If ever there was a year when a Republican candidate could win a resounding victory this was it. The current, term limited, incumbent is personally popular even as his legacy is on its way to leaving America in ruins. His would be successor is one of the most un-liked politicians of the modern era and her name is synonymous with dishonesty and corruption.
Somehow the Republican primary electorate saw fit to nominate a sometime Democrat, tabloid and television star, and real estate developer that would appear to confirm every leftist stereotype about Republicans. Whatever happens on November 8th social scientists will be studying this chain of events for many years.
Donald Trump was not the first choice for many Republicans. Indeed there have been moments during this campaign when it looked like Trump had hatched the plot to run for President as a Republican in order to clear the way for Hillary Clinton to return to the White House. Trump’s messaging lacked focus, he tended to contradict himself or be inconsistent from one speech to another. He came across as someone with less knowledge than the typical cable news junkie.
And yet I intend to join the tens of millions of Americans around the United States who are voting for Donald Trump for President.
Why?
Because in a manner of speaking he is the conservative, National Review type candidate that this country needs right now.
No, I haven’t lost my mind.
In January of this year National Review published an issue titled ‘Against Trump’ which included a Who’s Who of conservative and Republican writers. The essays featured arguments from a variety of points of view in the conservative movement with the one thing uniting them being the belief that Donald Trump should not be supported in the primaries let alone become the nominee.
So why is Trump the National Review candidate?
Simple. When William F. Buckley started National Review in 1955 he wrote that the duty of that magazine was to “stand athwart history yelling Stop! at a time when no one is inclined to do so.” In this context the reader can easily understand how Trump fits in.
Consider the excesses of the last eight years. We have a President that entered office with an express wish to “fundamentally transform” the country. Along with his party the President passed a wildly unpopular healthcare reform law that has increased costs and reduced access to doctors. The President has bullied the opposition. The best example was when he said that Republicans could come along for the ride but they would have to sit in the back. The President’s reply to congressional Republicans “I won,” was not tempered when they retook majorities in both chambers. With his legislative efforts frustrated, the President took to using his “pen and phone” to enact his agenda through a combination of Executive Orders and guidance to executive branch agencies like the IRS.
Trillion dollar annual deficits have also become the norm. This administration has generated more debt than all its predecessors back to the founding.
The left’s pursuit of social change has also reached a fever pitch. Gay marriage is a reality but dissenters like Kentucky clerk Kim Davis couldn’t be allowed to stand aside. They had to become true believers or face the consequences. Brendan Eich found out the hard way that private donations to political projects disfavored by the left have consequences. His contribution to the Prop8 campaign for traditional marriage in California was discovered by activists and he was dismissed from his job at Mozilla. The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Roman Catholic religious organization for women, was forced to pay for contraceptives under the Affordable Care Act. That they didn’t need it and that it is against their religious beliefs was irrelevant. Examples of abuses and intimidation by the left, with the full support of the administration, fill books.
The President also wants to flood this country with foreign refugees and economic migrants from Latin America. Not so much out of concern for their well being but to import a permanent Democrat voting majority.
Abroad the President has been remarkably effective in diminishing American power. Hasty retreats from Iraq and a continuing draw down from Afghanistan have emboldened enemies that had been largely defeated by the closing days of the Bush administration. Ineffectual posturing lead to the dismemberment of an eastern European country (Ukraine), the toppling of allied or neutral regimes in north Africa (Egypt, Libya), and a continuing civil war in Syria. Iranians took to the streets following a rigged election in 2009 and the President ignored them. More recently the Iran nuclear deal virtually guarantees the mullahs the bomb at some near point in the future while the administration is doing its best to help out by dropping literal bundles of cash in their laps. Heading east, Russian aircraft have been probing western airspace and buzzing US Navy ships. Further east China is flexing its muscles and intimidating its neighbors. Does anyone still trust the word of the United States?
In cyberspace the President gave away American control over the Internet to an international body. Much like what happens at the UN, powers hostile to the United States will soon gang up and out vote us in the management of a technology that we invented and gave the world.
Along comes Donald Trump yelling stop!
He wants to stop unfettered immigration and enforce our borders.
He wants to improve our competitiveness to keep industrial jobs in our country.
He wants to restore law and order in this country.
When majorities of Americans polled believe the country is going in the wrong direction Trump wants to “make America great again.”
How do you keep our country from continuing in the wrong direction?
You stand athwart history yelling Stop!
Then you do the hard work of turning it around.
Trump is the “National Review” candidate. That’s part of the reason he has my vote.