by G. Murphy Donovan
“Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” – Orwell
The next American presidential election year should be a potboiler, not Orwell’s 1984 but close.
The playbook on the left is pretty much a done deal. Joseph Robinette Biden and family will be running on three planks, the war in Ukraine with Russia, the war for woke at home, and “anybody but Trump.” Call it Putinesque abroad and grotesque at home. More than a little ironic that Democrats, formerly the refusenik party, are now a guns and butter wunderkind, marching globally under rainbow flags.
The Beltway swamp makes for bizarre literal and figurative bedfellows. Americans may have delusions about Biden family identity, but the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin certainly do not.
On the domestic front, if DEI and kinky culture are markers, the American left is already a flaming success at the tactical and operation level. Democrats have already planted woke, snowflake, and freak flags in all the federal institutions that matter: State, Defense, Commerce, Education, the Intelligence Community, and Public Broadcasting. Surely you could do worse than think of the legacy media as closet comrades too – allies of the freak, creep, and deep states.
Worse still nine of ten apparatchiks and contractors in the Washington, DC area vote for Democrats. Partisan civil ‘servants’ are a huge subversive asset even when Republicans or conservatives win high office.
Just ask Donald Trump.
Biden will cultivate the snowflake, woke, and war vote in a debate free environment; shielded by partisan legacy media prophylactics. For a climax, speaking actuarially, Joe Robinette could also ensure that Kamala Harris succeeds him.
Clearly, Republicans are the under dogs in the run up to 2024, or better still “down dogs” if you are familiar with that yoga posture. Tenured Republican Senate and House mandarins are down dog experts, posteriors ever at the ready.
Nevertheless, the political scrum on the American right in 2024 has some notables, interesting and worthy candidates all. Let’s start with a formidable woman.
Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley is a native of South Carolina where she served as a state legislator, Governor, and then Ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration. Haley has been quick to separate herself from woke or snowflake social memes so popular with the legacy media – and in urban Democrat sinecures.
Nikki has made it clear the she doesn’t support male transvestites/transsexuals encroaching or threatening female spaces or places, especially in sports. Good get there.
Haley has also put a shot across the Pentagon’s bow too by pledging to clean up dicey DEI programs at DOD that have had devastating consequences for recruiting and retention. Haley is a strong supporter of Israel also. She has opposed any BDS measures that target the Jewish state.
Nikki also supports voter ID legislation, suggesting she believes the integrity of US national elections might need to be “built back better.”
Earlier, Governor Haley expressed some doubts about the war against Russia in Ukraine, but has since become more hawkish. Skepticism about the pricey Ukraine caper seems to be an emerging theme among other serious Republican presidential candidates.
Ron DeSantis
At the moment, the big dog in the Republican race, other than Trump, is Ron DeSantis, incumbent governor of Florida. DeSantis is more than a phenom. He has pretty much remade the politics of Florida from purple to fire engine red. And unlike his competitors, he has had the courage to get out front in the war against woke.
Specifically, DeSantis has kicked the Disney Corporation, Florida’s largest employer, in their financial giblets. Few politicians are willing to take on woke Wall Street in the name of tradition or family values. Nevertheless, Governor DeSantis was smart enough and brave enough to call out Disney’s drift into the sex fetish quagmire, now a nightmare threat to American women and children.
Arguably, Disney is the most important American cultural influence on children, with a national, if not global reach. By hitting Disney, Ron DeSantis is drawing a line in the sand for all those American voters who feel like they have had enough of woke politics, snowflake whining, and medical malpractice – all in the name of fetish lifestyles and scientific fictions.
Clearly, Disney is left coast, not Florida, culture.
Philosophically, you could argue that DeSantis isn’t much different than Donald Trump. The difference between the two is largely personality. The Florida governor is more articulate, a less acerbic politician, and probably more congenial in general.
Let’s just say DeSantis might be Trump without the baggage.
Donald Trump
Once again, Trump is the lead dog in the Republican pack. And as always, the Donald is making his bones by firing non stop from the lip. Trump will call out allies, friends, and enemies. Clearly, Trump is a reluctant Republican, but as a pragmatist, he has to ride one of two party horses. Neo Cons and the righteous right, like the Cheneys, hate Trump with a passion.
So Donald Trump is just where he likes to be, impaled on three horns of a dilemma; a vindictive deep state, woke Democrats, and the Republican Neo Con right. And it’s not like Trump needs a job or more acrimony in his life. Donald Trump appears to be seeking restitution or vindication. A cynic might even characterize his reelection quest as a political revenge tour.
There is only one safe bet for 2024. Democrat shysters and cops will use any means, legal or not, to insure that Donald Trump doesn’t get reelected. If the subject is Trump, lawful and democratic precedents are road kill.
No matter. Trump, as always, is in it to win it. So “Katy bar the door” as political blood will be spilt in 2024.
Skeptics and pundits might be wise to reserve judgment about the Donald’s presidential prospects the third time around. In 2020, Trump was walloped by a politicized pandemic, a subversive Federal establishment, and a toxic partisan media. Indeed, you could argue that Biden was elected by “anybody but Trump” sentiment, possibly compounded by urban voter corruption. With all that smoke, you can’t help but believe that more than a few Trump haters, especially at Justice and FBI, torched more than a few legal standards.
