Tag: After Trump

After 2028

photog 3 Comments Current Events, Trump ,

So, everybody wants to know if all the redistricting for the race-based districts that is going on down south will offset the midterm disadvantage for the Republicans.  My guess is it will absorb the bulk of the blowout and the Democrats will take the House by a handful of seats.  Right now, they’re talking about the Senate being a toss-up.  If I were to guess I’ll say it’ll be a fifty-fifty Senate with Vance as the tie breaker and thus keeping the Senate for the Republicans.  So that deadlock means nothing substantive will be legislated for Trump’s last two years.  And that’s okay.  Executive orders will be the name of the game.

But what happens in 2028?  A lot of people are very pessimistic.  Personally, I’m optimistic.  Two years should be enough time for Trump to break Iran.  After the midterms I see him closing down the Straits of Hormuz for as long as it takes to bankrupt Iran and cripple China.  It won’t be pain free.  Iran will lash out and who knows how crazy they may get.  But I don’t think it will take two years to get them to give up their nuclear program permanently.  So, if he gets past Iran, I can see oil prices dropping drastically and that will have a profoundly positive effect on the economy.  Now what comes after Trump?

Let me take a pessimistic scenario.  Suppose everything goes wrong and the Democrats take the White House, Senate and House in 2028.  According to their leaders, they will nuke the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court and make all illegal aliens, citizens.  That will have the effect of providing them with a permanent majority in Washington.  That is what they say they’ll do.  But will they do it?

I think they know that if they do those things, they are effectively declaring war against the red states.  That is a very big deal.  And I think some of them are afraid that it will cause a permanent breach between the two separate constituencies that this country is composed of.  And I think they know if they’re the ones who do it, they will force the other side to give up on the normal way things are done in Washington and begin using “unconventional” tactics to prevent the federal government from destroying their states.  Now what this would exactly look like, I’m not sure.  But I suspect it will not all be “passive resistance.”  And eventually, this will bring about a permanent separation between red and blue states.

Some of this is already happening.  Businesses and high net worth individuals are leaving blue states and blue cities in droves.  The socialist mayors and governors are panicking because their budgets are in a shambles and the unchecked crime is frightening away the middle and working classes too.  So, we’re already seeing a separation begin.  If the Democrats flood the country with illegals, the red states are going to have to figure a way to prevent these invaders from harming their states.  And making that happen will cause additional friction between the feds and the red states.  And that is how it will escalate.  How will that end nobody knows but it will not look like one country anymore.  So, will they declare war against the red states?

The Trump Trajectory

photog Current Events, Trump ,

People talked about the “Reagan Revolution.”  I guess it was a conscious effort to leave the malaise of the 1970s behind.  It rejected the pessimism that grew out of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Oil Crisis and the general chaos that was spawned during the 1960s counterculture.  Reagan said that pessimism was unfounded and that America was ready to become “that shining city on a hill” that it was meant to be.

And to some extent, the booming 1980s sort of proved him right.  The hippies became yuppies and made a killing on Wall Street.  And away we went.  Of course that wasn’t all of it.  Reagan was followed by Bush senior and Clinton and Bush junior and all of them pushed agendas that didn’t include the long-range prosperity of the bulk of the American people.  They were intent on a “new world order” and getting their slice of the pie under the table.  So, the Reagan revolution didn’t end up with all of us living on that shining city on the hill.  Most of us ended up on the other side of the tracks and broke.

And that brings us to MAGA.  It’s sort of the Reagan Revolution 2.0 without the PG rating that 1940s Hollywood lent to Reagan.  We’ve got Donald Trump running this train and he’s got more of an R rating vibe to him.  But then again, in the age we’re in that doesn’t seem shocking or even surprising.  But what it does leave us to wonder about is where do we end up?  There were, are and probably always will be very powerful interest groups that are constantly lobbying for the federal government to do their bidding.  Arms dealers and hedge funds and pharmaceutical companies are constantly jockeying for Congress and the President to buy their weapons or approve their drug or pass a law to lock in their profits.  And all of these decisions could be detrimental to the future of you and yours.  Currently Donald Trump is calling the shots and he’s sticking it to the globalists and the Deep State and doing everything he can to make the job environment better for the middle and working classes of this country.  And I think this will re-ignite some of the optimism, opportunity and affluence that we saw and felt in the 1980s and 1990s.  And that’s wonderful.  So many of the young are hanging on by a thread and need some good times to help them catch up and live middle-class lives again.

