TAS Publisher Melissa McKenzie’s Center of the Democratic Party is not a happy read, but it’s an essential one with a high truth quotient. The best one-stop diagnosis of our political failures and cultural decline that I’ve read anywhere.
Today’s Democrat Party is indeed a wholly-owned subsidiary of the bat guano crazy Left for reasons our Melissa outlines. The party’s future is more in the hands of AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Comrade Mamdani, and their toxic ideas than in the hands of the JFKs, Hubert Humphreys, and Scoop Jacksons of my youth. In the party’s current state, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat for assistant county rat-catcher.
Making matters worse, the performance of down-ballot Republican office holders, taken all around, has been less than spectacular.
I join Melissa in challenging the happy-talk bubble so many Republicans seem to be in, thinking they’re in the political cat bird seat now with clear sailing for many election cycles to come. Not so fast. Donald Trump’s election in 2024 may be put down — as the estimable Piers Morgan claims in his new book Woke is Dead — to a much needed resurgence of common sense. But, alas, common sense has never been common, and is subject to leaving the room without notice.
Since moving back into 1600, President Trump has closed our borders, and his DHS is about the hard work of expelling the worse actors of the many millions of gate crashers the previous administration invited in. He’s cracked down on crime that Democrat policies have allowed to thrive. He’s made official government policy the bloody obvious that there are only two sexes, not dozens as Democrat gospel insists, with pronouns without end, amen.
He’s gotten us off the suicidal energy policy of abandoning fossil fuels in the name of a fake climate crisis. He’s working to end the slander that the U.S. is a hopelessly racist society where blacks suffer at the hands of white oppressors. He’s returned our military to its legitimate function of defending the country rather than acting as just another vehicle of left social engineering. These and other sensible and much-needed policies should have translated into high approval rating for Trump and for the Republican Party. They haven’t.
Conservative leaning writers and talking heads are fond of pointing out that the Democrat Party is “enjoying” historically low approval numbers. It is. But Republicans don’t do much better. And Trump’s approval ratings, with some spread between polls, hover just above 40 percent, with a majority expressing disapproval. Not a good place to be with slightly less than a year to go before a midterm election that historically sees low voter turnout but where all the political crazies flock to the polls. It’s reasonable to say the Republican’s whisker-thin majority in the House is in jeopardy. Losing the House would throw a major spanner in the spokes of the Trump agenda, which is already hobbled by federal judges acting more as left political activists than as jurists. (Defense stipulates the Donald may have overstepped in some areas. But in court he’s been far more sinned against than sinning.)
The cause of a major portion of lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome is not hard to locate. Most have to do with the Donald’s style and presentation. Even I, who’ve voted for him for president three times, don’t give him many style points. His speeches are rambling, repetitive messes. He often sounds like he’s wrong even when he’s right. And it’s clear he studied modesty on a Muhammad Ali scholarship. But how much better off we would be if more voters could distinguish between what many consider a toxic personality and Trump’s sound policies that have clearly made America a better place.
In addition to federal judges, many of whom I suspect are wearing RESIST! sweat-shirts under their robes, Trump continues to be maligned daily and unfairly by legacy media drones. And entertainment figures who, off script, seem to lack the sense God gave a chicken, keep up a steady dumb-beat. (In this regard, I believe I’ll skip Harrison Ford’s latest: Indiana Jones’ Gums Go Bad, coming soon to a three-quarters empty theater near you.) And don’t even get me started on the professoriat. Other than in STEM curricula — and even there we see softening — four years in most universities today is a worse investment than trying to help out that Nigerian prince.
Making matters worse, the performance of down-ballot Republican office holders, taken all around, has been less than spectacular. Better than the Democrats, of course, but has there ever been a lower bar than this? Too many Rs are timid, loathe to take the flack the Donald is willing to take to do what needs to be done, but which would step on some very noisy political toes.
Exhibit A in this regard is the current government shutdown, caused by the Democrats’ extortionist trillion-dollar-plus policy demand. The relative silence from the R side is unnerving. Not even the Donald seems to be as invested in this one as much as he should be. Too many Republicans seem to believe that Democrats will take the hit for causing air traffic controllers and Marine Corp. lance corporals to go without their paychecks while members of Congress are still cashing theirs. But don’t bet on this. The merits of the case would dictate that the Donkeys are causing this disruption. But when have the merits carried the day in contentious partisan conflict? That Republicans are blamed for government shutdowns seems to be written on stone tablets handed down from the mountain top.
Taking all of this into account, I believe I’ll have the following bumper strip made up in time for next fall’s mid-terms: “VOTE REPUBLICAN! — We may not be perfect, but the other bunch is stone crazy.”
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