This Disappointing Election Was Decades In The Making

As the presidential election comes to a close, a full 85% of Americans would prefer a candidate other than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It is not difficult to understand why. Secretary Clinton has proven to be corrupt and Donald Trump has proven to be foul and boorish.  We have ourselves to blame as voters, but even so, it is not all our fault. Established political elites from both parties forced a process in which two unacceptable candidates became inevitable. The Democratic primary was literally rigged, as we now know from Wikileaks. The Republican voters, after suffering years of rigged primaries of their own finally rebelled. The result was Donald Trump.

The Republican Party Will Be Unrecognizable

If you are an ordinary voter, that is, not some talking head or Neocon opinion writer, you are probably somewhat unhappy with Donald Trump as the message bearer. That is not to say that you would have changed your vote in the primary, but you wish his populist, antiestablishment message had been promoted by some other outsider who is more polished. But Trump was selected for a reason. He represents a complete rebuke of the Republican Establishment Elite and their hangers on in the conservative media. Donald Trump was selected because Donald Trump is a caricature. He's a realty TV star who appears on the Howard Stern show and says lewd things. He is the antithesis of the polished, plastic political Ken dolls the Republican elite have been shoving down voters' throats for decades. If you were to pick the perfect messenger to deliver a stunning rebuke to your establishment, Trump is it.

In the wake of their humiliating defeat, the Republican Establishment Elite wasted no time exposing themselves to their base. Paul Ryan, the sitting Speaker of the House, before any salacious sex stories were uncovered, refused to endorse Trump. Instead he summoned the newly selected nominee to Capitol Hill to lecture him on Republican Establishment values. Trump was having none of it and, rightfully, withheld his own endorsement of Ryan and his agenda. 

The Bushes refused to endorse Trump. After decades of being defended by the Republican base for some very foolish decisions, the Bushes have now turned on their own voters.

Members of former Republican administrations have publicly announced that Donald Trump is too dangerous to be President. And, of course, conservative media icons like Bill Kristol, George Will, Rich Lowery, Karl Rove, and others have taken every opportunity to bash Trump, call him names and predict his demise in an effort to ingratiate themselves to the elites in Washington. 

Their actions are hypocritical. Karl Rove, for example, excoriates Trump for pandering to his base of white male voters. Well, it was Karl Rove who implemented that same strategy in Ohio in 2004 to get Bush reelected. Mr. Rove, sensing he could increase Republican turn out, put gay marriage on the ballot in that state. Yes, that's right, Mr. Rove used what has now been judged to be anti-Gay bigotry to drive President Bush to reelection. This is, of course, nothing new to the Bushes. George Sr. was propelled to victory over Michael Dukakis with a racially offensive ad featuring Willie Horton; an ad that has been used against Republicans for decades now to label them racist. Trump's rhetoric may be over the top, but he has yet to actually stoop to the extremely low levels that Rove and the Bushes did in their elections. They should keep their mouths shut.

Conservative media elites are no better. This is the same crew that has always endorsed mild mannered men who later go on to lose. They despise the Republican base, the Tea Party, and any voter who disagrees with their Neocon agenda. And what is that agenda? It has been an agenda of perpetual war, globalism, symbolic regulatory and tax reform, and the consolidation of power around squishy moderates. 

The Republican Establishment Elites have utterly failed the party. Consider this, in the last 26 years, the Establishment has controlled the process. They have won exactly three Presidential elections. Establishment picks in the last 26 years:

George H.W. Bush - Lost reelection to Bill Clinton.

Bob Dole - Lost.

George W. Bush - Won twice, but lost the popular vote once.

John McCain - Lost.

Mitt Romney - Lost.

For almost three decades, the Republican Establishment has controlled a process that has produced defeat. If you were to remove from consideration the Republican Revolution of 1994, led by Newt Gingrich, and the two Tea Party victories, the same pathetic record would exist for Congressional races as well. To be direct, the Republican Establishment stinks at politics. 

Donald Trump has battled his own party, the news media, and the Democrats. The friendly fire he's received from elites in his own party will not be forgotten by the voters and, since the voters favor Trump over Paul Ryan by a 70 - 30% margin, it is pretty obvious who the real losers will be in the inevitable Republican civil war. 

Without the base of the party, there is no party. The base has utterly and completely rejected establishment politics and is now even more incensed after watching these elites show their true colors. It would be enough if they simply did nothing to help Trump and kept their mouths shut. It is something entirely different when the party elite actively work to undermine their own nominee's campaign. It is tantamount to rejecting the will of the voters. Well, the great unwashed masses have already washed their hands of Republicanism and that has been reflected in every poll since Mitt Romney won the nomination in 2012.

