As we all know, the best thing about hindsight is that it is always 20/20. In 1976, I made the one big political blunder that I will live up to. I helped elect Jimmy Carter as 39th president of the United States.

Actually, it all started out positively but very quickly slid downhill on a steep incline. Jimmy Carter has been an unmitigated disaster both during and since his time in office. He is just lucky that Barack Obama has now taken his title as worst president of our lifetime.

SETTING THE SCENE IN 1976

On Election Day, November 2, 1976, I was a 27 year old U.S. Air Force veteran enrolled at a Christian university. I had survived the Hippie Revolution during the Psychedelic 60s. While the war in Vietnam was raging, I served tours in the Philippines and on Okinawa.

At the time of the 1968 election, I was already over 18 but the 26th Amendment lowering the voting age from 21 had not yet been ratified. Therefore, my first opportunity to vote for President of the United States was via absentee ballot from Clark Air Base, Philippines in 1972.

Richard Nixon’s political future had been written off when the standing VP lost to a young Senator from Massachusetts in 1960. But 1968 was a very turbulent year in politics. In fact, it was a very traumatic year for our entire country.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th. Barely four and a half years after the assassination of JFK, his younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General RFK was shot and killed at a hotel in Los Angeles just a few miles from where I then resided. Robert Kennedy had just won the California Democratic Primary when his life was so tragically ended.

Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in the general election that year of 1968. In 1972, he was overwhelmingly re-elected against George McGovern. The best political slogan of all time that I recall was McGovern McCan’t.

So Nixon was riding high. But the man who always seemed destined to eventually self-destruct self-destructed. If you’re too young to remember Watergate, please Google it.

Nixon’s VP Spiro Agnew of Maryland had resigned due to a scandal and Gerald Ford had been confirmed as his replacement. In the face of almost certain impeachment, Tricky Dicky resigned on August 9th, 1974, just a couple months after I had returned to civilian life.

Jerry Ford was a very likable former Congressman from Michigan who was as clumsy as all get-out. America (myself included) was disgusted over the revelations of Watergate and rampant corruption in the White House.

Without belaboring the point, the time was ripe for a perceived Southern Gentleman from Georgia to bring civility back to the U.S. presidency. At their convention in Kansas City in 1976, the GOP had the chance to nominate Ronald Reagan but went with Ford instead.

I believe it was Charles Osgood who used to do rhyming reports who made the most memorable one that still sticks in my mind. This week in Kansas City fair, there was a man who wasn’t there! The GOP wanted no discussion whatsoever of Nixon’s fall.

So Jimmy Carter won.

SETTING THE SCENE IN 2020

This current discussion is not so much about the miserable legacy of Jimmy Carter which I have written about before. Suffice it for now to remind us that he was the one who failed to respond to Iran and created the hostile environment that still exists 40 years later. Carter then went on to pander to Palestinians and other Middle Eastern hostile Islamic entities.

What I’m focusing on here is how America was sick of Nixon and blamed the Republican Party for his abuses. He had actually done more good than bad following 8 years of Democrats under JFK and LBJ. But Watergate erased every bit of that.

Now, we are once again at a crossroads in history. After eight years of Democrat misrule under BHO, in 2016 our country was ready to entrust our future to Donald Trump. No need to go into an evaluation of POTUS 45.

I went into more detail about 1976 because many of you reading this today were not born yet, some were too young to yet take an interest in national events and frankly memories tend to dim after the passage of so much time unless this is a vital component of one’s sense of civic responsibility.

Today there is a lot of loose talk about a potential impeachment of our incumbent president. Many have actually forgotten or purposely buried the actual impeachment of Bill Clinton. But, the truth is that impeachment of President Trump remains highly unlikely. But this has all created an atmosphere of uncertainty.

This current article might be somewhat more apropos in 2024 when Donald Trump is completing his second full term in office. Yes, I fully expect that to happen. But there is too much that applies today to try to hold these thoughts in abeyance for 5 years.

The Democrat Party today is a far cry from what it was in 1976. Back then, Dems and GOP both seemed to love America but to have different visions of how to govern this wonderful land.

It would not be unreasonable in this day and age to question whether modern Democrats really do still love the United States of America. Do they value our shared national tradition over their own greed and political ambitions for power?

