“Mr. President, your time is now. There is no tomorrow. Winning again in 2024 is not going to happen. You have to win now — for you, for your legacy, for the 74 million voters you love, for America, for American exceptionalism, for capitalism. There is no tomorrow”
Conservative author, pundit and radio host Wayne Allen Root in a column this morning on Townhall.
A long time ago I subscribed to Townhall, now one of the five most visited conservative sites on the web. I quit because of too many columns like Root’s: hysterical jeremiads about how the United States was doomed. If I still read Townhall regularly, this irresponsible piece would have ended that, probably before I reached the end of the piece.
Root, who has been one of the most vociferous Donald Trump boosters since those halcyon days when he was just regarded as a real estate and casino hustler with as much chance of becoming President as Mr. Whipple, is right about one thing: Trump will not win in 2024. He’ll be too old, and he will have probably used the next four years to become even more polarizing and inflammatory than he already is. Trump might pull a Teddy Roosevelt and run a third party bid, guaranteeing Democrats the election; I wouldn’t put it past him. But he will not be elected President in 2024. If he were rational, practical and ethical, he would help groom a promising successor, like Nikki Haley. And if I were a yeti, I’d really enjoy the weather right now.
Calling for Trump to “win now” is the equivalent of calling for a violent upheaval across the country. Root writes,
Democrats cheated and stole this election, without punishment (so far). If they get away with rigging and stealing this election, it’s all over for Republicans forevermore. They stole the election with you in charge. Who’s going to stop them when they’re in charge? That’s like letting the wolf guard the hen house. It’s only going to get worse.
Yeah, they cheated, and they stole the election over the last four years of disinformation and sabotage. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing that can be done about that now. Where politics ends and undermining democracy begins is still a fuzzy line, but Republicans and Trump were outmaneuvered. One court after another has ruled that Republican complaints about state laws circumvented and procedures being breached were too late, and they are correct. Undoing national elections is a practical impossibility, as well as unwise. Moreover, having lost the popular vote by millions of votes, Trump’s stolen election argument cannot prevail, shouldn’t, and won’t. This is why the President should have conceded by now: it’s nothing more than an acknowledgment of reality. No, the Supreme Court is not going to order a new election, or declare that a President-elect who is already announcing Cabinet appointments lost. I don’t even want to imagine how the people who tore our cities up over the death of a drugged habitual criminal in Minnesota would react to that, and neither do the more reasonable SCOTUS justices, who are a majority. (I see a pro-Trump decision getting two votes, max.)
More hysteria from Root:
[T]he 2024 election will not matter, simply because America won’t exist in 2024 — not the America we know now. Democrats will destroy that America. Trust me, this will be a foreign country by 2024.
Trust me, Root is either fearmongering, or he’s lost his mind. The Democrats have elected a weak President (and a weaker VP). They will probably not have a majority in the Senate, and the House is so tight that the next two years will involve far less monolithic leftism than the previous two. The far Left-rational Left divide is getting more contentious, and the likelihood of the Presidency being a blue island in a sea of red after the 2022 mid-terms is strong.
Even if all that were less promising for conservatives, Root’s gloom shows a shocking lack of historical perspective and belief in his own country. Having survived the Revolution, the burning of Washington, the stretch of weak Presidents from 1836 to 1860 (Polk excepted) while slavery was dividing the nation, the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the stolen election of 1876, the labor upheaval, monopolies, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Hitler, the Cold War, world Communism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Watergate, Jimmy Carter, 9-11 and the attempted Democratic coups since 2016, the United States is going to be brought down by Joe Biden?
What an insult.
Ethics Alarms 
I seldom reply to your posts but today I felt I should put in my two cents worth. As a Republican I have had the same fears as Mr.Root but then, I looked back across this county’s history and said to myself: “The USA has gone through many things that at the time predictions were made of its demise but it survived.” I am not a Trump fan but I am a fan of his agenda. If only he would keep his mouth shut, humble himself, and accept he is not the President of this country as he is a president of his businesses. He does not have final say and many have as much power as he. Thank God our forefathers set up our form of government so that no one man can come in and run the show. I agree with you about Nicky Haley but I would like to add Tulsi Gabbard. Both of these ladies are power houses that, with the proper support could, accomplish what the extreme left and the extreme right will never succeed in doing. Even as a registered Republican I would vote for the right Democrat nominee and Tulsi has been the only one of many that I haven taken a second look at. I hope 2024 brings forth good candidates on both sides but I’m not holding my breath. Actually, I would love to see the Independents and Libertarians have more capability to put their messages out so this nation could see there are more options than just two political parties.
I think that Trump’s nomination in 2016 was the end of “America,” as a country in agreement about Enlightenment principles. I had watched for forty years as leftist thinking had overtaken Europe and then our own Democrats. I was very sad to see the Republicans finally fall to a demagogue of no apparent principle.