The party will splinter into nothing. In the near future, Bill Kristol will be writing fluff pieces about how brave Paul Ryan is putting the Republican coalition back together ... as the minority leader. George Will can rejoin the ever shrinking minority party in good conscience, knowing that he stood up to the disgusting Republican base and helped take them out. As Laura Ingraham so poignantly said, they can all go back to their think tanks in Washington and dream up a bunch of "conservative" policies that no Republican will ever be in power to implement.

Good for them.

The Trump Accusers

Surprise, Donald Trump, a reality TV star and beauty pageant sponsor, is more boorish than your average man. I say "more boorish" because almost all men are capable of saying and doing some boorish things. As any married woman, especially any married woman with teenage boys can tell you, boys are gross and sometimes think, say, and do icky things. This understanding of the male species is nearly universal, unless you are a journalist, a Democrat, a Republican Ken doll, or a Hollywood actor. Because, of course, those people never say or do anything boorish...

It is a good thing, for example, that no President ever raped his black slaves. It is a good thing that no President had an affair with his wife's secretary while brave men were dying on the beaches of Normandy. We are lucky that no President had multiple affairs in the White House with staffers during the Cuban Missile Crisis, including at least one who was underage. And thank God that, while we were bombing Iraq and dealing with the transition of power in Russia, the President wasn't fiddling around with cigars and an intern in the oval office. If those things had been true, this nation would be in shambles...Right?

It is not okay to grope women. It is not okay to talk about groping women. It is really stupid to talk about groping women if you don't actually grope women, and it is supremely stupid to talk about anything off color at all with an Access Hollywood reporter. However, Donald Trump was not running for President at the time and had no plans to. He did not talk about it in the oval office, and the accusers that have come forward have some problems with their stories.

I would remind all of my liberal friends, particularly those who do any defense work, that these types of allegations are disproven all the time. Most people jump to the conclusion that a man is guilty of sexual assault or harassment before any investigation has taken place. There is a good reason for this. Most of us would never, ever lie about such a thing, so we cannot fathom a woman lying about such a thing either. However, it is an unfortunate truth that women sometimes lie, and they sometimes lie about sexual assault or sexual harassment. 

Of the four women who have come forward, one sent emails to the Trump campaign asking him to visit her new restaurant. When he said no, the allegations began to pour out. Of course, it begs the question. If Trump was so horrible to her, why was she inviting him to come promote her restaurant during the campaign?

Another accuser claims Trump fondled her on an airplane. Unfortunately for this accuser, there was an eyewitness, a British man, who was so incensed by the story, and the implication that he had done nothing to stop it, that he came forward to refute her version of events. According to this eyewitness, Trump "did nothing of the sort," and in fact, "she was doing the flirting."

The third accuser wrote an article about Trump's new marriage to Melania. According to her, Trump took her into another room and tried to kiss her. Of course, this obvious attempt at infidelity did not make it into the People Magazine story about Trump's marriage. Although this accuser made contemporaneous statements which would tend to corroborate her story that something happened, it seems unusual to ignore an obviously tantalizing opportunity to destroy the Donald and make news.

The final accuser claims that Mr. Trump was alone in a nightclub and groped her. First, as Mr. Trump has pointed out, he is never alone in a nightclub. If he had been alone, he would have been recognized anyway. Moreover, it is well known that Donald Trump does not drink alcohol. The Donald, alone in a nightclub, just looking for an opportunity to grope someone seems unlikely. 

All of that being said, if Donald Trump is guilty of this misconduct, he should be sued or charged, lose and then be impeached. I am quite certain that there would be no shortage of Republican Establishment elites who would jump at the chance to remove Trump from office and replace him with Mike Pence. Between the elites and the Democrats, they could probably do it by unanimous consent...

Twenty days before an election is simply not long enough to adjudicate allegations of sexual misconduct, but Trump, like all accused, is entitled to at least some presumption of innocence.

The Trump Message

Drowned out by the scandalous news media coverage is Trump's message. Trump has certainly done his part to drown out his own message, but the media bias in this election surpasses anything anyone has ever seen before. Donald Trump can spend 45 minutes talking about policy and make one misstatement about Mexicans and the news media only reports the misstatement. 

The Trump message, however, is popular and easy to understand. He wants to secure our borders, end bad trade deals, revitalize manufacturing, rebuild our military, renegotiate NATO contributions to the common defense, appoint conservative judges, protect the Second Amendment, ban partial birth abortion, cut taxes, cut regulation, and end the revolving door between public service and lobbying.

Donald Trump wants to end Establishment nest feathering, crony capitalism, and dirty backroom deals. His agenda is exactly what this country needs and at exactly the time we need it. Our country has suffered from anemic growth for more than a decade now, and regular folks have begun to lose hope in our country. When you cannot find a good job, when you cannot support your family on one income, when you cannot find something you are proud to do, then you become despondent.