Nothing nearly as extreme as Watergate has transpired under POTUS 45. But I do observe that there is a sense of urgency in some factions to totally repudiate and distance our country from the policies and behavior of Donald Trump. To those old enough to remember, the one theme that remains constant with both Nixon and Trump is that their detractors consider them totally dysfunctional despite their actual accomplishments.

A rational decision in 1976 would have led to a vote for Gerald Ford rather than Jimmy Carter as I can now clearly see in retrospect. But Carter was soft-spoken and seductive in his political rhetoric. While the Democrat field of presidential hopefuls has yet to be winnowed down, there is a lot more chaff than wheat in the field. What is left may be less than optimum.

20/20 NEEDED IN 2020

We must avoid myopia at all costs. We must see people and their potential clearly. Those of us who supported a different GOP candidate in 2016 are resigned to the fact that Trump prevailed. Even if we would prefer someone different on our ticket next year, it ain’t going to happen.

We have to be careful not to think that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I hate to use this metaphor when some are actually campaigning to decriminalize cannabis. I never bought into the hippie culture during my youth and never experimented with grass and definitely never dropped acid.

But the fact that we are not 100% pleased with the status quo is no excuse to replace it with something exponentially less desirable. That’s why I haven’t focused on everything Jimmy Carter did as president and as ex-president to demonstrate his incompetence. That is all part of the historical record which you can easily research for yourself if you don’t remember it first-hand.

I’m more concerned with the discontent or malaise in the country that set the scene for the election of Jimmy Carter. I share the blame with many who were deceived and misled. I have never voted for another Democrat since if that counts for anything.

For those who don’t remember Watergate, it wasn’t the break-in that led to Nixon’s downfall. It was the subsequent cover-up.

There is nothing Trump has done or failed to do thus far that would lead to impeachment. He just needs to exercise care not to overreact. As long as he continues to do the job he was elected to do to the best of his ability, following the advice of the best advisors available, he will definitely be re-elected.

But if he panics and indulges in ad hominem attacks on specific opponents, he is just making himself more vulnerable politically. That would be opening the door that should remain padlocked from the inside.

We as conservatives must first and foremost remain circumspect. We all know there is much political discontent in this country. I personally have not felt such intensity since 1968 in those who want to tear down the infrastructure of our national government and start from scratch.

The Proud of America sentiment of the 1950s was rudely and crudely displaced in the 1960s. Despite Carter and other negative influences, we made it through as Ronald Reagan restored a feeling of patriotism amongst Americans.

We are currently in the most prolonged era of international warfare that we have ever experienced. We somehow survived the fundamental negative transformation of America and social re-engineering of the Obama years.

A FORK IN THE ROAD

So, we have once again come to crunch-time. We will do well to recall the mistakes made in the 1976 election which we must not repeat in 2020.

Remember that not all that sounds good is good. Not everyone who looks good is good. Conversely, all that may at first seem bad is not necessarily bad. What initially seems to be the worst option may ultimately be the one we should take.

The biggest difference in the last 43 years of course is modern technology. We didn’t have email back then, let alone the internet and social media. Information can now be instantly transmitted around the globe the moment you click Send or Tweet.

So let’s use this to our advantage. Share the word. The message is that things today are not as bad as they seem. Sometimes we just have to dine on peanut butter and jelly rather than caviar. Truth be told, I think I like the taste of PBJ sandwiches better anyway. If you want to make this a Jimmy Carter analogy, just say he was a better peanut farmer than president.

I can’t predict today who is the probable Carteresque decoy in the Democrat Party. But I can absolutely guarantee you, there’s not even one Winston Churchill in the midst. To go back in history even farther than we usually do, FDR led us into World War II but it took Truman to lead us out.

If there is one patriot in the Democratic Party who is not a complete political animal, please step forward and be recognized. There are only two genders, so please acknowledge which one you are and be a man or woman of principle.

Cut out the crap about cages at the border. Stand up for our national sovereignty. As long as you keep pandering to lawbreakers, you don’t deserve consideration to be our next president and commander-in-chief.

SUMMING IT UP

0+0=0.

America, avoid the error of 1976 and don’t fall for any candidate who promises you something will be created from nothing. Only God can do that. Nobody on the 2020 ballot will be divine.

The best mortal prospect is our current and future President Donald Trump. If I had to eat crow over voting for Carter, I must accept the fact that the celebrity from New York is better, far better, than any foreseeable alternative.

I sincerely wish it were not so.

But it is so.

