Month: November 2021

The Democratic Party agenda has dominated American politics for the last 89 years, since 1932. Republican Presidents like Eisenhower, Nixon and the Bushes didn’t really challenge the Democratic narrative. Reagan and Trump did, but both left office with Democratic political dominance intact.

The Republican Party agenda dominated for 72 years, from 1860 to 1932. Grover Cleveland was only a nominal Democrat, and Wilson only won because Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican vote.

In other words, 1860 and 1932 were realignment elections. The winning coalitions lasted far beyond one or two Presidencies. They lasted generations.

It seems as if contemporary Democrats have a death wish, as if they were intentionally trying to alienate people. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. In the political sense, these people have lost their minds.

I’ve got a feeling in my gut that 2024 is not only an historic landslide, but that incoming President Pence will prove a resounding success. If his successor is someone like Ron DeSantis, he, too, will be successful. An enduring political majority could be the result. Democrats may win the Presidency, but they won’t challenge the dominant, Republican narrative.

That narrative is, essentially, normalcy.

I may have felt this way before. I’ve been involved politically since 1960. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.

But I think it’s going to make the next few years extremely interesting. If you like politics.

From 2014 to 2018 it was possible for the Republican state legislatures to call for an Article V Amendment Convention without one Democrat vote. Since the 2018 election, that is no longer true. But by 2024, if current trends continue, it will be again.

At the moment there are Republican majorities in both chambers in 31 states. We should win the Minnesota Senate in 2022, getting us to 32.

In 2023 we should pick up the Virginia Senate, giving us 33. In the Republican landslide of 2024, we should win either Maine or Nevada. That’s 34.

I believe Mike Pence will be elected President in 2024, but as long as it isn’t Donald Trump — an avowed opponent of all Article V resolutions — the Republican in the White House will encourage the campaign to get the Fiscal Reform Amendment proposed at an Article V Convention, and ratified in his first term.

What started in 1975 will finally come to pass, and I am determined to see it.

I live in a part of California, the Sierra foothills, which has the culture of the Mountain West. This distinct American subculture extends north from northern Arizona and New Mexico all the way up to Alaska. It begins in western Colorado and includes the most easterly sections of Washington, Oregon and California.

But it’s still subject to the laws of California, so mask requirements are everywhere. I am a follower, not a leader, in this regard. If most people are wearing a mask, I do too. But if a significant minority are maskless, I take mine off.

I go to Walmart occasionally, and I’ve witnessed a trend, which has become a wave, of resistance. Big signs in front of the store say masks are required, per local law, but today, for the first time, almost no one had a mask on. Same thing, a little later, at Wells Fargo.

This is Irish democracy, or civil disobedience, and I think it’s gaining steam. In Alaska the election of Mayor Bronson was an early symptom. Glenn Youngkin’s recent win in Virginia is related.

This political wave is evidenced today Vermont Senator Leahy retiring. This is a surprise. He’s only 81, a spring chicken by Congressional standards.

What we’re witnessing is the beginning of a virtuous circle, as more Democrats retire, and more quality Republicans decide that 2022 is a great year to run.

It will be three years before we can vote Biden out of office, and he’ll do significant damage to this country in the mean time. But 2024 is shaping up as one of the great political wipeouts of all time. To me it looks like 1920. That election led to some badly needed reforms, including immigration law. 2024 is going to be so big that some great things are going to be possible, things that haven’t been possible in generations.

This why we’ll get good candidates for Congress. Big changes are coming, and who wouldn’t want to be part of that?

This is especially true in Alaska, and I intend to play a part in that play.

That’s the day Pence refused Trump’s angry demand that he throw out the electoral votes of states where fraud was suspected.

But the language of the 12^th Amendment admits of no room for interpretation.  It confers no power on the Vice President, only the duty to count the electoral votes submitted by the states. This act is purely ministerial.  It allows for no discretion.

Crackpot lawyer Eastman was speculating, in his “legal” advice to Trump, about what might happen if Pence exceeded his authority and claimed a power he did not have.  It was simply a recipe for an attempt at a coup d’etat.

