Two days removed from Christmas, it’s safe to say many folks are just as busy now as they were prior to the arrival of the long-anticipated holiday. But instead of shopping for gifts, scrubbing the house in preparation for visitors and making grocery lists for Christmas dinner,
Americans are tasked with returning the duplicated or unwanted presents – and cleaning up the enormous mess fostered by “Hurricane Christmas, 2023”.
One would think the post-holiday chores would represent a labor of love, especially since the memories from those few hours with everybody together in near proximity – or watching your first grandchild opening his own gifts this year – would suffice for years’ worth of pleasurable memories.
It’s also probably fair to say that many, many pre-Christmas wishes were dashed by a lack of fulfillment when the time came to expose the gift booty, be it a badly wanted box you didn’t receive or an untimely comment that might’ve ruined some aspect of the festivities by triggering the overly sensitive to rise from their temporarily peaceful stupors to wreak havoc.
Or hangovers? That’s another matter entirely.
And then there’s the wishes Americans harbored concerning their political leaders. These non-tangible “presents” aren’t available in stores, usually can’t be “bought” and definitely will never be completely satisfied. Some might even claim the political class, as a whole, is like an untamed beast that roams according to its own desires – or a flood without boundaries.
One case in point happened last week. In an article titled “Trump Faces Backlash After Calling Conservative Rep. Chip Roy a ‘RINO’ Who Should Be Primaried”, Debra Heine reported at American Greatness last week:
“Former President Donald Trump is facing a backlash after calling one of the most conservative members of Congress a RINO who should be primaried—one week after the filing deadline. Trump blasted Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, on Truth Social after the congressman endorsed Trump’s rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for president.
“’Has any smart and energetic Republican in the Great State of Texas decided to run in the Primary against RINO Congressman Chip Roy,’ Trump wrote. ‘For the right person, he is very beatable. If interested, let me know!!!’…
“Trump and Roy have a history of clashing dating back to early 2021 when the congressman gave a speech on the House floor calling Trump’s actions leading up to the January 6 riot ‘impeachable conduct.’ However, he did not vote with Democrats to impeach the then-president. Later in 2021, Trump denounced Roy’s bid to become the GOP conference chair, saying in a statement that ‘he has not done a great job, and will probably be successfully primaried in his own district.’”
To be fair, Roy’s criticisms of Trump were a tad over-the-top in themselves. Chip Roy is definitely a solid conservative in anyone’s estimation, but he should be granted leeway to be for Ron DeSantis without claiming that Trump is somehow devoid of the qualifications – or honesty – to act as president. DeSantis is a worthy candidate; let the backing stand on its own.
Besides, it’s not as though the 2024 GOP primary race is razor close and every little last-minute endorsement could be worth a couple micro-points that would make all the difference in a tight primary matchup. Chip Roy is familiar to close watchers of Congress, but other than a fairly narrow circle of admirers, he’s pretty obscure. It’s doubtful that voters in Iowa or New Hampshire are basing their preferences on what Roy says, put it that way.
Why is Trump so angry? Doesn’t he have more pressing matters to worry about?
Therein lies the first Christmas gift I didn’t get from the political class, specifically, a change in Donald Trump’s approach. I wanted Trump to cut out the stupid “disloyalty” name-calling and start assembling a coalition of would-be supporters for next November, when everyone, Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis and Chip Roy included, will join together to defeat the real enemy, Senile Joe Biden (or whomever the liberal party nominates) and the horde of leftist Democrat candidates for office.
Trump’s 2016 nicknames were needed to brand his opponents, both within the party and his general election counterpart. This coming year, we need unity, not pettiness. I’m guessing many of Trump’s most ardent backers agree and no one got what they were looking for this year, either.
Wanted: A backbone for conservatives and Republicans. With the action of the Colorado Supreme Court last week, effectively giving the okay to remove the Republican Party’s presidential race frontrunner from the state’s primary ballot, other states, predictably, soon followed suit. It just goes to show, throw a bone to one set of barking leftists and the rest of the tradition-trouncing pack sees it as a green light to ignore “democracy” and judge a man as an “insurrectionist” simply for disagreeing with the prevailing swamp narrative and pushing for a full-on official review of the 2020 election.
