Jim Jatras: I Stand with America. I Stand with Trump.

TheJIM!gram^© is a publication of Jim Jatras, the only announced prospect for the 2016 GOP Vice Presidential nod, addressing the daunting challenges facing our great country. Reposting and redistribution with attribution is permitted and encouraged.

March 6, 2016
No. 7

I Stand with America. I Stand with Trump.

An Endorsement from ‘the Man You’ve Never Heard Of’

Jim Jatras

In part because no one else in American history had ever done so, in September of last year I announced my interest in and availability for my party’s vice presidential nomination. I so informed each GOP presidential candidate by letter and Twitter.ABC News promptly dubbed me “the Man You’ve Never Heard Of Who Desperately Wants to Be Vice President.” (I’d have preferred “diligently” to “desperately,” but why quibble.)

I was content to let my offer lie on the table pending the Republican Convention and the eventual presidential nominee’s selection of a running mate, who I assumed almost certainly would be someone other than my humble but eminently qualified self. Despite repeated media inquiries, I saw no need to state a preference for any of the contenders for the top office.

Things have changed. As of this moment, I formally announce my endorsement of Donald John Trump for President of the United States.

What has prompted this less than earth-shattering decision? Essentially, two factors:

●        First, with increasing urgency good friends have been insisting to me that Donald Trump is a disaster for the country and for the Republican Party. He’s a liberal Democrat only pretending to be a conservative. He’s an avatar of nativism, racism, and hatred. He’s a “plant” by the Clintons to throw the election to Hillary. He’s “unpresidential,” he’s crude, and he’s a misogynist. He’s an egomaniacal con man and a lousy businessman who hates old ladies.

●        Second, and more importantly, my decision to endorse Mr. Trump is prompted by the unleashing of what appears to be the most formidable defamation campaign in American history. Fueled to the tune of tens of millions of dollars and keynoted by failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney (who reportedly was scared away from the 2016 race by the fearsome ¡Jeb! Bush), the #NeverTrump jihad recites the full litany of charges. But central is the claim that if Trump is the nominee, he’ll not only lose in a landslide to Hillary Clinton but drag the GOP “brand” down to catastrophic defeat, costing the Grand Old Party the Senate, the House, governorships, state legislatures, and local offices down to sheriff and dogcatcher.

I don’t imagine the voice of one near-unknown can counter such a massive effort. At the same time, maintaining neutrality could be construed as concurrence or even complicity.

It’s time to choose a side. I stand with America. I stand with Trump.

I will not here pick through the hail of darts furiously being flung Trump-wards, which on their merits I find mostly though not entirely unconvincing. Suffice it to say that with regard to the most potent accusation – that Trump’s nomination means electoral disaster for Republicans – the Trumpophobes do not really talk or behave as though they believe their own propaganda. As I wrote two months ago, in an analysis even more relevant now than it was then:

“ . . . the Establishment’s real worry is not that Trump might lose to Hillary. What terrifies them is that he might win. Make no mistake: most of those warning of Trump’s adverse impact on Republican prospects would prefer a President Hillary Rodham Clinton and are prepared to help achieve that outcome.”

Why? Primarily, it’s not Trump’s personal qualities, it’s his positions on three related issues where both the GOP and the Democratic establishments have stood foursquare against the interests of the American people, as I identified in January:immigration, trade, and war:

“Trump has stepped over the no-go line in each of these three areas. He has said Crimea is none of our concern (let the Europeans deal with it) and that Russia’s bombing the Islamic State is just fine. His heresies on immigration need no comment. He denounces trade agreements with Mexico and China as the fruit of American negotiators’ ineptitude; the author of The Art of the Deal insists that he could do a better job.”

But because a broad swath of the American people clearly is enthusiastically for Trump, his opponents sense they can’t beat him on issues.  They have to rely on personal smears and electoral trickery.

Let’s remember that early in the nominating process, when GOP insiders considered Trump a kind of joke, the party insisted he sign the no-independent-run pledge for fear he’d run as spoiler after he inevitably fizzled. Now that he’s not fizzling and looks increasingly likely to take the nomination (notwithstanding the usual blather about a brokered Convention), it’s the paladins of Beltway Conservatism threatening to go “Dixicrat” with some rump-GOP, faux conservative alternative like Romney (or even more absurdly, #DraftCondi Rice) if Trump takes the official nomination in Cleveland. They themselves, Trump’s critics, are the ones contemplating splitting the Republican party on purpose, and serving the election up on a platter to Hillary. And despite the increasing likelihood that Trump will garner the Republican nomination, they continue to savage him, doing Hillary’s work for her.

Does that sound like the strategy of people afraid that Trump will lose?

No, they are rightly afraid that Trump’s possible victory as a populist-nationalist Tribune of the Plebs, with his deviationism on immigration, trade, and war, would constitute an existential threat to their control over the party and (in condominium with the Democrats) the country, as well as debunking their phony “conservatism” that conserves nothing.  For many of the Brahmins of the Stupid Party, President Hillary Clinton would be a hundred times more palatable.

The decline of America’s moral and constitutional integrity is less a matter of narrowly-defined “conservatism” than a function of the fact that we are losing even our semblance of representative self-government by a free people who, whatever our diverse ethnic, racial, or religious origins, share the core values and loyalties of the historic American nation. As Laura Ingraham recently observed:

“Yes, there will be times when the populists disappoint pure conservatives. But populists and pure conservatives each have the same basic goal – a great country where the average person has a chance at a better life. By contrast, the Establishment already has what it wants and will do everything it can to maintain the status quo. Ted Cruz and his supporters have to make their own decision, but in the long run they need a major shakeup in the GOP Establishment to have a chance of seeing their ideas become law. Rubio (and his donors) have no intention of making such a change. In fact, they will support policies – open borders, new trade deals, more government debt – that will make any such change much harder to achieve.”

