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Vote Trump 2024

Concession

2016/2020

In 2016 Donald Trump won the presidential election against Hillary Clinton and she did not concede the election.  You say, “Oh she did.  She made a statement.”  Sure.  Hillary said something like all the lies characteristic of the Clintons, what turned since into its own vocabulary word:  Clintonesque.  She lied, what some might call “parsing words.”

Hillary Clinton, even before she lost, cooked up with the rest of the establishment, but led by her, the Russia conspiracy against Trump that impeded his presidency.  She preyed on Trump’s inexperience in Washington, DC.  John Durham in his special counsel investigation of the Russia hoax came to the conclusion

that there was no basis to immediately launch a full-fledged investigation against Donald Trump; that the FBI failed to follow up on intelligence reports that Hillary Clinton had approved a scheme to manufacture the Russia hoax and that her campaign funded opposition research to supply to the FBI and media with the false narrative; and that FBI leaders willingly subverted FBI policy, quashed investigations into Clinton’s potential violations of the law, and more.

Disqualification and a Fake Issue

That wasn’t the only signification that Hillary Clinton and the establishment did not concede the election.  They treated his presidency as ineligible or disqualified and didn’t ever accept the results.  The unelected administrative state cooperated with the Democrat Party in dozens of different ways to defy the electoral victory of President Donald Trump.  As an example, James Comey, the head of the FBI under President Barack Obama, leaked sensitive information about President Donald Trump to the press that precipitated the appointment of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation.

Many arguing against Trump point to his unwillingness to concede.  I don’t hear anything about the other side not conceding.  Both Clinton and Trump may not have conceded either in word or action, but Clinton didn’t inhabit the White House in 2016 nor Trump in 2020.  It’s ultimately a fake issue.  According to my own assessment, Trump’s challenge of the 2020 election did not compare to the seriousness of what Clinton did in 2016 and following, helped along by President Obama spying on the Trump campaign.

My History

I have voted in all the presidential elections since 1980.  Living in Wisconsin during my Freshmen year in College, I voted for Ronald Reagan in 80 and the same in 84.  When I moved to California, I started voting there first for George H.W. Bush in 88, same in 92, Bob Dole in 96, George W. Bush in 2000, same in 2004, John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump in 2016, and same in 2020.

This year I’ll vote Trump again in the state of Indiana in 2024.  It wasn’t until 1976 that I really started considering presidential elections with the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter election.  Even though I was alive for the 1968 and 1972 elections, I don’t remember them at all.  The first political event I remember was Watergate, seeing it in black and White on our old tube television set.  This will be my twelfth presidential election.

Every presidential election year from 1992 to 2020 I taught United States government in our high school.  Five days a week I came into government class and commented on the election until it occurred the first Tuesday in November.  I also taught jr. high history.  The United States history curriculum for jr. high also included some government.  The class read and answered questions about the United States Constitution.

Endorsement

Those for whom I voted president in the general election won six out of eleven times.  This year could become seven.  When Trump won in 2016, I wasn’t expecting it.  I didn’t think he would win in 2020.  Will he win this year?  For the first time, I think he will.  It’s hard to tell by the polls.  Maybe some of you reading know about the quiet Trump voters.  This affected the polls in 2016 and 2020.  The pollsters and the media got the Democrat vote percentage about right.  They underestimated Trump’s percentage both times.  Maybe you’ve seen this data.

Nothing gets more negative commentary on this blog than a positive mention of President Donald Trump.  Even if I intimate something positive about Trump without mentioning his name, I get a nasty comment.  What does this do for or to me?  Nothing.  Easily, Trump gets far more foul comments than all the other subjects combined.  Apparently these comments come from those who don’t like Trump’s meanness and nastiness.

The only hope for anything close to a Christian worldview is Trump.  I’m not going to tick off all the reasons.  They should be obvious.  If they’re not, I don’t think there is much I can write here today that will persuade you the reader, which you haven’t already heard, watched, or read.

It Won’t Do You Any Good to Apologize for Trump

Very often conservative support for President Donald Trump starts with an apology.  It goes something like the following.

I know he writes mean tweets and makes nasty insults, calls people names like a jr. higher.  He is badly flawed, foul, immoral, a lawbreaker, braggadocios, self-centered, divisive, petty, a liar, a con man, a flip flopper, a criminal, authoritarian, and banal.  But, I still voted for him because, you know, I look at performance.

People who start with an apology, I believe, think they’re warding off the expected angry reaction.  Or, they won’t be associated with the worst character traits of Trump, readying themselves to hear them.  I’m writing to say that it won’t do you any good to apologize for Trump.  Embrace him.  Accept his 2016 victory and his presidency.

None of the other 16 candidates would have defeated Hillary Clinton.  Trump did almost everything he said he would do.  He stuck his thumb in the eye of the corrupt media.  He battled and fought for conservatives against the greatest political opposition in my lifetime and maybe all of American history.

In 1836, Sir Henry Taylor wrote the classic book, The Statesman, the first modern book devoted to that subject.  He wrote:

[A] statesman has already, in the commonwealth of his own nature, given to the nobler functions the higher place; and as a minister; therefore, he is one whom his country may be satisfied to trust, and its best men be glad to serve. He, on the other hand, who sees in the party he forms only the pedestal of his own statue, or the plinth of a column to be erected to his honour, may, by inferior means and lower service, accomplish his purposes, such as they are; but he must be content with vulgar admiration, and lay out of account the respect of those who will reserve that tribute from what is merely powerful, and render it only to what is great.  “He that seeketh to be eminent amongst able men,” says Lord Bacon, “hath a great task; but that is ever good for the public. But he that plots to be the only figure amongst ciphers is the decay of a whole age.”