But what comes after Trump?  Let’s be optimistic and say that by 2028 Trump has managed to hang onto his control and sparks a boom economy.  And because of that JD Vance gets catapulted into the White House.  Will he have the vision it takes to prevent the same kind of shenanigans that Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and Biden allowed to happen?  I don’t know if he has the same kind of smarts that Trump has.  I’m not saying he’s dumb.  He seems eloquent and sharp.  But is he enough of a hustler to know when someone is trying to hustle him?  Because I think that’s what it comes down to.  Now the good thing is that Vance used to be a working class (at best) guy.  He may have a loyalty to the shlubs.  But can he out hustle all those crooks in DC?

And I think that is what it all comes down to.  Will JD Vance and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk throw in with us instead of Raytheon, Blackrock and Pfizer?  That’s the bottom line.  And can the majority of voters in this country throw in with them or will they instead vote for the next Mamdani or whatever communist flim-flam man comes down the pike next.  In other words, are Americans smart enough to vote for their own long-term interests.

That’s what I wonder.

06JUN2023 – Interesting Interview With Michael Anton

photog Current Events , , , , ,

The interviewer is asking about both the past and the future.  Anton talks about his experiences in the 2016 election and in the Trump administration.  And then he asks about 2024.  Here Anton sounds very much like those on the dissident right who feel that the time for elections fixing things is over.  It feels like there is a convergence going on on the Right.

This Guy DeSantis is Going to be a Factor Going Forward

photog Current Events , ,

I watched DeSantis in this speech.  He’s very credible and he has good instincts.  He speaks well and he also gets things done.

DeSantis is going to be positioned very favorably for a 2024 run for president.  If he keeps making Florida the success story for freedom vs. the Democrat hells all around he’s going to be a very popular choice.

I suspect Trump will want him to be his VP choice.  But how does that work?  Can you have them declare that arrangement from the start?  Otherwise DeSantis might turn out to be the stronger horse.  Running a state like Florida gives him a lot of people he can tap for cabinet positions.  That was one thing Donald Trump didn’t have and what caused him so much grief.

 

Speculations About a Leader

photog Current Events, Trump , , , , , ,

In a recent opinion piece Angelo Codevilla discussed how state enforced nullification of anti-constitutional federal laws and programs could act as the basis for a new federalism that allows conservatives to regain their freedoms without requiring a civil war.

In the article he stresses that it will take very strong leadership from someone to make something like this a reality.  Codevilla gives Charles De Gaulle as an example of a leader attempting to restore a nation.  And he stresses that the leader has to put the cause above his own personal concerns for glory or gain.  He must submerge his personality into the cause.  Codevilla wisely refuses to speculate about whether Donald Trump will be that leader.  But I’m not that wise and I want to at least discuss what the options will look like and how we’ll know when a leader has arrived.

First off, I want to remind everyone of one thing.  Prior to Donald Trump’s appearance on the scene none, and I mean none, of the so-called Republican leaders at the state or federal level did a damn thing about challenging the Left’s narrative about anything.  When it came to immigration, they kowtowed to the supposition that illegal immigrants should be made citizens and that unlimited illegal and legal immigration was a necessity and “the right thing to do.”  Good old JEB! Bush went so far to say that the crime of illegal immigration was “an act of love.”  And so, anyone who objected to it was a heartless monster who hated children and love.  It took Donald Trump to know that this con wasn’t actually believed by the American people.  And the establishment Republicans continued to denounce his “callous indifference” to criminal aliens all the way to his inauguration and beyond.  Eventually some of these NeverTrumpers woke up and realized they had better come up with a new con that included parroting the things that Trump had shown them.  But I ask you to think about this bit of history because many of those same people are once again presenting themselves to us as the future saviors of the conservative half of the United States.

Of course, we won’t be seeing JEB! or John Kasich or Carly Fiorina or Chris Christie anymore.  They are all done.  But expect Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio to be right there explaining how they’re ready to make America Great Again by only making twenty or thirty million illegal immigrants, citizens, at least in their first term anyway.  After that I’m sure a billion will seem like the right number.  My point here is that the GOP Establishment will never disappear.  They will always bounce back with whatever spin they think will allow them to perform their gatekeeping act and prevent anything from interfering with their “opponents” running the country off a cliff.

