By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Developer Donald Trump sold himself as a can-do business executive to enough voters in 2016 that he won some new land to build dreams on, the White House acreage as home to the development of his presidential agenda.
There was a fast, promising start when Trump took over. He stopped tax money for international organizations providing or promoting abortion, successfully filled a Supreme Court vacancy with a judge with a conservative record, Neil Gorsuch, assembled a cabinet said to be even more conservative than Ronald Reagan’s, and began regulatory reforms.
If this was the start, the sky seemed to be the limit. Well, slow down and think again.
Every administration produces some zigzags instead of purely straight lines in its blueprints and installs some revolving doors for staff turnovers.
Moreover, measuring progress is harder when dominant media foes continually jiggle the drawing board and say the best plan is to put everything of Trump’s under the wrecking ball.
Maybe Trump never could be persuaded to stop his daily tweets that may put him out on a limb, with hostile media ready to saw it off. Left-wing judges intervened with their own interferences. And, as major legislative initiatives like health-care reform gasped for life, Trump left some fans concerned about coherent strategy and comprehension.
In one recent example, the president strongly endorsed Luther Strange, an Alabama Republican running to retain his seat in the U.S. Senate that he was appointed to fill when Sen. Jeff Sessions became attorney general.
However, Strange was rejected by many conservatives but backed with millions of campaign dollars in the August 15 GOP primary by stand-patter Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with whom Trump was feuding over Senate GOP failures. Huh? A questionable political choice like Strange was the guy to get McConnell and Trump shaking hands on the same page?
Strange came in second in the primary and moves on to face former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, a conservative, in a September 26 GOP runoff.
Although Sessions had been one of conservatives’ favorite cabinet selections by Trump, not so long ago the president openly was attacking him as a disappointment.
Then Trump quickly swerved to tweet his pleasure that former Arizona State Sen. Kelli Ward, a proclaimed pro-life conservative, already had launched a campaign challenging Never Trumper U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, an open-borders GOP globalist, in next year’s Grand Canyon State GOP primary.
Trump didn’t so much seem to be building a house on sand, a futility warned against in the Bible, but a house with a little of everything, hoping it stayed together with a little mortar there, a little honey adhering here, and glue injected in the gaps.
Shortly before the president was scheduled to make a rally appearance in downtown Phoenix on August 22, The Wanderer asked a couple of political activists for their evaluations. One of them agreed to speak anonymously because, he said, he didn’t think his friends would be happy with what he thought.
Normally embarrassment isn’t a sufficient reason to conceal a speaker’s identity, but these frank words from a conservative are instructive about White House disorganization in August.
“Trump isn’t the victim, he’s in charge” in his administration, this activist said. “He has picked everyone. Their successes are his and their failures are his. He sold himself to us as the world’s best business guy, manager, deal-maker, etc. If he can’t build a team of 12 solid folks who are willing to work together in the White House, to run the greatest country in the world, that’s on him.
“Every president in your lifetime built a team that, while it had its infighting, stayed largely on the same page and, at the minimum, largely reflected the man in charge,” he said. “This group actually reflects the man in charge. They aren’t left or right, they are a mishmash of ideologies that are in conflict because they contradict each other.
“At some point in time, (journalistic) coverage of him from the right is going to have to start facing some of these difficult truths. The challenge is that his base is so loyal that most are worried about the backlash if/when they do. It’s a tough spot to be in,” this activist said.
A different conservative activist, Rob Haney, retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer it was too soon to know whether the mid-August departure of Trump’s chief strategist, conservative Steve Bannon, would see liberals gaining more control within the White House.
“But whatever the Trump White House may do to mollify the RINOs in Congress, I do not believe it will result with the passage of any major Trump legislative items,” Haney said. “There are just too many hard-core ‘Never Trump’ RINOs who will take turns aligning with Democrats to defeat the legislation.
“The RINOs are not so much afraid of losing House and Senate seats to the Democrats in the mid-terms as they are of having Trump succeed. Therefore, they are willing to take the backlash from the Republican base, just so it results in a Trump and conservative defeat,” he said.
“If the result is Democrat control of the House and Senate, so be it. The establishment forces still win, and the loss would signal that the conservatives cannot get their agenda through even with a strong conservative president. The RINOs and Democrats would have driven a stake through the heart of our constitutional government,” Haney said.
Not A Surprise
The activist who didn’t want to be identified told The Wanderer that strategist Bannon departed because new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly “was hired to bring order to the White House, and this was something he felt was necessary. To his credit, the president is backing up Kelly’s decisions so far.”
Regarding the Alabama Senate race, “Trump’s endorsement of Strange isn’t a surprise,” the activist added. “Strange has voted for his bills and McConnell has made it clear that he needs Strange on the team to keep things moving. Trump endorsed Strange because McConnell and the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) asked him to.”
As for the president tweeting against Republican Flake, USA Today posted that this “left (Kelli) Ward, the former state senator from Lake Havasu City (Ariz.), jubilant. And it left Flake’s fellow Republicans scrambling to defend him from the president of their own party.
“ ‘Jeff Flake is an excellent senator and a tireless advocate for Arizona and our nation,’ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said…in a brief written statement. ‘He has my full support’,” USA Today reported.
And the Los Angeles Times posted on August 17: “Strikingly, the president offered a semi-endorsement of Kelli Ward, a former Arizona state senator who plans to challenge Flake in a primary next year — a stand that would put him at odds not only with Flake, but with the state’s senior senator, John McCain, whom Trump jabbed, not for the first time, earlier this week.”
A veteran reality-TV entertainer as well as entrepreneur, Trump honed his skills with an audience long before becoming president. He seems to have lost none of his touch in keeping the crowd in suspense.
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