Revisiting Reaganism with George F. Will, Fifteen Years Later

Time to move on from Reagan,
wrote George F. Will as far back as 2007

Right before President George W. Bush's administration ended, George F. Will told conservatives that they needed to move on from Reagan.

Sadly, he didn't accept that the movement voters wanted meant Trump: a nationalist, populist, more isolationist foreign policy which focused on American citizens, stopped mass immigration (legal and illegal), and stopped with the reckless, globalist agenda-setting spending.

Will's call to move on from Ronald Reagan was published in 2007:

George F. Will:Conservatives must temper worship of Reaganism

WASHINGTON — In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis — gratitude decaying into idolatry — is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.

Reagan is dead, and Reaganism is dead. He met many of the challenges facing the country during the 1980s, and he scored a significant win in consigning international communism to the ash heap of history.

Today, the United State is looking at a harsher fate if We the People do not tackle the domestic marxism infecting our schools, universities, and other institutions.

That is one lesson of John Patrick Diggins' new book, "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History." Diggins, a historian at the City University of New York, treats Reagan respectfully as an important subject in American intellectual history. The 1980s, he says, thoroughly joined politics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory was radically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine.

Burke believed that the past is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom. Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

This notion of "beginning the world again" would re-emerge with Barack Obama. Sadly, the change that he thought he would bring would be nothing more than corporate elitism spitting on the needs of everyday Americans. Reagan cared about America, he loved the American people, but the domestic issues we face today cannot be solved by the Reaganism of yesterday.

Diggins' thesis is that the 1980s were America's "Emersonian moment" because Reagan, a "political romantic" from the Midwest and West, echoed New England's Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Emerson was right," Reagan said several times of the man who wrote, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine — conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived from his conception of the supernatural.

George Will depended way too much on quotes. What a distraction!

Putting aside the stylistic problems, Will does drill down a deeper issue: conservatism without anxieties. The truth is that every human being should be in tune with the Laws of Nature and Nature's God. This repository of natural law defines and embeds the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. 

We want the Laws of Nature to be crystal clear to every American. Then would they be restored to the cultural and legal heritage of this country. So, for this part I find Will's criticism a little unfounded.

Diggins says Reagan imbibed his mother's form of Christianity, a strand of 19th-century Unitarianism from which Reagan took a foundational belief that he expressed in a 1951 letter: "God couldn't create evil so the desires he planted in us are good." This logic — God is good, therefore so are God-given desires — leads to the Emersonian faith that we please God by pleasing ourselves. Therefore there is no need for the people to discipline their desires. So, no leader needs to suggest that the public has shortcomings and should engage in critical self-examination.

I disagree with this take. The Scriptures could not be clearer regarding human direction and will in conjunction with God's will and desires:

"12Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12-13)

Diggins thinks that Reagan's religion "enables us to forget religion" because it banishes the idea of "a God of judgment and punishment." Reagan's popularity was largely the result of "his blaming government for problems that are inherent in democracy itself." To Reagan, the idea of problems inherent in democracy was unintelligible because it implied that there were inherent problems with the demos — the people.

Human nature is flawed as well as fulsome, no doubt about that. Human nature does need to be limited, not expanded upon. This notion of human expansion and cheery optimism led to higher spending during his administration, with no real interest in tackling the massive debt that has only grown much, much worse over the last forty years.

There was nothing — nothing — in Reagan's thinking akin to Lincoln's melancholy fatalism, his belief (see his Second Inaugural) that the failings of the people on both sides of the Civil War were the reasons why "the war came."

It's essential for a president to rally and cheer up the citizenry, certainly, so I do not believe that a president should beat down on the national electorate exclusively. There is room, and much need, for course corrections among the people, no doubt. There is a fallen aspect to human nature which cannot be ignored, of course, for for that reason the United States Constitution instituted so many checks and balances on political power.

As Diggins says, Reagan's "theory of government has little reference to the principles of the American founding." To the founders, and especially to the wisest of them, James Madison, government's principal function is to resist, modulate and even frustrate the public's unruly passions, which arise from desires.

See above.

"The true conservatives, the founders," Diggins rightly says, constructed a government full of blocking mechanisms — separations of powers, a bicameral legislature and other checks and balances — in order "to check the demands of the people." Madison's constitution responds to the problem of human nature. "Reagan," says Diggins, "let human nature off the hook."

"An unmentionable irony," writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. "Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it." Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government — a dispenser of unending entitlements — they will get ever larger government.

There is a great deal of truth to this indictment. Reagan did not cut the spending, and he only slowed the growth of government. Today, forty years after the last inflation crises under President Jimmy Carter, the American public is enduring the long-term cost and consequences of printing money ad libitum.

But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's First Inaugural) that they are all heroes? And after being assured that all their desires, which inevitably include desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?

Barack Obama would echo similar sentiments during his 2008 campaign and into this first and second inaugural. The cheery optimism that treats human beings as basically good, while the government and the environment are the truly flawed features, will create nothing but problems for true constitutional governance.

Similarly, Reagan said that the people never start wars, only governments do. But the Balkans reached a bloody boil because of the absence of effective government. Which describes Iraq today.

George Will was a vocal opponet of the War in Iraq, as was John McLaughlin and a number of other paleoconservatives. Strangely enough, George Will hated President Trump, who was the first President in thirty years to keep the United States out of war and scale back American military commitments around the world!

Because of Reagan's role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Diggins ranks him among the "three great liberators in American history" — the others being Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt — and among America's three or four greatest presidents. But, says Diggins, an Emersonian president who tells us our desires are necessarily good leaves much to be desired.

It depends on what the desires are, and it depends how individuals push to realize those desires. If people want to use the government to fulfill their desires, they will find and create nothing but frustration. After Reagan, we have yet to see a Republican President who has been committed to cutting the spending and shrinking the size and scope of the state.

Will Trump follow through, should he get re-elected in 2024?

If the defining doctrine of the Republican Party is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison. As Diggins says, Reaganism tells people comforting and flattering things that they want to hear; the Madisonian persuasion tells them sobering truths that they need to know.

The American people have many sobering truths to face, like the fact that demographic demise, via births and mass immigration, is hurting the structure of the country. The excessive spending due to the reckless entitlement promises must come to an end. 

