Donald Trump calls them “forgotten Americans,” the people once described by Clinton loyalists during the 1990’s as living in “flyover country.” Because these people believe that a country that cannot control its borders will not survive very long, the political elite calls them “xenophobic.” Because they believe that the American government should put the safety of the American people above the globalist agenda, they are called “haters” by the ruling class. Because they believe that the politically powerful should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us, they are called “extremists” by the Washington power-brokers.
In Waking the Sleeping Giant: How Mainstream Americans Can Beat Liberals at Their Own Game, we simply described them as “mainstream Americans,” the people who work hard, take care of their families and communities, and play by the rules. And we said that they were the sleeping giant of American politics with the potential to turn a declining America back onto a common-sense course if only that giant would wake up and discover its power.
And in 2016, the sleeping giant of mainstream America appears to have finally awakened. Whatever they are called, these are the people who have propelled Donald Trump to within striking distance of the presidency. And they are the last line of defense against a political machine that will ruin what remains of rule of law in this country unless it is stopped.
The Clintons have been building their political machine for decades. That machine is maintained by global money and power, and it can deliver rich rewards to those who support its agenda and harass or ruin those who get in its way. Most of the so-called news media, including the so-called moderators at the presidential debates, are part of the machine. The machine is powerful enough to corrupt the heads of the FBI and the DOJ and to derail investigations into mishandling of state secrets and suspected pay-for-play operations in the Clinton State Department. The machine is brazen enough to brag about efforts to provoke violence at Trump rallies and to openly invite voter fraud. The machineoperates outside of and above the law.
To the out-of-touch political insiders of both political parties, Donald Trump represents a strange and dangerous new development that mysteriously erupted out of flyover country in 2016. But what the insiders don’t realize is that Trump’s voters are the same people who went to the polls in 2010 and 2014 and gave the GOP landslide victories and a mandate to stop Barack Obama’s radical transformation of America. When the transformation continued unchecked in spite of that mandate, mainstream America simply took the next step and found a candidate in Donald Trump who was outside the political class and who took their common-sense concerns seriously.
And what the political insiders still don’t grasp is that the Trump phenomenon is not about Donald Trump. That is why Trump’s candidacy has survived a barrage of slime from the Clinton Machine that would have submerged any other candidate. Trump is merely the messenger for a growing popular movement, and that movement is fed up with the political machine that Hillary Clinton represents.
And so the political machine and the popular movement have given us two candidates who represent two very different futures for America and for the parties they represent.
Since the 1960’s, left wing hardliners have tightened their grip on the leadership of the Democratic Party. The campus radicals of the 1960’s warned us that they would bring the American system down “by any means necessary,” and now that they are in leadership roles, they are close to carrying out that threat. A Hillary win would enable the far left to take the few remaining steps on that path: restrictions on religious freedom and freedom of speech, and attacks on Second Amendment rights. A Hillary loss, on the other hand, would be merely a tactical setback for the left, not a strategic failure. Their control of the Democratic Party is unchallenged, and they will regroup if necessary.
The future of the Republican Party, however, depends very much on the outcome of this election. The GOP reached its peak of moral clarity and political efficacy during the Reagan years, and has since wandered in the philosophical wilderness, torn between the progressive idols of the Beltway and the values and beliefs of their more conservative base. In the age-old GOP struggle between the Beltway and the base, a Trump win would shift the balance of power in favor of the base. Under a President Trump, a revitalized Republican Party might even expand its appeal to black Americans and other minorities who have been used for votes and then forgotten by the leftist social planners.
A Trump loss, however, would not only be devastating for rule of law and national security; it would also leave the base and the Beltway progressives of the GOP staring at each other with little in common but another lost election that should have been a Republican landslide. Then it’s a matter of time before the topic of divorce comes up.