ANALYSIS: MAG EDITOR’S SWAN SONG IS CLASSIC ‘FIT OF PIQUE’
The Donald is a deeply flawed man. He had an unusual, not particularly happy or normal upbringing. He’s an imperfect president. Sometimes he is annoying.
If you like him, Donald Trump’s Twitter habit is hilarious. If you hate him, he’s a demon.
Trump is as different from most of his base as he can be — they are working class, maybe even the “silent majority,” while he is a multi-millionaire with a big mouth.
Americans knew this in 2016. And yet, evangelical Christians and millions of others — 63 million American voters in all — chose him anyway. They overlooked his failings and decided he represented good policy for restoring sanity and strength to our country.
Not all Republicans voted for him. Some recoiled; they wrote in John Kasich or another person. Others reasoned that Trump would be a far-better cry than having Hillary and Bill Clinton back in the White House. Those voters held their nose and voted for him.
And there were plenty who were on the Trump train from the beginning — they were the true believers. They didn’t need convincing that he was the right person for the job at this time in our nation’s history. They are his biggest cheerleaders today.
In a Must Read Alaska poll on Facebook this week, 94 percent of 2,900 respondents said the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives makes them more likely, rather than less likely to vote for Trump in 2020. Most who take part in MRAK polls are Alaskans, and most are conservatives. But not all. The polls make their way around liberal groups on Facebook, where they get plenty of reach.
Only 171 participants over the course of the 48-hour poll said they are less likely to vote for Trump because of the impeachment proceedings:
What are these Alaskans seeing in the impeachment proceedings that Christianity Today does not see?
They’re seeing the naked political ambition of partisan Democrats, “resist” radicals, pink-pussy-hatted hate-mongers, screaming liberals, and Antifa infiltrators taking over the Democrats’ party, and the news media growing more partisan by the day.
Last week, Christianity Today joined MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Washington Post in saying it is time to remove this president.
Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli published an editorial that is “so devoid of any pretense of understanding the Constitution I am genuinely embarrassed for evangelicals (of which I am a member). Christians must hold the publication accountable and call this out promptly and directly,” according to constitutional attorney Jenna Ellis, writing in the Washington Examiner.
In 11 months, (10, if you count absentee and early voting) Americans will have a chance to do exactly what Christianity Today hopes they’ll do at the ballot box: Vote for anyone but Trump.
By the time the Senate completes its trial of President Donald J. Trump, there will be but 10 months (or 9 months for early voters) before the election. Joe Biden will, by then, be the likely choice on the other ticket. He still leads the pack for the Democrats.
Will any evangelical actually vote for Biden, now that Christianity Today has declared Trump unfit? Doubtful. Neither will they vote for Elizabeth Warren, or Mayor Pete.
Editor Galli jumped into the fray as he had one foot out the door, leaving the magazine to pick up the pieces, even as evangelical leader Franklin Graham admonished the publication for getting it wrong.
Indeed, Galli fell hook, line, and sinker for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “wrap-up smear,” a version of Saul Alinsky’s #13th Rule for Radicals:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Pelosi described how the “wrap-up smear” works. She had it memorized, because it’s a big part of her toolkit.
The nation remains conflicted about Trump, but he has won over support from some who did not vote for him the first time around. Why? Because he is just himself in a dangerous and unpredictable world, where despots and criminals rule, where our borders have become a sieve through which traffickers and terrorists pass. He’s not afraid to take on the corrupt leaders of other nations.
The fact that other leaders across the world do not like Donald Trump is refreshing. They also didn’t like George W. Bush. They don’t like “strong defense” American presidents, while those in other countries fawned over Barack Obama, and still pine for him today.
Democrats miss the Obamas. Who can, after all, forget about the limit of chicken tenders allowed American school children under Michelle Obama’s lunch program, while her own daughters dined like princesses at the exclusive Sidwell Friends prep academy?
All the while, in the post-Obama era, the American economy is growing again and prosperity is spreading across the land. The president has restored our military strength, and taken on the Deep State, is putting reasonable judges on the courts and is unwinding the Obamacare disaster.
Did most Americans vote for Trump? No, 65 million cast their fate with Hillary Clinton, who ran on a theme of her extensive political experience (who can forget her “reset” with Russia?), who denounced Trump and his base of support as bigots (“basket of deplorables”), who promised an expansion of President Barack Obama’s socialistic policies, such as Obamacare and open borders. She promised free college tuition. She promised to restrict gun ownership.
Trump, on the other hand, had no actual political experience. He is from a hardball, tough world of business deals, some of which succeeded, others that ended poorly. He’s been married three times. He’s the ultimate wheeler-dealer who broke all the conventional political rules going into the 2016 general election, surviving a field of 17 Republican candidates, many of whom had a lot more experience than he had, and a lot fewer ex-wives.
He wasn’t supposed to win; the smarties of the chattering class predicted that Clinton would sweep him off the map.
There are flawed leaders throughout history in every nation, but this impeachment is ultimately about the Constitution, not about moral failings or personal distaste.
Christianity Today’s retiring Editor Mark Galli once authored the book, “Jesus, Mean and Wild.” It’s about how the meek and mild “nice guy” Jesus is mythical. Instead, he presents him as a militant Messiah, unmanageable and a reflection of an untamable God.
While in Galli’s world view, Jesus could be mean and wild, he’s not giving that same latitude to human leaders that make him sick with hatred.
He wrote that Trump’s failings will “crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel. And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.”
M-Kay. Galli conveniently forgets that we live in an insane world, and that Trump has handled foreign and domestic affairs masterfully in his three years.
Trump is not the president all of us would want to spend Christmas with. He is coarse and urbane. He’s a certain kind of person, informed by his own experience of the world. He’s a bit of an oddball. He’s not your classic Christian … or is he? There is nary a Christian reading this today who can clear the moral high jump of pro-abortion, anti-Second Amendment Nancy Pelosi.
With the unrelenting attacks of the vitriolic Left, Trump is more like the president this country needed to keep in check our constitutional rights and secure our nation’s fundamental underpinnings. To the extent that Congress has let him, he has delivered on his promises, including the recent complete overhaul of NAFTA with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
The question will be to voters — evangelicals, women, African American, disaffected, young, old, rich, and poor — to decide if we still need this kind of president for four more years.
What Christianity Today last did was merely to give comfort to Trump’s political enemies and the media, (but we repeat ourselves) at a time when the Democrats needed that kind of boost. They’re losing ground as Trump gains support. The magazine provided just noise, and the noise did not have the effect intended.