Reagan said that government is the problem, but he never stopped growing that problem. The next generation of leaders and representatives in Washington DC and around the world will have to get used to saying NO to lobbyists, grifters, and consultants, and say NO to growing government.

Human nature needs a heavey dose of NO at this time, now more than any other, and Reaganism cannot provided that needed check and balance.

When President Jimmy Carter Came to Torrance

 

'Town Meeting' Is Carter's Centerpiece

By Edward Walsh

October 2, 1980

Jimmy Carter was never a high school basketball star. He is not tall, and even as a boy his taste in running was for the space and solitude of the distance events, not for jostling with nine other kids up and down a 74-foot strip of hardwood floor.

But now that he is a man and the president, Carter has become at home in the high school gymnasiums of America. Already in the fall campaign he has visited the gyms at Truman High School in Independence, Mo., Moody High School in Corpus Christi., Tex., and North High School in Torrance, Calif.

And today, which happened to be his 56th birthday. He was in the gym at Northern Community High School here, home of the Vikings, where he was as comfortable and at ease as any member of the girl's basketball team, winners of 56 straight, state champions the last two years.

The president was holding another of his "town meetings" and, as usual, it was an event.

The walls of the building were plastered with signs welcoming him, praising him, wishing him happy birthday. At one end of the gym, the school band sat cramped in a section of retractable wooden bleachers, poised to play "Hail to the Chief." There would be no basketball game here this afternoon, for the gym floor was covered with folding chairs where the respectful citizens of Flint would sit and listen to the president.

This was Carter's 22nd "town meeting" as president, and the fourth he has held during the one month of the general election campaign against Republican Ronald Reagan. The president told the cheering crowd that it was no accident he decided to come today to Flint, where he ended his 1976 campaign.

It is also no accident that the "town meeting" -- a format in which the president makes opening and closing statements and in between answers about a dozen questions from randomly selected citizens -- has become the centerplace, the main event, of the Carter campaign on the road.

The president is running as tightly a controlled campaign, and is at least as shielded from questions from the traveling press, as is Reagan. But it is part of Carter strategy to portray Reagan as a man out of his intellectual depth when it comes to national issues and to accuse the GOP nominee, as Carter did in a speech Tuesday night, of being "muzzled" by a staff that does his thinking for him.

The "town meeting" is the device the White House has hit up to contrast the "open" president with his "muzzled" opponent. Carter has used the device since the beginning of his presidency. He is more comfortable with it than with news conferences, and he is extremely skillful in exploiting the format.

Like other presidents before him, Carter has also said he gets better questions from ordinary citizens at these sessions than he does from Washington reporters. That, occasionally, is the case, but it is also true the questions posed at a "town meeting" can be as silly and shallow as any asked during a White House news conference.

Today's hour-long "town meeting" at Northern Community High was another virtuoso performance.

The first questioner, who began her inquiry about Cuban refugees in Spanish, gave the president a chance to show off his knowledge of Spanish, which won applause.

And elderly woman said she was concerned about the future of senior citizens, to which the president replied, "A lot of the future life for senior citizens will depend on the decisions that will be made in the ballot boxes of voting places on Nov. 4." He then launched into a discourse on his devotion to the Social Security System and other issues of particular concern to the elderly.

A man complained that Flint had not received due recognition as an automobile manufacturing center. Carter quickly agreed, expressed sympathy for the city's economic woes, and concluded by saying: " i was invited to meet here to have a man-to-man debate with Gov. Reagan. I'm here -- and anytime he's willing to meet me back here on a two-man debate proposition, I'll make my sixth visit to Flint, Mich."

Almost nothing fazes the president at a "town meeting" not even the two questions posed today about the economy of Flint, where last summer the unemployment rate hit almost 26 percent and where more than 22,000 people are still out of work, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Nor was Carter rattled by the truck driver who challenged administration policy on a complex issue involving umemployment benefits for workers in industries, such as trucking, that are indirectly affected by foreign imports. There was no suggestion of a change in policy from the president. Instead, he asked the man for his name and address so he could "go back and talk to the secretary of labor and give you a call."

The crowd loved it. They loved it when Marlene Laro, 9, asked Carter to explain "the difference between the Republicans and you so I can tell my parents how to vote." And they loved it when Carter, after his long answer to Marlene that he was more than happy to provide, shed his suit coat, a regular part of the theater at these events.

At the end, the crowd in the gym stood and sang "happy Birthday" to the president. With a broad grin, Carter thanked them and then he was gone. He is off Thursday to Dayton, Ohio, for another "town meeting."

Letters to the Editor for "Tear Down This Icon"

Two weeks ago, I wrote the first article in over a year for Townhall.com.

Tear Down This Icon: Replace Reagan with Trump

Here are two letters I received in response:

Whew! This is silly in the extreme. Trump was a fine president but he did not defeat Russia , crush the Dems, popularize Republicans or stay in office for 12 years (Bush was gifted the White House then blew it). The 12 years was a vital. The Donald did not give that to us. Not necessarily his fault but facts are facts. This effort by you is a monumental waste of time and print. We need Republican icons ,not fewer. Reagan as icon does nothing to detract from Trump so stop setting up a battle that only Dems will enjoy.

Russell Falconer

And here's another letter I received today!

Dear Mr. Schaper,

I recently read your article titled “Tear down this icon and replace with Trump…” and I felt it absolutely necessary to write and personally thank you for taking the time to write and publish this article of factual information.  I’m a writer and in all honestly it was a pleasure to read something about President Trump  that was positive and filled with facts and compliments, not facetious, insulting, & malicious, minutia.  I get most of my news from NewsMax TV.  However, I also read a lot of articles that show up in my inbox and for the most part, they are filled with lies and ambiguous opinions that are all spewed from the mouths of idiots who know absolutely nothing about anything!  

President Trump has done more for this country than any other President and it’s about damn time all of the Republicans get in sync with one another, throw away their stupid egos, and stand united as ONE PARTY, with President Trump as our #1 Leader!  I am fed up with the LEFTISTS and THE DEMOCRATS getting away with all sorts of criminal acts while the Republicans sit around and spend too much time on issues that are the least of our problems.  While most Republicans feel that the “abortion” issue was a win -win and a victory, they spent too much time discussing it when it’s an issue I personally  feel should not be part of a political stance.  This was just one example.  

