OPINION

Trump and His Supporters Are in This Fight for the Long Haul

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

I couldn't care less about the State of the Union address, and I'm hardly panicking about the government shutdown, but I care a great deal that Democrats and the liberal media continue to treat President Trump like a dog, with utter impunity.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disinvited Trump to deliver the address in the Capitol, falsely citing security concerns when everyone knows she was just joyfully sticking her thumb in his eye and trying to humiliate him.

Trump has decided to postpone the speech until the partial shutdown is resolved, presumably because he believes it's important that it be delivered in the House chamber with the customary pageantry and full media coverage. This is unfortunate, but we can't make every mountain a hill to die on.

The left has never accepted Trump's victory and has been seeking to delegitimize and emasculate him since before he took office. We constantly hear from the liberal establishment and its never-Trump allies on the right how awful Trump is and how it's just a matter of time before they have sufficient evidence to finally remove him from office.

After winning back the House in the midterm elections, Democrats plainly announced their intent to make his life a living hell, pledging endless investigations and impeachment. They are trying to fulfill their disgraceful promise.

Trump's opponents obviously believe that because they find him thoroughly objectionable, they are justified in ceaselessly insulting and disrespecting him and the office of the presidency. As they consider him the vilest of human beings, they are free to behave more despicably than the villain they imagine him to be, but without accountability.

While they pretend to be mostly agitated by his alleged ghastliness, their real beef is with his supporters, because they are the ones who elected him believing he wouldn't surrender to the left's socialist and culturally Marxist juggernaut. The Covington Catholic High School story is all the proof you need that red MAGA cap-wearing humans represent pure evil in the eyes of today's left.

As I (and others) have said before, President Trump didn't arise in a vacuum. Conservative patriots have had it with leftist bullies obliterating America's founding principles, traditional values and constitutional liberties. They are sick of leftists holding themselves out as titans of tolerance when they brand as bigots anyone whose views deviate from theirs.

Leftists will not destroy President Trump, but even if they cripple and neuter him, they will not marginalize his supporters or weaken their resolve.

Do they just assume we will retreat or surrender because they relentlessly condemn us as racists by virtue of our conservatism alone? It is unconscionable how they exploit minorities and stoke the flames of hatred and racial disharmony with their malicious racial slanders against political conservatives. Why aren't they condemned for committing a sin similar to racism in categorically judging and maligning a group of people as racist because of their political (and often spiritual) beliefs that have nothing to do with race -- except perhaps their belief that every human being, regardless of race, is entitled to dignity because we're all created in God's image?

The Democratic Party and the media keep moving further left -- to radical extremes -- yet depict us as the radicals. They contend, for example, that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an outlier and that Democrats, in the main, are more moderate, but the media and the party's base showcase her as the new face of the party, and the party continues to gravitate toward ideas she champions.

It is astonishing that they sermonize to us about our views on immigration, the economy and social issues when they endorse and celebrate a mother's "right" to terminate her unborn baby's life. The common denominator is that they distort the motives behind our policy preferences -- e.g., racism -- and theirs, e.g., they are "pro-choice" and only care about protecting the mother's "health" and "reproductive rights." If their positions were morally defensible, let alone superior, they wouldn't have to euphemize them, and they wouldn't have to lie about ours.

Moreover, if they were operating in good faith on the shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wouldn't have to falsely claim that Trump is holding the government hostage to his political demands when he knows full well that the Democrats are the ones refusing to negotiate a reasonable compromise and are misrepresenting their position on border security -- saying they support it while actively opposing it. On a more basic level, they wouldn't have to lie about Trump's other policies if they were so self-evidently heinous, such as mischaracterizing his tax cuts as disproportionately benefiting the rich. But they just can't help themselves.

I admire President Trump's stamina and his dogged commitment to his campaign promises. I am encouraged by his standing up to the left so fearlessly and with so little help. I don't know whether the Democrats will eventually wear him down with the disability of a thousand cuts, but I am confident he will not quit fighting as long as he is able. I am also quite sure the Democrats will not intimidate and defeat his supporters, who will never surrender to the fundamental transformation of the nation they love.