This isn’t the way
I never thought I’d say this, but I agreed with Chris Wallace yesterday.
Watching the video images of (alleged) Trump supporters having broken into the United States Capitol building to “protest” or stop the counting of the electoral votes -- or whatever they were there to do -- was something I never thought I’d witness. Wallace was calling on President Trump to say something, and I thought he was right.
My immediate impression was the “protesters” were conducting a false flag operation -- that it was Antifa scum or some other leftist group that was masquerading as Trump supporters to make conservatives look bad. A full explanation has not yet arrived as to what happened, but it certainly doesn’t look good for the country as a whole. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke to Fox News via phone just after three p.m. and also called on the president to make a statement.
The president did Tweet out a message to remain peaceful a few minutes later, and made a brief video in addition.
What’s next for the perpetrators, tar and feathers?
One can’t help but think the left side of the ideological spectrum brought this on with their waves of lies and distortions over the course of decades, not just years. No single act or statement did it. But it’s obvious that trust has completely broken down in this country. The election was a farce. It needs to be investigated -- thoroughly. Overturned? Not now. What’s going to improve things?
If Trump has to watch what he says, what about the Democrats? Does Maxine Waters have to apologize for telling people to “get in the face” of Trump supporters? Should Nancy Pelosi be contrite for ripping up Trump’s SOTU speech? Should the BLM miscreants be jailed for disrupting people at restaurants and on the streets? Where does it stop? Should all Americans just turn themselves in for their beliefs?
Democrats will simply use this incident as an excuse to further restrict our liberties. The media will back them in anything they call for. The Trump supporters who took part in this capitol building invasion reinforced every negative stereotype there is about the 74+ million decent people who voted for the president. Everyone involved in the tragedy should be arrested and prosecuted.
This is the way of the left. For once, Joe Biden was right -- we’re better than this.
Good luck in restoring the “soul of the nation,” Joe. Don’t bow to the mob. But you -- and the rest of your ruling class Democrats and Republicans -- had better address the feelings beneath all of this, or next time it could easily be worse. “Leaders” from both sides need to get involved and tell the truth.
Precedential (no, not “presidential”) value is in the eye of the beholder
What’s wrong with being first?
People are talking a lot about “precedents” these days, specifically the one Republicans set yesterday by members of the House of Representative and U.S. Senate objecting to certain states’ slates of electors during the Constitution-mandated counting of the electoral votes in Congress. As if by doing so -- objecting and setting a precedent -- the movers of the motion committed some sort of unforgivable political sin guaranteeing they will forever burn in political purgatory (if not go straight down to you-know-where without passing “Go” on the Monopoly board).
To the judgmental lot, establishing a “precedent” is just fine if what the individual did or intends to do is considered good and acceptable to the powers-that-be in the DC swamp. With practically everything else in our new Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi/“Chucky” Schumer elitist world, it depends on whether you’re liberal, “woke” and willing to trash American tradition.
For example, didn’t Barack Obama set a precedent by launching his presidential campaign after serving only a couple years in the U.S. senate? Heck, we know even Grampa Joe Biden himself was all over the trailblazing nature of the Big O’s boldness in 2007: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that's a storybook, man.” Imagine the doddering dunce president-elect saying something similar about his latest bosom political chum -- and fellow plagiarist -- Kamala Harris. Kamala is “storybook” too, though it looks like she’s stolen a lot of her tales from someone else.
Wouldn’t Obama’s successful run and two-term presidency be considered a “precedent”? Didn’t Obama lay the groundwork for redistributionist rabble-rousing black candidates like Raphael Warnock? The Georgia man’s list of controversial statements is a mile long, yet the establishment media ignored them -- as well as Warnock’s ex-wife’s very public claims that the pastor was abusive -- solely because of his skin color. The anointed Obama also received a complete media pass for his well-documented views on a multitude of controversial subjects, including his attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s “church” preaching black liberation theology.
Is there a new “precedent” set with Warnock, too? It appears so. It doesn’t matter how radical you are, what your background indicates and what your extended family says about your character as long as you have the correct racial/ethnic designation, can deny everything to the hilt and still win a Democrat primary. Presto, magic-o! You’re a United States senator! What was all that crap about #MeToo and “Believing all women” and the hubbub over Brett Kavanaugh’s high school drinking habits and Christine Blasey Ford’s faltering memory?
Who cares! Can’t you wait to see Warnock questioning witnesses on one of his senate committees in the near future? It’ll be a sight to see! He’ll shame them for their “worship of whiteness!”
And yes, perhaps Republicans did set a “precedent” yesterday by objecting to certain states’ electors. I’ve argued that, because of “precedents” set in 2016 and 2018, that there will never be another election where the losing side simply tosses in the proverbial towel and gives up all proper-like. But even more so, thanks to none other than Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, no politician will ever concede a race ever again!