There’s much more I can write  about when it comes to President Trump.  And  while I did my part both in 2016 and the 2020 elections by working as a digital activist for the Trump Campaign, now more than ever, I want to fight with ALL of my being to help President Trump (more-so) and the Republican party; provided that there are no more Republicans who turn their back on President Trump.  Otherwise, I can no longer support the GOP.  

Sincerely,

Madonna Gallis

Tear Down This Icon: Replace Reagan with Trump

In 2013, after Republicans lost their winnable race against Barack Obama to deny him a second term, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin sounded off with a daring opinion piece:

Tear Down This Icon

Normally, I would not give a fake conservative, closet NeverTrump liberal the time of day. But her article arguing for removing Ronald Reagan as a rallying point for the Republican Party resonated with me in the past.

Reagan was a big spender, even in Washington. He had liberal positions during his governorship. He supported amnesty for illegal aliens, and he even pressed for an open border of commerce, trade, etc. with Mexico. Many national-populist types are turning on Reagan for precisely these issues, and even his major columnist supporter George Will would denounce the clash between Reagan's rhetoric and the reality of his administration nearly thirty years after he was elected.

Now, let's take a closer look at Rubin's ruminations:

The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable. He was the only exemplar of modern conservatism to win the White House, and unlike liberal icons such as Roosevelt or Johnson or Obama, he presided over an economic boom and became beloved by voters not normally drawn to his party. No wonder that Reagan, long before his death in 2004, attained mythical status in the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

Nearly ten years after this statement, this mystical hold of Reaganism still grips the Republican Party, especially the National Federation of Republican Assemblies.

We should give some credit where it is due, anyway. Reagan presided over eight years of unprecedented economic growth. His foreign policy hearkened back to a more isolationist approach, in which he spoke softly but carried a big stick. His aggressive efforts to sanction and stop communism, especially the Soviet Union, are admirable. The USSR collapsed in large part because of Reagan's indefatigable commitment to consign communism to the ashheap of history.

Rubin continues:

But that myth has become a burden for the modern GOP. It has bound Reagan’s followers on the right to policies and positions that were time-specific. The old guard has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.

This is an accurate and effective criticism. The issues which Reagan faced in 1980 and 1984--inflation, recession, communism around the globe--were not the major issues of Election 2012. In fact, they are not the main issues today. As I mentioned above, Reagan's policies counter the goals and interests of conservatives today!

We want to secure the border, limit immigration (not just stop illegal immigration.) We want to expand gun ownership and assure gun rights, not deprive them. Also, China is a looming global (and globalist) threat which cannot be tamed with free trade.

Reagan's solutions and successes will not help the GOP today.

And with that, Rubin gave a stern warning to the Twenty-first Century GOP:

The Republican Party can remain a Ronald Reagan historical society, or it can try to endure as a force in national politics. But it can’t do both. The choice matters greatly, for there is no guarantee that the GOP will retain its ability to win national elections or that conservatism has a future as a national governing philosophy.

I could not agree more with this sentiment. It seems to me that Republicans want to live in the past. They do not want to move with the times, i.e. get fighting new fights. There is this hope that they can coast on prior victories.

However, I do not agree with Rubin that the party needs to move left on key cultural or economic issues. The last thing that the United States, or any country for that matter, needs is two liberal, progressive, leftist, communist parties, etc.

In her article tearing down Icon Reagan, she does not despise traditional values. She does make a great deal of noise about outreach to other demographics in the country, and even the RNC Chairman at the time, Reince Priebus, acknowledged that 

The Family Research Council rejects Rubin's suggestion, but focused on his campaign process to win as many states as possible throughout the country:

In a play on one of the Gipper’s greatest lines, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin urges us to “Tear Down this Icon.” The highly touted “From the Right” columnist urges conservatives and Republicans to get over the Reagan legacy.

By the recent showings of the party’s presidential nominees, one would think the GOP has certainly gotten over Ronald Reagan. When was the last time the Beltway campaign consultants, those high-priced hirelings, even attempted to win the whole country? Besotted by Red State/Blue State calculations, and armed with their white boards, the big domes never have come close to Reagan’s generous inclusiveness. Reagan thought of all the states as Red, White & Blue. He wanted to win them all, and twice nearly did.

Family Research Council writers are correct, in that the Republican Party has eschewed fighting for the entire country, and instead got comfortable with barely getting by. That never works in politics for the long term. California Republicans have followed that model since 2002, and now California is a deep-blue whole of progressive despair. Controlled opposition does not win the fight.

Rubin's point still deserves attention, i.e. the Republican Party needs to get beyond celebrating Reagan's old victories. There are new culture war issues that need to be fought, and just basking in the shadows of Reagan's past is not going to help the party--or the country--today.

So, I do agree with the general sentiment: time to move on from Reagan. I have written about this issue a number of times.

I submit that it's time to recognize President Trump as the new standard-bearer for the Republican Party. He accomplished a number of domestic policy goals which matter today. He fought to build the wall along our Southern border, not just talk about it. He focused on illegal immigration and mass immigration, which was decimating border communities and harming working people.

He is the most pro-life President we have ever had in the White House. He was the first President to address the March for Life in Washington DC. He repeatedly took efforts to cut funding to Planned Parenthood and other abortuary hate groups and institutions. 

He focused on protecting and enhancing religious liberty in a nation where respect for the divine has been unduly tarnished and neglected. 

He kept the United States out of war for four years. 

He fought against the encroachment of domestic communism, including Critical Racist Theorty and Woke ideologies. Reagan fought international communism, and that deserves merit and support. But we need to fight this corrupt, corrosive, evil ideology at home now, and we need a real culture war commitment to fighting and winning this fight.

Republicans have wanted to bask in the glowing of Reagan's old victories. President Trump's victories then and now deserve our new--and renewed--focus.

Most importantly, though, Trump should be the new standard-bearer because He Fights. He was a relentless pugilist in the fight to put America and Americans First. That spirit of trudging through tough times, of putting up one's dukes to fight and win, we need that kind of animus in conservative politics. We don't need controlled opposition, we don't need politicians who play by Queensbury Rules, while the Left routinely breaks the law and does whatever they want.

