Reality Star-in-Chief
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Think back to the 2012 presidential campaign and Mitt Romney. As you may recall, the Democrats and their media enablers very successfully painted Romney as a rich, out-of-touch ‘one percenter’ who could never possibly understand the concerns of ‘ordinary Americans.’ In response, Romney fecklessly treated us to home movies of himself and his family loading up the station wagon and going on vacation.
See, I’m not rich.I’m just an ordinary family guy.
It didn’t work. Romney was never able to shake the media-created image of silver spoon Brahmin. The Richie Rich meme stuck to Romney like a wet suit.
With that recollection in mind, jump ahead to June 2015. In the first few minutes of his announcement for the presidency, Donald Trump, in making the point that his presidency wouldn’t be beholden to PACs and big-money lobbyists said, “I’m really rich.” In an instant, and even though Donald Trump is by several multiples more wealthy than Mitt Romney, the issue of wealth was off the table. The Dems and the media never raised it once because they knew that if they tried, it wouldn’t work. Many times throughout the campaign Trump bragged on his personal wealth with complete impunity. Working class stiffs voted for him in sufficient numbers to lead him to an upset victory over the heavily-favored Hillary Clinton.
Taking that recollection, jump further forward to this past Tuesday. Sitting in the Oval Office with Democrats Nancy Pelosi, who will be Speaker of the House in about three weeks, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – and with the cameras rolling — the president loudly and proudly said that he would be perfectly willing to shut down the government if the next funding bill didn’t include money for his border wall.
Just like that, Trump ripped from their hands the cudgel that Democrats have used on Republicans at every budget impasse. “I will take the mantle of shutting down, and I’m going to shut it down for border security,” said the president. It was a master stroke of reality TV from the master of the genre.
Of course, the media is sputtering and fuming and carrying on. But let them. Every second of air that they give to the story further cements in the minds of those who voted for him that Trump means to keep his promise. He ran on stopping illegal immigration. He ran on building a border wall. If it constitutes the only leverage he has to keep those promises, a government “shutdown” is a feature, not a bug. (“Shutdown” is in quotes because we have learned from prior “shutdowns” that the federal government is so all-pervasive that it cannot actually be shut down.)
In one move, Trump outed the Democrats as the open border advocates that they are while simultaneously giving cover to Congressional Republicans (if they’re smart enough to use it).
It was a Trump tour de force. And if it’s any indication, it portends a long two years for soon-to-be Speaker Pelosi.
JUST in time for Christmas.
What a mensch.
That open to the media meeting was just what we needed. Nice to see Pelosi and Schumer try to peddle their poison in public. Two rats smoked out!
The two Bushes rarely made me proud of them. Not since Reagan, not until President Trump, has there been a president I have been happy with. President Reagan was a man who strove to deliver on his promises. And now we have President Trump who is delivering on promises made, despite an unprecedented elitist headwind. Donald Trump is not the perfect man, nor the perfect president, but he is the man the nation needs. He is delivering on what he promised those of us who voted for him. If fixing illegal immigration and getting the funding for our border wall requires shutting down the government, then let’s do it, Mr. President, let’s do it.
Wider-angle shot: Trump is less an issue than a symptom:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/12/13/donald-trump-executive-power-president-war-democracy-constitution-cult-column/2065368002/
Mr. Cook, your “wide-angle shot” goes wide of the mark. President Trump is neither an “issue” nor a “symptom.” He is a man doing what we who voted for him elected him to do.
Mr. Saunder, would you wager cash that The Wall will be built?
No, I don’t think it ever will be, I hope I’m wrong and I truly believe this is the final opportunity to get it done, but on the left you have open border advocates more interested in future votes than the American people they are supposed to serve. On the right you have just enough politicians beholden to the cheap labor lobbyists.
And in the center you have the American Middle and lower Middle Class who bear the brunt of paying for the Dems federal largess to illegals and whose paychecks increasingly slide downward due to the cheap labor..
I agree Mr. Saunders. President Trump is doing the things that others talked about doing, but never followed thru with ACTION. He is.
Same question.
Don’t need to wager* (*i.e. gamble cash money just for the sake of propping up my convictions like you apparently feel you need.)
