The good feelings in the aftermath of Trump’s election are coming from two sources at once: the immediate positive results from a radical shift in direction, and the sweet schadenfreude of watching our opponents receive their much-deserved comeuppance.
The exuberance flowing from the former feels like we’ve been suffering from a long and miserable illness, and the fever has finally broken. It reminds me of when Reagan won in 1980.
I was a callow youth of 18 when Reagan was elected, and because I was one of those strange young males who was interested mostly in sports and girls (and sure, tons of reading), I didn’t pay much attention to politics. But I followed the biggest issues in the news, and in the subsequent years, as I got into politics, I came to admire Reagan, as right-thinking people do.
And I loved the way that this optimistic leader brought such a change of outlook to America. Carter’s tired, leftist defeatism and malaise burned off like a fog after the sunrise, and though it took 18 months for Reagan’s economic policies to start bearing fruit, the mood changed immediately.
Carter didn’t seem to have much faith in the nation, and his defenders said that his grim struggling was mostly because the presidency had become too burdensome for one man to shoulder. Then Reagan entered, and said, “Hold my jar of jellybeans and watch this.” He clearly loved the country, and his outlook had more optimism than caution to it.
The most obvious change came in foreign policy, when the Islamic fanatics in Iran who had been holding our hostages for over a year released them immediately. From there Reagan started cheerfully opposing the soviet socialists, and began the pushback that would cause the USSR’s collapse shortly after he left office.
There is a more contemporary example of that Reagan-esque “morning in America” feeling. Or in this case, “morning in Argentina.” Javier Milei became the president there, and many saw him as a Trumpy figure. He was brash and bold, and to the wild hair he added the craziest mutton-chop sideburns since Mungo Jerry. (Boom! Obscure pop culture reference ripped from the headlines… of 1970.)
Milei introduced a pro-free-market package of policies that included government austerity, and tearing through the national bureaucracy like a chainsaw. And in a very short time, he’s achieved incredible economic and quality-of-life gains for the Argentinian people.
A week out from Trump’s election, I’m already getting some Reagan-with-Mungo-Jerry-sideburns vibes. Just as the Ayatollah released our hostages in 1981, the government of Qatar – which had been sheltering some top Hamas kleptocrats for over a year now – suddenly (within 48 hours of Trump’s victory) announced that they were kicking those creeps out of Doha.
I wonder why? Do you think it has anything to do with the fact that Biden’s attitude has been, “Qatar should mediate negotiations between Hamas and Israel that will go on for 47 years with no resolution,” and that Trump’s new offer is, “We’re giving the IDF lots of weapons and letting them off the chain, and they’re going to start dropping buildings and handing out ballistic enemas in Qatar the way they have been in Gaza and Lebanon”?
Coincidentally, the value of the Iranian currency has dropped, Hamas is putting out peace feelers in the press, and hostile world leaders know that they will soon be dealing with a confident US leader leaning into “peace through strength,” rather than a shuffling corpse or a cackling fellatrix pushing “peace through appeasement.”
Meanwhile at home, the NYC Mayor just announced that he’s stopping the insane policy of providing $18,500 welfare payments to illegals in his city, and the mostly corrupt top brass at the the FBI and elsewhere in DC are scrambling to find other employment before the orange broom begins to sweep clean.
The schadenfreude from our opponents’ shell-shocked disarray continues to come hard and fast, too. Suddenly no one on the left will admit to ever having had anything to do with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Except for the dope on CNN who says Que Mala should be appointed to SCOTUS!
I can just hear their debates now:
Que Mala: I was raised in the middle class—
John Roberts: You can’t begin every dissent with, “I was raised—”
Que Mala: I’m speaking. Will you let me speak?
Alito: This case is about contested rights over fisheries in coastal waters—
Que Mala: These fisherpersons have hopes. They have dreams. They have—
Thomas: Aspirations?
Que Mala (glaring at him): I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.
