By DEXTER DUGGAN
Many of the good ideas in new President Donald Trump’s February 28 speech to a joint session of Congress could be thwarted by just three numbers.
And that’s not even taking into account the trio of the hostile media, bureaucracy, and judiciary. Or the hostile worlds of entertainment, academia, and globalism.
Nor would it involve impeachment or imprisoning Trump or devising some other grotesquerie that inflamed left-wingers babble about as methods to vacate the Oval Office.
Left to the elite, Trump would have maybe 30 votes from the Electoral College instead of the commanding 304 he received.
Rush Limbaugh said on his March 6 national radio program that he’s confident the president is holding up all right against the assaults because he knows Trump, “and when he’s committed to doing something, nothing stops him or gets in his way. So they’re not succeeding in destroying his psyche or his confidence or any of that. I am assured of that.”
However, if somehow just three U.S. senators flipped to the other side, the Democrats would gain the upper-chamber majority and presumably bring Trump’s program to the screeching halt that the trios mentioned above haven’t been able to achieve.
Or, the three senators wouldn’t even have to become Democrats, but just edge into being Independents, like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Maine’s Angus King, who caucus with the chamber’s 46 Democrats, producing a minority of 48 versus the Senate’s 52 Republicans.
Yet another course would be to remain Republican but kick like stubborn donkeys against the administration. Think Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
Then there was the unusual case of “Jumpin’ Jim” Jeffords in 2001, the “moderate” Republican senator from Vermont who upset a 50-50 split in the chamber between the major parties to become an Independent and caucus with the Democrats. The GOP regained its Senate control late the following year, winning a special election in Missouri in 2002.
Amid all the buzz in dominantly liberal media about how to hobble or remove Trump, does it seem strange there’s no barrage of journalistic speculation about capturing the Senate even before the next election, in 2018?
Conservative Republican campaign strategist Constantin Querard told The Wanderer that with current overall election trends favoring Republicans, it seems unlikely that media would concern themselves speculating about a politician going in the other direction.
“The lack of media attention is likely related to just how unlikely it is to happen. They would need to flip three Republicans at a time when being a Republican is a good thing,” the Arizona strategist said on March 6. “Not going to happen, so why cover it?”
As for the possibility that the Republican Senate “mavericks” from South Carolina and Arizona could be induced to change party identifications, Querard said:
“There is no chance that either Graham or McCain switch parties. Both are red state senators who relish their role within the GOP. And neither has any interest in putting (New York liberal Democratic Sen. Charles) Schumer in charge” to become Senate majority leader.
“Conservatives are constantly frustrated by their coziness with liberal positions on some issues, but they remain more attached to the GOP’s platform and values than to today’s radical Democratic Party. Bottom line, they aren’t going anywhere,” Querard said.
On the other hand, the Washington Examiner posted on March 4 that national talk host Sean Hannity tweeted his followers to ask whether to start a betting pool on the question of when Graham officially becomes a Democrat.
Rob Haney, retired chairman of the Phoenix area’s Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer that Democratic Minority Leader Schumer could anticipate getting votes not only from Republicans In Name Only McCain and Graham, but, “for instance,” GOP Senators Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Susan Collins (Maine).
“I do not think any of them would risk changing parties under the current Trump wave,” Haney added on March 6. “They could do more damage to Trump by remaining Republicans but working to take down Trump, as McCain and Graham are doing now.”
A review of Trump’s February 28 speech before Congress shows at least 38 notable points, and that’s not even a comprehensive count.
Some of his talk pointed out that — like the shoemaker whose own children went barefoot — the United States had been trying to do so much, its own citizens may have been treated poorly.
Two successive paragraphs near the beginning said:
“I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future. For too long, we’ve watched our middle class shrink as we’ve exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries. We’ve financed and built one global project after another, but ignored the fates of our children in the inner cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and so many other places throughout our land.
“We’ve defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate,” the president continued. “And we’ve spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas, while our infrastructure at home has so badly crumbled.”
Trump later added: “To any in Congress who do not believe we should enforce our laws, I would ask you this one question: What would you say to the American family that loses their jobs, their income, or their loved one because America refused to uphold its laws and defend its borders?”
When Trump says he’s working for America first, that’s not because he disdains other nations, but because this nation is his first responsibility, as other nations are their own officials’ first responsibility.
