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The Trump Thing is a campaign ploy that may be, as the 2022 election year unfolds, utilized by Democrats here in Connecticut as a distraction and a unifying trumpet blast.
The ploy served the Democrat Party well during one of Connecticut’s
off-year presidential elections when Trump was not on the ballot and Democrats,
by deploying the ploy at every opportunity, managed to wrest legislative seats
from largely unoffending Republican office holders who were not in sync with
Trump’s deplorable manners or his bristly and egocentric nature.
Hardly any Republican office holders in the state bothered
to defend themselves at the time from charges, overt or implied, that they were
in league with the besieged Trump because they had failed to denounce
convincingly the titular head of their own National Republican Party.
Most instate Republicans appreciated Trump’s Supreme Court
choices, his successful efforts to stem the rising tide of illegal immigration
at the Mexican border, his successful efforts to increase business activity,
his punishing tariffs on Iran, his hastening of the production of a Coronavirus
vaccine, and his entente with several Arab states, some of which recognized
Israel for the first time since Democrat President Harry Truman had formally recognized the
state of Israel on behalf of the United States in 1948.
Will the Trump thing be deployed in the upcoming 2022 off
year presidential elections? Likely it will, if only because politicians are
much in the habit of repeating past successful campaign ploys, even when
changed times has made them less efficacious. The Trump ploy, heavily
emphasized by former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, did not serve him well
in 2021 after Trump already had left office.
The extent to which Trump – not on the ballot and no longer
President – will be used as a campaign foil in the coming elections will depend
entirely on Connecticut’s Democrat campaign machine, unchallenged in the
state’s largest cities, and a media still recovering from Trump’s traumatic
battering. Calling the tribunes of the people “the fake media” is not the surest
way of making friends and influencing people.
Even now we see in current news reports stinging references
to Trump, unplugged and no longer a danger to the Republic. And though we know the national media really
can chew gum and walk at the same time, rare criticism of the current administration
of President Joe Biden has been soft as a summer zephyr and intermittent. Is it
possible that Republicans this election year will be focusing on Biden, as
Democrats in recent off year elections focused on Trump, even though Biden will
not be on the ballot?
What Trump happens to be thinking at the moment about Biden’s inflationary spending-bender, or
the semi-permeable border between Mexico and the United States, or the
possibility that Honduran citizens soon may be permitted to vote in New York
City for non-federal candidates, or the unabated onrush of people crashing U.S.
borders with a wink and a nod from Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, or
the manifest failure of Biden’s abject surrender of Afghanistan to Taliban
forces is largely unimportant. Trump’s vituperation matters less that the quite
predictable consequences of the Biden policy failures cited above. President of
China Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, both aggressive communists
familiar with the uses of force, which throughout history always has trumped
flaccid diplomacy, have signaled they are prepared to challenge U.S. foreign
policy with possible military incursions into Taiwan and Ukraine.
Now that Trump-The-Demon has been shoved into the broom closet,
the media, rightly contrarian during the Trump presidency, appears to have lost
its appetite for political contrarian confrontation. That is why Trump denunciation
will serve as a welcome distraction for Democrats who do not wish to defend
Biden’s failed policies, even in politically sleepy Connecticut. Citizens who
place their trust in the tribunes of the people want reporters and editors to
be more, not less, contrarian with respect to the party in power. And, of
course, Democrats in Connecticut have cornered the political market for
decades.
As time marches inexorably on, it becomes increasingly less
possible for the party in power to denounce the party out of power for
political mishaps. Ruling progressive politicians in Connecticut have been
addicted to spending for decades and heedless of the crushing state debt, $57
billion, dangling over Connecticut’s future like a Damoclean sword. Neither the
state’s present condition nor the shape of its Democrat Party constructed
future can fairly be attributed to Republican General Assembly members shunted
aside by Democrats roughly since the Governor Jodi Rell administration.
The public temperature of people in Connecticut, quaintly
used to constitutional government, is HOT.
For two years, the general public has tolerated the shutdown of its economy,
its judiciary and its General Assembly, the chief representative body of the
people throughout its history – even in colonial days. It has rolled over with
a gubernatorial administered economic punch to its breadbasket, the shutdown
and political harassment of businesses by a governor who has, during this time,
exercised a plenary power more powerful and extensive that that of
Connecticut’s last colonial governor, Jonathan Trumbull in 1776.
Just now, as a prelude to the 2022 elections, frustrated and
impatient people are asking the question – how long O’Lord?
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