In answer to the core of your question however, do I think THE WALL will be built?
YES, 100%, because the Angel Families who have lost countless loved ones to foreign nationals being in the U.S. illegally, has caused such a public outrage, as well as the illegal drugs pouring thru wide open border spaces, and numerous other reasons, the public outcry has reached such a level, that now even National Security is on the line, and those few individuals “in high & low places” who still oppose a wall, cannot provide any logical answer which can bear up under scrutiny when Israel has built such a wall and proven that it brought near total impenetrability to a border that was once wantonly violated by terrorists, but no more.
REMEMBER THIS, go back and look at the various video montages of the nattering nabobs of negativism, the pundits, the prognosticators, the poobahs, who laughed at “the very idea of President Trump even becoming the Republican nominee” let alone winning the 2016 election. Well, to be sure, going back to his announcement, I was not one them, nor were the millions of citizens in thousands of counties across America who voted Donald J. Trump into office. And we’re going to do it again in 2020.
The perpetual “Hate Trump” Marxist religion is determined to take down our duly elected Trump Presidency by any means necessary with lies, half-truths, and deception. What we freedom-loving and Constitution advocates are watching today, in real time, is a coup d’état by the Left with saturation propaganda bombing using verbal/video/media/blog outlets at every opportunity, all in the “name” of free speech, of course. Our “free speech rights” gives the Left the right to persuade an ignorant citizenry to put their faith in the evil Left whose goal is to destroy our freedoms, one slice at a time. Once the Left wins, of course, all freedom disappears and there will be NO “free speech” or any other rights as granted by God and protected by the Constitution. The following video puts this political coup in context as discussed by real Patriots that are fearless to expose the agenda of the Left and its subversive followers.
“The Scandal of Our Generation”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KPMgKvJZ88
I believe that Trump is aware of the enemy at the door and is cleverly planning (with God’s help) to expose, in due time, the evil in our government and government supported institutions. If not, the march of the Left towards a Marxist America for the last 80 years will have been successful and like a “black hole,” the epoch of “The Enlightenment” will be sucked into everlasting darkness with the tyranny of the Middle Ages returning to enslave the masses. This may be our last chance to save ourselves from the tyrannical Leftist hordes.
PREDICTIONS, by those who DO believe The Wall will be built:
When?
Sometimes nagging doesn’t engender a response by choice of the nagged who deliberately ignore the nagging with the hope that the nagger will shut up! Those who annoy don’t deserve a response because their points are meaningless given the huge scope of danger to the Nation due to the illegal alien invasion that the Marxist Democrats support, ie., NO BORDERS or, Globalism gone berserk.
Why don’t you PREDICT the point and time in which Texas will follow California and become a BLUE State after we have absorbed the flow of illegal aliens that have occurred there the last 20 years?
California used to be a very RED State but the LEFT now controls the entire State government and Washington representation. Everyone knows that it is the ILLEGAL ALIEN invasion that is the hope and plan of the Marxist Democrat Party to subvert the Constitution by attracting this illegal flow (dependent on government largess as victims of socialism and BIG government) to eventually overwhelm the Conservative vote at the polls. (Yes, illegal aliens vote in California with illegal support of the Democrat Party.) Once Texas and Florida go BLUE and Leftist tyranny succeeds, there will never be another Republican President, followed eventually by a one Party, Marxist Democrat Congress.
Toleration of the illegal alien invasion erases our borders and destroys our free-market, free-enterprise, Constitutional system. Upon completion of this trend, the Left will have finally taken over our Nation and our Rights will become history. I predict less than 10 years. What’s your prediction?
As to your specific question: Experience dictates that the quickest way to induce yawns is to say the word “demographics,” because numbers are less sexy than claims. That said: Texas demography is already DANG close to purple.
And just moments ago, a Republican congressman from Texas predicted on TV: NO shutdown. “We’ll get a C.R.”
Ironically, the next congressman interviewed, from the Democratic House leadership, thought we might GET a shutdown, the-undoing-of-which will be the first piece of business the new Congress takes up.
One thing today has made clear: Trump LISTENS to Rush. ;)
Stay tuned…
And if you can’t wait for Mexico to pay for it:
https://www.gofundme.com/TheTrumpWall