There are other Republican contenders that we could talk about, but why bother. The likes of Chris Christy and Mike Pence will just split the also ran vote and insure that Trump wins the Republican primary. Maybe that’s the plan.
So, let’s suppose for a moment that Donald Trump is the nominee. Trumpsters are still the most potent voting bloc on the right – and they are passionate about justice and vindication, if not revenge. And things are different for 2024 too; no pandemic scare, the corrupt establishment, right and left, has been exposed, and the sentiment for 2024 may well be “anybody but Joe” – with the clear threat of Kamala Harris smirking in the wings.
If Trump gets reelected, Haley would be a brilliant antidote to the WEF at State and DeSantis could be the perfect purgative for Justice or DOD. And both would still be well positioned to run and keep the White House in saner hands for several election cycles.
This is not to suggest that another long-shot Trump win would settle anything. Indeed, the apparatus of federal departments, and many urban states, would still be in the hands of venal and vindictive Democrat partisans. Given the reservoir of bile in the deep, or civil “servant” state, the American cultural war at home and the hot/cold wars abroad will rage on, no matter what.
A poisoned well takes generations to mend – if ever.
The 2024 American presidential election will be kinetic and entertaining, but the results are unlikely to produce anything that approximates peace, civility, or stability in these “United” States.
First published in the American Thinker.
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Murphy Donovan writes about the policy and politics of national security.
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3 Responses
Now that my favorite president Donald John Trump is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA and with all sensible Republicans in saying this: I’m not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he’s not supposed to have and say, “This is secret information. Look at this,” and then be held accountable for his actions.
What kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take “evidence” before a “grand jury,” and that “grand jury” can “vote to indict” a former president for 37 alleged “crimes”? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joseph Robinette Biden, who HAVEN’T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no “evidence” they committed crimes. That is totally unfair!
It’s like Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a tweet Friday: “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not”.
What kind of country holds a president accountable for alleged crimes a grand jury charges him with?
Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: “Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Bidens? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work”.
TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don’t like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.
It’s like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I’ve done and refuse to look up the definition of “banana republic”.
And of course, you know who’s behind this travesty of justice, right? It’s so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.
Sure, they’ll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence.
But that’s complete nonsense. Unless we’re talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the nefarious left-wing crimes committed in the Trump-Russia probe.
Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he “charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either” is something I will ignore.
Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand — he’s bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith’s investigation is a witch hunt, and I’ve never known Trump to lie about anything.
Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law”.
So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn’t protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there’s a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: “See, as president I could have declassified it … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret”.
You call that “damning evidence”. I call it, “What about Hunter Biden’s laptop?” Putting Joseph Robinette Biden, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden in prison? Now that makes sense!
Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn’t be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the Department of Justice or anything like that.
Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.
It’s like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, “Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up”.
But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he committed a murder, I would say: “How dare you charge this man with murder when others in the U.S. Have not been charged with murder! There are clearly two tiers of justice, one in which my favorite president, who said he murdered someone, is charged with murder and one in which people who haven’t murdered are not charged with murder!”
And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train’s a comin’.
Uh, yeah. If there were any sign that Trump were being held accountable for things that politicians have normally been held accountable for in the same ways and means, and for which Democratic politicians today would and will also be held accountable for, then I might also agree with the apparent gist of that comment.
Since none of that is true and nothing resembling common standards are being applied, then no.
Presidents, and apparently senators, vice presidents and chiefs of staff, have been mishandling classified documents since at least the Clinton Administration. The Obama Administration and executive branch officials used an enormous web of lies to try to manipulate the 2016 election in favour of Hillary Clinton and then to hamstring the Trump Administration for 4 straight years, all unprecedented and on a vastly larger scale than known past American political skullduggery, are still perpetuating it though known to be fictions, and are not being held accountable for this vast effort to manipulate the election and undermine constitutional politics.
I’d also rather it be DeSantis. But on the large chance Trump is the nominee I hope he beats the odds and wins. I will laugh so hard, even if he turns out to accomplish nothing and largely attempt to do nothing for 4 more years. All that nothing will still strike the left somehow as the birth of the Fourth Reich and maybe they’ll all have strokes.
Your argument that Donald Trump should not be held accountable for wrongdoing because “everybody else does it” is stupid, and the claim behind it is untrue.
The closest facts approaching your claim would be the press coverage several weeks ago about some classified documents being found in Joe Biden and Mike Pence’s possession. In those cases, after the conducting of exhaustive searches pages was the unit of measure. The explanation that the papers were mixed up with numerous others and thus inadvertently kept is perfectly reasonable.
In Donald Trump’s case, we’re talking about many cubic feet of documents and other keepsakes that he knowingly ordered shipped out of the White House.
Mike Pence and Joe Biden promptly returned what they had once they found it. The Demagogue refused the National Archives’ repeated requests to do, prompting them to refer the matter to the Justice Department. In a sense, you could say he brought this on himself.
All of the above doesn’t even consider the illegal destruction of documents he routinely carried out while still in office.
Your other vague claims are not even worth giving any time to. If you ask me, you’re just as adolescent and fanatical as those lefties you claim to despise.
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“In the four years since, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Instead of understanding his narrow win in 2016 as the upset it was, they were told forecasters were going to be wrong again. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”