RDS and possibly his chances in 2028, just to attempt to stop DJT.
What we see in clips and headlines doesn't help as they are slanted. Trump see the disaster of Biden as a challenge to fix things AGAIN...to show that it CAN be done and that HE can do it. I personally believe he can.
I've watched him over the years. I've seen either live or on video many interviews of testimony he's done...he's changed his world view VERY LITTLE over 40+ years.
Many Rs don't like him because he isn't controllable and I suspect will NEVER listen to their advice or appointment suggestions again. The Ds don't like him because he isn't the person they, wrongly, thought he was. Washington is all about CONTROL, Trump isn't. Those of us who follow, support and like him, instinctively know this. Some people feel more secure when others are in control...his supporters don't.
Is he a perfect man? Was he a perfect POTUS? No to both BUT he is the kind of tough fighter we need; otherwise we are lost as a country. We need a man like that to turn this sinking tug around and set it back on course to freedom and prosperity. By 2028, we will hopefully, find a new person who is capable of picking up the torch and carrying on. Our party is lucky to have a strong bench.
In the mean time let's let our tested warrior have another crack at it. He's proven that his is ready and willing to take whatever they dish out at him. Few other are ready and capable of withstanding that storm and dishing it back to them. JMO
Do any your readers know somebody that POTUS #45 trusts and will listen to? A change in public posture is critical to success for Mr. Trump. Our nation will not survive as liberty loving, law abiding if there is another 4 or 8 years of a Dem administration in DC.