Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Let us consider the significance of the passage of time.
I honestly cannot believe that I have just written the above opening line. I fear that the next thing I know I’ll be extolling the virtues of Venn diagrams and yellow school busses to a captive audience of child actors whom I have paid to look on in wonder.
Still, the course of the Year of our Lord 2024 has indeed been most significant. What a difference a year makes. As 2024 dawned, a still-shielded Joe Biden seemed poised to win a second Presidential term. Establishment factions within both parties and the Federal bureaucracy had already marginalized Donald Trump once, engineering his apparent defeat in 2020.
They had every reason to be confident that they could repeat their success in 2024. America seemed ready to turn to them for leadership, instead of the man they had characterized as being too obnoxious, undisciplined, and vain to be trusted with power. Indeed, they planned to make him into a felon by any means necessary and castigated Donald J. Trump and his Make America Great Again supporters as being racist, sexist, homophobic deplorables who were an existential threat to our democracy.
That line about the significance of the passage of time was a signature expression of the subgenius whom the Democrats eventually ran as their candidate. After an internal power struggle set Biden up to be exposed as no longer being fit for the Presidency in a nationally televised debate, Kamala Harris was selected as their nominee. Without earning a single Primary vote in either 2020 or 2024, the Obama apparatchiks who still run the Democratic Party organized a palace coup.
Without a hint of political acumen, this empty vessel of a Vice President still won 75,009,338 votes, 48.4 percent, of the popular vote. President-Elect Trump only earned 2,288,383 more votes in a nation of close to 350,000,000 souls. The margin of victory was a mere 0.65 percent of the total United States population. Among the 152,307,059 votes cast, the margin of Trump’s victory was only 1.5 percent.
These numbers ignore the mysterious 6,259,529 additional votes that Joe Biden was credited with in his 2020 tally of 81,268,867 votes. One wonders where these voters, more than the population of Missouri, vanished to in the past four years. Another mystery is where they came from, given the Hillary Clinton tally of 65,853,514 votes from 2016. The legitimacy of Biden’s victory in 2020 remains very much in doubt.
The margin of success of Trump over Harris was not by much. Yes, it is more of a margin than won by any modern Republican except Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Richard Nixon in 1972. However, given that Harris was such an abysmally bad campaigner and such a profoundly flawed candidate, I am alarmed that Trump’s victory margin was so narrow, not much greater than just over one percent of cast ballots.
This past election was a close-run thing. Harris’ vote totals suggest the ongoing potency of the Democrat Party machine. The Democrats’ have enjoyed structural advantages built into our system since at least the Great Society programs were instituted in the mid-1960s. This could be made even worse if they succeed in giving voting citizenship to the 20 million illegal aliens that they have smuggled into this country over the past four years.
Also, while Trump seems untouchable right now, he is only a single individual. He cannot run again for the Presidency in 2028 and, even if he could, his age and health would limit his capabilities.
There is no guarantee that the MAGA agenda will remain the Republican core ethos going forward after Trump. The Bush-McCain-Romney faction of Moderates and so-called Conservative Never-Trumpers retain both their money and their positions of influence in Republican Party circles.
The only surety that could perpetuate the Trump and MAGA revolutions into the future beyond 2028 is us. Each and every one of us citizens who became involved in 2024 and voted for the Orange Fellow and his agenda have the capacity to shape the future course of the Republic. If we go back to sleep, then the usual suspects will inevitably regain control over the Republican Party.
If we let them, they will revert Republican default settings back to “Country Club” rather than where they need to be, on “Main Street.” Such a RINO party cannot win, and its milquetoast incrementalism really does not deserve victory. If we let them resume control, we Conservatives will suffer intensifying marginalization and persistent defeat.
The Republican Party and the MAGA movement is both Donald Trump’s and ours, for the moment. Let us go forward and remain involved in order to perpetuate our influence.
Remember that one price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
