SubscribeStar Saturday: Disappointment

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Well, the midterm elections have come and gone, and my primary reaction is bitter disappointment.

I’d been tepid about the elections this year, barely taking notice of them, but allowed myself to fall for the “red wave” hype.  In a sane world, that should have happened—a major backlash against inflation and insanity.

Instead, we have a brain-dead automaton in the United States Senate and a lean Republican majority in the House—a majority, I fear, that will be ultimately meaningless.  At the time of writing, the balance in the Senate itself is questionable, and the Democrats may even walk away controlling it—completely the opposite of what we all thought would happen.

I was a fool to get my hopes up about national politics.  Even had the Republicans taken huge majorities, what would have been the result?  Would anything have substantially changed?

Perhaps with time I’ll take a more measured response to events, but right now, it seems like our national republic is a joke, and the American people are addicted to government largesse and cultural degradation.  We don’t want to improve, and we don’t want to be free.  We want to be children, and children can’t govern themselves.

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Patriot Party

President Trump survived another sham impeachment and seems to be enjoying life outside of the White House.  I doubt his legal problems are over, as the Democrats and the Establishment Uniparty will do everything in their power to suppress and harass him and his family, but he remains hugely popular among his supporters.  According to a CBS News poll, seventy percent of Republicans would consider joining a third party if Trump led it (per The Epoch Times).  Thirty-three percent of Republicans would join a Trump-led party, with another thirty-seven percent responding “maybe.”

In similar news, John Derbyshire broke down numbers for a related question on his most recent podcast.  The poll he referenced asked (essentially) “what is the future of the Republican Party”?  The three choices were (to paraphrase) “Trump runs again,” “Trumpism is presented by a more traditionally ‘presidential’ candidate,” and “return to the old-style GOP issues.”  Respondents to that poll overwhelming selected the second option:  Trumpism with a less flamboyant figure.  Trump running again came in second, with the return to status quo ante option in a very distant third.

In other words, Trump himself might fade over time—and voters might want a less bombastic package—but the ideas and policies he championed remain hugely popular among conservative voters.

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TBT: Romney’s Perfidy Runs in the Family

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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The Devil Went Down to Georgia

The results are coming in from the two Georgia Senate run-offs, and it looks like the Democrats (at the time of writing) have secured one US Senate seat, and are poised—thanks to some last-minute ballot-printing, no doubt—to win a second.  Raphael Warnock, the black minister who hates the military, defeated Kelly Loeffler.  Jon Ossoff, a progressive’s progressive (he attended Atlanta’s incredibly Leftist Paideia School), holds a razor-thin lead over David Perdue.  I’m sure Stacey Abrams will manufacture the necessary votes.

Of course, the Democratic victories—which will give the Democrats narrow control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency come Biden the Usurper’s inauguration later this month—rest squarely at Georgia Republicans’ feet.  Governor Kemp’s unwillingness to uphold the integrity of the presidential election demoralized conservative voters—why vote if the system is rigged, and your own party won’t fight to fix it?

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The Morning After

Well, nothing got finalized last night.  I went to bed around 1 AM with a sense of uncertainty, but feeling somewhat confident about Wisconsin and Michigan, and hoping the early calls for Arizona and Virginia for Biden might be reversed.

The news this morning seems grim:  Wisconsin is leaning towards Biden, and Trump’s lead in Michigan has narrowed considerably—within the point where some manufactured or “found” votes from Detroit could plausibly flip it to Biden.  Even Georgia seems to be tilting towards Biden, even though Trump still holds as lead there as of this writing.

There are some silver linings:  Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania is around 700,000 votes, but there are apparently 1.4 million uncounted absentee ballots, which could skew heavily in Biden’s favor.  I figured a 0.7 million vote lead would be so insurmountable, even Democratic malfeasance couldn’t plausibly produce enough fake votes.  A 10,000 vote difference is one thing; 700,000 is quite another.

It also looks like Republicans will retain the Senate, and South Carolina US House District 1 flipped back to the GOP last night.  Lindsey Graham also won his reelection bid against Jaime Harrison (and handily), who blew $104.1 million in his race against Graham.

But, at this point—and, perhaps, I’m just tired and overly pessimistic as a result—it seems like the fix is in.  I was praying for a Trump showing so overwhelming, it would make fraud virtually impossible, or at least irrelevant.  Now the months of Democratic fraud and pushing of mail-in voting has reaped dividend for the progressives, who will no-doubt oust Biden at the earliest opportunity.

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Election Day 2020

Well, here it is:  Election Day 2020.  I got up early this morning to get to the polls around 6:50 AM, and there was already a line twenty-deep waiting at the door.  I voted around 7:25 AM, so it wasn’t too terribly long of a wait.  When I left, there was still a long line out the door, and I live in a town with less than 1000 people and two voting precincts.

Immediately after voting, I felt energized.  I may be naive, as my blogger buddy jonolan claims, but I can’t help but feel optimistic this morning.  Hopefully that optimism bears out across the country, and holds up as the results come in.

