Bob MaistrosWe warned you, weeks ago. That the compliant, complicit media, having terrified all America into cowed submission, would greet tentative attempts at reopening America with endless, alarming reports on coronavirus resurgence.
That they were helping Democrats achieve a perverse utopia via COVID-19: accruing more power on government’s part – and greater dependency on yours.
That whereas everyday citizens desperately pray for the coronavirus nightmare to end, progressives will never relinquish this dream of universal Nanny State addiction cum control.
And that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be back with demands for more stimulus checks, rich unemployment benefits, dollars to shovel at failing businesses, overburdened hospitals – hence, the “HEROES Act” – and goodies for favored constituencies.
Having warned you of all that, we’re back too. Not with another warning – but a particularly unwelcome declaration.
With the coronavirus in their corner, it’s all over: The Resistance has won.
And is gleefully looking ahead to President Pelosi (you really thought Sleepy Joe would run things?) controlling the levers of both congressional chambers and the White House to enact Democrats’ vision of an “FDR-“ – read “AOC-“ – size future.
Why? First, the old public relations and political axiom: if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Where one side makes wild, unsustainable but simple-to-grasp and on-their-face credible attacks that appeal to emotions – and stick like glue. And the other struggles to reason its way free.
No one ever sticks around for the explanation.
This commentator has already seen a foretaste in online super PAC ads of how things will go for Donald Trump and Republicans between now and November.
Soon, the coronavirus body count will cross a public pain threshold – 100,000 – and continue to climb. With the drumbeat ever louder behind the Democratic and progressive narrative: Trump was too slow to respond. Too fast to reopen. And too bumbling in between.
The president and his allies keep striving to explain: China travel shutdown. Tony Fauci and Pelosi pooh-poohing, “Nothing to worry about.” Rush orders of ventilators and personal protective equipment. Hospital ships. A vaccine Manhattan Project. How the huge death toll is actually driven by New York state, under media hero Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his nursing home fiasco.
No dice. Because no amount of explication overcomes a message as simple and powerful as: “It’s Trump’s fault.”
Meanwhile, the Coronavirus Collapse has cost more than 36 million jobs. The grim daily news: small businesses gasping, entire industries threatened, communities becoming ghost towns, household name companies bankrupt. Easy to pin on the president: it happened on his watch.
Trump insists he’ll get America booming again. Sorry. Given the cataclysmic plunge in demand, social distancing limiting capacity, and paralyzing fear of viral rebound – with a still-scared majority considering protecting public health more important than resuscitating commerce – there’s no quick way to reverse the economic disaster. Or cheerlead it away.
But ah! – conservatives exclaim: OBAMAGATE! Perjury traps. Withheld evidence. Oval Office conspiracy meetings. Unmasking. Edited 302s. Leaks, lies and more lies. And John Durham poised to blow things open and indict everyone in sight. Any day now. Really.
Get real. The deck is so stacked for The Resistance that Bill Barr still can’t even get the demonstrably wronged Michael Flynn off the hook.
There’s a reason no one’s heard from Durham yet: corruption cases are hard to make, and harder to win. Ask insufferable James Comey, insolent Andy McCabe and smug Peter Stzrok – all indictment-free amid Everests of evidence.
Tara Reade? Three words: Not. Going. Anywhere.
Listen carefully: nothing – nada, nix, zilch, zero, zip – will turn the tide on the “scandal” front between now and November. The wheels of injustice grind too slowly.
The last reason The Resistance has won? Because the keys to the kingdom are now firmly in the iron grip of powerful, petty, mostly blue-state tyrants who’ll never let go.
Is there any hope of meaningful revival with ignitions stuck at “off” in key economic engines: California, New York, Michigan, Illinois and Virginia? And public health bureaucrats now omnipotent potentates at every level? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Read the tea leaves. The president’s down in every poll nationally, and in most battleground states in RealClearPolitics averages, despite facing off against a two-time presidential loser who appears perpetually ready to dribble his oatmeal down his shirt and sounds worse. The “generic ballot” massively favors Democrats. Stir in possible universal “vote harvesting” (manufacturing), which always favors them.
It only gets worse from here. Because on the Virus Body Count and the Shutdown Slowdown, the Truman Dictum is escapable: the buck stops at the Resolute Desk.
The view here: voters – fairly or not – will hold Trump and Republicans accountable for what has happened during his administration. It comes with the territory. And among the coronavirus carnage, The Resistance has already risen triumphant.
Bob Maistros is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.
Bob Maistros
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Oh hell no they haven’t yet!!!
Sad but true. Look at the praise heaped on NY Governor Como – even with large number of COVID deaths in nursing homes as a result of his order for patients discharged from hospitals having recovered from the virus, no calls for investigation. Keeping the virus spreading subways running without serious cleaning them until recently – no calls for investigation.
I am more scared of January 2021. What will life be like under the Blue utopia.
I’m not sure Mr. Maistros is correct. Polls, unreliable though they may be, do not show the President falling behind, but coming ever closer to Biden. Further, there is a significant resistance to the resistance. Many individuals are rebelling against the lockdown orders. It has been made clear that the governors are pushing the lockdown and those are mostly of the Democratic camp.
If Trump does win he will have four more years to change the complexion of the country for the good. All right, it’s a dream, but certainly not even close to impossible.
Remember President Hillary? Oh yeah, she lost. Don’t throw in the towel yet.
You wish. Not gonna happen.
Bob has been a “communications and crisis specialist” for the Swamp his entire career. And this article proves that he is still wearing that hat. Dismissed!
Started my career with Chuck Grassley (after some entry-level stuff) and moved on to Chief Writer at the 84 Reagan Campaign.
