There have been two GOP debates. We now know all the players. They have had their chance to move the dial. The GOP nomination race is over.
Ron DeSantis is a great governor, and he needs to stay in Florida four more years to solidify what he has changed and innovated. As we have seen in Washington, four years without more is building on sand. Eight years allows time to consolidate. We need DeSantis in Florida to show other cowardly conservative Republican governors that there is no need to fear shipping illegal immigrants to New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Martha’s Vineyard, and, frankly, Martha’s bedroom and bathroom. It works. Those destinations proudly advertise themselves as Sanctuaries, so go ahead and sanctuarize them all.
Likewise, he has demonstrated that it is imperative to focus on textbooks being published to educate school children. If proposed history books sell lies about America in the manner of the “1619” mythology, go ahead and embargo them from schools. Obviously, interdicting books is unpleasant, so let adults buy those children’s books and read them, books that demonize America and promote LMNOPQ ideology. Let Amazon sell them to adults. Just deem them akin to pornography from which we protect school children. There is no moral imperative to compel children to learn lies.
DeSantis demonstrates what California already knows: When you force schoolbook publishers to promote your ideology or face a statewide ban, they follow the money. In California, they ban books that are “1776” pro-America and prefer lies in a hateful and antisemitic curriculum that shoves “critical ethnic studies” down kids’ throats. Until DeSantis, only blue states have banned books based on ideology, forcing publishers to lie to children. DeSantis is a stellar example to every other red-state governor: If text materials lie about America and promote LMNOPQ garbage, schools will not be permitted to buy them throughout the entire state. Them’s a lot of books. But, no, they won’t be “banned.” Sell them to people in nursing homes.
DeSantis took on Disney. That is amazing. That would scare most red-state governors: How can you take on a media behemoth, a TV and movie behemoth, an entertainment and theme park behemoth that is an economic superpower in your state? Yet he did it. That is the most gutsy thing any governor ever has done in my lifetime. Imagine: the governor of Florida taking on Disney! They are not innocent anymore. DeSantis exposed them.
DeSantis is needed in Florida. Trump will be the GOP nominee. DeSantis is second or third after Trump, and that is respectable for 2028. He is at 13 percent to Trump’s 57 percent nationally, 16 percent to Trump’s 49 percent in Iowa, and 10 percent to Trump’s 44 percent in New Hampshire. He certainly is doing better in the polls than any reporter for the Washington Post or anchor at MSNBC.
Nikki Haley is doing adequately in her run for vice president, polling next at 6 percent nationally. Credit her with a vigorous campaign. How vigorous? I receive an email every single day from the Haley people. Every day I thereupon click to unsubscribe. Every next day I get yet another Haley email. I unsubscribed again. No matter how often I unsubscribe, she keeps sending me another email. Halley’s Comet appears only once every 75–79 years. I wish the same were true of Haley’s Emails.
I like her for secretary of state if we cannot get another round of Mike Pompeo, my first choice. Otherwise, for secretary of something else: labor, transportation, something to keep her busy and around. I do like her for vice president as a Woman of Color, to help get votes, but she is not strong enough to bury the Deep State and stop illegal immigration and finish building the wall and restore America’s energy leadership. So she would make a fine veep as long as Trump can remain alive and well. He is impeachment immunized. He’s been impeached more than most of his voters have been vaccinated. He has impeachment antibodies. He’s not going anywhere as long as he watches the cholesterol.
The rest of the field barely matters. Christie has burned bridges that were not even constructed. The guy from Dakota is not going anywhere. That Indian kid with the slick hair is just slick talk, slick hair, TikTok-wise, and probably will end up in Trump’s Cabinet anyway because he praises Trump sycophantically. Pence is not a serious candidate; he just wants a chance to tell his story and sell books.
So let’s get real: The only reason newspapers and TV always talk about the other GOP candidates is to keep you occupied and watching and clicking until Trump’s nomination is official. It’s like the way other idiots always talk about a “two-state solution” in the Middle East. That’s never gonna happen. It just keeps people busy.
