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Friday, December 27, 2019

Will 2019 or 2020 Be Remembered As Trump's Annus Mirabilis?



Friends, every day in Trumpland is better than the last, and, we assume, that formula might hold true for every year as well.  My latest article, soon to grace the electronic pages of Townhall, recaps some of the greatest triumphs for Trumpism in 2019, and it looks forward to some wonderful opportunities in 2020.  I would argue that, in 2016, we put the Left on the ropes.  We had a chance to finish them off politically in 2018, and sadly we blew it.  Winning the House was enough to put the wind back in their sails.  2020, though, could be the coup de grace.  Now, don't get me wrong: the Left and the Democratic Party have tremendous advantages, especially in their domination of the culture, but there is still a realistic path to their permanent marginalization.  Simply put, it's the path of self-marginalization.  We conservatives can't defeat the Democratic Party and its ideological handmaidens, but it and they can defeat themselves.  That process begins with Americans falling in love with Donald Trump all over again in 2020 and reelecting him.  That, in itself, would probably be enough to cause the Dems to lose their marbles.  They already have, you say?  True, but not so much as to delegitimize their cause for the majority of voters.  We need the Democrats to embrace their vindictiveness, their intolerance, their anti-social tendencies, their lionization of anti-state violence, their hostility to capitalism and Christianity, and all those horrifying qualities that make the modern Left so contemptuous.  We need these qualities to be trumpeted day and night by a media that is either cleansed of its bias (unlikely) or so captivated by the spectacle of leftist self-destruction that they can't help but cover one of the greatest news stories of our lifetimes.  And it all begins, as I said, with the reelection of Donald Trump in 2020.  Decision Day is now roughly ten months away.  My resolution for 2020, therefore, will be to make a maximum effort to win the presidential election, and hopefully the House as well, so we can finally put left-wing extremism to bed and make America whole and wholesome again -- or great, if you prefer.  Are you with me???

2019 Was Great; 2020 Ought To Be Greater

2019 was a year of phenomenal accomplishments for President Trump and for the conservative movement.

First and foremost, our economy continued to surge ahead, the stock market soared, and job and salary growth drove unemployment rates lower and the standard of living ever higher. Joe Biden may have tried to make the case in the last Democratic debate that the middle class is getting “killed” in this economy, but only the most starry-eyed of partisans could believe that...uh, malarkey. The state of our economic union has seldom been stronger.

In foreign policy, President Trump resisted the siren song of the warmongers and neocons, avoiding new military entanglements and setting us on the path of eventual withdrawal from Syria, Afghanistan, and West Africa. He continued to extend an olive branch to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which may or may not be accepted someday. He successfully challenged our NATO allies to shoulder more of the burden of our common defense. Above all, Trump has been true to his word: he has been an “America First” President, who involves the United States in foreign conflicts only when our vital national interests are at stake.

On trade, President Trump achieved major new free trade agreements with Japan and Canada/Mexico, and he stood firm in our trade war with China — the first American President to stand up to China and its trade manipulation in the post-Cold War era. America's willingness to play hard ball on trade even had the important consequence that Mexico stepped up its efforts to combat illegal immigration. A year that began with a tidal wave of irregular migration, much of it from Central America, is ending with many miles of new border fortifications in place, and illegal crossings way down.

President Trump secured record levels of funding for the U.S. military and for veterans, keeping his promise to maintain our national security and to do right by the brave men and women who fight, and have fought, on our behalf. Moreover, Trump added a new branch to the U.S. armed forces for the first time in more than 70 years: the Space Force. America is thus well-positioned to be a leader in both the civilian and military exploitation of space, the “Final Frontier”. Will the United States of the Milky Way someday herald Donald J. Trump as one of its founders? It would be foolish to scoff.

Perhaps most consequentially, in the medium term, President Trump, in cooperation with Mitch McConnell and a solid Republican majority in the Senate, maintained a steady flow of conservative, originalist judges onto the federal bench. This is the Trumpian accomplishment that inflicts the most consternation on liberals, and, not coincidentally, it is the accomplishment that patriots and conservatives should most prize, because it guarantees that those who believe in and cherish our Constitution will have a powerful voice in debates about our country's future for decades to come.

Perversely, we have the Democrats to thank for another potentially salutary development in 2019: the partisan, political, and unpopular impeachment of President Trump. The chances of Trump's removal from office are zero — but the chances that this farce of an impeachment will represent, in effect, a donation-in-kind to Trump's reelection campaign, and to Republicans trying to unseat swing-district Democrats in the House, are substantial. Thus, the albatross of impeachment, hanging around the necks of so-called moderate Democrats, combined with the stupefying weakness of the Democratic field of presidential candidates, may be the necessary preconditions for conservative and Republican wins in 2020 and beyond, portending even more Trumpian progress in the years ahead.

All in all, 2019 was a banner year for President Trump and for all those who believe in the values and goals of his popular, conservative movement. We have much to be thankful for, and ample reason to believe that 2020 will be a year filled with opportunity and optimism for our great country.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480.

