An Extraordinary Election : Part I

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED LAST TUESDAY? • • • BUSINESS SUPPORT FOR TRUMP. A large part of the Fortune 50 zas so sure Hillary would win that they didn't even bother to write a plan for succeeding under a Trump presidency, and they are now writing to Trump to express "support" while scrambling to figure out how to position their businesses with him in the White House. But, Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone told the annual Free Enterprise Day at Florida’s Palm Beach Atlantic University -- which honors local and national business leaders for their work and philanthropic achievements -- the election of Donald Trump as President is a referendum against "elites" who feel as though they are "entitled" to public office. Langone, 81, said Trump "tuned in" to the anger, frustration and resentment that the American people have over political correctness and the economy. • • • Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch -- the 'enfant terrible' fighting corporate inefficiency when he led GE -- says President-elect Trump's economic plan has “unlimited” opportunities. Welch told CNBC : "You look at lower taxes. You look at job creation. We are stuck. We have been stuck in a terrible, overregulated economy for eight years. I mean stuck. Business stinks." Welch noted that because Republicans also retained control of Congress, Trump has an "awesome responsibility because there's no one else to point the finger at. So you've got to get a team together." Welch thinks Trump needs to forget every fight he had in the primary and general election and focus on who the best people are for the job : "You can't have grudges in this game. You need talent. We will win with the best people. He's not going to shut down trade. He's going to get a better deal on TPP. He's going to do these things. This guy's a dealmaker." • Welch isn't the only business expert enthusiastic about Trump. Veteran financial guru Larry Kudlow, who served as the Trump campaign senior economic advisor, told Newsmax TV that Trump will honor his campaign vows to restore prosperity to all Americans and to America. Last Wednesday, Kudlow told Steve Malzberg on "America Talks Live" : "Donald Trump has a very strong economic growth message which is going to be great for the economy and for profits and for businesses large and small." Kudlow, who is a Newsmax Finance Insider and CNBC senior contributor, said Trump was successful because he understands the dissatisfaction of "ordinary middle-class folk" : "With Mr. Trump you're going to have across-the-board tax cuts, you're going to end Obamacare, which is a prosperity killer and a healthcare killer, you're going to take the handcuffs off of energy, you're going to wall back all these regulations and you're going to stop the government from taking over the economy. That's a powerful message." Kudlow says Trump : "understood that they were angry and that the establishment in Washington and elsewhere was not delivering. He understood that they wanted change and he understood that they wanted to drain the swamp, get rid of the corruption, stop the corporate cronyism. He understood that instinctively and he knew that people were not willing to give up the American dream...I think it was effective and I think he hit it exactly right. He just understood the American people in a way that no other political figure has understood it." • • • A TRANSITION UNLIKE ANY OTHER. The recurring theme of most media in the aftermath of the Trump victory was voiced by the Fiscal Times on Wednesday : "Trump’s stunning victory in the race to become the 45th President of the United States leaves only questions -- questions about the path forward for a deeply divided nation, the future of American democracy and the outlook for the US and global economies -- and the only certainty is that those profound uncertainties are bound to unnerve a great number of Americans as well as countries and markets worldwide, and far more than the shocking Brexit vote in June did. Voter anxiety runs high about Trump -- the first President to never have served in public office or the military -- and indicates just how much hinges on his actions now, and those of his supporters." The Fiscal Times says Trump's first job will be to unite the country, or at least prevent the divisions that were amplified by the election from dissolving into waves of hate and fear. Trump was gracious in his victory speech, congratulating Hillary Clinton for a hard-fought campaign and expressing gratitude for her service to the country : “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and Independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me.” • But, his efforts at reconciliation, falling mostly on deaf Democrat and Progressive ears, have not prevented Trump from reassuring his supporters. He told CBS "60 Minutes" on Sunday : “What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate." • The Mainstream -- whether media, business or political -- has since Tuesday night incessantly asked if Trump up to the task. They want to know how will he lead, how he will bring the country together after years of rising partisanship and months of negative campaign rhetoric on both sides, if he will be able to deliver his key campaign promises -- building a wall on the border with Mexico that Mexico pays for, deporting criminal undocumented immigrants, crushing ISIS, generating annual GDP growth of at least 4%, creating 25 million jobs over 10 years, rewriting trade agreements, reforming the tax