OPINION:
Paul Ryan, House speaker-turned-Fox-board-member, sideswiped Donald Trump during remarks delivered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, saying the former president was causing the Republican Party to drift from the “core principles of conservatism” and that GOPers must shun the “populist appeal of one personality,” else face a fate of nothingness.
Shortly after, on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight,” Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin said his party members wanted to keep the Capitol protest investigation going because they regarded Trump as “an absolute pariah in America.”
If the idea is to make Trump inconsequential, then this is the wrong way to go.
Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, etc. — bring it on. The Trump Train keeps on chugging.
The more the RINOs, the more the Democrats, the more the haters in the elitist camps and leftist camps and globalist camps attack Trump, the more his supporters rally around him. It’s like a Newton’s Law thing.
The more anti-Trumpers try to shut down Trump, the more the spirit of Trump rebels.
It’s not about Trump, per se. It’s not about Trump, the cult of personality, or Trump, the white knighted horseman, or Trump the savior of humanity — or any of that jargon the left likes to slap at the Trump base, while mocking and deriding the 75-plus millions of this base as “deplorable” and ignorant racists.
It’s the fact that Trump stood strong in office for the principles of America that the elites, the Democrats, the RINOs, the collectivists, the globalists, the socialists, the selfishly ambitious and blatantly unconstitutional have oh-so-long pushed to the side.
Trump did what he promised he’d do from the campaign trail: He put America First. And he did so while facing off against substantial forces, both from without — from Democrats, from the United Nations, from heads of states of nations both friendly and unfriendly to America — and from within, from within his own Republican Party. Remember: Trump had a Republican majority in both the House and Senate when he took office. The biggest political fights Trump faced at the time was from his own supposed Republican allies.
It’s these same “Republican allies” that can’t stand the idea of Trump making a second go of the White House. So they’re banding together with the left, once again, to go after Trump for made-up charges. Russia collusion has turned to Jan. 6.
“How can we prevent Trump-like presidents in the future?” the left-leaning Brookings Institute asked in a recent headline.
Well, the answer is not to sideline Trump.
The only way to ensure another “Trump-like” president won’t sit in the White House — or, in fact, Trump himself, for a second term — is to outright kill the American spirit. And that indeed is what the left is trying to do. America’s strength rests on the idea that rights come from God, not government — that it’s individualism, not collectivism — that a seated president has no more inherent rights than, say, a garbage collector.
The left can’t stand that concept because it limits government’s power.
The left can’t stand Trump because his America First and Make America Great Again policies dared to buoy that concept.
So it’s a hand-in-hand fight that’s brewing. Elitists think that by stifling Trump, they’ll automatically shut down the voices that stood behind Trump for his years in office — and in so doing, usher in a new form of government in America that will favor the good of the state over the good of the individual.
But they’re forgetting one thing: When those who cherish individual freedoms are threatened by enemies who want to steal those cherished, God-given freedoms, the response of the liberty-minded camp isn’t to run in fear. It’s to fight. It’s to fight even when the fight looks overwhelming.
That’s why Trump has staying power, no matter what the left does.
The more he’s unfairly attacked, the more he’s seen as aligned with the true spirit of freedom. And a spirit is impossible to kill.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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