With stops along the way (amid 35 years in PR) with Orrin Hatch (the conservative 80s version), Michele Bachmann and the conservative (virulently anti-Establishment) side of VA state and local politics. Left the Republican Party in 2013 because it was too Establishment and ultimately back-stabbed the candidate I was slaving long volunteer hours for, Ken Cuccinelli. (That well-known squish.)
Correspondence Masters in Religion from that bastion of liberalism, Liberty University, with a side career in fundy evangelism and missions.
Not saying I wanted this to happen. (Anyone reading my full body of work would know this.) Saying it has happened.
Anything else?
You left the Republican party, which says it all. You write as if you’re taking the middle of the road..but in essence you’re an opinion writer with a dishonest slant!
All that verbiage, lol. Tell us Do you believe Survivors and where were/are you on C.B. Ford?
I’ll hold up my laughter till you comment!!
Republicans refuse to vet out of their own way. The habitually seek permission from Democrats to act against Democrat corruption…and they never get permission.
Oh Bob, you have so many inaccuracies in your piece here that I’m sad for you.
I’m game. Share specifics.
Armed insurrection. Get ready for war. Eliminate all traitors, regardless of their political affiliation.
While I will concede many points the author makes as accurate, and quite compelling, there is a huge flaw in the analysis that many people make when looking in to the future. They take what’s happening now and draw a straight liner line to predict what will happen at some point in the future. In reality that line is often a squiggly line and rarely results in the predicted projection of current events. He may be correct but many things will occur between now and Nov 3rd that can and will change the trajectory of events as they are judged today.
Not a straight-line analysis at all. I predict at the end that it will get worse. And unless Trump gets smart soon, it will.
But that’s a subject for a future (forthcoming) analysis.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Can you elaborate on your comment that “unless Trump gets smart soon?” Gets smart how? And I’m being absolutely serious, because since you suggest that he’s already lost the election, how can he get smart? What does he need to change?
I agree that Trump needs to do something, not sure what though. The left has found a strategy that is working to weaken Trump, even if it means destroying the economy. The “pacts” among left coast and Northeast governors will serve to keep the economy down even if the south and flyover country reopen completely. Trump is a smart guy, but that may not be enough this time. They will destroy the economy to destroy Trump and regain power and the media will blame Trump. And they have learned exactly how much fear it takes to control the population, they will use this again as needed to gain and maintain power.
I guess that this guarantees that you’ll get copious requests to appear on the MSM Fake News shows to spout your views. Your plan all along. Congrats! Mission accomplished.
My phone is ringing off the proverbial hook. (Not.)
I’ve always heard that it ain’t over til the fat lady sings. She is merely clearing her throat right now. There is much work to be done by indies, libertarians, and conservatives that lean right to bring more to the fold, but there are 5 months left. We have been given a gift by those leftist to hammer people over the head with on the restriction of freedom, because most indies are Indies because they DON’T like being told what to do.
“One can always choose to avoid reality, but what one cannot avoid are the consequences of choosing to avoid reality.” –AYN RAND
For the past half century, “we the people” have marched off to the polls to cast ballots that required us to hold our noses while doing as much. “Yes, my guy is bad, but not nearly as bad as YOUR guy, don’t you see?”
Apathetic society, meet consequences, it’s about time the two of you finally met. But at least try to be polite, seeing as how the two of you hate each other.
Bob is living back in the day when the media set the stage, those days are history. The public knows exactly who is to blame, and it is not Trump. By midsummer, the red states will be enjoying the benefits of the weather and freedom, while blue state residents languish in limbo…..and furious at their state governors and legislatures. You can expect a vengeance vote unlike any ever seen before. The democrat party might not survive.
Your analysis is perfect, and your resume is even more impressive. Only the President trumps your resume (he needs to get smart?) and the fat guy (according to Pelosi) hasn’t even begun to sing. He’s too busy being President in a crisis. When he does it will be ‘the greatest show on earth.’ Gary Cooper (Flynn even looks the part) against an assortment of unpalatable Nadlers, Schiffs, Brennans, Clappers and Comeys. Throw in bimbos and bribes, Mifsuds and Halpers, Pages of Strokhs and Pelosi and Meuller and you have a story Lecarre might have written if he would have thought it the least bit imaginable. If the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal won’t print it, the New York Post will. Throw in a recovery in our health and well-being over the Summer and neither Biden or a last-minute brokered replacement has a chance, unless Americans are too stupid to realize the stakes of the coming election.
As his insolent claim that the only way to be Black is to support him shows, Biden is a poor excuse for a candidate. He can choice the fork in the road of more exposure and reveal himself to be a declining old man who never had much intellect, just twisted to meet whatever the public notions were at any moment and who never actually successfully managed much of anything other than family graft or he can hide in the basement forever and let the Trump campaign reveal him. It is a tough road for Trump and the GOP Senate; but they have talent and the other side lacks it.
Unfortunately, I agree. Witness 64% approval for Gov. Whitmer in Detroit Free Press poll.
The unpleasant reality for conservatives is that this is now a profoundly left-wing country that no longer believes in freedom but a government that promises all bliss all the time and that regards any risk at all as too great to take. Such is what we have embraced when we allow women to run things, and it won’t be long before we start hearing talk about how men (or at least white men) should be banned from voting because toxic masculinity and that they’re interfering with the completion of the progressive project.
France 1940, elderly frightened Marshals surrendered a superior army. We used to inoculate
our children against Demoralization and defeatism, but the “sky is falling” book has been removed from public schools. If the author is being honest, I feel sorry for him. He must be terrified.