So, anyone who tells me that what we need is Trumpism without Trump is talking about something that has never been seen before in real life.  If anyone wants to assume the mantle either in opposition to Donald Trump’s run in 2024 or in his absence if he decides not to run, I say show me what you’ve got.  Prove to me you know what we want and then prove to me that you can and will do it.  And that’s a tall order.  Even Donald Trump was stymied in his desire to “drain the swamp.”  The swamp refused to be drained and he couldn’t change that.  If someone has a plan, we’ll need to know what it is and how he proposes to do it.  In fact, I’m not sure that a lot of us even think a President of the United States can do it alone.  It might take a `       coalition of red state governors with or without a Republican president to make any progress against the combined power of the Deep State and the Globalist Corporate Cabal that currently has us by the throat.

So, anyone who wants to be the new Trump has a lot of explaining to do.  I need to know what and how.  I want to see some evidence that he actually believes in the things he claims to stand for and I want to know who he plans to fire in the Justice Department and I want to know who will be his Attorney General.

And not to be too critical of how he handled an impossible job, if Donald Trump will be running again in 2024, I want to know what he will do this time to prevent the train wreck that the Justice Department caused for his administration.  I’ll want to know what policies he will champion and who in the legislature and who in the governorships he has allied himself with to make these things realities instead of lost causes.

It’s a very long time until 2024.  I would say that anyone who waits until then to start causing changes in the direction of this country is not a leader.  I like that Ron DeSantis is enacting legislature to protect Floridians from first amendment violations by Silicon Valley and unconstitutional federal laws.  I’d love to see him form a coalition with Texas and some of the other red states.  What I’d really like is for these measures to be challenged by the feds and then see a state governor and legislation refuse a federal court’s ruling against them.  I’d like to see them win a staring contest with Creepy Uncle Joe and win!  That’s when I’ll know that here is some leadership on the horizon.  Until then it’s just speculation.

What Will President Trump Say Next Sunday?

photog Current Events, Trump , , ,

On Sunday February 28th 2021 at 3:40 pm on the last day of CPAC, Donald Trump will make his first major public speech since the January 6th rally in Washington D.C. that the Left used as an excuse for his post-term impeachment and the militarization of Capitol Hill into something resembling the Berlin Wall.

I’ve been waiting impatiently for this speech for weeks.  I guess if I had been more thoughtful, I would have acknowledged that it was necessary to let the impeachment process and the fallout from all of the dozens of Biden regime executive orders settle first before there would be space in the public eye for a major statement by Donald Trump.

So, in less than a week the only man in generations who was both willing and able to do something significant to improve the lives of normal Americans will have the chance to tell us if he has a plan for the future.  I won’t lie and say I’m not anxious that he may decide to pass the torch to the next generation.  After all he is already 74 years old and by 2024, he’ll be 78.  That’s a lot to expect from a man.

But what I’m hoping he will say is that he wants to build a political and commercial foundation for us.  He has some means and he knows other wealthy and powerful men who if they have the ambition and foresight can put together a corporation that supports many different populist and conservative needs.

My ideas for this are very overblown.  I envision a corporation that provides unassailable access for conservatives to services that currently are at the whim of progressive attack.  People who have done nothing more dangerous than question the progressive dictates on sexual and racial pieties have had their internet businesses shut down or shadow banned.  They have been hounded out of their jobs, denied service by banks and payment processors and even arrested by local and federal law enforcement based on selective enforcement of laws that often are completely unconstitutional.

So, you can see, I’ll probably be at least somewhat let down no matter what is said.  I feel that at this point it is going to take men of extraordinary vision to take back this country without an actual civil war.  An enormous amount of coordination and the willingness to build corporate structures and commercial institutions at great financial risk doesn’t seem probable.  But either those things must happen or one of two things will.  Either a demagogue will step in and things will go in a different and much darker direction, or the normal people of this country will finally give up and the progressives will turn this into a totalitarian woke state right out of 1984.  And I really don’t want either of those options.

But even if President Trump only gives us a tiny part of a plan for our future it will be the first tiny patch of good news we’ve had in months.  I’m looking forward to it with great expectation.  I would even like it if he reflected on the RINO’s that stabbed him in the back and also pointed to the current flock of conservative leaders and anointed a few of them as the men who will have to carry the ball after his time has passed.

And finally, this speech is the chance for the acknowledged leader of conservative America to address his people specifically.  At CPAC the audience isn’t all of America.  It’s specifically conservative America and Donald Trump is currently the undisputed leader of that tribe.  We voted for him in prodigious numbers.  Recent surveys show we would abandon the Republican Party if he started a Patriot Party of his own and we’re looking to him to show us a path forward into a future that doesn’t leave us at the mercy of the progressive left.  I hope he has something good for us to hear.

