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This opinion column by a leading Northeastern conservative columnist, Paul Mulshine, argues that for conservatives, 2017 was “The Year of the Donald.”
It was the Year of The Donald for conservatives
Reagan was in office for just six months in 1981 when the air-traffic controllers went on strike in violation of federal law. The Beltway crowd expected a settlement would come after a bit of tussling between the two sides.
Nope. Reagan fired all 11,345 of them. After that, everyone knew the new president didn’t play by the rules of Washington.
Donald Trump has shown the same attitude. The only difference is that he’s chalked up a longer list of accomplishments.
President Trump has had his share of policy successes, which we’ve endeavored to recognize here at NOQReport. Yet elation at a few policy successes of President Trump hardly makes this nominally-Republican President a valid standard-bearer of conservatism. However, these successes are modest at best, and to cite them as evidence of the dawn of a new Reaganesque “Morning in America” is to diminish the achievements of prior Republican Administrations and drop the measuring stick for conservatism all the way to the ground.
If anything is noteworthy about Trump’s first year, beyond the White House’s dismissal of Omarosa Manigault, it is his refusal so far to cave in to prevailing coastal-elite pressure to be more “moderate” or “progressive.”
The Mad Left has pushed the Democratic Party farther to the Leftist/Marxist fringe of the political spectrum. The radicals’ boldness, defiance and hubris have sparked a reaction among much of the rest of the electorate, whether you call them “deplorables” or simply, the “Others.” The depth of the degree to which the Mad Left detests Trump (and in fact, anyone with whom they disagree) both politically and personally has allowed him to enhance and deepen his support among his socioeconomic (if not necessarily Republican or conservative) base which rightfully feels under constant social and economic attack.
Unlike Republican voters of past generations, current Republicans don’t merely disagree with the Left. They resent the Left. They also fear the Left.
And when politics become (if they aren’t always are) personal, when politics become seen as a matter of economic survival, such resentment is a powerful fuel for voter turnout.
Yet, self-described conservatives’ support for Trump does not make Trump a conservative. It just means conservatives are engaging — finally! — in a strategic alliance. It’s an alliance borne of desperation, as conservatives (and many others) see themselves suddenly in the maelstrom of an all-but-declared cultural war which threatens a way of life and even the legitimacy of our economic and political systems.
Such a strategic alliance is similar to the alliance the United States formed with Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union in World War II, in the face of the Nazi-led Axis.
That alliance hardly made “the Greatest Generation” of Americans pro-Communist, did it?
Likewise, today’s alliance of desperation with Trump should not be taken to mean that conservatives condone, much less endorse, Trump’s many personal character defects and discipline deficits. The alliance does not require turning the proverbial blind eye towards these major flaws, either.
Trump’s future electoral prospects are strong and will remain as such, as long as his support among his core supporters remains rabid, if not necessarily wide. He would be a likely favorite to win re-election in 2020, particularly if his general election opponent has wide but tepid support, like Hillary Clinton.
However, should Trump’s opponent match him in the ferocity of his or her core support (especially if that opponent is an overt “progressive”), it may be a real struggle to get to 270 electoral votes.
Such a scenario could threaten America with the prospects of a federal government where each branch of government could be dominated by redistributionist, totalitarian, social justice acolytes. That outcome would reveal the Trump years to be nothing more than a historical accident, the Buster Douglas lucky-punch-knockout of Mike Tyson, the exception to the larger, leftward trend.
If Trump should prove to be nothing more than a brief, accidental interruption in the nation’s embrace of secularism, socialism and social justice, conservatives will regret their abandonment of that one bedrock characteristic of philosophical and cultural conservatism.
Character.
Now that would be — Sad!
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Well Eric they did not abandon character in Alabama. That is why Roy Moore lost.
As the red-hats continue threatening and insulting the true conservatives (those that DO care about character but were persuaded to vote for Trump against Hillary because of the “binary choice” argument), they alienate the very voters they will need in 2018 and 2020 to prevent the very takeover of government that you are attempting to fear-monger with.