Trump proved to be a pleasant surprise, a competent man. Most important, though, is that he is remarkably live-and-let-live. With him as President, people may not have been supported in living tolerantly among their neighbors, but at least they were free to do this.
I think that time is over. Citing Joe Biden’s incompetence is naive: his emptiness is itself the proof that he is not in charge. All the institutions that opposed Trump from Day 1 – the Democrats, the bureaucracy, the news media, the entertainment behemoth, the high tech and social media corporations, the education establishment – are poised to erase our history as a free people and impose a myth that our new rulers have saved us from the boogeyman.
Is there any national group that will organize against them to defend every word of our Constitution? Who is it?
Some states may still have a pulse. If the country should break into pieces, I would probably be on the wrong side of the line in a progressive state. I don’t look forward to signing affirmations of progressive myth, but it would go down much easier if I knew there were still places where kids are taught that all men are created equal.
He’ll be no older than Biden is now, and probably in a lot better shape. That’s assuming Biden makes it to 2024 without dying or being kicked out of power via the 25th Amendment. I don’t see why the Democrats shouldn’t sweep in GA, with the huge amount of money they are pouring in, and a cheating apparatus in place that no one will touch. Then what? Maybe we wait things out until 2022, when, by all rights, the Senate should fall back into GOP hands if it isn’t there already and the House should flip. However, with this cheating apparatus in place and the courts having given their blessing, what’s to stop the Democratic party from turning every election into the swing states from now on? Even if we did win, what’s to keep Biden from just using the pen and phone like Obama? The fact is that although Biden himself is weak, he’s a weak puppet for other powers who are not. He is going to throw open the borders and send Beto after guns. Even two years of that is going to be a big problem. He’s going to expand Obamacare, which will now never be rolled back. He’ll probably do away with the Federal death penalty, and turn our criminal justice system into Europe 2.0. Not to mention how he’s going to use the pandemic to crush the economy and put more small businesses OUT of business.
Trump has to push this now, or never. We are on the cusp of a civil war between freedom and tyranny, and I don’t intend to just go down quietly.
Push what? You can’t deny that a reversal now would rupture the government and cause the worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War. You just can’t undo legal votes cast in good faith; the courts can’t and won’t. There are many reasons the Democrats are unlikely to sweep in Georgia, the main one being that Ossoff is terrible and even the media can’t hide the wife-beating allegations. Also all the polls are close, and as we learned just a month ago, pollsters under-count Republican support.
I can tell you’re getting hysterical when you start worrying about guns. If there is one thing the SCOTUS mix guarantees, it’s that gun-grabbing goes nowhere.
I think the Dems will over reach or devolve into infighting and collapse pretty quickly under their own weight. Does anyone really think the Wall Street supporters of the Democratic party are going to let them crash the market? Despite the Dems saying “everything’s terrible” for the last four years, I don’t think the electorate will stand still while the Dems ruin a really strong economy. I just don’t see it happening. Give the Dems enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.
I agree.
I think we were more depressed than usual by the results of this election for a couple reasons, but one big one is that the initial results on election night were so much in Trump’s favor that it was excruciating seeing his lead slip away in state after state.
I do not think the Democrats will sweep Georgia. There were about half a million fewer mail-in/absentee ballots requested than for the general election and those heavily favored Biden. From the reports I heard before Christmas, the polling was more Republicanish than the November election. There is no Libertarian candidate in the election (which was the reason Perdue ended up in a runoff), and is there anyone who thinks that any numbers of Libertarian voters will go for Warnock and Ossof?
The Democrats heavily outspent the Republicans in Senatorial races in South Carolina, Kentucky, and I believe in North Carolina and Maine. How’d that work for them the first time? I assume, come to think of it, that they outspent the Republicans in Georgia as well (why should it have been any different than anywhere else?), and yet Perdue barely missed his majority against the Democrat and LIbertarian combined.
Given their record over the last 20 years — the Democrats and media have forgotten how to govern effectively. Clinton was probably the only one effective at governing since either Johnson or Truman, I think.
What is the old saying — if it wasn’t for overreach, they’d have no reach at all?
Like I said last time the only way out I see is Biden strongly pushing for investigations and arrests about election fraud now, giving Trump the green light to pursue those; then a strong promise to follow through. Doing that would put most of the Trump camp on a reluctant wait-and-see position. That the Democrats have not pursued this course of action tells me all I need to know about the chances that they won’t abuse their newly-acquired power.
I think we need to define the word “Win”. Why do we equate winning with Trump remaining as President? Trump can win by marshalling his resources to continue the fight to convince enough voters that voter fraud is real enough to alter the outcomes of elections. I do agree that if we simply sweep that which occurred in the 2020 election under the rug a certain political party will be emboldened to push for fewer impediments to voting by the living and the dead and the otherwise ineligible.