Building on Trump’s Revolt

photog Current Events, Trump , , ,

Donald Trump recognized an explosion waiting for a spark.  He vocalized the outrage and despair that had built up under generations of “leaders” of both mainstream parties who disregarded the will of their constituencies and deprived them of their constitutional freedoms in the name of making a better world.  And now that we have seen what happens when the President is someone who means to work for us and not against us, I think we should be planning to arrange for the same kind of leadership in the next president and in other government positions.

As I’ve said several times before, I think President Trump needs to explicitly name his successor.  Whether he uses the office of the vice presidency as an indicator I think it is vitally important that before he finishes his second term he needs to name a successor.  Whether that will be Mike Pence or someone else, President Trump is the only man to answer that question.

But what about beyond this?  How do we expand this revolt to roll back all the harm done by the anti-constitutional assault we’ve been living under for fifty years?  It’s going to take an organization.  But how does it get built?

When the Tea Party attempted a grass roots movement it devolved into nothing but hucksterism and all that surfaced from that was Mitt Romney.  But without a grass roots movement we end up with the GOP Establishment which once again is Mitt Romney or at best Ted Cruz.  We need someone to build us a new party, something like the Tea Party but with clout and without the grifters.

Once again I hate to say it but we need Donald Trump to build us a foundation that we can flock to.  Replacing the Republican Party probably would do more damage than letting it remain.  But we need an organization that we can build that won’t be easily stolen away by the enemy.  We need someone who doesn’t need money so we can feel like our donations to it will be used for the right cause, to push our agenda among the spineless Republicans and to promote less-spineless Republicans.

I say I hate to say it because it makes me think that we have no hope without a savior with vaults full of money.  But I say it because I think it’s true.  It will take Donald Trump and any other of his class who love this country the way it was to lay a foundation for rebuilding its institutions from the ground up.  It will take lobbyists and PAC money and think tanks and community organizers to start organizing the people who have given up and direct the ones who are looking for effective actions that they can take.

We don’t want e-mails and letters hounding us for donations.  We want leadership and organizational skills and clever lawyers to fight for our rights and defend us from our enemies.  We want someone to attack our enemies using the courts and the Justice Department to stop them from harming us.  Stop Google and Twitter and Paypal and Patreon and Facebook from de-platforming us and stop Antifa from assaulting us in the streets.

So as strange as it is to say, Donald Trump can’t just retire after his terms are over and enjoy his life.  We need him to build the MAGA Foundation and turn it into the weapon we need to keep his revolt alive.  We can support it with our money and other forms of contributions but he’ll have to bring it to life.

Can Pence Succeed Trump?

photog Current Events, Trump , , ,

No one can replace Donald Trump.  He is unique.  Of the seven billion plus humans inhabiting planet Earth there couldn’t be another even close to his experiences, personality and skills.  His quirks and his abilities are completely idiosyncratic.  But he will also someday be term limited from serving as President of the United States.  So, it is necessary to consider who could succeed Donald J. Trump as president.

Mike Pence would be the conventional choice.  The Vice President of a successful President should have a leg up.  But Al Gore and Richard Nixon could disagree.  Assuming President Trump continues to preside over a healthy economy chances are Mike Pence would have at least an even chance at winning.  But is Mike Pence the man for the job?

In terms of personality and background it would be hard to imagine a starker contrast than Trump and Pence.

 

Name Donald Trump Mike Pence
Birthplace New York City, NY Columbus, IN
family business real estate tycoon gas station owner
net worth north of 1 billion dollars $700,000 (mostly future pension benefits)
liquid net worth in the tens of millions $15,000
religious convictions doubtful and conflicted devout
total number of wives 3 1
total lifetime number of porn star sex liaisons impossible to know but upper limit in triple figures zero
Ability to withstand cross-examination by George Stephanopoulos infinite zero

 

If you read Mike’s bio, he checks all the boxes for a social conservative.  He’s pro-life, religious, family values, defense of marriage.  He signed a bill as governor of Indiana to protect religious business owners from anti-discrimination law suits by homosexuals.  But he immediately signed an amended version that gutted it when the Media, some big businesses and progressive advocacy groups coordinated their public attacks and threatened to boycott Indiana.  And this latter incident is the troubling sticking point.  Does Pence have the guts to stick to his guns and defy the progressive coalition?