code, repealing and replacing Obamacare (with saving coverage for pre-existing conditions and children at home until age 26 -- which is not a bone to Obama because these two points have been in the GOP House bill to repeal Obamacare since it was first drafted), draining the swamp of Washington corruption, rebuilding American infrastructure and renewing the American dream. Of course, Trump is up to the job and if the GOP Congress tries to prevent his program from passing, it is they who will pay at the ballot box. • Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel was right when he argued that the media erred by taking Trump literally but not seriously while voters took him seriously but not literally. That leaves a lot of room for practical maneuvering as Trump goes ahead with his program. • • • TRUMP'S VICTORY WAS A CHRISTIAN VICTORY. Newsmax reported Friday that the sweeping support evangelicals gave Trump on election day was based by their fear that Christianity is being destroyed. Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for My Faith Votes, which focuses on getting Christian Americans to the polls, told Newsmax TV : "America has become an increasingly intolerant place for Christians....The religious right is dying, Christianity is dying. What we've learned is America isn't Los Angeles or New York. America is the center of the country and the majority of the people in this country want religious freedom, they stand up for Christian values and are unashamed of our Judeo-Christian effort. It's what's happened in America: threats to religious liberty and all these other things. But I've got to tell you, Donald Trump deserves all the credit in the world." Moore, whose nonpartisan group motivates and mobilizes the Christian vote, said he has never seen anybody "with so much power and so much influence go to the effort he went to build individual relationships with not dozens of significant Christian leaders, but thousands of them." He noted that some pastors have the President-Elect's cell phone number. Moore told Newsmax : "Trump invited criticism, he created an evangelical advisory board, he didn't even require everyone to endorse him to be on the board because he legitimately wanted their advice and they had an open conversation with him. And it worked in an astonishing, astonishing way. And this is as American as anything. I mean we are a country with a Judeo-Christian foundation. We have a congressionally-mandated National Day of Prayer....I started getting emails and text messages and phone calls from every direction on election day [saying] ‘we're praying for America, we're praying for Mr. Trump, we're praying for religious freedom, we're praying for all these things. And it happened. Not only that, the turnout effort was unbelievable." Moore noted that in the previous two elections, 25 million evangelicals "just sat at home. That wasn't the case this time. They, in fact, turned out in record, record numbers. But it wasn't for lack of effort. I mean My Faith Votes alone had [public service announcements] in 110 million households...six daily on over 1,000 Christian radio stations all across the country." And, what does Moore and his group hope for from President Trump? -- a repeal of the so-called 1954 "Johnson Amendment" -- which prohibits some tax-exempt organizations from endorsing and opposing political candidates. Moore says this is a big issue for Christians that Trump is going to tackle : "This amendment was passed in order to keep the pastors in this country -- to keep their mouths shuts. They can't speak about politics, they could be penalized by the IRS and that's an anti-American as anything. And you know Donald Trump is the first Republican candidate...in the history of the Republican Party, to put the repeal of the Johnson Amendment as part of their platform." • TheHill reports that Trump won the white evangelical vote by historic margins, taking a bigger share with the group than Mitt Romney, John McCain and even George W. Bush did, according to exit polls. In so doing, the President-Elect overcame what many assumed would be a paralyzing disadvantage for the thrice-married Manhattanite who once favored abortion. Trump closed the deal with born-again leaders and voters by telling them, in his blunt way, exactly what they wanted to hear. He made unprecedented promises, including releasing his potential list of Supreme Court justices ahead of time. He also added a litmus test, vowing to only appoint “pro-life” justices. Once mocked for his “New York values,” Trump is now expected to implement arguably the most aggressive social conservative agenda in recent memory. Not even George W. Bush, a favorite of evangelicals, entered office with an ironclad promise to defund Planned Parenthood. Trump has put that pledge in writing. Trump often boasted during the campaign “the evangelicals love me,” and few in the media recognized just how deep that alliance went. On Wednesday morning, long-time conservative political activist Ralph Reed delivered a post-election presentation at Washington’s National Press Club. Reed, the chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, has mobilized evangelicals for nearly three decades and oversaw another massive ground game to help Trump, which he says included 1.2 million door knocks. White evangelicals made up a record 26% of the electorate, according to exit polls, and 81% of them voted for Trump. The proportion that voted for Hillary Clinton -- 16% -- is at the lower level of support for a Democrat nominee in recent years. In fact, Trump was not the natural