Editor’s note: Big Tent Ideas always aims to provide balancing perspectives on the hottest issues of the day. Below is a column arguing that the Republican Party shouldn’t move on from former President Donald Trump, as he is the only person who can take on the “deep state.” A counterpoint can be found here, where former senior Trump adviser Christian Whiton argues that Gov. Ron DeSantis is the candidate America needs most and the Trump honeymoon is over.
Tucker Carlson, who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the America First movement, signs off his nightly Fox News show as “the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and group think.”
The “lying” and “pomposity” surely represent the tactics of a Democrat/media complex who will stop at nothing — including using the power of the state to persecute their political enemies. President Joe Biden’s reprehensible speech in Philadelphia all but confirmed it. (RELATED: WHITON: The DeSantis Effect Has Been A Boon To Florida. It’s Time To Bring It To All Of America In 2024 )
Unfortunately, the “group think” stuff is Republican owned and operated, especially as it pertains to former President Donald Trump. How else to explain a growing chorus from the GOP elite — from editorial boards at the Wall Street Journal to the New York Post — to “move beyond Trump?”
Indeed, the elephant in the establishment’s living room is almost a palpable desire to return to the good old days of “compassionate conservatism” by beltway Republicans who have grown tired of protestors on their lawn.
“And don’t think for a moment,” as I write in “Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics & the Partisan Press,” the opposition to Trump is due to his “so-called abrasive personality. The media deliberately conflated style with substance, using his idiosyncrasies to go after a man whose policies they didn’t like.” And so it is with those saying it’s time to “get past” the 45th President.
They omit just one thing — who else is going to take on government gangsters willing to lock up their fellow citizens? Mitt Romney?
To be sure, Gov. Ron DeSantis is a tantalizing alternative. He has shown the guts necessary to ward off a destructive “woke” agenda. But Florida desperately needs him and he has forever and a day to run for President. Moreover, he, like all the others, hasn’t been vetted on the entire gamut of America First principles.
America is a free trade zone, but how does he feel about multilateral trade or better yet, the war in Ukraine? The latter being a veritable Republican rallying cry for the dwindling Bush-Cheney-McCain wing of the party.
I’m not saying any of the alternatives wouldn’t come down on the right side against globalism or endless war. What I am saying is Trump still has the loyalty of the Republican base because he already has. As it stands, the former President is the only candidate who’s been thoroughly vetted. And he really hasn’t wavered.
Yet the most important reason Trump must prevail is far more straightforward. No president in American history has been subjected to more vile, underhanded and outright illegal attacks. For that reason alone, President Trump cannot be unconstitutionally driven from public life. For if he is, it won’t matter who succeeds him.
Our nation is on the brink because dangerous forces within our own government have attempted — and still are — to thwart the will of the people. The raid on Mar-A-Lago wasn’t just document dispute overkill shredding attorney-client privilege, it was a frontal assault on the sanctity of private property.
The illegal FISA wiretaps weren’t just a failure of due process in a secret court, they were a coup d’e’tat employing the bureaucratic bowels of one-party apparatchiks to spy on another.
A national security media apparatus, including some 50 former intelligence officials, that aided and abetted covering-up the Hunter Biden laptop story by falsely calling it “Russian disinformation” on the eve of an election is not just the usual dirty trick from Washington insiders, it is an affront to decency and the rule of law.
House Republicans are said to be preparing probes into the machinations of the Homeland Security chief, Chinese biowarfare and the Biden family “pay to play” business should they retake the House. Good. But any genuine oversight must include the origins of the “Russian collusion” hoax and a patently corrupt DOJ. And if Lady Justice is still wearing blindfolds, indictments will surely follow.
Trump remains the leading GOP candidate in ‘24 because the base is desperate to rid the country of the constitutional crisis a runaway “deep-state” has imposed on us.
Republican voters have little doubt his final term would have it appropriately in the crosshairs. If anyone else wants to run on that, they should say so.
Unless, of course, they’d rather ‘move on.’
Former Congressman Jason Lewis was Minnesota’s Republican nominee for the US Senate in 2020 and is the author of Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics & the Partisan Press.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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