Not Trump, But the Establishment Threatens Democracy
By John Seiler
NYT columnist David Brooks wonders, “Why Is There Still No Strategy to Defeat Donald Trump?” Actually, there is: The strategy is what’s called the War on Trump. It’s all the absurd lawsuits against him, it’s the Jan. 6 Kangaroo Committee, it’s the constant haranguing by the Establishment/Deep State/The Regime/The Military Industrial Complex saying he threatens “Our Democracy.”
Brooks: “One of the stunning facts of the age is the continued prominence of Donald Trump. His candidates did well in the G.O.P. primaries this year. He won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. His favorability ratings within his party have been high and basically unchanged since late 2016. In a range of polls, some have actually shown Trump leading President Biden in a race for re-election in 2024.”
Actually, it’s not “stunning” at all. It’s the reason Lincoln gave for keeping as his top general the unkempt, cigar-chomping, drunk U.S. Grant: “He fights.”
Trump fights. Consider the recent, post-Reagan presidents or nominees:
1988, 92: GHW Bush: Increased taxes and reversed Reagan’s cuts in government bureaucracy. Got us involved in Iraq, where we still are 32 years later.
1996: Bob Dole: “tax collector for the welfare state.”
2000, 04: GW Bush: Disastrous Iraq War, which we’re still fighting. Lied about WMD. Increased domestic spending faster than any president since LBJ’s Great Society.
2008: Insane McCain would have gotten us into a nuclear war with Russia.
2012: Romney": the ultimate RINO, Republican in Name Only. His Romneycare when he was governor of Massachusetts was the model for Obamacare.
Trump had many faults, but he didn’t start any new wars, got us mostly out of Afghanistan and Iraq, cut taxes and regulations, and appointed three great Supreme Court justices, who protected our gun rights and revoked the Roe v. Wade abortion slaughter decision.
Isn’t democracy giving voters what they wanted? And isn’t shafting them after election day the opposite of democracy?
Brooks: “His prominence is astounding because over the past seven years the American establishment has spent enormous amounts of energy trying to discredit him.
“Those of us in this establishment correctly identified Trump as a grave threat to American democracy.”
Look how stupid that is: The “establishment,” which he identifies and claims membership in, is just a small fraction of the American population, <1%. But upsetting them is “a grave threat to American democracy”!
Actually, the opposite is true. Upsetting them is almost identical with democracy. The establishment is the rulers and the pundits, like Brooks, who have destroyed our country.
His list of the establishment’s supposed failures: “Many strategies were deployed in order to discredit Trump. There was the immorality strategy: Thousands of articles were written detailing his lies and peccadilloes. There was the impeachment strategy: Investigations were launched into his various scandals and outrages. There was the exposure strategy: Scores of books were written exposing how shambolic and ineffective the Trump White House really was.”
At least he admits what the establishment – that tiny group of anti-Trumpists – was up to. “There was the immorality strategy: Thousands of articles were written detailing his lies and peccadilloes.” But Trump fulfilled far more of his campaign pledges than any president since Reagan. Again, not perfect.
“There was the impeachment strategy: Investigations were launched into his various scandals and outrages.” What? The first impeachment was about Biden being corrupted by bribes from Ukraine. Look how that turned out: A war in Ukraine threatening to go nuclear. Europe freezing this winter. Africa starving. Meanwhile Zelensky is going to be headlining a Sept. 21 confab of the war profiteers – the Military Industrial Complex.
The second impeachment was about the establishment getting upset with the little riot on Jan. 6. And Liz Cheney grandstanding her grievances because Trump called out her Iraq War Criminal father – before voters bounced her..
“There was the exposure strategy: Scores of books were written exposing how shambolic and ineffective the Trump White House really was.” Ineffective? See the list I ran above. Trump was highly effective. His main mistake was with personnel. He should have followed his own reputation from “The Apprentice” and used its signature line more often: “You’re fired.”
“The barrage has probably solidified Trump’s hold on his party. Republicans see themselves at war with the progressive coastal elites. If those elites are dumping on Trump, he must be their guy.” Well, that’s true. So does Brooks get it in the end?
Brooks: “A couple weeks ago, Biden gave a speech in Philadelphia, declaring the MAGA movement a threat to democracy. The speech said a lot of true things about that movement, but there was an implied confession: We have no strategy.”
No, they do have a strategy: The lawsuits and arrests and harassment, what Scott Adams calls the “hunt Republicans strategy.” Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro and numerous others have been arrested. The FBI seized Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone. And of course there’s the unprecedented, Gestapo raid on Trump’s home, even rifling through his wife’s drawers and his teenage son’s room. That’s not “saving democracy.” That’s fascism.
Biden’s strategy is clear: Erect a police state, jail Trump and his followers and end freedom in America to make sure Democrats never lose power.
Brooks: “Trumpists tell themselves that America is being threatened by a radical left putsch that is out to take over the government and undermine the culture. The core challenge now is to show by word and deed that this is a gross exaggeration.”
OK, show me. I’m waiting. Maybe soon I’ll be waiting in a detention cell in the Biden Gulag.