The Runback: The End of an Error
The end of Trump's Presidency is the end of a colossal mistake by Republicans
Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
Podcast Episode #17
This week I discussed the conservative movement and how it has been broken by Donald Trump.
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News and Politics
Single-Member Districts Embedded in Executive Order: A necessary redistricting reform may finally come to fruition thanks to Governor Larry Hogan.
Time for Andy Harris to Go: The Congressman's tacit support for sedition shows it's time for him to move on.
Luedtke's Latest Handout to Unions: Majority Leader wants union membership to be tax-deductible.
January 2021 Maryland Gubernatorial Power Rankings: The latest in a series of rankings between now and the June 2022 Primary.
Sports
NFL Wild Card Graveyard: One last look before the long goodnight.
The Process Strikes Back: Alabama Reaches the Summit Again.
Shameless Plugs
My latest for The Capital: Trump fans losing Twitter accounts aren’t being denied free speech.
The Monday Thought
In a little over two days, Donald Trump will no longer be President of the United States.
Trump’s presidency was somehow worse than many of us conservative critics thought it would be. Somehow, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.
All of that being said, let’s take a look at some of the Trump Administration’s accomplishments as well as its failures.
Accomplishments:
The nomination of three high-quality Supreme Court Justices in Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
The appointment of 230 conservative judges throughout the Federal bench.
Progress toward deregulation.
Signed the First Step Act.
Moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Help shepherd normalized relations between Israel and a number of Middle Eastern Countries.
Operation Warp Speed helped create the COVID-19 vaccine in record time.
Failures:
Abandonment of successful free trade policies in order to bring forth nationalist economic policies.
Implementation of tariffs on imported goods that decreased the purchasing power of average Americans while simultaneously creating retaliatory action aimed at American exports
A $7.7 trillion increase in the national debt, a 39% increase from the debt Trump inherited from Barack Obama.
Fiasco after fiasco on foreign policy. As former Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “We squandered the best opportunity we had on North Korea…With Putin we didn’t get anything done. We’re nowhere with China on national security. We’re in a worse place today than we were before he came in, and I didn’t think that was possible.” A weak position of appeasement on North Korea that did nothing to stop the North Korean nuclear threat. Doing nothing to combat Russia’s attempt to disrupt American politics and the American economy. Failing to address China’s growing military and economic might in the pacific. Degradation of the relationship between the U.S. and our allies in NATO. All have led to a weakening of America’s national security and diplomatic postures.
Pursuing a dangerous policy on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that would lead to even more censorship on social media.
Created an express lane of executions, executing more inmates in the last six months than the Federal Government had executed in the last 65 years.
Pardoning a whole bunch of individuals connected to him, with more allegedly on the way.
An administration of lying and obfuscation even when lying and obfuscation served no public policy interests.
Embraced the nonsense QAnon cult.
Fabrication of bogus claims about election results, election fraud, and election security that led directly to the loss of Republican control of the U.S. Senate.
Loss of both chambers of Congress to the Democrats over the course of four years.
Forcing the Republican Party to abandon its entire platform to adopt Trump’s left-wing, statist platform.
Gutted the GOP as a whole by making the entire Republican brand radioactive, disperse, and fighting with each other.
Encouraged, intentionally or otherwise, an attempted coup d’etat against the government in order to stay in power.
The entire Trump Administration was a failure for everybody involved.
It was a failure for the GOP, whose establishment latched on to Trump because they were scared of the direction Ted Cruz could take the party.
It was a failure of everybody who worked for Trump, who will likely wear a scarlet T for the rest of their working lives.
It was a failure for the Trump brand, which is now tattered and disgraced to only the most loyal Trumpists. It was a failure for the sycophants in Congress who latched on to Trump and made appeasing him and his ego the central focus of their political brand.
It was a failure for conservative media, many of whom abandon their long-professed conservatives principles to follow Trump in the abyss of statism and nationalism in search of the almighty dollar.
And it was a failure for Donald Trump, who saw whatever reputation he brought with him to the office destroyed, his brand ruined, and will likely be facing various criminal charges in Georgia and New York, to say nothing of any civil suits he may face, all without the ability to get his message out to the public.
It’s like the entire Presidency can be described from a meme back in the early days of Trump:
Trump’s Administration was statist. Trump’s Administration was anarchist. Trump’s Administration was nationalist. But no actual conservative would dare call it conservative.
Nominating Trump was a mistake. An error of colossal proportions. More Republicans than would care to admit it know that now. Some of us knew it five years ago. But no honest person can say that conservatism is in a better place now than it was four years ago. The Republican Party surely isn’t. And America isn’t either.
We were promised we would be tired of all the winning. All we got was an America reeling in violence and chaos and Republicans out of power and reeling. We were promised that Trump would make America great again. While America was already great, we are certainly not in a better position post-Trump than pre-Trump.
For the folks who signed up for this, for the Republicans who demanded loyalty to a President who has loyalty to nobody, I finish up by asking you this, in the words of JET:
Oh, look what you've done
You've made a fool of everyone
Oh, well, it seems like such fun
Until you lose what you had won
Oh, look what you've done
You've made a fool of everyone
A fool of everyone
A fool of everyone
The Runback: The End of an Error
Also... 7 trillion added to the deficit.