Reagan had his place, but it's time to move on. We need a new standard, a new pattern, a new example of conservatism that fights to win, that struggles to shape the culture, that moves forward to ensure and foster a movement.

It's time to tear down Reagan and replace him with Trump.

How I Became 100% Pro-Life

A year ago, I sparked an incredible discussion on Facebook. I asked people about the abortion issue, re: are you pro-choice or pro-life.

I was surprised by the number of people who were not only pro-life, but who did not even recognize the option for abortion in the cases of rape or incest. For some people, they did not support abortion even if the life of the mother was in jeopardy!

I was really surprised by those remarks.

Earlier on, I was having dinner with a veteran who lived in Santa Clarita, California. The issue of abortion came up during our discussion. I told him that I was pro-life, but that I supported abortion in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

The veteran responded: "It's not the baby's fault if she was conceived in rape."

I countered, "Sure, but it's not the mother's fault, either."

The discussion on that issue stopped there.

Little by little, I encountered people who also shared that they opposed abortion, even in the cases of rape and incest. This did cause me to rethink my views on the matter.

A few months ago, I found the testimony of a prophet and evangelic speaker named Andre Ashby on YouTube. I was looking him up because I remembered that he had prophesied over me in a church meeting in Torrance, CA in 1996. I was just thinking about the great words that he had spoken over me, and I wanted to see if he was still active in ministry. I watched his video testimony, and I learned that he had been conceived in rape! 

Wow! That really caused this whole issue to hit home for me. I was now personally impacted, blessed by someone who had been brought into this world, and who had been a blessing in this world, but was born to parents in which the father had raped his mother. Unbelievable!

With that personal implication, I realized that I simply could not support abortion because a mother had been raped. A child is a child is a child, and he deserves to live, even if how he was conceived was due to great harm and sin.

It's not the kid's fault, just as that veteran had told me.

Later on, I listened to the testimonies of two women, one who had gotten an abortion after she was raped, and one who chose not to abort her child after she was raped. The testimony of the woman who had gotten the abortion announced that the loss of her child was like getting raped a second time.

What a horrific thought! It had never occured to me how fundamentally intrusive and abusive an abortion procedure is for a mother. For me, the issue about abortion had focused on the needs of the mother, not just the child. Relying on that metric, I saw a perfectly justifiable reason for opposition abortion in the cases of rape and incest.

Finally, I spoke with another pro-life activist on this matter, and he made it crystal clear for me:

"Abortion is murder. If you do not support murder, then you cannot support abortion. It's as simple as that."

And with that, I became 100% pro-life, an abortion abolitionist.

George Will is An Affront to Conservatism

In the previous post, I mentioned how Conservative Inc.

Now, I want to focus one particular miscreant of Conservative Inc.: Agnostic turned fool (or rather, atheist) George Will.

Now, about the point that William F. Buckley and his conservative gang have been part of the problem, not the solution, I would like to share with you an article written by George F. Will, himself another part of the do-nothing Conservative Inc. cabal.

In this column, Will showed how he and William F. Buckely were never really committed to fighting back -- only in being respectable, and how their disdain for Trump exposes their true egotism, while ignoring the needs of the whole country (FYI, this article was written during the height of the 2016 campaign, August 2015 :

Donald Trump Is an Affront to Anyone Devoted to William F. Buckley’s Legacy

By GEORGE WILL

In every town large enough to have two traffic lights there is a bar at the back of which sits the local Donald Trump, nursing his fifth beer and innumerable delusions. Because the actual Donald Trump is wealthy, he can turn himself into an unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate. It is his right to use his riches as he pleases. His squalid performance and its coarsening of civic life are costs of freedom that an open society must be prepared to pay.

Right away, we see the coarse and diffident arrogance of this Beltway elitist. He looks down on small towns, and he looks down on the individuals who live in these towns as empty people who have wasted their lives and contribute nothing but their solitary delusions of grandeur. This very arrogance is what turned off many Republican voters to Romney, and perhaps also hurt John McCain and Bob Dole in their respective bids for President, too.

When, however, Trump decided that his next acquisition would be not another casino but the Republican presidential nomination, he tactically and quickly underwent many conversions of convenience (concerning abortion, health care, funding Democrats, etc.). His makeover demonstrates that he is a counterfeit Republican and no conservative.

Three years later, these conversions were about more than mere convenience. He has initiated and completed a number of conservative policies for the greater good of the country which many other conservatives had talked about but never accomplished.

He is an affront to anyone devoted to the project William F. Buckley began six decades ago with the founding in 1955 of National Review — making conservatism intellectually respectable and politically palatable. Buckley’s legacy is being betrayed by invertebrate conservatives now saying that although Trump “goes too far,” he has “tapped into something,” and therefore . . .

Making conservatism intellectually respectable and politically palatable meant ... losing often, and losing gracefully the Left. That way, the major newspapers and television stations would continue to invite conservative pundits like George Will, Bill Kristol, and Jonah Goldberg onto their programs, although them to pontifate their points and sell their books--but at the same time ensure that none of them were making a difference to shape the culture for the better.

Therefore what? This stance — if a semi-grovel can be dignified as a stance — is a recipe for deserved disaster. Remember, Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond “tapped into” things.

This riff is a slimey character smear. President Trump is not a racist. President Trump's economic and political populism has actually restored constutional foundations in this country, too.

In 1948, Wallace, FDR’s former vice president, ran as a third-party candidate opposing Harry Truman’s re-election. His campaign became a vehicle for, among others, Communists and fellow travelers opposed to Truman’s anti-Soviet foreign policy. Truman persevered, leaders of organized labor cleansed their movement of Soviet sympathizers, and Truman was re-elected.

He won also in spite of South Carolina’s Democratic governor Thurmond siphoning off Democratic votes (and 39 electoral votes) as a Dixiecrat protesting civil-rights commitments in the Democratic party’s platform. Truman won because he kept his party and himself from seeming incoherent and boneless.

No. Truman won because the Republican candidate that year, Thomas Dewey, was a weak nominee who took no strong positions or proclaimed any committed advocacy for doing what was best for the country. He did not give a strong platform or presence to distinguishing himself from Harry Truman at all. 