Now, there are some mitigating circumstances that are in his favor.  Being the Governor of Indiana during the Obama presidency doesn’t have the privileges that being President of the United States has.  You can imagine the pressure being brought to bear by business leaders as negative publicity swirled around Indiana during the blitzkrieg that the Media created.  And I’m sure the US Attorney General’s office was probably on the phone threatening him too.  But however, you slice it, the optics were hardly Trumpian.

It is fair to ask if Mike Pence may have learned something in the last three years of working with Donald Trump that improves his case.  I would have to say yes.  It seems highly unlikely that working in close proximity to President Trump hasn’t provided very valuable object lessons in how to triage the almost unending series of crises, both actual and media-fabricated that have confronted the White House since January of 2017.  By the end of President Trump’s second term, I would imagine even Mike Pence will have added a certain understated swagger to his manner when dealing with the media and other pests.  Undoubtedly, he’ll never be able to launch a vindictive tweet at Chuck Schumer or bark out a fake news sound bite the way The Donald can but I don’t doubt he’ll manage to make his points without collapsing into spineless acquiescence to the likes of Stephanopoulos.

Now this doesn’t answer the other important question.  Is Mike Pence the best choice for Trump’s successor?  Frankly, I doubt that.  I think the best man for the job will be another independent businessman or possibly an extraordinary military leader (of course my favorite choice is always me but we’ll leave that for another day).  But for this essay let’s restrict ourselves to whether Mike Pence could carry on the good work being done by President Trump.  I will give Pence grudging approval and say that based on his strengths, weaknesses and opportunities to grow as Trump’s right-hand man he probably could do it.

One last safeguard for Pence is that if President Trump doesn’t honestly think Pence is the right man to succeed him, he has two chances to correct the problem.  He can choose a different running mate for 2020 and in 2024 if he suddenly objects to Pence, he can recommend someone else for the job.

So, let’s say I give Mike Pence a wavering one thumb up.  Here’s hoping he comes into his own in the second term.

Trump Should Get to Pick the Next Trump

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

Listening to the Powerline interview of Michael Anton.  The interviewer asked a very  salient question.  Who comes after Trump?  Anton said maybe Senator Cotton might be the closest to Trump in policy position, but that nobody else had the loyalty of the Deplorables the way President Trump does.  And that is true.  And also Trump is the one with the instincts to know who is real and who is “fake.”  I’ve said this before but it bears repeating as we progress through President Trump’s term in office.  He needs to be the one to anoint his successor.

I think it will be very interesting to see if Mike Pence will be his running mate in 2020.  I think Pence probably will be but I wouldn’t be shocked if he weren’t.  President Trump has a great responsibility to try to extend the time during which changes to the troubled status-quo can occur.  Sixteen or even twenty four years is only a part of the time that is needed to repair the damage that has already been done to the Republic.  We need to think of even eight years of reform as just the start of what must be done if we expect normalcy to ever recover.  We need a string of Trump like presidents just to get back to zero.

Sounds impossible.  But stranger things have happened.  Meanwhile hopefully Trump is already thinking about who his successor will be in five years.

The Worriers Are Worried

photog Current Events, OCF, Trump , , , ,

One of the guys in the office is agitated.  He thinks Trump has collapsed and the world is coming to an end.  There are articles this guy read that say that Trump is caving on judicial appointments to some of the Circuit Courts.  And also, he’s worried about the Wall not getting built.

So, what do I think about all this?  My bottom line is Barr must get approved soon.  I saw that Graham gave the Dems an extra week before the committee vote takes place.  I read that this timing will give Mueller the opportunity to damage the President during some announcement he is working on.  Fine, Graham is useless, I know that.  My read on this is that Barr should be approved by February 15th.  If by March he isn’t approved then I’ll start to think that Trump is trapped.  Getting control of the Justice Department is the most important objective Trump needs to get done right now.  If he lets that slide then there is little hope of reining in the Deep State that is running amok arresting his friends and associates at will.  So that is what I tell those panicking.  If we reach March and Barr isn’t Attorney General then I’ll admit Trump has been boxed in and won’t be able to clean out the Justice Department.

But getting agitated does nothing.  Start taking concrete steps in your own life to protect yourself and your family from the terrible people and things that are going on all around you.  Form alliances and relationships with people who have shown themselves to be reliable and you can trust.  Support people who are brave enough to identify themselves as supporting the truth about what’s going on.  Ignore the liars and cowards of the establishment republican slate.  Don’t support them and don’t give them a penny.  If the Democrats take the Presidency then we are the real resistance.  They will dismantle this country.  They showed us that under Obama.  Then we have to decide how we respond to that.  Make a stand or leave or become slaves.  Those seem to be the choices.