No one knows for sure how this sorry chain of events will end – most likely with a Supreme Court decision overturning the Colorado Court’s foolishness packaged with a stern rebuke of the state justices’ audacity in believing they had the power to do such a thing – but the damage is likely already done. Precedent after awful precedent has been set in the twenty-first century, with one party repeatedly asserting that the other’s leader was a murderer (George W. Bush in the Iraq War and Donald Trump over COVID, etc.), accusing the other of all sorts of values transgressions (being against “voting rights”, or being racists, sexists, bigots, anti-immigrant, genocidal fascists), all of which are based on differences in policy, what have you.
Most conservatives have taken these insults sitting down, so to speak, with very little reaction or fight in response. What did mom used to tell us? That responding to a bully with an eye-for-an-eye would only get both of you sent to the principal’s office, right? Or in the NFL, the guy who pushes in response to a chip after the play is usually the one who gets flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct.
That being said, here's thinking conservatives have been much too passive in responding to the left’s provocations. I’m not advocating for more January 6-like rioting – this only results in arrests, unconstitutional confinement and prosecutions – but conservatives must get off the couch and meet the left on the rhetorical battlefield, be it by volunteering to be election watchers, precinct captains, campaign volunteers, writing letters to the editor, etc.
The left will never quit. We mustn’t either. The good thing is this isn’t a one-time gift – it’s ongoing. Tomorrow’s another day, right? Let’s build a citizen army of conservative boat-rockers, then watch as great results follow.
I wanted a real presidential race in 2023; I didn’t get it. I didn’t have to wait until Christmas this week to discover it, but a lively back-and-forth between qualified candidates did not materialize in either party this year.
I for one thought it would be appropriate for Donald Trump to have to claw and scratch for votes, participate in debates, answer for policies that went haywire during his administration and simultaneously sharpen his issue articulation ahead of the 2024 general election. I also wanted to hear from some of the younger up-and-comer candidates – such as Gov. Ron DeSantis – to see whether one of them would represent a better alternative vis-à-vis senile Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or whomever the Democrats ended up nominating.
Time and circumstances showed it wasn’t going to happen – a real race, that is. I’m not so sure the blowout was because Trump was that much better. He was aided in great part by the utter incompetence and corruption of his probable Democrat opponent as well as Democrats dramatically overstepping their authority to charge him with crimes that wouldn’t stick anywhere outside of deep blue urban jurisdictions – or the Biden controlled federal Justice Department.
It's still possible Democrats will bump Biden to the side and run a replacement and it’s also within the realm of possibility that Trump will slip in one or more of the early state GOP contests and crack open the door for a challenger (i.e. Ron DeSantis). Nikki Haley is unacceptable and has no staying power. The last thing conservatives need is a phony establishment candidate again.Fortunately, 2024 will provide all the race Americans crave. Bring it on.
I also hoped for a media that does its job, and didn’t get it. If each of us received a dollar for each time some establishment media honk parroted the line “House Republicans are considering impeaching the president with no evidence linked to Joe Biden himself”, we’d have had enough cash to buy Christmas presents for the next hundred years. These ineffective people are either biased, or blind, or both.
The major establishment media never tried to earn conservatives’ trust in 2023 – or any other year -- which is why the media’s approval ratings are much lower even than senile Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s – and are hovering in Mitch McConnell’s range. People-in-the-know don’t bother with the media’s reporting, but plenty of gullible, ignorant folks take what the reporters say at face value. How else would anyone say they’re planning to vote for Joe Biden next year?
No one is glad to see another Christmas pass, especially those who had high hopes for getting some sort of special “gift” this year that didn’t actually materialize. America’s political class doesn’t often deliver anything satisfying, so it’s no surprise that they stiffed everyone again in 2023 on certain subjects. Will 2024 be better? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Joe Biden economy
inflation
Biden cognitive decline
gas prices,
Nancy Pelosi
Biden senile
January 6 Committee
Liz Cheney
Build Back Better
Joe Manchin
RINOs
Marjorie Taylor Green
Kevin McCarthy
Mitch McConnell
2022 elections
Donald Trump
2024 presidential election