Conservatives who flinch from forthrightly marginalizing Trump mistakenly fear alienating a substantial Republican cohort. But the assumption that today’s Trumpites are Republicans is unsubstantiated and implausible. Many are no doubt lightly attached to the political process, preferring entertainment to affiliation. They relish in their candidate’s vituperation and share his aversion to facts. From what GOP faction might Trumpites come? The establishment? Social conservatives? Unlikely.

More elitist arrogance. On the contrary, many Republican voters were deeply enmeshed in the political process, and they saw one establishment candidate after another refuse to follow through on policies, platforms, or promises for the greater good of the country. Republicans were continuing to push different forms of amnesty. Working-class Americans saw their jobs being shut down and shipped overseas. The public safety issues eroding middle American gnawed on many Americans, and the basic dignity and quality of life which Americans had worked hard for was slipping away from them, while government-allied crony capitalists continued to get richer, and the rest of us paid for it. They wanted a bold change to this status quo, and they elected Donald Trump.

I do submit, however, to the truth that the new cohort of Trump voters does not fall neatly within the Republican framework. Disaffected Democrats and populist independents lined up behind Donald Trump, as well. There is a massive political realignment taking place, and conservatives can benefit if they pay attention and reach out to core constituencies across the country on the trade and illegal immigration issues.

A party has a duty to exclude interlopers, including cynical opportunists deranged by egotism.

And grifters, which include all the so-called "gay conservatives". and bookish types like George Will!

They certainly are not tea partyers, those earnest, issue-oriented, book-club organizing activists who are passionate about policy. Trump’s aversion to reality was displayed during the Cleveland debate when Chris Wallace asked him for “evidence” to support his claim that Mexico’s government is sending rapists and drug dealers to America. Trump, as usual, offered apoplexy as an argument.

George Will has demonstrated a greater aversion to reality. He doesn't seem to understand that conservatives in particular and citizens in general are fed up with the caving in. They want to see results, not just talking points and verbal jousting matches on live television.

A political party has a right to (in language Trump likes) secure its borders. Indeed, a party has a duty to exclude interlopers, including cynical opportunists deranged by egotism. This is why closed primaries, although not obligatory, are defensible: Let party members make the choices that define the party and dispense its most precious possession, a presidential nomination. So, the Republican National Committee should immediately stipulate that subsequent Republican debates will be open to any and all — but only — candidates who pledge to support the party’s nominee.

President Trump did the right thing when he had indicated that he would not necessarily support the GOP nominee (if it wasn't he). Keep in mind that four years later, sellout RINOs like John Kasich have openly opposed President Trump and are contemplating whether to speak at the Democratic National Committee Convention in August.

This year’s Republican field is the most impressive since 1980, and perhaps the most talent-rich since the party first had a presidential nominee, in 1856. But 16 candidates are experiencing diminishment by association with the 17th.

And guess what? The 17th became President, because the political realignment that so many of the Republican base were craving finally came to fruition. This realignment bothers beltway elites like George Will. He wants to sit at the cool kids' table and make lots of rich kids' money. All of this takes place while the country descends into abject chaos and culture war cacophony.

Soon the campaign will turn to granular politics, the on-the-ground retail work required by the 1.4 percent of the nation’s population that lives in Iowa and New Hampshire. Try to imagine Trump in an Iowa living room, with a macaroon in one hand and cup of hot chocolate balanced on a knee, observing Midwestern civilities while talking about something other than himself.

That imagining was not necessary, and would turn out to be irrelevant, since Trump did not campaign in Iowa to begin with. As many pundits have shared, and as Trump probably figured out, it did not make a difference whether he won Iowa's caucuses or not. Those election contests help to clear the field rather than isolate the strongest candidate for the nomination. President Trump was the only candidate who would not only defeat sixteen other candidates, but beat down the Hillary Clinton-DNC juggernaut which was propped up on nothing but lies, deceit, theft, and murder. Only Trump had the guts and gumption to get it done.

Television, which has made Trump (he is one of three candidates, with Mike Huckabee and John Kasich, who have had television shows), will unmake him, turning his shtick into a transcontinental bore. But not before many voters will have noticed weird vibrations pulsing from the GOP.

On the contrary, Trump has continued to manipulate and take down the media like no other. He has exposed their rank hypocrisy so well. Conservative Inc. finks like George Will want to keep close ties and happy connections with the corporate media because it's their bread and butter. They want to keep writing articles, giving speeches, selling books, etc. Of course, all of that money-making has come at a price for the rest of the country.

So, conservatives today should deal with Trump with the firmness Buckley dealt with the John Birch Society in 1962. The society was an extension of a loony businessman who said Dwight Eisenhower was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” In a 5,000-word National Review “excoriation” (Buckley’s word), he excommunicated the society from the conservative movement.

This is the most damaging indictment yet that I can find against George Will. The John Birch Society is in no wise a racist organization, or is it some "looney extension" of conspiracy theories. The organization emerged out of frustration with the fact that Republicans did not dismantle and destroy the New Deal Socialism of FDR and the Democratic Party. The fact that so many Republicans were swept into office in the early 1950s was a clear testimony to the fact that Americans wanted normalcy and a return to constitutionalism, not globalism or communism.

And yet, the communistic underpinnings of the New Deal were not removed during the Eisenhower Administration. In fact, they grew worse under the Johnson Administration--much worse. And where was George Will in the midst of that discussion, by the way?

Buckley received an approving letter from a subscriber who said, “You have once again given a voice to the conscience of conservatism.” The letter was signed, “Ronald Reagan, Pacific Palisades, Cal.”

Not sure why Ronald Reagan would share such a sentiment. Then again, President Trump has said, written, done many liberal things throughout his life, but has turned out to be an effective conservative juggernaut in the White House (Aside from the spending, of course).

With the article above dissected and dispensed with, I would share that indeed Georg Will is the affront to true conservatism, not Donald Trump.

George Will wrote a lot, talked a lot, pontificated even more, and has had nothing to show for all these efforts. Conservative Inc. talking heads like Will have not conserved anything. In fact, now is the time to push back hard not just on the Left but the Conservative establishment, which has been content to get nothing done but make money and make a profile for themselves while the country falls apart.

With all the rioting going on in the streets, with the increased kow-towing to the Left on one cultural issue after another from Conservative Inc., it is no surprise that more people are getting tired of the chattering classes and want to see real change, real leadership from their ... leaders!