And here it is at Townhall:

https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2019/12/30/2019-was-great-2020-ought-to-be-greater-n2558592 

8 comments:

  1. Dr. Waddy: You have made a powerful argument for the overall benefit our country has derived from this President and its implied promise for the future. Two points in your essay caught my particular attention:

    First, that the disdainful and completely captured MSM may be nevertheless unable to resist coverage of developments most unfavorable to the far left which it (my embellishment) cherishes, nourishes and promotes with complete confidence in its unassailable righteousness. There is proof for this in MSM's reluctant but finally unavoidable coverage of the Lewinski scandal. Brer Rabbit and "Bill" Clinton were their guides; :"oh, don' throw me in that briar patch" and the amoral Clintons' obvious embrace of the tactic of preemption, eg "Why yeah Newt, Hill and I have always been for small government, after all we all know'the era of big government is over' yessir!" "Why we in the MSM always have resolutely and without bias , striven to uncover all government and official misconduct and (gasp) immorality!" Watchem climb on board when the impeachment quicksand engulfs the Bidens and leaves the Dem nomination to the moonstruck.

    Also: the steady flow of Trump enabled law abiding conservatives to the Federal judiciary will likely deprive the left of its now traditional (and until now assumed) refuge in an easily leftist corrupted branch(given the leftist bias so evident in the American law academy) but will also help to reforge a credible and limited definition of the Judicial Branch not primarily as an ORIGINATOR of laws but as an interpreter of law previously established by the Legislative and Executive branches. A second Trump term may serve to confirm this positive and constructive development.

    Yes, I know the higher judiciary makes law in its decisions, as per our English Common Law tradition. But the American left has interpreted this as license to legislate through the courts when the insolently popular legislature demurs in giving them their unassailably righteous will. President Trump has, to their unendurable and juvenile frustration, said NO!

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  2. Interesting points, Jack. You're right -- the media couldn't resist the Lewinsky scandal. Ultimately, that worked to Bill's advantage, though, because the scandal could be dismissed as "just about sex". The American people have grown mighty cynical about politics and life in general, so it takes a scandal of truly epic proportions to hold their attention for long. (That's presumably why the cycle of "outrages" supposedly committed by President Trump is constantly renewed by the media.) In a weird way, the more the press covers a story, the quicker the voters tire of it, and the less impact it ultimately has. All I'm saying is that the death throes of the Left will most assuredly be covered by the media, but to what effect is hard to predict...

    And I quite agree that the Trumpian judiciary will be a game-changer. A number of questions would hang over it, though. Would it be intimidated by the Left's domination of the culture, and occasionally the streets? Would it have the courage to ROLL BACK much of the abysmal jurisprudence that activist liberal judges have accumulated since WWII? Would it discover the joys of judicial activism all on its own and try to remold society in its own image? I know Republicans and conservatives SAY they're for limited government, but I don't see much evidence that they mean it. Don't get me wrong -- a conservative judiciary will be an immense improvement over the alternative...and I can't want to see how it would manifest as a force for good in American society. This may be the turning of the tide, and I relish it!

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  3. Dr. Waddy: All credible and plausible concerns, yours: I wonder if the marginalization of the left in general may be a product of a reduction of the MSM (because of overwhelming public disgust with its lack of objectivity and professionalism) to carnival hucksterhood. Perhaps the then rump MSM would attempt to save itself and fight another day by assuming a preemptive favorable bias for the real America?

    I'm wary of "apologetic conservatism " infecting the confirmed conservative SCOTUS majority we may well get in the President's second term. "Now, now, we need not be judgemental". Justice Roberts has suggested in himself an alarming tendency in this direction.

    Our side as a whole must be resolved to put the American left on the canvas and KEEP it there.

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  4. Jack beat me to it again, smiles.

    I am afraid, Jack, your thought of "Our side as a whole must be resolved to put the American left on the canvas and KEEP it there"- is a pipe dream, sigh.

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  5. Linda: You may well be right. The American left has confirmed since 1968 that their intent is total and existential. They would destroy our country and replace it with something unimagineable, though this certainty would not restrain them from, nevertheless, dreaming of utopia and considering themselves free to impose it on the unwashed.

    Have enough of the real Americans become FULLY convinced of this? 2020 could be a test.

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  6. I know what you mean, Linda. The Left is plucky, and defeating it does seem like an absurd notion, when it can always depend on the media to swoop in to the rescue. As I mentioned elsewhere, I think only if the Left moves further leftward (and embraces violence, on some level) can we lastingly marginalize it.

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  7. Dr. Waddy and Linda: 2020 may well see both developments. The left is pretty close to going off into the deep end. It reminds me of the Attica rioters,who actually thought they had widespread public support.

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  8. Jack, the rioters may have had a point, because the Left (and its fellow travelers, in the slammer and elsewhere) got away with all sorts of outrageous violence in the 60s and 70s, under the heading of "they're just freedom fighters" and "it's an understandable reaction to centuries of oppression". Any nastiness after the 2020 election will be spun in much the same way, but as with the 60s and 70s there will be a price to pay. There is a limit to the American people's gullibility!

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