Tag: conservatism

TBT^2: Trumparion Rising

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It’s hard to believe that President Trump was re-elected roughly a year ago, and that he has been back in office almost nine months.  Trump didn’t waste anytime upon taking office, putting ICE to work right away on deporting illegal aliens and deploying the National Guard to crack down on crime-ridden cities.  He flooded Washington with executive orders, which, while potentially fleeting, have made it difficult for activist judges to keep up with the flurry of changes.  He (sort of) started a trade war with most of the war, which, if not exactly consistent, shook up international markets and put the world on notice that the free ride at America’s expense is over.

I’m largely satisfied with Trump’s progress so far.  My major concerns are that he has been too inconsistent on tariffs; too slow on swamp drainage (although the massive layoffs during the government shutdown, as well as the DOGE-payouts, were huge); and too cozy with certain lobbies.  As to the first, I figure he is using tariffs more as a foreign policy cudgel and/or carrot than as a consistent policy towards repatriating American manufacturing.  To the second, I think we’re facing a “root-and-branch” situation that requires a radical, near-total replacement of official Washington.  For the third, even there Trump is showing signs of shaking off his dogged devotion to his donors of dubious dual loyalties.

Those quibbles aside, things are demonstrably better than they were one year ago.  The Democrats are something of a national laughingstock.  Major corporations are shifting into alignment with elements of Trumpism.  The rampant Leftism of the culture has become more muted.  I have no illusions that these changes are permanent, but they suggest that the powers-that-be are cowed.

All of that said, I’m eager to see what happens next—and to prepare for Vance’s presidency.

With that, here is 7 November 2024’s “TBT: Trumparion Rising“:

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Flashback Friday: Happy Halloween!

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Woooooooot—it’s Halloween!  At long last!

Halloween is particularly fun when it’s on a Friday.  My little town “observed” trick-or-treating last night, but I’m going with Dr. Fiancée and my niece and nephews tonight (we’re not dressing up, but the kids are).  I’m looking forward to some family time.

How are you celebrating tonight, readers?

With that, here is 31 October 2019’s “Happy Halloween!“:

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TBT: Trumparion Rising

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Holy crap—America is back, baby!  The garbage took out the trash—and re-elected Donald Trump to another (non-consecutive) four-year term.

What a ride.  All through Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, I felt like I was living in a dream—a replay of 2016, but even better.

2016 had a raw sense of excitement and uncertainty about it.  Everyone in MAGA World was having fun because we really didn’t think Trump would pull it off against the globalist oligarchs and the Clinton Machine (some people did see his potential even then—God Bless them!—and knew that The Teflon Don would slay the Wicked Witch of Davos).

2024 also had that raw excitement, but it was seasoned with experience.  We knew Trump.  And we knew Biden/Harris.  The choice was clear, and easy.  Trump is bringing with him national renewal and, I pray, revival.

The men carried home this election, I think.  No disrespect to the ladies for their role, but this was the most masculine election in modern American history.  Men finally said, “enough!,” got off the couch, and voted.  Seeing as the other side totally hates us, it was a no-brainer.  Any man that voted for Kamala Harris is gay, a eunuch, or a cuckold—period.  Eh, maybe some well-meaning, befuddled Boomer “Cons” voted that way to defend “conservative” “principles,” but they’re metaphorically castrated, if not physically so.  Good riddance to David French and his simpering, effete ilk.

I’ve been hearing a lot of commentators refer to Trump as a “world-historic” figure.  I’d never thought of it so explicitly, but it’s true:  he is The Man for This Hour.  I sincerely believe he has been ordained by God to lead an American renewal.  There’s no other explanation for how he survived that assassination attempt.

God Bless America!

With that, here is 22 November 2022’s “Trumparion Rising“:

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Kick Out the Cat Ladies

The Portly Politico26 Comments

Regular readers will know I have a strong, even pathological, anti-femite streak.  It’s perhaps ironic, as many of my readers are women, and I actually find most women quite charming and pleasant company.  That said, I can’t ignore how terrible things tend to go when women are in charge of anything more substantial than the local church bake sale or the PTA.

With the notable exceptions—and I have to mention them because women in particular don’t seem to understand the concept of “generalization“—women are not really suited for politics, governance, management, etc.  What they do really well, however, is act as the social glue that binds a community together.  Again, if you want your church bake sale to be a success or your PTA to hound delusional administrators, women are your best option.

If you want to direct grand strategy and pursue a sane domestic policy, leave it to the men.  Women in politics seem to boil down to “kill babies, give me free stuff!”  It was Republican women in South Carolina, for example, who blocked a total abortion ban in my State; all three of them were booted from the South Carolina Senate in their primary elections, leaving our State Senate blessedly free of female meddling.

Lately there’s been some hubbub over J.D. Vance’s past comments about women, particularly his claim that our country is being run by “childless cat ladies” and the “childless Left.”  National Review, the bastion of fake conservative handwringers, fumed simpishly over Vance’s comments, while not exactly addressing the substance of what he said.  After all, Vance said the unpopular part out loud—the cat ladies “are miserable in their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

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In Defense of the British Monarchy

The Portly Politico19 Comments

As a natural conservative, not merely a political one, I have always felt an affinity for the British monarchy, and never bought into the excessively utilitarian (and inherently radical) arguments that favor the abolition of the monarchy.  After weeks of listening to videos from The People Profiles about the monarchy, I am even more convinced in the necessity of the British monarchy as a cultural and political force.

To be clear, I do not advocate for monarchy of any form in the United States.  The reader might ask, “if it’s so beneficial to our British cousins, with whom we share quite a bit of history and culture, why isn’t it good for us?”  The answer is simple:  we’ve never had one!  Monarchy is something almost completely foreign to Americans, at least since 1776.  Our Founding was explicitly anti-monarchical, even if there were Americans willing to submit to a kingship under George Washington.

