Blaming Trump

It is truly startling to review the extent to which conservative thinkers, writers, and commentators have joined in the vituperative Democrat and media campaign against their former president and benefactor. Blaming Trump causes evident glee in conservatism’s enemies, who have had Trump in their crosshairs for six years and more. Democrats report conservative disputes and backbiting with great satisfaction. We should not endorse such strategic machinations, which demoralize our side and give succor and aid to those who wish us permanently in the political wilderness — a wish, if things do not change, they may well realize.

Certainly, Trump made serious errors of judgment, the most glaring of which was allowing Fauci and Birx to remain as medical authorities during the COVID-19 scare rather than cashier them as partisan frauds, as he did Comey. Trump was out of his depth here, just as were billions of other people and the leaders of almost every nation in the world. He allowed himself to be blindsided. I cannot quite fault him for that since, as his detractors might take the time to reflect, Trump is neither Solomon, Jesus, nor God — and that is perhaps what many of his erstwhile supporters cannot forgive him for. “Human, all too human” doesn’t cut it for them.

Obviously, Trump is not to the manner born — though neither were legendary and successful warriors like George Patton and William Tecumseh Sherman, no fine gentlemen but rough and tumble characters. Like them or not, they were winners. We are now in a war for the nation and thus need a wartime president, warts and all. Eric Mack writing at Newsmax notes that “people are forgetting Trump is a New York fighter, a billionaire beholden to no one, and not a politician.” Writing at Townhall, Kevin McCullough zeroes in on the real issue: “All fire must be trained on the pain the Democrats are inflicting on the American people, their pocketbooks, and their children… The real battle is with the progressive Marxists attempting to destroy America.” Trump’s America First should be “the unwavering policy focus.”

We need to remember that Trump’s overall record in office was unprecedented for what he managed to accomplish in the most trying and disruptive of circumstances. He put a faltering America back on track despite the concerted and unrelenting blitzkrieg launched against him. I can think of no other political figure who could have withstood the daily onslaught of lies, accusations, lawfare, slander, phony investigations, fake news reports, false revelations, and meretricious impeachments yet achieved what he did. And now he is accused by his fellow Republicans of having lost the midterms for his Party by indulging in overheated rhetoric and backing weak candidates in Congressional and local races.

That is the problem for many: Trump’s presumably poor choice of candidates leading to electoral disaster. But as Dr. Gina Loudon reports at The National Pulse, all told, Trump backed 235 candidates, 219 of whom won their respective races, for a success rate of 93%. Not too shabby, I would venture. Nor do we account for the evident gains Republicans have made and the historically large number of Republican states now with supermajorities. By rights, both the Senate and the House should be firmly in Republican hands, and indeed, the results for a Republican House should have been determined days ago.

Newt Gingrich slyly wonders how a 5-to-6 million majority Republican vote could not have yielded a far more robust result. Well, he should. Similarly, Paul Craig Roberts’ perspective for the Institute for Political Economy makes considerable sense: “The CNN exit polls show substantial erosion of the Democrat voting base since the 2018 election. How can such substantial erosion be consistent with the lack of any significant Republican gain on Tuesday? If the vote count is honest, then the conclusion is that we must write off the American people as beings too stupid to survive as a free people. This is why I much prefer to believe that the election was again stolen.”

After all, what is one to make of a venal and manifestly non-compos candidate like John Fetterman being summarily elevated to the Senate? Or of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, counting the votes of her gubernatorial rival, Kari Lake? Seriously? Is such a procedure legitimate? What about all the mysterious delays in counting votes while mail-in ballots are curiously being processed elsewhere? Trump cannot take the blame for a corrupt and degraded third-world electoral system put in place by the powerful leftist opposition and by the quislings and reprobates in his own party.

Conservatives should not endorse or practice the divisive tactics promoted by the Democrats and the media and silently abetted by the cadre of perfidious corporate Republicans. We should not be singing, as Loudon warns, from their hymn sheet. And we should not be slinging insults at one another. Nor should we dismiss Trump’s monster rallies, showing massive support across the American heartland despite those who now doubt his viability.

A combination of Democrat chicanery and intrigue, along with the deliberate blind eye and ruinous maneuvering of establishment Republicans who can’t stand a successful Trump or the MAGA movement, were responsible for the absence of a seismic red wave, though a long comber is nothing to sneer at. Still, not good enough. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has sepulchered the GOP, saying “The old party is dead.”

The new Republican party would revive Trump’s agenda: “tougher tariffs on China, reshore American jobs, open up American energy full throttle, 100K new cops on the street. Unrig the system.” The latter exhortation is crucial. As Roger Kimball writes in the Spectator World, “Republicans need to figure out mail-in voting” — that is, non-RINO Republicans — since mail-ins and absentee ballots will influence the course of elections. “The wholesale practice of early or mail-in voting,” he writes, “makes a mockery of elections… The fix is in.”

I can’t say with absolute confidence whether Trump should run again or pass the torch to DeSantis, though I suspect there is really no choice. Florida needs DeSantis, whom I greatly respect but whose time for a presidential adventure should, in my estimation, wait until the completion of his term as governor. He could use the seasoning that Trump already possesses. Moreover, at present he would be no match for the Deep State juggernaut; the smear campaign has already begun, and it will grow and may well succeed unless the electoral system can be rehabilitated. In any event, “unrigging” the system is the task, and a monumental one it is for the coming years. Meanwhile, the blame game needs to stop. And it needs to stop now.