As President, Trump had a duty to follow the Constitution.  But he wasn’t interested in the Constitution.  He was interested in power, and in somehow avoiding the humiliation of having lost an election to a demented charlatan. 

Because of his ignorance of and indifference to the Constitution, Trump disgraced himself on January 6^th, and proved himself unfit for service in political office.

If it looks like it’s going to be close enough, Democrats will make plans to steal Presidential elections. This is especially true when they roundly despise the Republican candidate. They loathed “Tricky Dick” Nixon in 1960, and in 2020 they were consumed with hatred of Donald Trump. They stole the 1960 election in Illinois and Texas, and it may prove out that they stole 2020 as well. They would have stolen 2016, but it was going to be a sure Democrat win, so they weren’t ready. If it’s close enough in 2024, and Trump is the Republican, they’ll certainly try to steal it again.

If Republicans are going to be sure of a win, they need to win big, big enough that it can’t be stolen. That’s one reason why, in the end, it’s very unlikely that they’ll nominate Trump again. Half the country hates him, and would vote for Donald Duck before they’d vote for Donald Trump. This why savvy Republican candidates like Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin try to keep Trump out of their campaigns. Mainstream Democrats are dispirited and apathetic. Only Trump hatred can get them to the polls.

This will be just as true, if not more so, in 2022 and 2024. Association with Trump may help win Republican primaries, but it’s a major impediment in a general election. As more information about the events of January 6, 2021 comes to light, the Trump appeal will continue to fade. Not because of the dubious “insurrection” at the Capitol. That was a farce. The real scandal was Trump’s attempt to pressure Vice President Pence into unilaterally overturning the electoral vote in states where there was evidence of fraud, and using a mob to do it. (This is reported in “Peril” by Woodward and Costa, pp.238-239, and the people who they claim witnessed it — Ivanka Trump and National Security Adviser Keith Kellogg — have not denied it.)

This was unprecedented in American history. What Trump wanted Pence to do was tantamount to a coup d’etat, an illegal seizure of power. The media has downplayed this aspect of January 6, because, while it makes Trump look bad, it makes Pence look good. They know that if Pence is the 2024 nominee, he’ll be favored to win, and win big. He has the Trump agenda, without the Trump baggage. His performance on January 6 distanced him from Trump, but not from Trump’s issues.

Trump was a terrible candidate, but a great President. His administration provides a template for the Republican who follows him. He was, essentially, a turnaround manager, an outsider brought into a moribund organization to provide a new direction. Turn around managers have to be willing to take on the corporate establishment, and ruffle some feathers in the process. They aren’t there for the long haul, and they can get a lot of people upset. This is what Trump did for this country, and he deserves the gratitude of the American people for what he accomplished on their behalf.

He also revolutionized the Republican Party, repudiating its slavish devotion to the economics of free trade, and making it, once more, the party of the people who actually make this country work. Politically, Trump was a hedgehog, not a fox. He didn’t know a lot of things, but he knew one big thing, the most important thing in politics: give people what they want.

But as a candidate, Trump was a near disaster. Any conventional Republican would have easily beaten Hillary Clinton. She was a truly awful candidate, in a Republican year, with no message, who ran a truly awful campaign. Only having Trump as an opponent allowed her to keep it close. In 2020 Biden was, if anything, worse than Clinton. But his campaign and the media, working in tandem, were able to disguise his inadequacies just enough to squeak out a win.

Trump fatigue will continue to build, as he obsesses over the lost 2020 election, and continues his vendettas against those who failed to support his efforts to overturn it. In 2016 he famously declared he could commit homicide in broad daylight, and still maintain his appeal to his core supporters, and that still may be true. But that core is shrinking, and his recent behavior is emboldening his Republican critics. Other than Don Jr., his family seems uninterested in his political comeback, and he’d be 83 years old at the end of his next term in office, if he wins.

When Trump’s father passed his fortune on to him, the Trumps were in the Forbes 400 wealthiest families in America. That’s no longer true, and it no doubt bothers him. His family, his party, and his country would be better off if he devotes himself to what he does best, and enjoys doing: making money.

As Trump the Improbable fades from the spotlight, conservatism, the Republican Party, and the United States of America have a bright future awaiting them.