For social conservatives in particular, it’s time to recognize the decades-long come-on by the GOP and “Conservatism, Inc.” for the scam it is: “Vote for us, we’ll get a majority in Congress, we’ll take the White House, we’ll appoint good ‘strict constructionist’ Justices [like Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor … well, you get the picture] and return decency to America.” Uh-huh. That’s been our Plan A, and we see how well it’s worked out. It won’t get better as our country is abolished out from under us. As one Roman Catholic writer observes (“Yes, Catholics Can Vote For Trump”):

“No other candidate is serious about the Mexican-Muslim invasion. Trump is the only candidate promising to do something about it. Either Trump gets elected, or the bishops will destroy the pro-life movement with all their new pro-abortion voters.”

The alternative to a populist revolution – and with it at least the hope of a conservative social restoration – is continuing down the path set by the duopoly of the Democrats (no comment needed) and the GOP open borders donor class (ditto).  For a look into a non-Trump future, consider what Illinois Congressman Luis Gutiérrez calls a “new American political coalition,” a self-selected ruling class that posits its interests and values against those of the historic Christian (mainly Protestant), English-speaking American nation, which will be consigned to the status of a permanent disenfranchised, vilified minority:

“ . . . a million Latinos turn 18 every year in the United States of America. And . . .  they’re all American citizens of the United States. And here’s what happens: they become the basis of the new American political coalition. That is young people, that is Latinos, that is immigrants, it’s African Americans, it’s Asians, it’s gay people, it’s people that care about the economy [translation: “Gimme free stuff”], and it’s people that care about the environment [translation: carbon cultists] .  . . .  look: you’re never going to take the White House with this kind of politics ever again because there’s a new American politics.”

In a word, it’s Balkanization, a coalition of vested group entitlements, spearheaded by recent immigrants and their “anchor baby” descendants who reject assimilation to a common American identity and in fact define themselves in opposition to it. It’s the political equivalent of American workers’ training their foreign replacements for their own jobs. Gutiérrez is telling us: a new, substitute America is here – another people – ready to take power. As Jacob Heilbrunn cited Bertolt Brecht’s poetic mockery (in the context of the 1953 East Berlin uprising):

“The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”

Thus, what is really at stake is whether our country will irrevocably cease to be a res publica – the property of a self-aware, sovereign citizenry. If the historic America is not to be “dissolved” and transformed into Gutiérrez-land, the power of the bipartisan “oligarchy” (as Senator Jeff Sessions, a Trump supporter, calls it) or of the “Deep State” (as author Mike Lofgren, not a Trump supporter, calls it) must be broken. On the Democratic side, Sanders is trying to do that (in his own flawed way, but weighed down by the required idols of the Left, from #BlackLivesMatter to “sanctuary cities” to a blank check for abortion) but is unlikely to succeed. Hillary, the corrupt Picture of Dorian Gray face of the Democratic faction of the oligarchy, maintains a commanding lead. Trump’s prospects in the GOP are better, perhaps much better.

Can we trust Trump? Will he build his wall and secure our borders? Renovate our deteriorating infrastructure? Restore our manufacturing base? Audit the Federal Reserve and defenestrate the banksters? Restore the GOP’s long-lost reputation (now hardly remembered by anyone) as the “Peace Party” that got us out of wars the Democrats started? Sign a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, as long as they continue to perform abortions (which they will)? Exclude actual or potential Islamic terrorists? Dump our freeloading so-called “allies”? Cease the PC trashing of every tradition in which Americans once took pride? Reunite a nation sundered by Barack Obama and the GOP mandarins, with their divide et impera Punch and Judy show of class and racial discord?

Can Trump really “Make America Great Again”? Or at least slow our decline and give our country another chance?

I don’t know.  But I do know that none of the more mannerly politicians served up by the oligarchy will.

“Trust not in princes . . .” (Ps. 146:3) Neither Trump nor any other politician should be accepted on blind faith. Who really can say if Trump can win or if he does how he would govern. Who can say what’s really in his mind and heart or if, in God’s eyes, he’s a good man or a bad one. But given the dire warning from the likes of Romney, I like the odds with Trump better than with any of the available alternatives. When the character of his enemies is considered – particularly Warfare Stateneoconservatives (some of whom at least have the honesty to defect openly to Hillary) – my willingness to gamble on him only increases.

Finally, a warning. As Stalin observed: “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.” Trump, who for many powerful people is quite a problem indeed, has been recklessly compared to Jean-Marie Le Pen, Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin – even to Hitler and Mussolini. In an American context, to Andrew Jackson, Huey Long, and George Wallace. Let’s note that each of those three Americans was the target of assassination. Jackson survived by a failure of his attacker’s pistols, hailed by some as miraculous. “The Kingfish” was killed. Wallace was crippled for life.

If you think there is any length to which Trump’s enemies will not go, think again.

Jim Jatras, [email him] is a former US diplomat and foreign policy adviser to the Senate GOP leadership. He currently is the only announced prospect for the Republican vice presidential nomination. He comments on financial and foreign policy topics and on U.S. politics in his publication TheJIM!gram. 

My Pledge:  Whether or not am selected for the Republican Vice Presidential nomination and am privileged to assume that august post in January 2017, I will remain committed to the core principles I announced in September 2015, which I hope will be furthered under a Trump presidency: “I am pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage, pro-immigration control, anti-war, pro-privacy, pro-tax reform, anti-phony ‘free trade’ deals. We need to feel like Americans again!”

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