candidate for evangelical voters in the Republican presidential primaries -- Ted Cruz was, overwhelmingly. Campaigning alongside his father, preacher Rafael Cruz, the Texas Senator enthralled Christian audiences wherever he went. He landed prized evangelical endorsements and won the straw poll at the high-profile Values Voter Summit for three straight years leading into 2016. Then he won the Iowa caucuses. Few evangelical leaders saw early promise in Trump. One who did was the very influential Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. Others, like Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, came late to Trump. She didn’t view him as a moral authority. She saw a man who, in her judgment, would be far preferable to a Democrat campaigning with the enthusiastic support of Planned Parenthood. Nance even went to Trump Tower last week to rally evangelical women. She said she supported Trump : “not on gender or personality but in defense of the Supreme Court, the sanctity of life, religious freedom, national security, and economic freedom.” Social conservative leaders warmed to Trump around the time of the convention because he didn’t fight them on the party platform. Instead, Trump’s team supported the most conservative platform in the history of the party. In Reed’s judgment, Trump made “the most full-throated, aggressive and unapologetic appeal to evangelical voters” in a general election environment since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. Reed says : “For the most part, the modus operandi of the national Republican Party has been to embrace these voters, their leaders and their organizations and issues in the primaries; and then keep them out of camera range and at arm’s length in the general election. Donald Trump never played with that playbook.” A number of evangelical leaders mention the final debate as a key moment -- the point at which Donald Trump closed the deal with evangelicals “when he gave the most concise definition of late-term abortion that any Republican or any presidential candidate in the general election has given.” With Republicans set to control the House, Senate and the White House, these leaders have high hopes and won’t accept excuses for not delivering. They expect Trump to swiftly nominate a Supreme Court justice in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. Ken Blackwell, the former Cincinnati mayor who’s on Trump’s domestic transition team, said : “Social conservatives saw the most existential threat to religious liberty being the filling of the Scalia seat and the shaping of the Court for some time to come. The Court is the most important. That’s going to be an early signal.” As leader of Trump’s transition team, Vice President-Elect Mike Pence will play a major role in executing Trump's socially conservative agenda. Movement leaders trust Pence and his relationships on Capitol Hill will be invaluable for moving legislation -- nominating pro-life justices to the Supreme Court, signing into law legislation that would end late-term abortions nationwide, making the Hyde Amendment permanent law “to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions,” and defunding Planned Parenthood. Overturning Obama’s 2015 executive order on LGBT workplace discrimination will come later on the Christian agenda. • • • THE #NEVER TRUMP NEO-CONSERVATIVES. • Rob Garver of the Fiscal Times wrote last week : "For all the attention it received from the non-Breitbart conservative media establishment, the so-called #NeverTrump movement doesn’t appear to have had a whole lot of impact at the voting booth on Tuesday." However, Evan McMullin, the candidate who symbolized traditional Republicans opposed to the nomination of Donald Trump, wants to take what’s been started and try to build a movement. McMullin, a former House Republican staffer, emailed his supporters to continue their opposition to the President-Elect in areas where he falls short of old-school Republican values : “Now, more than ever, it is time for a new generation of American leadership, a new era of civic engagement, and a New Conservative Movement. We are not giving up. This is only the beginning.” McMullin does not ask his supporters get behind or give the benefit of the doubt to President-Elect Trump. Instead, McMullin wrote : “As we face the reality of Donald Trump’s victory and the uncertain future it holds, we must not give up on the timeless principles for which we have fought. That’s why we are going to continue building The New Conservative Movement. We will stand on the same truth we started with: equality, freedom, liberty, and inclusiveness.” • But, it is very unclear is just how much #NeverTrump sentiment there really is out there in the Republican electorate. For a movement supposedly based on widespread discontent with the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, the New Conservative movement may find few Republicans ready to join it in significant numbers. Donald Trump won 90% of the vote of registered Republicans who voted on Tuesday -- a better showing than Hillary Clinton, whose 89% of the Democrat vote came without any opposition in her own party. If we believe McMullin's words, he sounds a lot like a Progressive in Republican clothing when he says “No longer can we stand by and passively hope our leaders will stand up for our rights, stand up for women, people of different races and religions, stand up for people with disabilities. We can no longer do it." But, in his own state of Utah, he came in third after Trump and Clinton, with 20% of the votes of fellow