George Will is an affront to conservatism, and President Trump has exposed the conservative chatterati like George Will and Jonah Goldberg for who they really are: a bunch of do-nothing talking heads who never wanted to do better for this country. And with the decline of print media, their influence is on the inevitable wane, and all for the better.

Victory, Not Containment: The Pro-Family Movement Must Tear Down the LGBT Wall

The year 2019 was the 30^th Anniversary of two pivotal moments in the fight against Communist tyranny. The first is The Tiananmen Square Massacre, a protest-turned-brutal reminder that Communism was unsparing in its malevolence. Chinese citizens protested Beijing’s communistic despotism, expressing the natural, fundamental longing to be free. They protested for democratic reforms. One man with a briefcase blocked a phalanx of army tanks, showing ready courage to resist communist tyranny.  In response, the Chinese military stormed the public square, slaughtering thousands. That day, the world could no longer ignore the obvious: the free world could not coexist with Communism and hope for détente. Like a virulent cancer, Communism needed to be exterminated, not accommodated.

In contrast to those June protests, November 1989 witnessed a stirring victory against Communism. Germans celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union and demolished the Berlin Wall. Generations young and old embraced a new future, one in which the horrid divide between the Communist East and the Free West came crashing down in front of them. As travel restrictions between East and West feel, freedom fighters scaled the hateful Berlin Wall, vaunting the victory of liberty over tyranny. For thirty years, citizens of the Eastern Bloc had rushed the Berlin Wall in their attempts to flee Communism tyranny, only to be gunned down by Soviet turrets. That day, no one could stop the Germans rushing from East to West. With welcome glee, Germans on both sides took picks and axes and began breaking down the Berlin Wall.

All of a sudden, the symbol and substance of Communism came down, but the blows that brought down the Berlin Wall started much earlier in a debate half a world away. In 1967, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan was discussing with US Senator Robert F. Kennedy the United States’ role in fighting communism. Reagan declared: “I think the Berlin Wall should disappear.”

Reagan: "I would like to see the Berlin Wall Disappear"

 Europeans in general, and Western intellectuals in particular laughed. For them, Communism was a fait accompli. Everyone just needed to accept it. Rather than fighting back to eradicate that evil ideology, Western powers placated communist regimes and contained its spread as best as they could. That weak, ineffective approach didn’t cut it for Reagan. He wanted to consign Communism to “the ash heap of history,” not just stop its spread. He was committed to that vision until the day he was chopping off bits of the Berlin Wall’s bricks.

Today, the Pro-Family Movement is acting like the vast majority of Western leaders during Reagan’s day in regards to Communism. Instead of fighting against the LGBT onslaught to win, pro-family groups settle for failure and weak-kneed containment. Only thirty years ago, the LGBT lobby had peddled the lie that people are born gay, and therefore to oppose gays was total bigotry. Despite ample evidence proving otherwise, pro-family forces have given up fighting for what is right.

And what has been the result? First, pro-family have capitulated over and over:

 “We won’t throw you in jail for homosexual conduct, but keep it in your bedrooms.”

Then came the gay pride parades.

Gay Pride Parade in Toronto (notice the naked men around children in plain sight)

“You can have your gay marriage, but let us have our religious liberty!”

Then came the lawsuits against churches, charities, and small businesses.

“You can have your sex change operations, but don’t do it to my kids.”

Then came the court orders which forced parents to allow their children to undergo these horrendous, mutilating procedures. And now everyday people are begging for their liberty, only to face criminal prosecution for speaking out against homosexuality, transgenderism, and other paraphilias.

To succeed, the anti-LGBT movement must regain Reagan’s foresight and conviction. Reagan understood that Communism was a global ideology committed to world domination. Communist dictators were never going stay with their own borders, so Reagan knew that Communism needed to be crushed. Yet today the pro-family movement naïvely and cowardly believes that the LGBT Movement can be tolerated, as long as it remains within fixed boundaries. But the LGBT agenda has spread by force, ignoring the will of voters in the United States, throughout Europe, and now in South East Asia, where millions of Taiwanese voters supported natural marriage, but the government imposed gay marriage anyway.

Today, the LGBT Movement’s ruthless domination cannot be ignored. Major corporations celebrate Pride Month, shoving the corrupted six-color rainbow in consumers’ faces. Social media platforms celebrate all things LGBT and shut down anyone who disagrees. 

Drag Queens force their LGBT ideologies onto unwitting children in taxpayer-funded libraries. Parents cannot opt their children out of learning LGBT History and sexually explicit behaviors in government schools.

Only now is it finally dawning on people what MassResistance President Brian Camenker declared in 2013 said about the LGBT Agenda: “The slippery slope is real.”

"The slippery slope is real." -- Brian Camenker
Check out "What Gay Marriage Did to Massachusetts" video for more info

Like President Ronald Reagan confronting communism with the express intent of eradicating it, pro-family activists need to wake up and defeat the LGBT Agenda.  We have to strike at the core of this Big Gay Lie and knock it down. Consider what President Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev right in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: "Tear Down This Wall!"

Reagan did not worry about diplomatic platitudes. He didn’t play nice and say: "You can have your Communism on that side of the wall. Just don't bring it to our side." That weak, accommodationist containment strategy of the previous three decades gave the world Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, Che Guevara, and Tiananmen Square. Reagan’s bold, relentless conviction tore down the hated Berlin Wall, and with it the entire bloody fraud of Communism.

Today, the Pro-Family Movement must stop accommodation the LGBT Agenda, but tear down the LGBT wall. The whole agenda is a prison which has kept victimized millions, and now billions are forced to accommodate this tyranny or pay the price.  Communism is a lie. The LGBT Movement is rife with lies. The only way to stop lies is to fight them with the truth. Let’s follow Reagan’s example to consign this LGBT agenda to the ash heap of history.

Reflection on the Death of George Herbert Walker Bush

George Herbert Walker Bush has passed away, the latest President to serve only one term and the last one to serve in World War II. I am not saddened by his passing, although elements of his legacy are remarkable. He was the first President I recall from my childhood. Although I was born in 1980, and Ronald Reagan was the first President in my lifetime, I don’t remember the Gipper. I do remember George H.W. Bush from the outset of his administration, when he was sworn in as Reagan’s hopeful successor. In fact, in January 1989 I watched his inauguration ceremony along with the rest of my second-grade classmates.

