Lessons of scandal and deterrence…

En Garde in the bunker…

Trump is flawed at many levels, but it’s clear that his election spoke to a general revulsion with lessons replete on political correctness, self-defeat, self-abasement, corruption, crony capitalism and massive government. We either work with him and recognize that his defeat will be ours, or we hand the Republic over permanently to its mortal enemies on the Left.

Consider that it’s a MIRACLE that he won at all. The entire media was against him (yes, including Faux News). The Democrats were against him. The Republicans were against him. The NeoCon NeverTrump traitors were against him. The lessons of politics were against him.

The Deep State was against him. Every nation that paid to play at the Clinton Slush Fund & Influence Casino was against him. Multiple Billionaires were against him. Hollyweird was against him. The entire ‘tech industry’ and corporate ownership of social media was against him. The lessons were there for all to see.

16 other candidates (mostly career professional GOPe) were against him. The actual Democrat candidate was against him, the co-pilot of the most villainous criminal political family in American history. The sitting PRESIDENT was against him, and used the practically unlimited resources of the federal government (and all of its surveillance capability) to weaponize the Deep State against him. He was outspent by what, three to one (or more)?

Not a single major newspaper in the COUNTRY endorsed him. He was vilified in ways never seen in politics before. He was personally targeted and set-up by the supposedly ‘conservative’ moderators at the very first debate (and every debate thereafter, but the first one was a shocker). Lessons of scandal indeed.

The overcomer outran the favorite in a cakewalk due to We the People…

He overcame ALL of it, and he did it all with a skeleton staff, without a “ground game”, without a national support structure and while being sabotaged by his own party, without being beholden to anyone but the American People; and the American People were the ONLY support he had, against ALL of the above and lots more I forgot to mention. Lessons of life he acquired in another profession.

That doesn’t even include all the cheating and voter fraud that went on, which will become known as those investigations continue. He beat them ALL.

Can you name another human being, dead or alive, who would have faced those odds to pull off what Donald J. Trump pulled off?

Thought so.

Thomas Lifson from yesterday’s American Thinker…

The old injunction that we should be careful what we wish for needs to be brought home to the Democrats and the Deep Staters seeking to oust President Trump from the office to which voters elected him.  Having generated hysteria over alleged Russian “interference” in our election, they have opened a door for the GOP.  Those charges are a propaganda ploy dreamed up by John Podesta and the Hillary inner circle, as documented in the book Shattered, yet they have been used by the Democrats and their media friends to distract and hobble our president.

Victor Davis Hanson addresses the questions I just raised in an article published at American Greatness, titled “Republicans and the Lost Art of Deterrence.”  As with all of Hanson’s writing, it is full of the kind of insight that comes from the close study of human nature over the ages, as expressed in the wars fought as civilization pursues its course.

Here is a brief excerpt, containing his consideration of the reasons for the GOP Battered Spouse Syndrome (my term, not his):

Is naiveté the cause of such laxity? Do Republicans unilaterally follow Munich rules because they hope such protocols will create a new “civility” and “bipartisan cooperation” in Washington?

Or is the culprit civil dissension among the ranks, as the congressional leadership secretly has no real incentive to help the despised outsider Trump? When Republicans get re-elected on repealing and replacing Obamacare during the assured Obama veto-presidency, and then flip in the age of surety that Trump would reify their campaign boasts, should we laugh or cry? Is the Republican establishment’s aim to see Trump’s agenda rendered null and void – or does intent even matter when the result is the same anyway?

Or is the empowerment of progressive conspiracy-mongering due to fear of the mainstream media, which demonizes principled resistance to progressivism and lauds unprincipled surrender to it?

Or, lastly, is the cause a bewildering misreading of human nature? I say “bewildering” because conservatives supposedly brag that they are the more astute students of unchanging human nature, while progressives are purportedly naïve believers in therapeutic remedies to perceived human frailties?

If any of the above, the Republicans had better soon wise up. For eight months, progressives have swarmed the media and our politics with false charges of Russian collusion, aimed at delegitimizing both a president and his conservative agenda.

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson’s recommendation is spot on – Go Full-Bore on Real Scandals:

The salvation of both the Trump Administration and the Republican congressional fate in the 2018 elections is to reestablish political deterrence – accomplished by going on a full-fledged offensive against real, not merely perceived or alleged, political scandals. Only that way will the accusers feel the predicament of the accused, especially as there is real merit to Democratic liability in a way that charges of Trump collusion have largely proved a political fraud. Only when deterrence is achieved, will the Democrats be forced to concentrate on agendas, issues, laws, and messages, not on ambushing the president.

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See full Thomas Lifson piece: Time to teach Democrats a scandal lesson

And Victor Davis Hanson full piece: Republicans and the Lost Art of Deterrence