Bob MaistrosA Blue Wave may – or may not – be swelling next week. Nevertheless, crisscrossing the country to stave it off is President Donald J. Trump – who, like all incumbents, in a very real way is on the ballot, and dominates headlines like no other political figure before him.
And to get that job done, The Donald must laser-focus the electorate on 5 ‘I’s in this final stretch.
Two “I”s must be neutralized. One must be brought back top-of-mind. And two must be hammered home as the defining Democratic priorities of the next two years.
Inflation and Iran: These two go together because the proximate cause of current “affordability” complaints is the president’s determination to defeat America’s Planetary Enemy #1 for the past 47 years, resulting in persistently high energy prices even though more oil now flows through the Strait of Hormuz than before the conflict.
But here’s the message the commander-in-chief and Republican surrogates must deliver, as forcefully articulated by prominent national security analyst Mark Dubowitz via Ben Domenech:
“Imagine a scenario where … Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was still alive.” (Which he’s not.)
“And he was still moving forward with his nuclear weapons program and intercontinental ballistic missile program (that) threatened the United States (and) a massive missile shield to protect that nuclear program…” (Which Iran can’t.)
“a strong economy…” (Now experiencing currency collapse, hyperinflation, and crippling contraction under America’s blockade.)
“and a regional network of terror proxies responsible for killing and maiming Americans over the years that was still powerful and still deadly.” (Now largely dismantled.)
“That was the trajectory we were on before President Trump made his decision to counterattack.” (And now effectively reversed.)
The president is already pithily short-handing the linkage between temporarily higher prices and his righteous long-term cause: “I thought gas would be double and triple. And it’s a small price to pay for taking a nuclear weapon away from maniacs.”
But voters should be equally forcefully reminded that Democrats under Barack Obama and Joe Biden intentionally pursued permanently “skyrocketing” fossil fuel prices. And lest one forget: the extant ringleader of the Green Raw Deal scam is out leading the charge for, and even bankrolling, the Democratic Socialists (a redundancy) who want to bring it back full force.
Immigration: Alongside the economy, controlling the border was the driving issue in the Orange Colossus’s 2024 triumph, and a promise kept. Huge majorities once supported mass deportations.
Democrat demagoguery and deadly disruptions in enforcement have succeeded in nudging narrow majorities to the view that the government’s efforts in this direction have gone too far.
Still, the reality of the border chaos under the first DSA administration – Joe Biden’s – should be brought back top-of-mind. Video of Chinese migrants sprinting through gaps in barriers, throngs of thousands of illegals overrunning boundary communities, and ghost flights ferrying thousands more to the interior should be on a continual loop over every conceivable channel between now and Election Day. Alongside reminders that the radicals driving the party’s direction have made defunding any immigration enforcement a top priority. (Steven Miller, call your office.)
Impeding: Even if Democrats control Congress, they won’t have the numbers to trump a Trumpian veto. So it’s virtually guaranteed that they will resort to a device employed twice in the last year alone: shutdowns.
Democrats engineered a record blockage of federal funding from October 1 to November 12 last year to attempt to force a permanent extension of “temporary” COVID-era Obamacare premium tax credits – described by the Cato Institute as “a fiscal boondoggle that doles out taxpayer-funded health insurance to high-income earners.”
Then they were back at it just two months later with a prolonged partial shutdown disrupting the Department of Homeland Security. Their cause that time? Yep: effectively gutting ICE operations. (See “Immigration” above.)
Why can Trump virtually guarantee that a House “held hostage” by the DSA will deploy the same shutdown showdown strategy? Because current Senate Democratic honcho Chuck Schumer was twice dragged across the coals not just by radicals but also mainstreamers – with some calling for his removal – for agreeing to keep open or re-open the government.
With the breath of wildly ambitious fellow Empire Stater Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hot on his electoral collar (if she doesn’t reach for the presidency), it’s a mistake Chucky is unlikely to repeat.
Most of all, Impeachment: The president hits the nail on the head when he insists, “If we don’t win, they’ll end up impeaching me.” For the same reason as the “Impeding” strategy: Democrats can’t really get anything of substance done. So they’ll let their Trump Derangement Syndrome run wild.
Don’t buy the pretense that some Democratic candidates and leaders will eschew impeachment. This is the party that, when it controlled the House, impeached Trump a second time on phony charges after he had left office.
In fact, House Speaker-in-Waiting Hakeem Jeffries has given away the game, admitting, “We haven’t ruled anything out when it comes to all of the tools available to us to hold people accountable.”
Far-left Jamie Raskin, erstwhile Trump impeachment manager and potential chairman of the Judiciary Committee that would oversee such proceedings, uses the same core term: “Everybody on our side understands that impeachment is a critical tool in the toolbox for constitutional self-defense against a president acting like… an imperious, lawless, arrogant king.”
Translation: it’s a done deal.
While one poll claims 54% of Americans say Trump has committed impeachable offenses, they hate impeachment in practice. Bill Clinton’s impeachment in his second term — on real, actual evidence of obstruction of justice — boosted his approval rating and was enough to get Newt Gingrich routed from his speakership. And Democratic lawfare efforts may actually have fueled Trump’s own electoral comeback.
So next to the loop of Biden border chaos and chicanery, the certainty of otherwise impotent Democratic majorities gone TDS wild with an Impedance + Impeachment strategy needs to fill the airwaves and every pore of social media between now and November 3. And the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania needs to continue to lead the way.
Bob Maistros was chief writer for the historic 1984 re-election campaign and speechwriter for three U.S. Senators and numerous prominent business and political leaders worldwide.
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