I remember in 2016 a sense of despair that the fix was in, which slowly gave way to the magic of a Trump upset.  This year I am more anxious about the aftermath of the results than I am about the results themselves (although I am praying fervently for an unexpected Trump landslide).  A narrow victory for either candidate is probably the worst possible outcome (ergo, my aforementioned prayers for a convincing, incontestable Trump victory).

Of course, if my prayers are answered and Trump wins resoundingly and Republicans dominate Congress again, there won’t suddenly be peace on the streets.  As I noted in “Progressivism and Political Violence,” the progressive Left will resort to anything—including violence—if it’s electorally denied access to the legitimate organs of power.

With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court is now solidly conservative-constitutionalist.  If Republicans control the presidency and a convincing majority in the House and Senate, the Left will grow even more enraged, unhinged, and violent.  Never mind they can take a bite at the congressional apple again in two years; they will array every force and tactic at their disposal to destroy us.

We must remember, too, that electoral victory does not equate to cultural victory.  The Left dominates the institutions and entertainment.  Leftist dogma increasingly shapes our basic assumptions about the world.  Those assumptions run deep, infecting even conservative Christians, the very group equipped intellectually and spiritually to resist such corruption.

But Leftism, for all its falsehoods and inconsistencies, is seductive to untrained minds and to well-meaning hearts.  It whispers sweet lies and promises.  In this way, it is truly demonic; indeed, it is satanic.  Satan appears as a being of light; his ugliness and wickedness only reveal themselves later.  Such has been the course of Leftism in American history.

But for now, let’s focus on winning that electoral victory.  If you haven’t already, get out and VOTE for Trump and Republican candidates at every level.  Let’s win the levers of power—and then begin the much harder work of repairing our broken culture.

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One Final Appeal

The 2020 election is tomorrow, and the fate of the country hangs in the balance.  Yes, such melodramatic rhetoric crops up in every election, but it’s very real this time around.

By this point, many Americans have made their choices, but I implore undecided conservatives and centrists to cast their votes for President Trump—and for Republicans at every level.  Sure, there are still some RINOs in our midsts, but a semi-reliable RINO is better by far than a reliably destructive progressive.

Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell might not always vote the way we would like them to, but there’s no denying they’ve been effective at supporting President Trump’s agenda in deed, if not always in words.  But actions speak louder than words; I can put up with a token denouncement from McConnell if he keeps packing the courts with conservative constitutionalists and playing procedural hardball with the Democrats.

Of course, the main attraction is Trump himself.  If he were any other person in American history, we’d be lauding him as the greatest president of a generation.  But because his style is combative and pugilistic, conservatives are all too eager to denounce him as “reckless.”  The irony is that Trump would have been unable to accomplish everything he has in his first term if he didn’t possess that scrappy sensibility.

I had a conversation last week with a conservative friend who agonizingly arrived at the point where even though he dislikes Trump’s style, he realizes the Democrats have nothing to offer but death and destruction.  Voting for the Democrats was never on the table for him, but he felt he could not morally support the President—until he thoughtfully considered the president’s record.  As he put it, “‘Peace in the Middle East’ used to be a joke.  Then Trump actually did it.”

Trump is the obvious choice for peace, prosperity, and national renewal.  Joe Biden is a puppet of the progressive Left, which will shunt him out of office in favor of Kamala Harris—a calculating, cruel, corrupt politician lacking any scruples whatsoever—at the first opportunity.

Don’t let that happen.  Vote for Trump, vote Republican, and vote to Keep America Great!

MAGA!

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Second Presidential Debate Review

Last night was the second and final presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden.  Overall, it was far more measured in tone and richer in substance than the first debate, and it accomplished what President Trump needed to do:  reassure squishy independents and critical undecided voters that he’s not just a loose cannon, but can actually govern, and govern well.

I also found the moderator to be surprisingly fair.  The questions obviously were slanted in favor of the Democrats, as these questions always are (again, who cares about climate change anymore?), but she gave President Trump the opportunity to respond to criticisms, and also had some tough questions for Biden.

President Trump did what he should have done in the first debate:  he gave Biden the rope with which to hang himself.  It was Biden who brought up China and Ukraine, which opened the door for Trump to attack Hunter Biden’s lucrative salaries from foreign companies and governments—the result of Biden’s influence peddling.

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The RNC: Normality and Sanity

As an ostensible politics blogger I’ve been quite derelict in my duty to watch the Republican National Convention, at least with the kind of rapt attention I should.  I completely skipped out on the terrible Democratic National Convention, which was, by all appearances, a disaster in both form and substance.

That said, what I have seen is encouraging.  The theme of the RNC seems to be that a vote for Republicans is a vote for sanity, and that the Republicans are the party of normal people.  The implication, of course, is that the Democrats support insanity and the abnormal, which is objectively true.

The media has reported that the RNC is throwing out red meat for its base, but considering that Trump naturalized five immigrants and Tim Scott was calling for criminal justice and law enforcement reforms suggest otherwise.  If anything, the convention this year is a sales pitch to independents, who are no-doubt weary of seeing cities burn and cops reviled.

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