After Nikki Haley dropped out and Donald Trump reached the delegate threshold, he is the GOP nominee for president of the United States. Even with over 90 charges, trials having begun and large parts of the public media out to get him, he and his campaign showed nothing but strength throughout the contests so far. However, to win back the presidency, Trump will have to unite the party, get independents behind him and buck some of these trials postponed until after the election.
In 2016, the divided GOP came home for Trump with 93% of the vote. This was massive, fueled by a variety of things. First, the MAGA voters who loved Trump as soon as he came down his golden escalator, of which, many still do. Second, their hatred for Hillary Clinton, who many viewed as an opportunistic criminal, with many speculating that she has had enemies murdered, which is why Barack Obama didn’t choose her as his vice president. Of course, this is speculation, and some consider them conspiracy theories. What are not conspiracy theories though are her thousands of deleted emails, bleached servers and destroyed personal cell phones. Finally, Americans were offered something other than the last eight years of their lives and they took it.
This leads us directly to where the GOP is today, as some might say a divided party because of Trump himself. However, the GOP has been divided for quite some time, and if anything, in 2016 and 2020, Trump has united the party at the ballot box. Additionally, in 2016 the GOP was more divided than it is now, with both the Ted Cruz and the Trump camps wanting blood for each, mostly fueled by both candidates’ remarks about each other, but they got in line and voted. This must be the case for the GOP in 2024.
Us Americans are in a much different place than we were before COVID, compared to where we are now. High inflation, an out-of-control border, foreign wars and energy weakness are the norm of today, while the norm under the first Trump Administration was cheap gas and energy prices, bold foreign policy with no new wars (besides the much-needed U.S.-China Trade War), a much more secure border where new barriers were being built and economic growth was bolting through the sky.
It’s without a doubt that some don’t like Trump because of his personality. Of course, it is valid, as he often doesn’t hold back on his harsh criticism of his opponents or people that he doesn’t like in general. It’s his biggest downfall, but that is also why so many people love him. All around the country, even the world, people are looking for that kind of harsh reality that polished politicians don’t and will never have. However, it’s a balancing act. Are you willing to go for the polished politician with policies that make our lives harder, or the harsh reality type that made our lives better? The GOP needs to come together, ignore the lie that Joe Biden will protect democracy and vote for the guy that has and will again institute policies that support families, students and everyone else in between.
@msn | May 2, 2024 at 12:01 pm
When I look at Trump and Biden, I can’t help but think, that they are not the best that America can do. I wish I could vote against both of them. I. Biden is a tired old hack who is carrying on the bad old Democratic tradition of taxing and spending America back into the Sto ne Age.. Trump is an erratic populist with no fixed set of principles. After he whipped up his crowd to take over the Capital, I am uneasy with handing him the keys to the nation’s nukes and making him commander of our military. He just lacks the maturity and judgement for such great responsibility.
America produced political geniuses like the Founding Fathers in a world powered by horses and lit by whale oil. Now, when the whole nation can fly and we can summon up every word ever written with a flick of a finger, Trump and Biden are all we have to choose from? Where are the new Washington’s, the Jeffersons, the Lincoln’s who made and preserved America with their political genius? Who among our public figures can you point to and say he is apolitical genius who can lead America to a better future? There is nobody whom I can see. Nobody.
America is politically impoverished by cheap and mean-spirited bickering in the service of ego or to loot the treasury to fund hare brained schemes that make America worse.
Show me the president of my dreams, one who has served in the military in combat and who has felt the pain of losing buddies so that he does not rush to war casually. Show me a businessman who has made a payroll and balanced a budget. Show me an educated man who is well read in American history. Show me a politician who knows all the dirty tricks of his trade but does not make a fortune from them at the expense of the people. show me a patriot who stands up and feels a little weepy when the national anthem is played and the flag flutters.
Where is that man? We need him to step up and show himself now. We need him desperately.
David Jackson | Mar 19, 2024 at 7:41 pm
We will either get Trump, who says mean things and has an ego problem, yet kept inflation under control, got the Abraham Accords signed, and and prices low by making us a net oil exporter instead of dependent on foreign oil, and despite all the hyperbole about f@scism, didn’t roll over a single constitutionally protected right of any Americans.
Or we will get more of the Biden puppet regime’s rampant inflation, human trafficking and cartel violence at the border, artificial importation of migrants with no background checks or incentive to assimilate, death and risks of WWIII with mismanaged foreign proxy wars, arming of mid-east radical groups, and energy policy designed to centralize control while doing nothing for the planet, all while installing judges and pushing legislation to have government control rights to speech, arms, and property.
That’s literally the choice we have.
Chris J | Mar 20, 2024 at 10:23 am
Let’s agree on one thing: a binary choice is wrong for the good of true democracy. A multi-party system with ranked choice voting is the only true way forward (a significant portion of the population is being forced year after year to hold their nose and vote for “the lesser of two evils”; it’s a fact that the country does not need to be as divided as Rs and Ds make things out to be). And let’s do away with the electoral college, a system that in modern politics has prioritized half a dozen swing states over the voices from the remaining 44 states.
Let’s be honest: Inflation is largely a problem created by greedy, unchecked corporations (including oil companies); inflation has never been under the control of any POTUS (at least not to the extent that we’ve been led to believe); imposing steep tariffs are also the purview of POTUS, and that has had direct effects on the price of goods, a price that all regular citizens pay. Furthermore, “installing judges” is the purview of every POTUS (do some basic research compare the numbers of appointed judges between DJT’s tenure and during Biden’s presidency). What is also the purview of POTUS is nominating highly qualified non-partisan diplomats to the State Department. It is a fact that DJT gutted the State Department and his people in the legislature regularly continue to block appointments to this day. A strong diplomatic infrastructure is what has helped (until ~2017) minimize conflicts that could have gotten much worse (admittedly an imperfect system, but a better one than no diplomacy at all, or a system, as DJT would have it, where power is consolidated to him and a handful of folks who are not out to do what’s in the best interest of the common American like me and you). DJT is not the Messiah for the messy political system that is democracy, a system implicitly unwieldy and slow and frustrating but was the response to monarchies not doing what was best for their subjects.