I am an ex-Republican conservative that cares about character and leadership. As a result of 2016 GOP convention hostilities that originated with and were carried out by the team and of the death threats against Republican delegates, state reps & voters by red-hatters, and other Trump operatives, I have decided to that the Republican party under Trump is no different from the Democrats and deserves the same disdain as the Democrat party.
As to Trump so-called “accomplishments”:
Trump claims that he ended DACA. Not True. He punted the decision to Congress to write a bill permanently granting DACA amnesty. He EO was nothing but noise as it repealed nothing, established no new policies, established no new limits on illegal immigration or DACA/Dreamer status, nor made any other changes – other than the photo-op it provided for Trump.
Trump claims to have moved the Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but he signed the waiver to NOT move the Embassy for another 6 months. His “announcement” was simply that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel – an announcement / policy set by the Senate and Congress in the 1990s – again lots of noise – no action.
Trump claims credit for the “roaring economy” and points to the DOW average – an average that rose almost every year of Obama’s term and was quickly isolated to the Quantitative Easing and all the money being pumped into Wall Street by the Feds with nowhere to go because businesses were not hiring. Trump’s unemployment rate is about what Obama kept posting and Trump is using the same numbers as Obama – always to be revised downward (quietly) a couple months after the initial much-ballyhoo’d announcement.
Trump STILL has not started building the wall, nor is Mexico paying for it. We now have articles being posted about how illegal immigration border crossings have been rising since April and are now HIGHER than Obama’s averages. Trump claims that he increased the size of the BP, but he only AUTHORIZED more hiring (funding permitting) – then never fought for (or re-allocated) additional funding to actually HIRE the new BP agents his photo-op EO “AUTHORIZED”.
Trump’s “successes” with Carrier ahve turned to out to be false (jobs STILL went to Mexico except for those that were going to be kept BEFORE Trump/Pence “got involved”).
The “tax relief” is growing in UNpopularity as people finally see what’s actually in the bill.
Trump’s “Obamacare Mandate Repeal” was no such thing. The ACA was not modified to remove the mandate at all. The only action Congress did was to set the penalty to zero. The law still requires purchase of insurance, still provides – and now has been given new funding for the tax-payer-subsidized premiums, and the next Democrat Congress can (and likely will) re-impose the non-zero financial penalty – but at higher levels than before. This is a net loss because Trump has energized the Democrat base while discouraging the conservative & Republican bases that have historically voted for full repeal.
Trump’s wild, incoherent, and reckless tweeting have all but started another war with NK/China and his attacks on NATO have only encouraged Russian aggression while discouraging and angering our allies in Europe and GB. Nations that no longer want to Trump in-country and that used to be good trading partners (customers) for US-made goods, but whose people will increasingly not want goods associated with Trump’s America – especially if Trump continues his insults of the people of those countries.
Trump’s juvenile tweets and belligerency – far from appearing to the world as “strength” screams out “weakness, insecurity, immaturity” from those that serve in our government.
I’m of the personal belief that Gen Mattis, Gen Kelley, and Sec Tillerson have banded together to limit Trump’s access to his staff, to outside information that might upset him, and to the levers of power and military control normally wielded by the POTUS because they recognizes the symptoms of Trump’s increasing dementia and his degrading mental faculties. I see fewer articles about Jared Kushner doing Sec State functions and almost nothing about Ivanka’s previously out-sized role in the WH – Perhaps because of the limits Gen Kelley has placed on Trump’s information intake – this is a good thing as it “controls” Trump’s worse nature, but a BAD thing because it means the President of the US has likely become a figurehead controlled by the “puppet-master” team of Kelley/Tillerson/Mattis. If we now have a team of people behind the scenes actually making the decisions and feeding them to Trump for regugitation that sounds too close to a “shadow government” or “politburo” for my comfort. (It DOES explain why the GOP establishment seems to have embraced Trump’s goals recently however – especially if they believe they have a role in “running” the President.