[Frame this and hang it on your wall, Pres. Trump, because it’s the closest thing you’re ever going to get to an endorsement from me. You don’t know me from Adam, but you can rest assured a lot of other conservatives who were disenfranchised in Cleveland feel the same way.]

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Before the 2018 midterm elections, there was a general consensus among those in a conservative chat group I run that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would become the face of the Democratic Party. We were correct. Where we were wrong is in thinking this would be a bad thing. I personally thought a young, energetic millennial would be a rallying force that showed Americans government belonged in the hands of millennials and, by proxy, the Democratic party.

That was before we learned how radical she really was. Now that her true colors have been revealed to the world, I’m changing my stance. She is the face of the Democratic Party, and this can be a very good thing for conservatives as long as we do two things.

A recent Axios poll shows AOC’s clout is rising.

All the information we need is right there to tell us the two things that must happen for the GOP to retain the Senate and White House and win back the House of Representatives in 2020. First, we must keep AOC and her “squad” – Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaid – in the news. Thankfully, they readily oblige by giving journalists on both sides of the aisle more fodder than anyone other than the President.

Second, we must hammer home the notion that socialism is very, very bad. Open borders, Medicare-for-All, gun confiscations, and the Green New Deal are all topics that should be hammered as well, but they need much more explaining. Socialism is generally recognized as bad and we need that perception to grow. This is extremely important because right now, many radical progressives are selling the idea of “Democratic Socialism” to anyone they influence. They’re saying it’s different from Venezuela and everywhere else that socialism has been tried and failed miserably.

They’re pushing this notion hard. We need to spread the truth even harder.

If there’s one certainty in election politics, it’s that ignorance rules. We cannot assume that average apolitical Americans are going to be acutely aware of the dangers of socialism or the people who are pushing the notion. Assume the people generally don’t understand. For example, most Americans favor Medicare-for-All until they find out what’s in it. The same can likely be said about the Green New Deal as the vast majority of Americans would classify it as a green initiative that is trying to fight climate change. But even one of the plan’s architects, AOC’s Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti, balks at the notion that it’s a “climate change thing.”

Conservatives have the truth on our side, and people like AOC are doing everything they can to subvert the truth. Many voters are misinformed, but they’re not stupid. We must make them acutely aware of the dangers of radical progressivism.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Former Democrat Brandon Straka is not very popular on the left. He represents the dissemination of an existential threat to radical progressives everywhere. What he’s spreading is the truth, and coming from someone who was formerly a media- and education-indoctrinated leftist, it holds plenty of clout.

When he formed the #WalkAway movement, it was an awakening for him that he wanted to share with the rest of the world. He realized the facts didn’t jibe with the narratives being pushed by both Democrats and mainstream media. Both instantly lashed out at him for daring to cross the line of understanding that Jussie Smollett didn’t get attacked by MAGA racists, the Covington Catholic School kids didn’t go after a Native American man, and President Trump did not collude with Russia.

“#WalkAway’s goal is to fight back against liberal ideology and narratives, which are embraced by the Democratic Party, in an effort to awaken Americans to the real truth – not the indoctrination and false narratives of the political left,” Straka said. “We specifically want to effectively communicate with and engage minority groups targeted by the Democrats. The ultimate goal is to do away with groupthink and tribal mentality and encourage people to embrace their individual identities and unify America.”

For telling the truth and not buying into progressive propaganda, Straka has been excommunicated from the Democratic cult. Thankfully for him, he is being embraced by people in the center and to the right who appreciate the truth.

He has another fan as well. President Trump Tweeted out a snippet of the first episode of The Hard Truth.

“In January of 2017, I bitterly proclaimed on social media that I would never be able to understand how anybody could vote for a man who stood before a cheering crowd & mocked a reporter’s disability.
That’s when somebody sent me this…”
SEE FULL VIDEO: https://t.co/HPihnCtVZn pic.twitter.com/m7P5bxbibY

— Brandon Straka (@usminority) July 12, 2019

“We have already produced the first 5 episodes,” Straka said. “Each episode will be released when the previous episode begins to lose a bit of traction- so it won’t be a regular schedule, but instead based on consumer demand or when we feel a particular message might be immediately needed.”

In the first episode of The Hard Truth, Brandon Straka reveals the origins of his movement. It’s definitely worth a watch… President Trump himself recommended doing so. Mainstream media is lying to you. Be warned.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.