That brings us to Trump the Candidate.
I wish there were a way to break through to the GOP “Never Trumpers.” They belly-ache about Biden, his doddering, his inflation, his $6-a-gallon gasoline, his unaffordable food prices that are killing families, his moronic decision to make war on fossil fuels when that is what the entire world relies on, his weakness on crime, his Afghanistan fiasco, his horrible judge picks. Seriously: Neil M. Gorsuch or Whatsername (the one who cannot define what a woman is)? Brett M. Kavanaugh or Whatsername? Amy Coney Barrett or Whatsername?
Seriously.
I wish the “Never Trumpers” would grasp that, despite their wishes, Trump will be the only alternative to four more years of Biden/Kamala — i.e., the last four years of America — regardless of their feelings. The race is set. That’s who it’s gonna be. It’s not gonna be DeSantis or Haley or the India guy with the slick hair or the guy with the Martin Scorsese eyebrows. It’s not gonna be some wistful Miracle Savior like the excellent governor of Virginia, who also needs to focus on Virginia. There will be no miracle surprises unless George Santos decides to run for president. So it’s gonna be Trump.
I truly wish, deeply and no less than the “Never Trumpers,” that, after all these years he has had to derive lessons from his first term, he would have drawn more wisdom from what went best and what needs tweaking. I wish he would be more circumspect, more of a mentsch, less of a bullvahn. We needed a bullvahn initially to break and smash Obama’s idols. But that was then. Now we just need a mentsch. Picture in your mind John Fetterman with his disgusting and undignified hoodie and shorts and sneakers without socks. We need the exact opposite, someone we can present to our parents.
Oh, how I wish Trump could rise to that occasion! But I now accept that he cannot. He has two sons, two daughters, and a wife. They all know what I am talking about, and I am sure they all pester him behind closed doors. It does no good, and that is his curse. But still he has proven himself great in so many ways, and Biden by now has proven himself a nefarious sleaze, a crook, someone at the center of a family crime syndicate that challenges the Corleones and Sopranos.
There is no other choice for the non-woke but to vote for Trump. No one else will be the GOP nominee. Biden will be the Democrat nominee if he still is conscious, and he will not dare unload Kamala. For many “Never Trumpers,” sadly the election will be like what Utah used to offer convicted death-row murderers: death by firing squad or death by listening to Mitt Romney. But that is what it is.
A vote for Biden means even higher food costs, gasoline at $8 a gallon, Kamala, continued chaos throughout the world, Iran threatening America — not Israel — with nuclear weapons, endless billions more to keep Ukraine–Putin war alive for four more seasons (unless shortened by a writer’s strike in Hollywood), Pete the South Bender overseeing more train derailments and plane-delay chaos, the corrupt justice system plowing ahead with spies sitting in churches and synagogues, another 50 Trump indictments, and endless chaos including Puerto Rico as a 51st state and 15 Supreme Court justices, with another six Women of Color as unqualified as Whatsername (the one who cannot define what a woman is).
We have to back Trump, and we have to do it robustly. It does not matter how many times he gets indicted by the corrupt system, the depth of whose evil our country never before has seen. Jan. 6 one-sided hearings do not matter. It does not matter how many documents he foolishly — stupidly — brought to Mar-a-Lago when he should have deposited them in Biden’s garage near that car. It does not matter how much hush money he paid that pole dancer who was represented by that guy serving a forever prison term for squeezing Nike. It does not matter how many people he pressed regarding election tallies in Georgia or D.C. Whether he was correct or dead wrong, Trump honestly believes to this day that he was cheated in those elections, and that is enough legally to justify his efforts to press for the Georgia and D.C. vote counts as he did.
The bottom line: He will be the GOP nominee, come heck or high water, and Biden–Kamala will be the alternative. In an increasingly non-binary America, that is the binary: Trump or Biden–Kamala. Today, Oct. 4, 2023, you are on notice of what clearly will be on the ballot one year from now. It is time to get real and go full-blast for Trump.
via spectator