What else comes to mind, however, when I think of the Elder President Bush? My Aunt Frannie from West Mifflin, Pennsylvania in late 1991, the last time that I visited her. She was irate in those days. Why? “Read my lips! No new taxes!” she griped to me. Next, she pointed out the rising taxes shrinking her already fixed retirement income. She later mentioned how every foreign-made car on the streets of Pittsburg (right down the valley from her home) put four Americans out of work. She probably would have voted for Trump if she were alive today, but she definitely hated Bush.

Another childhood memory: A group of protesters outside of my local post office were denouncing President Bush. “He is Nero-Minded!”, one pamphlet read. The demonstrators informed me more about this New World Order, an agenda troubles Americans even today. Our country should never surrender its unique place—and role—in a world fraught with tyranny and seduced by socialism. No doubt, Phyliss Schlafy was extremely dismissive of this so-called Republican, especially since he remained committed to promulgating the aggressive, interventionist foreign policy of the Kissinger era two decades before. Governments which fight wars for the few at the expense of the rest cannot continue.

Despite his rise to prominence with pro-America conservative Ronald Reagan, Bush remained vocally committed to the Globalism fantasy, the notion that nations should further cooperate, even submit their sovereignty to a larger global agency in the pursuit of world peace. The contradiction manifested itself so clearly when Bush posited a “New World Order” as a commitment to the rule of law, when such legal strictures require respect for individual nation-states, but certainly not to a global organization like the corrupt, feckless United Nations. Bush signed into law the legislative program which gave us Agenda 21 today. Bush was a civilized statist, to say the least, but a statist nonetheless.

His reticence on the world stage was not commendable, either, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the downfall of the Soviet Union, and the whole Communist enterprise. Some middling conservatives and contrived moderate Republicans look to Bush’s effusive demeanor during that time with fondness. “It was good for President Bush not to rub this massive victory in Russia’s face,” they will claim. I could not disagree more. While our leaders should seek peace with all world leaders, Bush should have extensively commended his predecessor’s calm, dedicated resolve to consign communism to the ash-heap of history. If there was a new world order to celebrate, that was the time, an order where principled leaders fight for individual liberty at all costs and sanction those countries who don’t. To this day, I cry with joy recalling Berlins on both sides of the wall dancing, cheering, and knocking down that tyrannical blockade. President Bush should have welcomed those victories with greater acclaim.

The worst thing that Bush 41 did during his administration, though? He betrayed his base, the Reaganites who had swept into power a conservative revolution sixteen years in the making would see its reversal during his one-term troubles. “Read my lips: no new taxes!” Bush had triumphantly promised to great acclaim at the 1988 Republican National Committee Convention. Two years later, November 5^th, 1990, Bush said to the voters “Kiss My Butt!” and signed into law a massive omnibus, riddled with tax increases, which in turn became “Pay Through the Nose”. The fact that the press and academy would praise “his courage” for raising taxes on the rest of us was just sickening. There is no courage when forcing other people to pay for your costs.

Despite his successful military leadership during Operation Desert Shield—later Operation Desert Storm—in Iraq, the recession which followed crippled Bush’s already waning re-election chances in 1992. He was the architect of his own undoing. The roaring Reagan Revolution economy wavered because of the tax increases. The supply-side economics which allowed individuals, including business owners and wealthy investors, to keep their money actually works. Bush the Big Government liberal Republican called such free market reforms “voodoo economics” in his frustrated bid for the Presidency in 1980. Bush was also a social liberal, comfortable with abortion and certainly non-committal when it came to natural marriage.

A Rockefeller Republican long after the liberal Governor of New York turned short-lived Vice President had passed away. Conservatism with conviction (not globalist accommodation) rescued the United States from moral and fiscal decline in 1980. That same resolve saved America with the election of President Donald Trump—and with it a final repudiation of Bush’s elitist statism. No wonder Bush voted for Hillary.

As expected, just as the legacy (liberal, anti-Trump) media gushed over the deceased “Republican” US Senator John McCain, so too they are tripping over themselves to celebrate George H. W. Bush. His private life, from his 73-year marriage to Barbara Pierce to the storied legacy of his political family succeeding on their own merits, deserves reflection and praise. His service to the United States during World War II was commendable, as he received the Distinguished Flying Cross for “bravery under fire”.  Let the media fawn all they please about President Bush, the dedicated family man and veteran. However, as President, the elder Bush was a failure whose disregard for his party’s principles and our country’s values were ill-placed in the White House.

Ronald Reagan’s 107th Birthday--Why Are We Still Celebrating?

After receiving three different emails to sign a card celebrating Ronald Reagan’s 107^th Birthday, I asked myself: “Why are we still celebrating the Gipper?” He was a great President, but is the icon turning into a crutch for hiding from the fights of today? The issue is a two-sided question. Indeed, Reagan’s legacy offers a lot for us to rejoice about, but also to ponder and reconsider. He represented the seemingly contradictory conservative change agent in a time when Americans were ready for anything after four years of economic malaise, cultural chaos, and political depression.  His victories for conservatism are considerable, but if he’s an example to follow, there’s so much more to consider besides what he did.

Why Should We Celebrate Reagan Still Today?

The background for President Reagan’s rise, setback, ascent, and legacy go as follows. Ronnie had run briefly in 1968, but party bosses decided “Nixon’s the one.” In Election 1976, Reagan had wrapped up two terms as governor to challenge politically-damaged Gerald Ford. The former House minority leader signed off on Richard Nixon’s pardon, and was punished in the short term, although historians and politicos acknowledge that this first major order spared the country further disarray.

Then just like now, the internal fighting within the GOP focused on how consistently to contend for limited government and individual liberty, both at home and abroad. Liberal Republicans embraced Big Government entitlements, while the more conservative faction wanted to scale back the state and restore constitutional principles.

In 1980, just like Trump did in 2016, Reagan ran against the Republican Establishment and a Democratic Party lurching leftward, including a strong primary challenge from US Senator Ted “Chappaquiddick” Kennedy.  Reagan’s conservatism bothered GOP liberals so much, that one House Rep (the Jeff Flake of his time) John Anderson launched a third-party bid, which only helped Reagan. Reagan’s incredible victory took down the abysmal incumbent Carter, a rudderless administration defined by hand-outs, oil embargoes, Iranian hostages, and a country at home struggling through stagflation. Carter became President only because he ran as a relatively unknown centrist.