Perhaps due to Abrams’ precedent, 2016 loser Hillary Rodham “With Her!” Clinton told Joe Biden not to concede the election under any circumstances this year. Didn’t ol’ Crooked Hill set a precedent herself by claiming that Donald Trump “stole” the election with Russian assistance? Then Abrams lost her own gubernatorial election a couple years ago and agreed to let Brian Kemp act as governor without ever officially conceding.
There was a rather hilarious montage of numerous Democrat candidates -- including Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary designee Pete Buttigieg -- saying Abrams was the legitimate governor of Georgia and her election was “stolen” because of voter suppression on Fox News’s Georgia election coverage the other night.
Precedent, precedent, precedent!
Any more precedents around? Heck yeah! How about those fixed in 2020 alone. One, a Democrat presidential candidate need not have a functioning brain; two, he or she shouldn’t grant interviews; three, he or she needn’t actively campaign like a normal, healthy person would; and four, he or she needn’t answer questions about blatant corruption (Hunter, anyone?) as long as he or she is seen as being a better guy or gal than the Republican candidate!
It definitely looks like Democrats and the media are okay with someone being first to do something -- and setting a precedent -- as long as it doesn’t go against the grain of acceptable thought. Just don’t dare step out of line and follow your constitutional duty. They don’t like that precedent one bit.
There’s no getting around it, Trump made a big political mistake
It doesn’t happen often, but for the first time in a long time I’m convinced Donald Trump committed a serious political error (and I’m not talking about the capitol building break-in and its aftermath). By making the post-November 3rd Georgia narrative all about him and his relentless social media flogging of Peach State GOP establishment officials, he managed to tick off just enough Republicans to give Warnock and Ossoff their one-point (or less) victories.
Talk about voter suppression. We did it to ourselves on Tuesday. Allowing the idea to spread that it was okay not to vote as a form of “protest” was poison and the conservative cause swallowed a big glob of it. Hopefully it won’t set a precedent.
Stated more plainly, by Trump arguing that everything about Georgia’s elections was illegitimate, he didn’t exactly motivate people to go out and vote again. By refusing to let go and grasp not only the high road but the long (political) run, Trump may have cost himself the goodwill he’d need to make a 2024 try at a second term.
Of course, Joe Biden will almost certainly fail. Will it make voters think they made a mistake? Daniel Gallington wrote at The Washington Times, “This is not a ‘dire prediction’ because we will recover from Joe Biden’s more generalized failure as a president, but it could be quite a painful process for us to get back on the political track we had become very comfortable with.
“The reason Mr. Biden will fail so soon is that many more millions than voted for him will realize — and quickly — that they made a mistake. In some ways, it will be a similar reaction than was to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, when many of his voters quickly realized they had screwed up. So why/how did we elect the wrong person — both in 1976 and again in 2020? The exact reason for this was/is the focused public voter reaction on a single and very specific set of circumstances, rather than as an endorsement of a generalized political agenda…
“The 2020 election was not in any way a liberal political mandate — rather it was a focused reaction to a serious national and worldwide health emergency.”
Gallington argues Biden is therefore doomed to failure. It’s hard to dispute anything he wrote, especially because the new president is intellectually bankrupt and incompetent. But should we hope for the president’s “failure?”
A couple points. First, as Rush Limbaugh made the case when Obama was sworn-in, there’s nothing wrong with hoping the new president fails -- to pass his agenda. It’s not as though we’re wishing physical ill on him or his family; we can pray for his health and still not hope that God will shine a positive light on his issue positions. In this sense, I hope Biden fails. I really don’t think national federally funded healthcare, the Green New Deal, open borders, imposing the left’s radical social agenda or packing the Supreme Court are good ideas. If he fails, everybody wins.
Second, up until recent years, the standard practice for “retired” presidents was to put themselves out to human pasture, perhaps getting good use out of their golf clubs, deep diving into legacy establishing charity work and/or taking up painting, like George W. Bush did. This relative isolation from view helps “cleanse” the exited chief executive’s reputation. After having spent four or eight years (or more?) under the heat lamp of intense media scrutiny, a lengthy “cooling off period” is necessary for every president to revive his reputation.
Then, when compared with the struggles -- or blatant failures -- of the current president, the previous one doesn’t look so bad. Nostalgia is common for those who frequently harken back to the days when government wasn’t so incompetent and we had presidents who could actually put consecutive sentences together without gaffes, verbal stumbles or incoherent babbling.
It will take time for Trump to regain some of the good feelings that he’s lost in the past month or so. Democrats would never admit that they made a mistake in electing Joe Biden, because they felt all along that the old Delaware fool -- or even Bernie Sanders -- was preferable to Trump. But there will come a time, and probably soon, when the marginal voters will regret bringing Democrats to power.
The question is whether the damage is permanent. Yesterday didn’t help things.
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