What would we think of a leader of Italy or France who said, in order not to be considered a xenophobe, that his first responsibility is caring for the people of the United States? His own citizens justifiably would be astounded.
Yet elitists in the U.S. seem to think that if Trump doesn’t make native Latin Americans at least his equal personal responsibility, he’s morally impaired, to say the least. However, the U.S. can help many others in need without adopting them into this household. God is the Father of all, while allowing distinction between the nations of His families.
The president’s talk, while presumably carefully prepared, had its stylistic quirks, such as saying that during the presidential campaign, his supporters’ “quiet voices became a loud chorus,” then “the chorus became an earthquake.” A choir that causes temblors? Or maybe it’s okay to phrase it that way, because the president had just noted that in 2016, “the Earth shifted beneath our feet.”
Trump soon added, “Our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and, ultimately, stop. And our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety, and opportunity.”
However, Arizonan James Asher, DO, vice president of the Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix, told The Wanderer there are various social ills related to this drug epidemic.
“Everything that follows, regarding the stopping of drug cartels, gangs, etc., begs the question of how to deal with the epidemic levels of drug addiction in our society, and given that 10 percent of our population is addicted to drugs or alcohol,” Asher said, adding:
“Illicit drug use was up 8.3 percent from 2002 in 2013 with 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older — 9.4 percent of the population — having used an illicit drug in the past month.
“The cartels, smuggling, crime, gangs, etc., don’t exist in some kind of vacuum. The problem is within our borders. Without some kind of spiritual renewal, it’s hard to imagine how this is going to change, with all the money to be made supplying the growing demand,” Asher said.
Asher said he wished Trump had said:
“We need to reverse the downward path of atheism and evil, and restore the spiritual base of America. Start going back to church, start praying, start giving thanks to a generous God, and start looking to your communities for opportunities to volunteer and help out. These will make America great sooner and more efficiently than anything else. Without them, America will continue to deteriorate in spite of all our other efforts.”
Also, the doctor said he wished Trump had said, “All life is sacred, and a nation is best judged by the way it treats its most disadvantaged and helpless. Including those in the womb, the infirm, disabled, and aged.”
On the issue of immigration to the U.S., one might argue that the current system, dominated by lawless immigration, regards this nation as a huge welfare agency stressfully tasked to cure other nations’ refusal to assume their own rightful obligations.
Poor people in other lands need basic opportunities more than highly skilled emigrating technical workers do. However, those fundamental improvements in their lives would be better supplied in their own cultural and language settings than throwing them into distant, strange surroundings where their unauthorized presence means they’re lawbreakers from day one.
Trump’s speech outlined how he hopes to improve legal immigration to the U.S. by using a merit-based system.
“The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers,” Trump said. “Nations around the world, like Canada, Australia, and many others, have a merit-based immigration system. It’s a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially.
“Yet, in America, we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens rely upon,” he continued. “According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs American taxpayers many billions of dollars a year.
“Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, we will have so many more benefits. It will save countless dollars, raise workers’ wages, and help struggling families — including immigrant families — enter the middle class,” the president said.
Asher, the Phoenix doctor, commented to The Wanderer: “Where such people are hopelessly unable to get ahead in their own corruption-ridden countries, this makes sense, but selecting such people from such countries is probably a lot more complex to sort out.
“Would it be too much to hope that we would begin seriously working to help make other countries so attractive that very few of their people — especially their best and brightest — felt a need to emigrate to America? Doing so would surely enhance such countries’ prosperity and ability to trade with us,” Asher said.
Vision And Mission
Among other big-ticket items, Trump spoke of restoring jobs to American workers, coping with the staggering financial problems that Barack Obama thrust on the U.S., including Obama’s collapsing government medical monstrosity, and also destroying ISIS terrorism and improving the educational system.
Drawing near the end of the talk, Trump said that when his goals are met, “we will have made America greater than ever before — for all Americans. This is our vision. This is our mission. But we can only get there together. We are one people, with one destiny. We all bleed the same blood. We all salute the same great American flag. And we all are made by the same God.”
It says much that Obama’s eight years of divisiveness, deception, arrogance, moral decadence, and overreach were met with adoration by supine media that today writhe with hatred of Trump, while college campuses are trampled by left-wing rioters who worry these media not at all.
If it’s not the end of civilization, it’ll have to do until worse comes along. Or Trump can reverse it.
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