It is argued that because each state oversees it election process the ability to conspire to rig an election would be out of the question as it would require too many to agree. We can see that such a conspiracy need not be nationwide; for as few as five states that have major urban areas, that routinely have low voter turnouts, and suddenly see a groundswell of support for the Democrat candidate can tip the tide in their favor; a party need not even have to tell its officials in the non-metro areas thus limiting the number of people needed to make the needed vote adjustments. This can now occur whether the folks turn out to vote or not. They merely need to be registered.
Sure the media was, and will remain in the tank for the progressives. I don’t think any of them have the spine to stand up against the “Cancel Culturalists” when the woke mob finds something they don’t like about one of their peers in the media. In fact I think most will become more malleable. Any vestige of critical thinking capacity the media elites might possess today will disappear as they try to preserve their elitist status among the woke. Speaking the truth can make life very uncomfortable and those accustomed to unearned comforts will sell their souls to keep those comforts coming. The media can only deliver a message it cannot control your thinking unless you let them. Therefore, it will mean that fighting the media’s messaging will require better messaging and a willingness to evaluate multiple information streams.
Perhaps winning really means effecting fundamental changes to ensure voter integrity by requiring proof of citizenship and address to register, photo ID at the polls, and other measure such as creating a national voter ID system that prevents the same person from voting in two different places in any election.
I would also like to see that every state first deliver a value for the ballot universe. The ballot universe is the number of ballots that are subject to the canvass. Once that universe of ballots is certified absolutely no more ballots can be included in the counting. This is designed to prevent suddenly found ballots from increasing the number of ballots after actual counting of votes begins.
Only after the ballot universe is certified can election judges and observers begin the task of counting votes.
My only caveat to the above is that if the majority of the voting population believes that it is more of the government’s responsibility to take care of us than our own responsibility and they have learned that voting allows themselves to increase money and resources flowing to them from the government then the only losers are the poor SOB’s (Your children and their children) that wind up picking up the bills we frivolously run up so we incur no hardship. They will be the Uyghar equivalents working in the Chinese tennis shoe factories operating in North America.
BTW
Why is this the unethical quote of the week when on Dec 21 you titled something similar as the ethical quote of the week.
Ethics Quote Of The Week: Biden Deputy Chief Of Staff, Jen O’Malley Dillon
What makes saying
“I’m not saying they’re not a bunch of fuckers. Mitch McConnell is terrible.”
an ethical quote – or am I missing the meaning?
—Jen O’Malley Dillon, incoming Deputy Chief of Staff for Joe Biden, explaining to Glamour Magazine that bi-partisan deals are still possible with Republicans.
You’re missing something. Ethics quotes are not ethical quotes necessarily, they raise ethical issues. Dillon’s quote raised ethical issues about the sincerity of the Biden/Democratic “let’s heal” blather. The quote was not itself an unethical quote in a vacuum. This quote is unethical on its face.
I know I’ve explained these distinctions before, but not recently.
Thanks
I must have missed the explanation.
Likewise, I appreciate the amplification. I missed it before — plus I haven’t been paying enough attention to the difference between headlines that say ‘Ethics quote’ vs ‘Ethical quote’. I will try to keep up in the future. 🙂
Chris, I mostly agree with you. Trump lost the election, but the Republicans scored a resounding win in the vast majority of down ballot elections. They need to leverage this into fixing the obvious problems with our election processes.
I am definitely in favor of states adopting voter ID requirements — my state, North Carolina, cleared a major court hurdle to implement this just a couple months ago. However, for any number of reasons I don’t want to see a national anything ID law. I do not want to see the federal government encroaching even more on our lives.
If we could get states to adopt reasonable precautions, I can live with the occasional double voter. There will always be people willing to cheat — here again is another instance where we shouldn’t let the perfect stand in the way of the good.
I don’t know if Trump would run again or if I’d want him to or if he could actually be elected again (this might actually be the biggest hurdle). But I would venture to say it will be important that he support the GOP nominee, whoever that might be. He will still have millions of supporters and if he tells them to stay home, we’re doomed. (crossing my fingers, knocking on wood, etc).
DG
I agree that we should avoid a national ID.
The Federal government already has a database of all citizens. Even babies whose parents want to claim the child as a dependent must get a social security number. A national voter ID need only tie the last four digits to the voter registration. If a person moves and tries to register in the new locale the registration officials in the new location sends a cancellation memo through a federal voter exchange which notifies the old election officials who remove the person from their rolls. This can also work with the deceased. It simply creates real time culling of voter rolls.
Soooooooo………breaking news (ta da!)
According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump just signed the appropriation/Covid relief agglomeration bill.
It appears that Pelosi will still be doing some sort of grandstanding about a $2000 check in the House tomorrow.
There is no such thing as the rational left. If the Democrats pick up the two senatorial seats in the Georgia runoff election the stock market will tank for one: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/12/24/democrats-republicans-georgia-runoff-elections-stocks/
Rational Left?
Michael
I believe the rational left refers to leftists that understand that patience will help achieve the objectives more efficiently then trying to implement them forceably.