Adam Savit has a response to yet another TDS fueled anti-Trump rant. Writing at the Washington Blade he notes how astonished some on the left can be when they discover that not all Trump supporters are knuckle-dragging legions from flyover country.
Like many Trump critics, [Peter] Rosenstein suffers from a “chicken and egg” misconception. The people who voted for Trump were used to being belittled and slurred as racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, etc., for decades. The difference is that now we have a loud voice providing a counterpoint to these ad-hominem attacks. I don’t think many Trump voters would argue that he is morally perfect, but he provides breathing space for conversations and debates about policy questions that have long been put off limits by the media and the establishments of both parties.
No truer words were ever said.
Every Republican president, since Hitler, was Hitler. The party of Change hasn’t changed their ad hominem in more than eight decades. And it is, as the saying goes, “why Trump is President.”
Just like any winning national political coalition, we are highly diverse. Some of us are blue-collar, small town, and more easily discarded in the “deplorable” basket. Some of us are sophisticated professionals with nuanced opinions about a complicated set of policy questions. Many of us are gay, lesbian, trans and urban. We are complex individuals and independent thinkers and we come in all shapes and sizes. We are also done with being bullied and marginalized, and if you value free thought and speech, you should join us in opposing the kind of political intimidation that led to the necessity of Trump-style populism in the first place.
The left created the environment in which Mr. trump became the best possible response. And the harder President Trump works for them, the harder the left doubles down on the strategy that got him elected. They don’t seem at all inclined to rethink that.
Many LGBT Republicans had serious misgivings about Trump in 2016, and some still do. What I can tell you for sure is that many more gays in the DMV support him today because of the relentlessly hostile and unfair treatment he’s received in the media from day one. We do not have the luxury to be more embarrassed by President Trump because the endless, unoriginal and gratuitous attack pieces against him (and us) like yours won’t allow us to be.
The endless hounding of people in MAGA hats. Catcalls of racism, bigot, and Nazi. Physical attacks, doxxing, media humiliations. They are meant to shut people up and keep them home. To suppress our will to be and think and speak what we feel. To literally keep us in an ideological closet; regardless of our age, sex, race, occupation, or inclinations. Not seen and not heard.
It is a less than encouraging platform from which to be ruled. The promise of suppression and intimidation. But it’s who they are, what they do. The form of government they promise cannot operate any other way. It is juxtaposed to everything that any real “rights movement” ever fought to overcome.
So, would losing to President Trump in 2020 bring the message home that this isn’t working?
The left promises no peace until they win. There will be no peace either way. The Obama years taught us that.
Because the one thing more dangerous to the left’s ambitions than a President who won’t lay down with them in the Swamp is an electorate committed to protecting its rights to free speech and conscience. The right to self-defense, property, and individual liberty. People who will elect even Donald Trump, if that’s what it takes to protect them.