Roberts: What? Nobody said—
Que Mala: I’m speaking!
And, scene.
One of the funniest developments of the last week has been finding out that the political party of hugely wasteful government spending programs blew through a shockingly high mountain of cash in their failed campaign.
Unexpectedly!
Kamala raised a billion dollars – “billion” with a “B!” – and somehow ended up $20 mil in the hole! It turns out every sleazy celebrity who posed as a close personal friend and committed leftist was charging the Dem campaign for their appearances. Creepy Oprah – who is literally a billionaire – reportedly charged Kamala $1 million to “interview” her for the cameras.
Sure, I’d listen to Kamala’s inane word salad for a million bucks. But not if I had Oprah’s money!
And the rest of the Dem brain trust weren’t much smarter than Kamala. Because they poured just under half a billion dollars ($495 mil) into 5 Senate races – two defending Dems in MT and OH, and three going after GOP seats in MO, TX and FL. And they went 0-for-5 in those races!
If you’re keeping score at home, the GOP spent around $500 million and won the White House, the Senate and the House, while the Dems spent over 3 times that much. And all they achieved with all of that cash was to kill P-nut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon, and to make all of the women (including those assigned male at birth) in the “main-stream media” cry like toddlers and throw hilariously entertaining tantrums.
One added bonus: the elite Left now has $1.5 billion less to spend on the next election cycle!
Speaking of added bonuses, our cup continues to runneth over – after all the joy that hath cometh in the morning! – because our leftist betters seem to have learned zero lessons from their epic beatdown.
Ken-Doll Newsom has called a special legislative session to beef up CA’s resources to fight Trump on environmentalism, abortion, and immigration, and Jabba the Pritzker in IL and Schumer and Hochul in NY are calling for similar efforts. In reality, that means that taxpayers in those states will have more of their money wasted. Post-Dobbs, abortion is handled completely by the states already, and they are free to spend state dollars on green boondoggles to their hearts’ content.
In Massachusetts, Grandma Squanto is on the warpath too, vowing the same kind of “resistance” to the legitimately elected government of our nation. She’s setting up a pitched battle of cowboys and Warrens (#wemustneverstopmockingher) along the same lines as the other blue governors.
Because their deep and abiding love of our sacred democracy requires them to fight the voters’ express preferences tooth and nail, of course.
I’ll leave you with one more bit of good news.
Oops, two: my daughter Katie is fully recovered, and has already been back to nursing for two shifts. Thanks again for all the thoughts and prayers for her!
Second, MSNBC went into the weekend trying to give their benighted viewers some hope for the future in the form of a story headlined, “Five Democrats in prime position to be face of the party in 2028.”
(Please feel free to insert your own “faces only a mother could love” joke here.)
The line-up is as follows:
CA’s Ken-Doll
MI’s Gretchen “Wicked Whitmer of the Mid-west” Whitmer
IN’s Mayor Pete
PA’s Josh Shapiro
MD’s Governor Wes Moore
The first three are well-known and well-loathed, due to their records of failed governance. Their best attributes seem to be their identity-politics box checking: Whitmer is female (sort of), Pete is gay (and likes choo choos), and Newsom is sort of non-binary, due to his featureless plastic genital region.
But after this election – in which Trump got record high (for the GOP) vote percentages from blacks, Hispanics, suburban women, native Americans, Jews and even Amish! – the bloom may have gone off the identity-politics rose.
So the front runners would have to be Shapiro and Moore. The former because all we know of him is how he compares to Tampon Tim Walz (and clearing that bar means literally nothing), and the latter because he is completely unknown.
Shapiro’s Jewishness is likely to hurt his chances amongst the jihadi element of the Democrat base, but Moore is black. So he is the defacto Dem to beat, because of anti-white racism, and his totally unknown status.
I know it’s a little early for the Polymarket to start cranking up for 2028.
But I’ve gotta say, I like our chances so far.
Hamas delenda est!