The Forgotten Man remains, at best, forgotten. At worst, he is ridiculed for clinging to his guns and religion, or labeled irredeemable and deplorable. He is labeled a redneck, uneducated, and a racist bigot who hates women. But the Forgotten Men are the men that fight our wars, grow our food, build our cars, mine our coal, drill our oil, and preserve our traditional pioneer values. These are the men that are voting for Trump.

Establishment elites and other snobs continue to ridicule these men as troglodytes, and men of low character. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of men and the vast majority of white men will be voting for Trump in this election. You can label Trump whatever you want, but be very careful how you label his supporters. Without them, there are no factories, farms, or soldiers. Without them, the elites and their sycophants would be on their own, without any arugula to eat, Navy Seals to protect them, or Cadillacs to drive. They most certainly will not survive the coming confrontations with other serious men, like Vladimir Putin.

The Danger Of Clinton Corruption

If Hillary Clinton were competent and not corrupt, I would vote for her over Trump. Unfortunately, she has proven to be both incompetent and corrupt. Bernie Sanders would have been a much better candidate and would be a much better President. 

But Clinton corruption prevailed in the primary. Wikileaks has been able to prove that Clinton was able to leverage the DNC, the news media and some very dirty tactics to rig the system against Bernie Sanders. Some of the revelations are sickening. She was going to attack him as a Jew. She was going to attack him as a communist. She was going to question his mental health. She actually went so far as to try to convince election officials in Illinois to move the date of the Illinois primary to stop Sanders' momentum. She colluded with DNC officials to marginalize Sanders, and the DNC was more than happy to oblige. 

In the general election, leaked emails show that Clinton has a near despotic relationship with the media. Just as Putin controls much of the Russian media, we now know for sure, thanks to WikiLeaks, that the American news media actively colludes with the Democrats. Clinton has reviewed news articles before they are released to the public. She was given the questions by CNN analyst Donna Brazille before the second debate. News organizations ignore her obvious misconduct and have helped develop and disseminate the Clinton narrative. 

Recent revelations from WikiLeaks should make every American fear for our democracy. What they show is a pattern of bias and corruption that is usually only seen in places like the Soviet Union. We know from credible but anonymous FBI sources that the career agents and prosecutors in the Bureau  were adamant about indicting Clinton for her misconduct while Secretary of State. We know that top officials at the State Department offered political goodies to FBI investigators who would help to bury classified emails that were found on her personal server. We know that she knowingly lied about the intelligence coming after the attack in Benghazi. We also know from WikiLeaks that she initiated a major cover up to protect herself and President Obama from any scrutiny. 

Hillary Clinton thinks she is above the law because she is above the law. For that reason alone, she is more of a danger to our democracy than Trump could ever be. She openly ignores the law, she applies questionably legal tactics to get what she wants, she conspires to destroy anyone that gets in  her way, she routinely lies to the American people and Congress, and she refuses to face any media scrutiny or take serious questions about her misconduct. If Hillary Clinton is elected, our nation will continue further down this path of crony capitalism, pay to play, nest feathering, lies and basic incompetence. 

If there is anyone who is still uncertain as to the level of self importance harbored by Democrat elites, consider this: 

Russia invades Crimea, nothing. Syria uses chemical weapons, nothing. Russia invades Ukraine, nothing. Russia supports Assad and kills U.S. allies on the ground in Syria, nothing. 

But...

Russia hacks into the DNC and publishes embarrassing emails, Obama threatens an all out cyberwar with Russia. I guess we know where their priorities lie...

These Democrat elites, and Clinton in particular, represent a fundamental threat to our democratic institutions. Where the rule of law means nothing, where collusion and bribery are commonplace, where the American people are constantly manipulated and balkanized, and where significant American strategic goals are traded for personal gain, there is no democracy. America becomes just another banana republic racing towards its place on the great trash heap of history. 

Hillary Clinton cannot become President.

The Home Stretch

Like most people, I've never been so disappointed in our political system. It is rigged, the voters are ignored, and the common man or woman cannot get a fair shake. We have obviously lost our way as a nation. There is nothing about this election that will fix that, but it may be enough to at least beat the bushes and force the snakes to show themselves. If Trump is elected, the established elites of the Republican Party will be humiliated and marginalized, probably for a long time. The party can then begin to rebuild from the ashes of this horrible election. If Trump loses, there will no longer be a Republican Party as it is currently known. What comes out of that ash heap is anyone's guess.

If Clinton is elected, it is likely that Paul Ryan and company will be in a small minority in Congress. Clinton will appoint liberal judges who will support her plans to take away your guns and your right to carry a weapon. Partial birth abortion will be carved into the law for decades. Globalism will continue to erode U.S. manufacturing, and regulatory burdens will continue to force American businesses, and their jobs, overseas. American energy production will be attacked, and your taxes will go up. 

This is as terrible a choice as an electorate could face in the modern era. But, in my mind, the orgy of corruption from the Establishments of both parties must be put to an end. That means, as abhorrent as he may be, Trump is the right choice for America at this moment in history.