To be clear, a second DJT presidency would include nationwide abortion bans, cultural battles in classrooms, attacks on climate science, and the political use of the military. His return could see more aggressive and comprehensive changes than his first term, with a focus on executive power and conservative appointments in federal courts. These policy positions speak to only to a declining Christian population and all have significant implications for democracy, individual rights, and the overall quality of American lives. Bottom line: a vote for Trump is a vote for absolute power in the hands of very few who empower a minority to act outside the bounds of a civil society; that is not democracy; it is a monarchy at best, a corporate oligarchical dictatorship at worst.
David Jackson | Mar 21, 2024 at 8:39 pm
First of all, we’re not a democracy. The fact anyone can make it to an institution of higher learning without having read the Constitution, the law of our nation, is telling of our current state of public education. The word democracy isn’t mentioned once in the US Constitution, nor has it been amended to be included. A “true democracy” has been known to be nothing more than mob rule since ancient Athens, and our founders we’re well aware of this when writing the constitution for our Constitutional Republic. I’ll agree the two-party system is a failure, but ranked choice voting is an even larger failure that would not serve the interests of safeguarding the people’s rights or promoting efficiency in government. Moreover, the President of the United States is exactly that, the President of the United STATES, not a president of the people who functions as another elected representative. The President is the chief executive of the Federal Government and therefore must protect the interest of all the several States, not simply our more populace ones. A popular vote would take us from prioritizing half a dozen swing states to prioritizing the wants of New York City, LA, Chicago, and Houston over everyone else. The States have different geographical needs, industries, and population densities that are not served by the popular opinion of people who don’t live in them. If anything, we should change the Electoral College to give each state only one electoral vote as that would force every administration to care about every region of the country.
Yes, lets be honest: your assessment of inflation is entirely incorrect. Inflation is caused by the Federal Government printing more US Currency out of thin air and spending more money than we actually have. The more that’s printed the more our money loses its purchasing power. Private industry, even the admittedly greedy corporations, cannot sell things at prices too high people are not willing or even able to buy them.
One of Trump’s few virtues was appointing judges who read the law as written, not interpret it to say whatever is opportune for those whose political power depends on pretending it says what’s contemporarily convenient. The perfect example of this is Biden’s Supreme Court appointee Katanji Brown Jackson. A woman literally chosen due to her race and sex instead of qualifications, and if that weren’t bad enough, openly stated she doesn’t believe in the natural rights the US was founded on (not to mention used to justify fighting the Civil War to abolish slavery) during her confirmation process and is apparently concerned the First Amendment “hamstrings the government” from controlling American’s speech. Imagine that.
To be clear, how would a second DJT presidency itself lead to nationwide abortion bans when Congress writes laws, not the President? What do you mean by cultural battels in the classroom, that children wouldn’t exclusively be taught the overt lies that the US is built by “white supremacy” on “stolen land” or the “all disparities are the result of systemic oppression” nonsense by national union talking heads and that’s a problem for you? By attacks on climate science, you mean getting us back out of the Paris Climate Accord (again) which restricts the US and Europe while openly allowing Earth’s two largest polluters (China and India) to dump as much carbon into the atmosphere as they please? And not sure what you could mean by political use of the military, other than daring to say they should be focused on warfighting and not abandoning our allies and $50 Billion of weapons after deciding to retreat from our longest war. As far as Sate Dept Diplomats, Trump’s foreign policy had a Putin who was in check, a China on notice to not invade Taiwan, and the Abrham Accords signed in the mid-east. Biden’s incompetence has Putin emboldened enough to invade Ukraine, China pushing its boundaries in the South China Sea, and chaos back in the Middle East. And, sorry, but it’s not the “conservative” appointments in federal courts who are a threat to individual rights. By definition, that means they’ll interpret law as written instead of re-interpret as ever changing popular tend desires. It’s the liberal “living document” court appointees who believe they can unilaterally decide by judicial fiat that what was an individual right is now either a privilege or simply nonexistent because “we live in different times now” or some other slogan.
Trump isn’t any graver of a threat expanding or abusing executive power than any demagogue we’ve had in that office in the last half century. The only thing that makes him different is he isn’t a career bureaucrat who pandered to the corporate media for support, but instead beat career bureaucrats at their own game and told the media they were manipulators to their faces. If you’d like to compare Trump’s actual transgressions while in office vs each sitting president back to LBJ I’d love to. Too many people who believe only what the bias media they consume tells them to believe need some perspective.
Are you an agitprop writer for NPR? What evidence do you have that “Bottom line: a vote for Trump is a vote for absolute power in the hands of very few who empower a minority to act outside the bounds of a civil society; that is not democracy; it is a monarchy at best, a corporate oligarchical dictatorship at worst.”? I’d seriously love to see it, and contrast it against the judicial activism, lawfare, and open disregard for constitutional rule of law and individual rights, of the modern Democratic Party pushing its burn it to the ground so we can re-build our neo-socialist technocracy in its place agenda.
Chas | Mar 17, 2024 at 8:11 pm
Sure sure, I highly encourage the GOP to put every one of their political eggs into a broken, and corrupt political basket. I can’t wait to see how that works out for them.
David Jackson | Mar 19, 2024 at 7:36 pm
Worked for the Dems….well with some “fortification” to help out.