(If I was starting to doubt Trump, RFK Jr. snapped me out of it. Read why in my new column at RealClearPolitics.)
By FRANK MIELE
OK, first of all, the headline is for rhetorical purposes only. Other than the Trump column, there is no place for a conservative to go.
Options? The Mitch McConnell column? The Marc Racicot/George W. Bush column? The John Thune column? Heaven forbid. Those are all sellouts who would let the Democrats drive their Communist Manifesto bus right through the gates of power in the name of comity and compromise.
Enough people knew that, or suspected it, in 2016 for Donald Trump the real-estate/reality-TV mogul to turn Jeb Bush and moderate Republicanism into warmed-over hash. And after “the mistake” in 2020, Americans were begging Trump to take control of the ship of state again and undo the socialist excesses of Joe Biden’s handlers who gave us open borders, the green new blackmail (er, green new deal), and the absurdity of women hiding in men’s bodies (with or without sacrificing their men’s parts).
So when Trump was restored to the White House last year, I had high hopes for the return of the kind of prudent governance that we had seen in Trump’s first term – a measured pushback against the lunacy of Democratic policies and the retrenchment of government power over every aspect of our lives.
But I wasn’t counting on Trump’s perfectly logical response to watching the Democrats attempt to reverse his reforms while at the same time trying to send him to jail for the rest of his life. Add to that the looming mortality that Trump 47 probably felt pressing upon him as a result of two assassination attempts, and what we have gotten for the past 18 months is nothing like Trump 45. It is Trump unbound.
Trump unbound is exhilarating when he is tearing through the accumulated excesses of the administrative state. It is considerably less exhilarating when he decides that constitutional limits, congressional prerogatives, and fiscal restraint are impediments rather than principles.
On top of that, throw in a war with Iran that nobody wanted (even though it may pay dividends in the long run), oil priced upwards of $4.50 a gallon, and his attempt to rebrand America in his own image when no one was unhappy with the old brand, and you get discontent not just among Trump-haters, but also among true conservatives.
And Trump gets an approval rating that is cratering at around 40%.
So when they announced that the GOP was having a rare “midterm convention,” I decided to pass on watching the extravaganza. What I was concerned about (Trump turning the show into a self-love fest) indeed came to pass, and I was left trying to figure out how Republicans were going to prevail in their campaign to paint Democrats as socialists while President Trump was touting his plan to give every adult U.S. citizen a check for $5,000 just when the national debt was passing $40 trillion.
Worst of all, I read about Trump narcissistically asking the crowd to pledge to “the greatest president in the history of the United States” that they would “cheat like hell” when they go to vote on Nov. 3. Heck, even if he were the greatest president in history, it’s just bad manners to say so. And how do you get off joking about cheating when you have campaigned for the last six years on the idea of election integrity?
Honestly, it did make me wonder – not for the first time – whether Trump really wanted Republicans to win the next election. I read a slew of news articles and columns making Trump look like a doddering fool, and I was about to kiss the election goodbye, but then someone sent me a link to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s convention speech and called it the best speech of the 21st century. That may itself be oversell, but it was certainly the best speech of the convention, and after I watched it, there was no doubt that I was not just a Bobby Kennedy supporter but also a “back-to-business, let’s-go-get-em” Trump supporter.
I was (what’s the word? oh yeah) inspired. Just what a political speech should aim to accomplish.
First of all, he reminded me that there is no viable alternative to Trump. He described in brutal detail how far the Democratic Party has strayed from the principles that made me a Democrat for the first 45 years of my life. John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy Sr. favored tax cuts, strong defense, free speech, and free markets, and opposed communism and centralized government. Then came Bobby’s devastating summation: Those values “had found a new home, and it was called the Republican Party.”
What was even worse, Bobby said, was what the left stands for today: communism vs. common sense. He reminded me that the Democratic Party used COVID as an excuse to “systematically obliterate” the Bill of Rights – literally trying to undermine it in an effort to impose government control over the sacred individual rights of speech, assembly, and religion.
They abandoned the working people who had once been the backbone of the Democratic Party and reversed the party’s traditional opposition to illegal immigration.
Even worse, they turned women’s sports into an endangered species by encouraging men to use their physical superiority to displace female athletes from the championship podium.
But most importantly, this 72-year-old lifelong Democrat reminded me why Donald Trump was, at the very least, the most important president of my lifetime – and why I owed him my allegiance even if he was sometimes rude, brash, narcissistic, and altogether unpleasant.
Kennedy’s testimony about his personal relationship with Trump was nothing short of uplifting. He told of meeting Trump after the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt and deciding shortly thereafter to suspend his own presidential campaign and endorse Trump.
Why?
I realized that everything that I had heard about President Trump and everything I believed about him from the mainstream media was a lie. … I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues and in molecular detail, and most of all, a near-reckless courage to challenge vested interests and official orthodoxies.
You can’t get a better endorsement of Trump’s qualifications for president than that, but what impressed me even more was Kennedy’s willingness, after having spent two years in Trump’s inner circle, to give his full-throated testimony to the president’s character.
Some of my … Democratic friends told me that I was a fool for trusting President Trump. And so I want to make the record clear right now. President Trump has kept every single promise that he made to me without exception.
In the end, Bobby listed President Trump’s accomplishments. Not everyone will agree with them, but what touched my heart was hearing a man who had stood opposed to Trump for many years say that he was wrong and that he is grateful to God for giving the country a leader like Trump who wants to restore American democracy.
I didn’t watch the rest of the midterm convention or listen to President Trump’s own lengthy speeches, but thanks to Bobby I heard exactly what I needed to.
Flawed or not, Donald Trump is the perfect leader for our time.
About Heartland Diary USA
Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,” “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.