The British—and, more specifically, the English—however, have possessed a monarchy for over 1000 years, with the exception of that Cromwellian unpleasantness from 1648-1660, ending with the restoration of the Stuarts with Charles II.  That is a great deal of tradition, custom, and ceremony to toss out merely to save a few bucks on maintaining the Royal Family.

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Election Day 2022

The Portly Politico15 Comments

Well, here it is—Election Day 2022.  The much-vaunted midterms have arrived, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good day for Republicans.

I’ll admit, I’ve been tuned out from and burned out on politics of late, and while I’m optimistic about today’s results for Republicans, I’m a tad disillusioned with the state of electoral politics generally.  Will a “red wave” result in some meaningful reform this time around, or will GOP Establishment types wrangle the feisty upstarts and neutralize the MAGA Wing?

I’m not a “doomer” by any stretch—I sincerely hope for the latter, and I think it is the future of the Republican Party, if the GOP hopes to survive as a viable political party.  History, however, is not an encouraging indicator.

That said, a sweeping Republican victory is, by any measure, vastly preferable to a sweeping Democratic one.  At worst, I know a Republican House and Senate won’t screw things up further, and may make some marginal improvements; but a Democratic House and Senate, at worst, will double-down on the current insanity of lawlessness and moral relativism.

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Let’s Get Biblical: Elijah and the 7000

The Portly Politico15 Comments

It’s easy to get discouraged in the face of all the insanity and absurdity of the wokesters, who aren’t just unwashed Antifa thugs picking fights in the streets.  Woke-ism, Cultural Marxism, CRT, progressivism, etc.—whatever name we give it, the ideology dominates our institutions, our ruling class, and our popular culture.

In the face of such totality, it’s little wonder that conservatives and traditionalists grow pessimistic about the future.  Despair is seductive, and misery loves company.

As Christians, however, despair is profoundly sinful.  When we give into despair—into hopelessness—we are denying God’s Sovereignty, His Power and His Plan to guide us through the present storm.

During my pastor’s sermon this past Sunday, he mentioned in passing the passages from 1 Kings 19 in which Elijah curls up under a broom tree and prays for death.  Despite defeating the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel in the previous chapter, Elijah despairs, for he knows that Jezebel has put a price on his head—and he feels utterly alone.

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TBT: Romney’s Perfidy Runs in the Family

The Portly Politico2 Comments

As a bit of a mea culpa for my positive post about Mitt Romney’s pro-natalism plan, I thought I’d atone by looking back to one of my better posts:  a detailed rundown of the Romney family’s long history of waffling on important issues, and attempting to play both sides of the political spectrum simultaneously.

Romney’s father, George Romney, was one of a (thankfully) dying breed:  the Rockefeller Republicans.  These “moderate” and liberal Republicans essentially were a paler echo of the postwar Democratic Party:  they espoused heavy spending, government intervention, and socially progressive policies, just in a more toned-down manner than their more overtly progressive colleagues in the opposing party.

In this post, I review Romney the Elder’s infamous “brainwashing” interview, in which he claimed his earlier pro-Vietnam War position was due to a thorough “brainwashing” by the United States military.  It was a politically catastrophic and bizarre statement, and one that demonstrated yet another of Romney’s shifting positions to fit with the tenor and fashions of the time.

And so it continues with Romney the Younger, who voted this week to proceed with the farcical impeachment trial against a man who is no longer holding office.  Romney will yet again bask in temporary accolades for his “courage” and “bipartisanship” in the press, before they return to reviling him for being a Republican.

At this point, why can’t these Republican squishes—Romney, Murkowski, Collin, et. al.—just show their true colors and join the Democratic Party?

But I digress.  Here is 6 January 2019’s “Romney’s Perfidy Runs in the Family“:

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Fleeing to (and Preserving) Freedom

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Monday’s edition of Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day on Ballotpedia listed the sixteen States that lost population in 2020.  That’s significant as it will likely affect the apportionment of congressional districts in a number of States, depending on how rapidly other States’ populations grew relative to these States’ shrinkage.

Seven of the States were in New England of the Mid-Atlantic:  Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.  The other nine were California, Michigan, Ohio, Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

While I certainly don’t like seeing Southern States in that list (I’ll consider West Virginia “honorarily Southern”), their inclusion makes sense.  Mississippi is a great State, as I imagine West Virginia is, too, but they’re not exactly hotbeds of opportunity.  Similarly, Louisiana is so corrupt, it’s little wonder that it’s shedding inhabitants.

The rest of these States make perfect sense:  New England and the Mid-Atlantic are hotbeds of failed progressive policies and social justice insanity.  Reading photog’s posts at Orion’s Cold Fire gives a good sense for the besieged nature of conservatives in his State, Massachusetts.  I once spoke with a pharmacist who relocated his family from either Connecticut or Vermont—I can’t quite remember now—who said he had to move South because he was run out of his job for not supporting abortion.

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Inauguration Day 2021

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The day has arrived—the briefly delayed third term of Obama’s presidency.  In the years since Obama left office, the progressive Left has become even more insane.  After a four-year reprieve under Trump, the radical progressives aren’t going to let another opportunity pass to transform the country completely.

Things are going to get worse before they get better, which is why I’m encouraging my fellow conservatives, Christians, and traditionalists to think and act locally in the years to come (H/T to historian Brion McClanahan for that pithy phrase).  Now is the time to attend town/city and county council meetings, to run for local and State offices, and to build up communities.  While we can do some of that online, we’ve got to get out and meet people—join Bible studies, form local clubs, revive forgotten civic organizations, etc.  Heck, even play at an open mic!

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