Mormons. • McMullin's gibberish reminds me that on election day, American Thinker published a Michael Davidson article titled "The Ideology of Political Suicide." It should be required reading for anyone who even thinks about becoming active politically. Davidson writes : "The most foundational -- and suicidal -- element of radical conservative political ideology is its absolutist approach to what it accepts as good and right and pure policies for the country's future. Unfortunately, the inescapable truth is that this is rarely, if ever, achievable in the real world. As applied to the presidential race of 2016, we have witnessed the accolytes of this naïve ideology spouting their vitriol while engaging in acts of political suicide to prove the sincerity and depth of their beliefs." Davidson asks a simple question of these conservative purists : "If they love their country and their values as they say they do, then why does it seem they have given no thought to the outcome which would most contribute to the long-term preservation and furtherance of those ideals?" • Chief on the list is the one that will most affect the course of the United States for decades -- the US Supreme Court, comprised of Justices with lifetime appointments. A quick analysis of the current composition of the Court shows that starting in 2017 or 2018 at the latest, a President Hillary Clinton would have had the opportunity to fill at least three, if not four, seats on the Court, giving it a 6-3 liberal majority that would remain intact for at least 30 years. Thus, even if "pure" conservatives had got their wish of electing Clinton, and our nation had only four years under her, the die already would have been cast for decades. Clinton openly and repeatedly stated that she would appoint Justices who stand for everything conservatives are supposedly against. Fortunately, Trump was elected. He has vowed to appoint conservative Justices to the Supreme Court who will interpret the Constitution faithfully. Have these purist conservatives considered what their hero and icon Ronald Reagan would think of their suicidal position? They should re-read what Reagan wrote in his autobiography, “An American Life,” : "When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it. Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything. I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: “I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average. If you got 75% or 80% of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it." Davidson put it starkly : "By refusing to take the best that can be achieved, and then 'fight for the rest later,' conservatives of this radical ideological bent [would have guaranteed] that they received 100% of what they do not want. The net outcome of that foolish and short-sighted choice [would have been] that they [would] be forced to watch their values and beliefs be sacrificed on the altar of their non-negotiable preferences and demands...powerless to do anything about it. Perhaps that is what they feel their faith and their belief system demands that they do, but political pragmatism and realities are rarely addressed through an ideology that amounts to suicide." • • • THE NEO-CONSERVATIVES WERE DENIED THEIR MARTYRDOM. We can rejoice that Mitt Romney, Bill Kristol, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell -- and yes Paul Ryan -- were as wrong about the electabllity of Donald Trump as they have been for the past eight years, during which they voodoo-danced while explaining why Congress would not pass any legislation that Obama might veto. That got us Obamacare, higher taxes, a depleted military, the Iran nuclear deal, the invasion of Libya, a blind eye turned on Syria's civil war and Al-Assad's use of chemical weapons, and a national debt set to top $20 TRILLION any minute. Nice work, Neo-Cons -- and still they hesitate, wondering how much of the Trump agenda they can support. Is it any wonder the Republican Party bolted to Trump??? • • • TRUMP'S SAFETY IS A CONCERN AS PROGRESSIVES REVERT TO TYPE. President-Elect Donald Trump is being threatened following Tuesday's election with calls through social media for his assassination, and the Secret Service will likely investigate all credible threats, according to security sources. Secret Service spokesperson Nicole Mainor declined comment on the growing number of posts, telling the New York Post the agency "does not provide nformation regarding protective services," but a security source said the Secret Service will investigate threats. Indirect threats are not generally prosecuted, the unnamed source said, beause there is a difference between someone saying they will kill a President and someone who suggests that another person should commit the act. The posts are mounting, and also include calls for Vice President-Elect Mike Pence's death. Very disturbing is the reaction of Twitter, which has not banned the use of an #AssassinateTrump hashtag, drawing cries of horrified outrage from many Trump supporters, according to the Gateway Pundit. • Even before the social media death threats began, veteran journalist and White House expert Ronald Kessler told Newsmax TV the Secret Service will need to beef up its protection of President-Elect Donald Trump because of his tough-talking demeanor, saying : "Typically, Presidents who really stir up emotions -- such as JFK, for example, or Ronald Reagan, who've become targets of assassination attempts or actual assassinations -- [need] special consideration." Kessler urged Trump to wear his bulletproof vest. He also said Trump should appoint