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I’m not a Donald Trump fan. From the start, I’ve detested him as a candidate but believed wholeheartedly in his “greatness agenda.” America first? Count me in. Build the wall? By all means. Straighten out trade. Reassert the national interest. Put China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia in their place. Make NATO pay up. Sounds good. Let’s go!

But let’s also not pretend. Trump is a marvelous entertainer but a poor politician. He was a mixed bag as president — great in some ways, terrible in others.

We know what a Harris-Walz administration will do, and that would spell disaster for the country.

He started no wars but failed to end any. (Maybe nobody could have.) The trade deals were good, the tax cuts were better, and the judges weren’t too bad — though Neil Gorsuch is no Antonin Scalia and Amy Coney Barrett is no great shakes.

Trump was not a good judge of character. At least half of his Cabinet undermined him at every turn, and a few were straight-up traitors. He could not manage the permanent bureaucracy, and in many ways the permanent bureaucracy managed him. And his deference to what my friend Lloyd Billingsley calls “white coat supremacy” during the COVID crisis was a downright disgrace.

Operation Warp Speed as Trump’s “greatest accomplishment”? Please. Even he doesn’t believe that any more.

But as my father often liked to remind me, “you can’t have nice things.” Or nice candidates. In the end, I was happy to vote for Trump in 2016 and I am happy to vote for him now, not because I think he can fulfill half of his promises but because I very much want Kamala Harris and all that she represents to lose.

The stakes

In July 2016, I co-founded American Greatness, an upstart online journal with grand aspirations that has lately fallen on hard times. But I was an outlier at my own company at the beginning because I was the only one of three founders who was outspokenly and ostentatiously “NeverTrump.”

I know, I know. Stick with me here. It gets better, I promise.

Longtime readers of Blaze News know this company has published a variety of views on Trump over the years. Glenn Beck, Steve Deace, and Daniel Horowitz, among others, have been unsparing in their criticism of Trump at times. So I am not alone.

But we also understand the stakes. We aren’t going to sacrifice the country or our kids to vindicate some misbegotten or perverted sense of “honor.”

Politics often requires trade-offs. It’s important not to mistake policy preferences for high principles. Given the choice between deeply flawed and certain disaster, let us pray it remains true that “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”

When it came down to it, I voted for Trump in 2016, in cerulean blue California, because I despised his opponents more than I disliked him. My vote was a middle finger to his enemies … and to mine. That remains true today.

Oh, fascists? Up yours!

The fact is that they hate us. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their confederates have spent the better part of eight years tarring Trump and his supporters as Nazis, fascists, “semi-fascists,” deplorables, domestic extremists, insurrectionists, and, most recently, “garbage.”

The very online left would say, “Well, if the shoe fits …” And I would say most of those people wouldn’t know a real fascist if a Blackshirt was kicking them in the face with a steel-toe boot while belting out “Giovinezza.”

Language is like currency. The late, great Lenny Bruce in his act more than 60 years ago tried to make the point that if you overuse a word — in his case, the N-word — you could drain it of its power. I’m not sure he succeeded in that case, but Democrats and leftists have done a fine job of taking the sting out of “Nazi” and “fascist.” Fascist, fascist, fascist. Nazi, Nazi, Nazi. All the time. They’ve debased the words. The barb is now worth less than a penny. It’s worth nothing at all.

Half the country, give or take, simply isn’t listening any more. The words no longer wound. They’re stripped of meaning. That’s been true for a while, I think. Eight years ago, when the claims were fresh, I wrote:

Enough of this. Snark will not do. Insinuation will not do. Conversation stoppers — “he’s a bigot,” “he’s a fascist” — absolutely will not do. “He’s a fascist” is not an argument. There can be no reasonable response. Over and over, reasonable people plead, “No, he’s not.” What they’re really saying is, “No, I’m not.” But who is listening? We’re called to be charitable. But what good is charity when the other side has made up its mind? The only fitting response is the middle finger. Or the back of the hand.

The politics of the middle finger are fine as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. We need a proper realignment. It’s been in the works for quite some time even if it’s been slow to manifest.

The “old” Republican Party — the party of Bush and Dole and McCain and Romney and McConnell and Ryan — abhors Trump and his America First agenda. Worse, these Republicans abhor and reject the base. Erstwhile “conservative” or “rock-ribbed” Republicans including Dick Cheney and Arnold Schwarzenegger have endorsed the obviously illiberal Harris. George W. Bush has stayed mum, but it’s not a stretch to think he’ll vote for Harris if he votes at all. She is the safe bet for establishment Republicans like him.

They would surrender their country to preserve their phony “honor” for … what? It isn’t honor at all. It’s self-interest. It’s a profound misunderstanding of politics. It’s a death wish. No, thank you.

Happily, their time has passed. They’re essentially Democrats now. They are finished, whether they realize it or not.

The argument is over

The realignment is real and it’s ongoing. The old left-right distinctions are losing their salience. But who knows where it will lead?

A dear friend the other day said to me, “I don’t want either one of them to win.” I sympathize, but too bad. You’re getting one or the other. The Vaunted Ron DeSantis Juggernaut never materialized, the Great NeverTrump Hope Nikki Haley flamed out (and ended up endorsing Trump anyway), and, tell me, who is the Libertarian Party’s candidate this year again?

On the eve of the 2016 election, I wrote, “For me, it isn’t a matter of Trump winning. All that matters is she loses.” Hillary Clinton was a criminal who said sinister things behind closed doors while peddling bromides and clichés to the public. She was wholly unacceptable, even if Trump was less than desirable.

My expectations for Trump are not much greater today than they were then. “Put not your faith in princes” (or Barrons), as the psalmist says. But the stakes are as great if not greater today than they were eight years ago. We know what a Harris-Walz administration will do, and that would spell disaster for the country.

We’re no longer having an argument. Our opponents have made it quite clear. When Harris speaks of “unity,” she means, for us, surrender and supplication. We have nothing left to discuss. If we have a decent chance at turning the country around for ourselves and our posterity, then like Trump or not, Kamala Harris must lose.