by Devin
I was talking to friend and business associate the other day with whom I had not communicated since last summer. He and I have had some interesting and animated discussions about politics in the past, but always respectful in spite of opposing views. One series of conversations we had was about why the Republican Party lost the last two Presidential elections to the Democrats. Now, for context, my friend is an evangelical Christian Republican who is very much aligned with the Republican Establishment.
When I told him that the reason why both John McCain and Mitt Romney lost was because the conservative base of the Republican Party stayed home, he was, to put it mildly, downright indignant and refused to believe me. Of course, he wanted to know if I voted in those elections and, of course, I did, for both McCain and Romney. That didn’t help my case, but I explained that I firmly believed that both were a huge improvement over Barack Obama, and while I was not happy with them as the nominees, I held my nose and voted for them anyway because I felt that it was more important to defeat the Democrats and their ideology than it was to lose because the Republican candidate did not meet my ideological standards. Well, the Republican candidates, as we all well know, lost anyway.
I eventually convinced him that I was right about why they lost, at least I think I did. In any case, when we were catching up the other day he broached the subject of politics and asked me what I thought of Donald Trump. So here is what I told him.
When Trump announced he was entering the race I was intrigued. At that time I did not know much about his political views. As an aside, I still don’t know much about his political views, but more on that later. My main concern at the time was the media presumption that Jeb Bush would be the eventual nominee. In fact, I wrote an article about that and posted it here on this site. Feel free to check it out here! But back to Jeb! As I said, he was my main concern because I knew he was an all-in Republican Establishment guy in the very same vein as McCain and Romney. I felt very certain that we conservatives were going to get stuck with another loser as our nominee and that conservatives were helpless to do anything about it. Enter The Donald.
Trump wasted no time mincing words and made a big splash right off the bat with his famous announcement speech. This was followed by a refusal to walk back even a single word of what he said.
THIS was refreshing! I thought, what is this? A guy running for political office who isn’t apologizing every time he turns around because he offended someone? Wow! I could get on board with that! It helped that the particular policy with which he was making so much of an impact was about illegal immigration. Conservatives across the land who are fed up with the failure of our government to control our border were excited that someone finally had the balls to say what we have been thinking now for years! Woo hoo!
Then it became obvious that Trump was not liked by the Republican Establishment. Check the second box! This is looking pretty good!
Okay. Let me hit the pause button for a moment and make it clear that prior to Trump jumping into the race, I was already a Cruz supporter from the day he announced. I’ve been following Cruz’s political career ever since he announced he was running for the US Senate. As everyone seems to know, except possibly Trump, Cruz is universally reviled by the Republican Establishment. Box checked from day one. Cruz is the only conservative in Washington, DC, who has worked as hard as is possible to fight unapologetically for conservative values and do exactly what he said he would do while he was on the campaign trail running for the US Senate. Hence his reputation with the Establishment.
Back to Trump. I cheered as Jeb Bush’s numbers began to tank, or, more precisely, cratered, with the entry of Donald Trump. Suddenly, the presumptive nominee was struggling to get any air at all! I credit Trump entirely for the demise of Jeb Bush’s campaign. And for that, I am truly grateful to him. But as Jeb tanked, Trump began to move more toward the center with some of the things he was saying and it wasn’t long before my opinion of him began to sour. Since then it has become obvious to all but the most politically unconscious that Trump is no conservative and in fact, has no political ideology or philosophy at all. His lack of familiarity with the US Constitution is appalling.
Let me just say right now, to be absolutely clear, I never abandoned Ted Cruz for Trump. Not even for a moment. My primary interest in Trump was how he was affecting the rest of the Republican field and, so far so good, he was eliminating the chaff right and left. Well, maybe just left! Except, of course, for Kasich, who simply won’t quit even though he was defeated before he ever started.
The straw that finally broke the proverbial camel’s back for me with Trump, for good, was when another friend of mine from the good ol’ homeland in the South declared that Trump had already won before the first super Tuesday primaries and said I should stop dreaming about a Cruz nomination and start thinking about how Trump would destroy Hilary and Make America Great Again? Well, I knew it didn’t look good for Cruz at that point, but I’ll be damned if I was going to concede so soon so easily. Particularly since I knew Cruz to be a hell of a lot smarter than people realize.
My Southern friend eventually conceded that Cruz still had a chance, however small it might be. Nowadays he is not so sure about a Trump nomination, but that’s a subject for another article some other time. Let’s get back to my original conversation with my friend and associate, the evangelical Christian Establishment guy. This is where it gets interesting, I promise.
It seems that Trump is not riding a conservative wave at all. He is riding a populist anti-establishment wave! THIS is nothing short of amazing! Talk about irony! Trump is the ultimate Establishment anti-Establishment candidate. Huh???! That’s right. You read that right, but go ahead and read it again if you’re not sure! And this is what has everyone scratching their heads. Particularly the media pundits who, as usual, haven’t got a clue! Can I just say, I love it?! Oh yes. I do.
