Topic: Politics & Elections
After explaining why Donald Trump could not possibly snag the Republican Party presidential nomination, and then explaining why GOP presidential candidate Trump could not possibly beat Hillary Clinton, the media have moved on to explain why President-Elect Trump will find it impossible to govern. His transition team is in disarray! He’ll never be able to make good on his promises! There will be no border wall! The Iran nuclear agreement will stand! The world will turn against him! Obamacare is here to stay! Etc. and so forth.
Well, color me dubious. These shrill predictions of failure and catastrophe, coming as they do from sources that proved spectacularly wrong about the just-concluded election, are somnewhat lacking in credibility. And when you look at the actual situation confronting the incoming president, it’s obvious that he has been vouchsafed multiple opportunities to make an early and substantial down payment on his campaign promises. And for that he can thank…soon-to-be-former President Barack H. Obama…and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
A substantial number of the people who voted for Donald Trump were not particularly enamored of him. Theirs was a strategic vote to keep Hillary Clinton out: specifically to prevent her from loading the Supreme Court with progressive lefties. And now, at the top of his to-do list on the first day of his presidency Trump will find: Nominate Supreme Court Justice—the gift of that much-reviled GOP Establishment fixer, Mitch McConnell. It was he who deep-sixed Obama’s attempt to fill the high court vacancy created by the untimely death of Justice Scalia. The President, his minions and his media claque all condemned McConnell’s maneuver as obstruction of the deepest dye. They were confident that a public outcry would force Senate Republicans to cave. But they didn’t, Obama’s nominee went nowhere, and now Trump with his list of twenty-one potential justices gets to name Scalia’s replacement. A large number of strategic Trump votes are about to pay off.
Then there’s Obama’s gift to Trump. Frustrated by the results of two midterm elections that decimated House and Senate Democrats, unwilling to work with congressional Republicans, the President resorted to his pen and his phone, striving to ram through as much of his agenda as possible via executive orders. Some of these have already been slapped down by the courts but many more survive. And what is created by a stroke of the presidential pen can be quashed in the same way. Knowing Trump he’ll make a media event of this, melodramatically wielding his pen to mow down ranks upon rank of Obama-era executive overreaches. Thanks, Barry!
Then there’s the Iran nuclear deal, which supposedly President Trump will find impossible to scuttle. But as various commentators have pointed out all he really needs to do is stop paying blackmail and ransom to Iran, which is the means by which the Obama Administration has kept the deal from collapsing. Once the flow of dollars stops the ayatollahs themselves will denounce the agreement and that will be that. (What the US should do then is a sticky question for another day.)
On illegal immigration and border security no one expects this complex and difficult problem to be solved in a matter of weeks. But the people who voted for Trump do expect to see prompt action. He has only to show that he means business—say by cracking down on sanctuary cities that shield criminal illegals, by beginning the process of rounding up and deporting same, and by taking some immediate steps to reinforce border security.
And finally there’s Obamacare, that comically dysfunctional Rube Goldberg contraption by which the Left sought pave the way to socialized medicine. Admittedly its repeal and replacement will not be the work of a day. But the claims of Democrats and their media chorus to the contrary notwithstanding, congressional Republicans do have proposals for real, sensible healthcare reform. A start could be made by repealing the stupid prohibition against selling health insurance plans across state lines and by eliminating Obamacare’s coverage mandates.
Given the mess that has been made by our Community Organizer-in-Chief and his Bright Young Things, the incoming Trump Administration faces no easy task. That Trump himself is a political neophyte provides food for thought and reason to be concerned. Will he be up the challenge? Only time will tell. But the opportunities are there to start things off on an action-oriented high note—if only Trump and his people have the wit to seize upon them.
