Yesterday’s blog linked to William A Jacobson’s “pep talk”
for conservatives. Today, the executive
editor of The Federalist, Joy Pullmann,
looks back on what Michael Anton was predicting in 2016, and why we all need those
pep talks. Here’s an extract – towards the
end of her column:
Biden’s Destruction Of America Vindicates
Mike Anton’s 2016 ‘Flight 93’ Essay
. . Anton was also right that
Trump’s top issues — border security, international trade, and endless foreign
wars — were broadly popular and could form the basis of a national renewal. The
Biden administration’s gross and dangerous mismanagement of all these issues
has vindicated this analysis as well. We’re just two years into Biden’s
divisive, lawless, scorched-earth reign, and one already wonders if
there will be anything left of our country after two more.
On the flip side, Trump’s platform
and four years in office transformed and united the Republican Party. The only
people who haven’t figured that out are the people who misread the nation and their
own constituents and refused to man up and admit it, forfeiting their
credibility to lead. Their cowardice and softness have revealed themselves as
more dangerous than Trump’s rudeness and intimidation, and voters are over it.
Riding the center of the maelstrom,
Trump’s presidency did change the political winds, in ways Anton couldn’t
predict. For one, Trump cracked the right’s tolerance for political correctness, a
major victory. We are now free to say, yes, we do want our border secured, and
to call that racist is simply unserious and callous to all the women and
children trafficked and raped by the cartels. We can say that anti-white racism
is also racism, and it’s the right that maintains the strictest zero-tolerance
policy on racism.
Trump’s moderate appeal and
bull-in-the-China-shop bashing of the racist stigma barrier set the GOP toward
becoming a truly multiracial working-class and middle-class coalition party.
The amplified media propaganda machine and woke incest between big business and
government has prompted a deep and wide backlash, alienating normies from the
Democrat Party. In this, Trump’s presidency helped people awaken to their true
political foes and allies, clarifying what time we are in and who is a
talk-only grifter and who’s a legit freedom fighter.
Anton also couldn’t account for
Covid opening so many people’s eyes — except many among self-appointed
conservative “leadership,” who acquiesced instead of fighting for actual
constitutional rights such as freedom of assembly, free speech, and not being
“deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”! They left
resisting the communists to ordinary citizens, such as the few Democrat
lawyers who still believe in civil rights, apolitical doctors who
formed impressive new messaging and policy coalitions, and mom bloggers with
kids banned from school.
We don’t need the right’s Monday
morning armchair quarterbacks to do anything but get out of the way as Ben
Sasse did. . . .
Read Ms. Pullman’s full column here. It’s one to bookmark.
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