Professor at Notre Dame, Michael Zuckert, wrote in 2020, Lincoln and Democratic Statesmanship:

Our ideas of statesmanship are fraught with seeming contradictions: The democratic statesman is true to the peoples (sic) wishes and views—but also capable of standing against popular opinion when necessary. The statesman rises above conflicts and seeks compromise between parties—but also stands firmly for what is right.

And I quote all that material about statesmen and statesmanship to get to my subject of President Donald Trump.  I’m not going to say whether I think he is one or not.  As you scan through the annals of the history of government, who was a statesman and did it matter?  Was Julius Caesar one?  What about William the Conqueror?  Was King George III?  What kind of statesmen presided over the Roman Coliseum?

If you go to scripture, you can look at all the various leaders of nations in order to surmise the statesman.  Old Testament Israel looks like a recent Marine Corps slogan, “A Few Good Men.”  Very few.  A statue of General George Patton sits outside the library at West Point some say because he didn’t spend much time in there.  Even Patton wouldn’t survive the present environment of the United States.

Today some propose settling for nothing short of Burkean conservativism in the trajectory of Russell Kirk.  They yearn for William F. Buckley at the National Review.   Jonah Goldberg just today, as I write this post, attacked Trump again.  These conservatives, including many professing Christians, now take on the chief identification of Anti-Trump.  In his piece, Goldberg insulted Trump voters, showing again, as he and others have again and again, got Trump wrong.  This is seen all over his post in the LA Times, which doesn’t publish true conservatives, where he wrote:

One of the paradoxes of charismatic leadership is that the leader’s illegitimacy — in legal, rational or traditional terms — can have the effect of strengthening their hold on their followers. This dynamic has been at the heart of Trump’s distortion of the right. If the man cannot measure up to the traditional, moral, rational or legal yardsticks that conservatives once ascribed to leadership, then it is the yardstick’s fault for not measuring up to the man.

That’s right.  Through his charisma, Trump has a cult-like, worshipful loyalty on his voters, who are called followers.  All of these 74 million voters, which was more than any presidential candidate had ever received in any presidential election, could not see the fraud that Trump was like the enlightened Goldbergian human being.  Goldberg said concerning the Founder of Turning Point USA, “Charlie Kirk, a pliant priest in Trump’s personality cult.”  On the other hand, the public intellectuals (if that is possible), who voted for and defend Trump, call Goldberg the subject of Trump derangement syndrome.  Douglas Wilson wrote last week:

Whatever I might think, the brains behind the progressive left have decided to take a header into the maelstrom of “doing whatever they can to advance the narrative and person and prospects of Donald J. Trump.” This is what a derangement syndrome can do to you. It turns the quivering brains of high-powered political operatives into a soupy kind of jelly, with green mold on the surface.

I see the jelly with the green mold coming out of Goldberg’s ears.

To speak of Trump without apology, consider why you voted for him, support him, and would vote for him again as president, even though you’re a Christian.  You don’t have to use the Russia hoax, even the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade with all the conservative justices Trump appointed.  Trump believes that something in the United States is of higher value than other nations worth protecting by securing the borders.  Borders conserve something on the inside that is better than what is on the outside.  That simple, basic conservative idea separated  Trump from his competitors like the wall he aspired to build.

A long time ago the United States left the possibility of a Russell Kirk conservative.  We are in much more desperate times.  We have to look to principles much more basic than those outlined by Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli.  The Brexit vote in England recognized this too.  What I’m describing, Jonah Goldberg calls “instrumentalism.”  He wrote in another essay:

The least objectionable of them justified their decision in the name of instrumentalism—“Trump’s flawed, but we can use him.”

This isn’t using Trump until we can get somebody better.  That’s still an argument for 2024.  No, Trump is where we’re at.  Maybe we will get somebody better, but that’s also the reasoning behind what led to Joe Biden in 2020.

Trump isn’t an instrument.  He espouses necessary, rudimentary principles.  His don’t go far enough.  They don’t do as much as I would do.  But they go further than what we would get from anyone else, such as names like Dole, McCain, and Romney.  Even throw in George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Gerald Ford.  Trump truly raised the bar over these men.

I want to argue just a little.  You say, Trump is authoritarian.  He’s a fascist.  By far.  By far, the greatest threat of fascism is the progressive left, like Ronald Reagan said:

America stands on four main values: Faith in God, Freedom of Speech, Family and Economic Freedom. If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.

Trump in his presidency practiced the separation of powers.  He picked federalist Supreme Court justices, who did more to decentralize the federal government than in decades.  Trump supported that.  You’re just swallowing a lie when you say he’s a fascist or an authoritarian.  He gave freedom to become energy independent, turning loose the American people.

Maybe you say he’s a want-to-be dictator because of January 6, 2020.  Nothing like that came close to happening on January 6, nothing even nearly as bad as what did occur in Seattle, Portland, and the Twin Cities of Minnesota in the previous summer.  The Russia hoax disenfranchised Trump voters.  Illegal ballot harvesting did too.  The perpetrators walk free.  Does anyone think that we live under a fair justice system today?  Where is the abuse of power?  Who has attempted to criminalize parents who speak up in school board meetings?

I don’t apologize for President Donald Trump any more than I do for the minutemen on the Lexington Green.

AUTHORS OF THE BLOG

  • Kent Brandenburg
  • Thomas Ross

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