Take the high road, but keep the zingers coming
The Friday Letter / No. 449 / From Atlanta
If there was any doubt in conservative minds about who should lead the ticket in 2024, Donald Trump erased it in Dallas last weekend at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee annual convention. Trump came away as the favorite of 98 percent of constitutional conservatism's true believers, the folks who make things happen in the party now, the Party of Trump.
If he runs, Trump is assured the support of this most committed base whose principles are uncompromising. But he can't win with only them. Yes, there was election fraud. The evidence is strong and growing. Election law and state constitution violations in Pennsylvania are documented and indisputable. Midnight vote manufacturing in Georgia is getting harder for Democrats and Georgia's weak Republican governor and secretary of state to conceal. Despite Michigan's establishment GOP wing assuring us that the election there was true and fair, too many questions remain. But it is also true that Trump lost too many single women who supported him in 2016. He has to get them back in 2024.
Trump needs to accept this reality. He can be excused for continuing to state the obvious, that the Democrat-Media Alliance, the intelligence apparatus, academia, military leadership, teacher and government employee unions, Big Tech and Big Business would stop at nothing to destroy him, both his presidency and his family. But Trump needs to subcontract this message to surrogates. Mention it briefly in speeches, then shift to his vision for a second term.
Let his supporters remind voters that Mark Zuckerberg spent $400 million to defeat him. Trump's quip that Biden won 95 percent of the vote in some precincts “because he campaigned so well from his basement” is vintage Trump humor. Use it as a 1-liner, then move on. Plenty of us are willing to help carry this water.
Starting, of course, by reminding voters that he engineered the most successful administration in at least the last century. He does that well and should continue it, albeit in more abbreviated form.
Trump did this in his speech Sunday, but the message was camouflaged by his endless repeating of the old complaints about a stolen election. It probably was, as we are beginning to learn by new revelations coming out of Georgia and other states that he won in 2016. But nearly an hour into it, he was still carping.
People who follow the 2020 election controversy fall into three groups: those who will always believe the election was stolen, people who will never believe it was stolen, and (probably a very small group) people who will be persuaded by evidence as it emerges. Trump isn't going to change any minds in the meantime.
Trump knows how to explain complicated issues in language for the common man. He could improve on this Reaganesque skill by crafting his 2024 message (and in helping conservative candidates in 2022) into distinct parts, sprinkled with personal stories and uncomplicated graphics:
How he created prosperity and opportunity for all Americans.
How he protected our borders.
How he confronted the growing military and economic threats of China.
How he brought peace to the Middle East with the Abraham Accords.
How he got us out of very bad trade and climate deals.
And then he needs to explain how he will build on these accomplishments:
How he will take down Big Tech and restore our First Amendment right of free speech and assembly.
How he will save our children from the poison forced upon them in the government schools.
down Big Tech.
At CPAC, Trump threw out some zingers:
“In a matter of mere months, Joe Biden has brought our country to the brink of ruin.”
“The radical left and the failed political establishment hates our movement for a simple reason because together we took on the corrupt special interests.”
“In the face of the Biden administration’s far left campaign to transform our country and erase our history, we are not backing down. We will never back down. When we regain control of Congress, we will immediately regain control of our border.”
“We will completely defund and bar critical race theory. 1776, not 1619, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s all they talk about. Race. The whole show. race, race. We don’t talk about our country being great anymore. We don’t talk about how America can lead the world. We don’t talk about stopping crime or the hundreds and hundreds of people that are being shot in Democrat run cities and what to do about it.”
“We will hold China accountable for the damage and suffering they have caused, and make them pay trillions of dollars in reparations to us and to the world. We will break up the big tech monopolies, and bring back free speech. We can’t let this continue. We will take back our elections, and finally, we will always include a thing called voter ID.”
That's what Trump can do. Pound, pound, pound, drive the points home with the clarity of brevity. Trump knows how to fight in alleys, and he doesn't need to abandon that tactic, particularly in defending himself from ad hominem attacks and false accusations. Leave the election fraud trench warfare to others, rise above it, as it will take care of itself as unstoppable evidence continues to grow.
What the rest of us can do is make sure the Socialist Democrats don't get their wish of fomenting a nomination fight between Trump and DeSantis. Whether it's Trump or DeSantis, constitutional conservatives – not the mushy wing of Romney, Cassidy, Murkowski, Collins and Sasse – must start thinking seriously now about who will be our best choice to end the madness. This is some serious dinner table talk.
Short takes on the news
Calling the law unconstitutional, a 3-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a nearly 50-year-old law in Virginia that bans licensed gun dealers from selling firearms to adults 18-21. A lower court had upheld the law, the Associated Press reports. Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee, calls the right to bear arms is a “cherished constitutional right” that vests at age 18 and said the court refuses “to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status.” The ruling faces an uncertain future in the Democrat-controlled full court, based in Richmond, Va.
Election fraud update
An audit and statewide recount of 2020 presidential votes shows that 35,000 voters may have violated Georgia law by voting in a county other than where they live, Margot Cleveland writes at The Federalist. Discounting temporary absences and a 30-day grace period to change registration, one data analyst says the potential illegal votes could exceed Biden's published 12,670-vote margin over Trump.
Mark Davis, the president of Data Productions Inc. and an expert in voter data analytics, told Cleveland that “Under Georgia law, a judge can order an election be redone if he or she sees there were enough illegal, irregular, or improperly rejected votes to cast the results of the election in doubt, or if they see evidence of ‘systemic irregularities.” He believes both occurred and that Trump might have won his challenge to Georgia's results if a court had been willing to hear the case.
Our web domain will soon change to votetrack.us, as we expand reporting on important votes in Congress, the federal courts, and state legislatures. In the meantime, the Friday Letter is published at substack.com and at The News-Guardian.