a new Secret Service director who will "shake things up in the Secret Service so that there isn't this cover-up mentality that we've seen [involving Secret Service security breaches]....I think he will appoint a good person to head the Secret Service...to change the culture : "Which is a culture within the management, not among the agents -- who are brave and dedicated -- but the management has this lax attitude and cover-up culture that has got to stop." • Fox News' Bill O'Reilly lashed out Thursday at anti-Trump demonstrations that have erupted since his election, decrying what appears to be a "civil war brewing" and charging some demonstrators "want our system destroyed." In his "The O'Reilly Factor," he drew the line between protesters and anarchists : "Here in the USA, we honor protests, but increasingly we are seeing people who want our system destroyed. If you believe Donald Trump is not good for America, I have have no problem with you displaying that opinion. However, if you hurt someone, destroy some thing, or promote anarchy, you then become a danger to the republic. That kind of stuff needs to be punished and quickly. Just because something offends you doesn't mean you have the right to hurt or destroy. The new President might want to make that very clear." O'Reilly noted one woman demonstrator who declared "we're here to really create the revolution that we know is possible." O'Reilly "The revolution is going the other way...almost 60 million Americans voted for Trump...That ballot box protest was peaceful. It's the way our republic works. No one was hurt. No one terrorized. No one killed." • And, in a protest reminiscent of the late 1960s anti-Vietnam protests, hundreds of students at American University gathered on campus to protest Donald Trump's presidential victory and used matches and lighters to torch several American flags. The group chanted "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" and waved signs reading "Black Lives Matter," "Stand up to racism!" and "Stand against anti-Moslem bigotry," according to the university's student newspaper. "This is a representation of America! We are going down in flames!" one protestor shouted. Racism and anti-Moslem bigorty -- who are they kidding??? Conservatives have never marched or rioted when they have lost an election. But the left can be counted on to do so when offended by anything they can define as a grievance against their "group" -- like voting for candidates with whom they disagree. These protests are not spontaneous, as anyone who read the Podesta emails and watched the O'Keefe videos knows. They are planned and paid for, by George Soros, ANSWER, and others like the rioters in Ferguson, who, with Soros dollars, launched the thuggish Black Lives Matter group, so fully embraced by Hillary Clinton. Since the 1920s, it has always been leftists who stir up and promote violence as a means to their endgame. The mainstream media wrung its hands and warned that Trump supporters would riot if he lost. That never would have happened -- and they know it. These tactics belong entirely to the left. Anarchy is and has always been a strategy of Progressives to make people fear them. Trump voters finally had enough and voted for a new direction, and we are seeing riots organized by radical, anti-democratic groups. They may think they are making people regret their votes for Trump, but they are only making them more certain they made the right choice. • • • Dear readers, we may now breathe a sigh of relief, hoping that Soros and his BLM riot professionals soon get tired of watching students burn flags while American gets on with transitioning from Progessive Obama to Conservative Republican Trump. And we can say "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" -- Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House -- as well as the vast majority of governorships and state legislatures. There is a message there for anyone who wnats to see it -- and the message was delivered by Tea Partiers and gassroots Christian Republicans who decided that enough is enough. • And while we celebrate, let's pause to thank Sarah Palin, who is surely the most maligned Republican in modern history, after Donald Trump. The roots of Donald Trump's historic presidential victory go back eight years to the 2008 presidential election. Palin had many of the same characteristics as Trump : robust patriotic populism driven by intense love of country and rejection of big-government internationalism embodied by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Palin also introduced Americans to seeing the political struggle not as Left vs. Right, but as Silent America vs. Ruling Elites, Bluebloods vs. Commoners, Ivy League vs. College of Hard Knocks, Urban vs. Middle and Rural Workers. In this respect, Sarah Palin was the pioneer, with the arrows in her back to prove it, who charged up Americans to accept Trump's message and support and vote for him. This is not to take anything away from Trump. Unlike Palin, Trump did not battle the mainstream media, but instead successfully manipulated it to his advantage, playing the MSM like a fiddle while tweeting daily about MSM lies and errors. Trump also had a knack for putting his political opponents on the defensive with labels they could not escape. Thus, the moniker "Crooked Hillary" may become Hillary Clinton's enduring legacy...and rightly so. Donald Trump won an historic victory on November 8, yes, and the person who, more than anyone else, opened the door was Sarah Palin. • More about this extraordinary election tomorrow.