Today, President Trump’s victorious election win and first year remind us how outsiders can get in to make American great again. Candidates who listen to the working classes and middle-income voters on their most pressing concerns will win every time. Republicans forgot this lesson for thirty years, focusing more on raising big money and making nice with the press

.

The once-disdained free market reforms implemented by Reagan lead the country through a massive economic contraction. Similar reforms are helping buoyed American workers today. Reagan’s version of tax cuts generated five years of unprecedented economic prosperity.

Despite an assassination attempt early in his presidency, Reagan survived, and his standing thrived before the American people. His robust optimism brought a country on the brink of second-tier solace to first-tier resurgence. Like Trump, Reagan loved this country, and did everything to protect it. He projected strength within the first 100 days of his first term. The Ayatollahs released the American embassy hostages within weeks of his election win. As President, he called the recalcitrant air traffic controllers’ bluff, as they had reneged on their promise not to go on strike. Reagan firmly ordered the federal employees: “Get back to work in 48 hours, or you will be summarily terminated.” Unlike his predecessor, the former B-Movie actor was not playing around. Decisive leadership with clear, convincing rhetoric defined Reagan’s Presidency.

And he was not afraid to call evil to its face. How desperately we need leaders to define and defend moral absolutes in a morally relative world. The Soviet Union was no wayward global competitor, but “The Evil Empire.” Jailed dissidents in Russia celebrated this moral turn in the Cold War. Reagan’s international victory, to supervise and behold the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was Reagan’s single most important win, a product of his communication process and grounded visionary hopes. As early as 1968, he had declared “I want the Berlin Wall to come down.” Academics, intellectuals, and media pundits had all resigned themselves to the lasting influence of Soviet Communism.

Reagan knew better. He knew that the Soviet Union needed to liberalize their economy to survive, but Reagan played for keeps, demanding an end to that sordid regime, including the removal of the hated Berlin Wall. To this day, my most memorable moment happened when I was 8 years old, and  I watched the Berlin Wall come down, with jubilant Germans climbing, dancing, and ultimately cutting down that wretched, artificial divide. Reagan’s principled perseverance was inimitable yet worthy of imitation, and for that we should be forever grateful.

Why We Should Think Twice About Reagan

The biggest problem isn’t entirely Reagan per se, but rather how stagnant Reagan-mania has made conservatives. Remembering his accomplishments cannot replace fighting for future conservative victories. During Election 2012, Republican Presidential contenders resorted to praising Reagan and dropping anecdotes about when they shook his hand or talked to him. Obama was a weakened incumbent, but Reaganite nostalgia did not promote a robust, victorious conservatism.

I wouldn’t go so far as columnist Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post (“Tear Down This Icon”), but Republicans need to stick to current solutions for today’s issues. On other matters, Reagan supported an assault weapons ban. He strong-armed fiscal hawks early in his administration to vote for more debt-ceiling increases with promises to cut the spending. The spending cuts didn’t happen, the necessary entitlement reforms were abandoned, and our government needs to take national debt seriously. I could spend the next three paragraphs raging about the infamous Simpson-Mazzolli amnesty. I would say that immigration reform failed because there was no wall or funded enforcement. Learn from Reagan’s mistake, President Trump and Republican Congress!

In short, indeed we should celebrate Reagan for his stellar accomplishments, from election victories to policy wins, but we can’t bask in the triumphs of yesterday to win against the imposing evils of today. Sadly, that defines the objectives of too many political operatives today.

More Winning: President Trump Slashing Regulations Faster Than Reagan

President Trump is busy working for the best of the country in psite of the press coverage on the anti-patriotic NFL, the Puerto Rican hurricane disasters, and now the devastating mass murder along the Las Vegas Strip.

The Daily Caller reports:

President Donald Trump has cut the federal regulatory burden to levels that took the Reagan administration years to achieve, according to a new report.

A report by the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) found the Trump administration cut the number of pages in the Federal Register 32 percent in the first nine months of this year. It took former President Ronald Reagan several years to cut that many pages of regulations.

“President Trump compared to his predecessors is—so far—the least regulatory president of all,” CEI’s director of technology studies Clyde Wayne Crews wrotein an updated report on Trump’s deregulatory effort.

Crews reported the Trump administration has also cut the number of new regulations issued this year 18 percent from the end of the Obama administration. Included in that is a 58 percent decrease in “significant” rules that come with a $100 million or greater price tag.

“As we continue to watch the president’s progress on his economic priorities, it’s interesting to compare Trump with previous presidents, namely Ronald Reagan,” Crews wrote. “Under Reagan, both regulations and Federal Register pages dropped more than one-third. So far, Trump has reduced the flow of regulation even more.”

Upon taking office, Trump promised get rid of 70 percent of federal regulations. The president signed an executive order asking federal agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new proposed.

A coalition of left-leaning groups sued Trump in February, asking the court to overturn the executive order to repeal two regulations for every new one issued.

The groups argued the order would “block or force the repeal of regulations needed to protect health, safety, and the environment, across a broad range of topics – from automobile safety, to occupational health, to air pollution, to endangered species.”

As part of the order, federal agencies created task forces to identify regulations ripe for repeal. The administration has repealed hundreds of Obama-era regulations, and delayed or halted progress on regulations in the pipeline.

“They are down a down 28 percent compared to the corresponding time frame from Obama’s final year. Trump: 1241, Obama: 1737,” Crews wrote of proposed federal rules.

“Note that Trump’s ‘significant’ proposed rules are drastically below any predecessor. They are down 77 percent compared to Obama. Trump: 65, Obama: 290,” Crews wrote.

Incredible but true. No wonder the American economy is roaring into 3% plus GDP growth.

President Obama expanded the regulatory state beyond recognition.

Trump rolled back most of the rules, and has continued to cut the expansion of the welfare and regulatory state in the United States.

It is admirable and welcome that the administration set up task forces to find rules to get rid of, too.

How incredible is this? Trump is rolling back these destructive, anti-business, anti-growth regulations faster than Ronald Reagan! Indeed, it is morning in America, and Trump is Making America Great Again!