Who on earth EVER would have dreamed that not only were long-time Republican voters of the conservative base disenfranchised by the last two Republican presidential nominees, but so were the centrist types! Who knew???! NOBODY! That’s who!
So, here we are back to the point I was making to my friend about conservatives staying home the last two elections because the Republican candidate did not represent them and they were sick and tired of having moderate, milquetoast, big government, fiscally irresponsible, socially and morally bankrupt nominees forced upon them. And what do I hear? Ardent Trump supporters are going to stay home if Trump is not the nominee! Huh??! I thought to myself, am I hearing this right??? The very people who couldn’t believe conservatives would hang the Republican Party out to dry for lack of representation suddenly are on the other end of the stick and threatening to do the EXACT SAME THING! Insanity rules!!!
And, of course, no surprise, ardent conservatives are once again threatening to boycott Trump if he is the nominee. Wow. Never in my life have I EVER witnessed a crazier political circumstance than what we are witnessing right now at this moment in American history.
So where does this leave us? It would seem that I have built a case practically guaranteeing a Democrat victory this fall, so how do I justify the title of this article? Deep breath in. Here we go!
While Trump has been busily disenfranchising women and conservatives and the Republican Party has been busily disenfranchising everyone, the Democrats have been busy with their own internal battle. Bernie, the self-proclaimed democratic socialist (that’s code speak for communist), Sanders seems to have locked up the youth vote so securely that Hilary no longer even pretends to care about them. But it’s not just the youth vote. It is also the extreme left-wing base of the Democratic Party. I live in a very liberal town: Santa Fe, New Mexico. For every Hilary bumper sticker there are easily two dozen or even more Bernie stickers and yard signs. And while Sanders has managed to wage a strong and, quite frankly, successful campaign so far against Hildebroom, she is still ahead in the delegate count because of the all-important super delegates that she has skillfully won over to her side of the ledger. The excitement by those feeling the Bern is going to turn to anger after the convention is over and Hilary has been forced on them by the same methods that have been used for decades by the Republican Establishment to force their Chosen One losers on its conservative base.
It is just my opinion, but I think the degree of disenfranchisement on the left is going to be giant when Hilary is nominated anyway. This is a group that is used to being united behind their candidate long before this point in the process. This is a group of people whose number one tool for change is the protest. These people do not sit down quietly when they don’t get their way! Rest assured, they will not vote for Hilary. Add to that the incredible damage Hilary has done to herself with the whole email scandal and the utter chaos that followed in Libya in the aftermath of toppling the Gaddafi regime. Then there’s her abysmal record of attacking and attempting to destroy all the women with whom her husband, Bill the Philanderer, had affairs with over his career. Her support from women is weak at best.
At this point, you may be thinking, okay, that all may be true, buy why am I so sure Hilary is going to win the Democratic nomination? To that, all I can say is, you just watch and see. But, just for a moment, let’s go to Mr. Roger’s Land of Make Believe and pretend that Bernie succeeds and wins the nomination. Only those people who still think the Berninator has a real chance of winning the nomination are going to vote for him. Anyone still clinging to Broom Hilda is not going to get fired up about Bernie. Come on. If the Bernster hasn’t already fired you up, he never will. Which means you are consciously aware of the fact that you are a Democrat, not a Socialist, and Socialism is not where you thought your party was heading (URGENT MESSAGE to you if you are in this group: WAKE UP! YOUR PARTY LEFT YOU A LONG TIME AGO!!!).
Add to this the fact that if there are Democrats who, at the end of the day, won’t be able to vote for Bernie because he is just TOO far to the left, how many independents do you think he’ll get? This alone should be enough to convince you that the Democratic Party will NEVER allow him to be the nominee. Now, if he had been clever enough to hide his extreme radical left-wing ideology in the same way that Barack Obama was able to do it, he might have had a chance. Only, then no one would have noticed him and he surely would not have garnered the kind of dedicated, downright religious, following that he has.
Finally, to put the last nail in the coffin, have you noticed how many people are turning out for the Democratic primaries and caucuses compared to the number showing up to vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses? It is something like half! There is no energy on the left this time around. I cannot say with certainty why this is, but I suspect it is because President Obama simply wore them down. Kind of in the same way George “Dubbiyer” Bush wore his voters down. It may also be because Hilary is being shoved down their collective throats and the only alternative is someone any mature adult would see as a radical lunatic.
All of these things tell me that so long as the idiotic Republican Establishment doesn’t just usurp the nomination process and install Paul Ryan, John Kasich, or Jeb Bush as their nominee, or some other numb nuts who didn’t even run, the general election is already taking place, right now, in the Republican Primary. You don’t have to agree, but if you don’t, sign up and post your comments! We would love to hear them!