(09-16-2020 11:40 AM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/voting-for-trump-is-to-try-saving-yourself-from-being-beaten-into-submission-by-the-social-justice-mob

"...Pletka, a fellow at the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, wrote Monday that she has never cared for President Trump and did not vote for him in 2016, but that after seeing what has happened at warp speed in the last few months, she will probably have to in November.

She named a lot of things that a center-right voter might say — that she's afraid for the economy and for the Supreme Court careening to the left and for more socialist-friendly policies. But eventually, Pletka got to what she should really fear, and what every independent voter should consider.

From Pletka's op-ed:

I fear the virtue-signaling bullies who increasingly try to dominate or silence public discourse — and encourage my children to think that their being White is intrinsically evil, that America’s founding is akin to original sin. I fear the growing self-censorship that guides many people’s every utterance, and the leftist vigilantes who view every personal choice — from recipes to hairdos — through their twisted prisms of politics and culture. An entirely Democratic-run Washington, urged on by progressives’ media allies, would no doubt only accelerate these trends...."

(09-16-2020 12:04 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  These kinds of personal awakenings cannot be scripted or scheduled. They just happen organically when an individual stops trusting their Facebook feeds and their cable-news shows, and stops to actually look at what’s happening around them in the real world.

(09-16-2020 11:49 AM)bobdizole Wrote:  As someone who leans center-right I wholly agree with this. I don't want to live under a progressive regime anymore than I want to live in a Theocracy. If DJT wins in November I believe it will force the democrats back towards the center. I thought they would have got that message when hildog lost, but instead they took from that they weren't progressive enough. Which might have been true if they wanted to get the bernie bros on board, but that is not going to get them votes in the rust belt

(09-16-2020 12:16 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I believe what Glenn Beck said...

If Joe Biden somehow manages to win, this will likely be the last Constitutional election in our lifetimes.

(09-16-2020 12:16 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I believe what Glenn Beck said...

If Joe Biden somehow manages to win, this will likely be the last Constitutional election in our lifetimes.

(09-16-2020 12:48 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-16-2020 12:16 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I believe what Glenn Beck said...

If Joe Biden somehow manages to win, this will likely be the last Constitutional election in our lifetimes.

One of my best friends just said essentially the same thing.

(09-16-2020 11:57 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  If you say that you are a conservative, and you finally find yourself supporting Trump because you fear virtue signalling bullies, and not because he's been the best conservative we may have ever seen govern the country, then you probably aint quite as conservative as you think you are.

(09-16-2020 01:03 PM)BartlettTigerFan Wrote:  

(09-16-2020 12:48 PM)TripleA Wrote:  

(09-16-2020 12:16 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I believe what Glenn Beck said...

If Joe Biden somehow manages to win, this will likely be the last Constitutional election in our lifetimes.

One of my best friends just said essentially the same thing.

If Biden wins and they take back the Senate and keep the house, this country deserves whatever happens.

(09-16-2020 12:16 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I believe what Glenn Beck said...

If Joe Biden somehow manages to win, this will likely be the last Constitutional election in our lifetimes.

(09-16-2020 01:19 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  

(09-16-2020 12:16 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I believe what Glenn Beck said...

If Joe Biden somehow manages to win, this will likely be the last Constitutional election in our lifetimes.

And so where is Beck on POTUS these days? Wasn’t he a pretty vocal never Trumper back in ‘15-16?
I don’t listen to Beck, not for any particular reason, just don’t have the radio on all that much.

I do agree with that basic statement, first thing they’ll go after is SCOTUS, quickly thereafter the electoral college. We’ll be ruled by Califa and NYC from here on out.

(09-16-2020 03:51 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  "Christ wanted us to discern. Discernment is witnessing what goes on around you and knowing people and entities by what they actually do."

But, specifically He was referring to the discernment of the sinful nature inherrent in man and how it would manifest itself in our lives. We have seen that sinful nature of the Demoncraps even in the people in Congress. Too many to name because they're all on the same page. They also "try" to use the Bible to put their point across but it fails miserable because truthfully they don't know the Bible and don't know what they're talking about. We've seen enough of them doing it and falling flat. Like their father the devil he used half truths and still uses half truths to lie to us into believing him, they learned well from him.

Those who don't know the Father do not have the gift of discernment that He gives to us. He says that when we accept Him we will be able to read the Bible as it tells us and not what we want to believe. It's true, I couldn't make heads or tails of what the Bible said until I accepted Him and His gifts. Praise Him foreve.

Quote:Democrats hoped that Republican defections from President Donald Trump would help former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, but an article in The Nation observes that Trump is consolidating support, even from “Biden Republicans.”

National affairs correspondent Jeet Heer noted in an article titled “Biden Republicans Are a Political Illusion”:

In late August, Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff under President Barack Obama as well as onetime mayor of Chicago, declared, “This will be the year of the Biden Republican.” Emanuel was describing the hope that the Democratic Party would convert enough hardcore partisans to fundamentally realign American politics. Just as Reagan Democrats helped the Republicans dominate American politics in the 1980s, so Biden Republicans could help usher in a new era. To that end, much of the Democratic National Convention was tailored to please Republicans more than Democrats, with plenty of speeches by past and present Republicans like Colin Powell, Michael Bloomberg, John Kasich, and Cindy McCain. Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were marginalized. This stood in contrast to the Republican convention, which was aimed not at outreach but at bolstering the party’s Trumpist identity, with all the adult children of the president speaking.

…

Enough time has gone by since the convention that we can safely say that the Republican message was more successful.

…

Trump is succeeding in consolidating Republican support behind him, while the Democratic pitch to Republican voters hasn’t gained any traction. Republicans who are skeptical of Trump are returning to the fold, while Democrats aren’t winning new converts.

Heer also referred to a recent Washington Post op-ed by former “Never Trump” stalwart Danielle Pletka, “I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may be forced to vote for him this year.”

Pletka said in 2017 that there were rumors Trump was “crazy” or on “drugs,” but now says:

I fear that former vice president Joe Biden would be a figurehead president, incapable of focus or leadership, who would run a teleprompter presidency with the words drafted by his party’s hard-left ideologues. I fear that a Congress with Democrats controlling both houses — almost certainly ensured by a Biden victory in November — would begin an assault on the institutions of government that preserve the nation’s small “d” democracy. That could include the abolition of the filibuster, creating an executive-legislative monolith of unlimited political power; an increase in the number of Supreme Court seats to ensure a liberal supermajority; passage of devastating economic measures such as the Green New Deal; nationalized health care; the dismantling of U.S. borders and the introduction of socialist-inspired measures that will wreck an economy still recovering from the pandemic shutdown.

I fear the grip of Manhattan-San Francisco progressive mores that increasingly permeate my daily newspapers, my children’s curriculums and my local government. I fear the virtue-signaling bullies who increasingly try to dominate or silence public discourse — and encourage my children to think that their being White is intrinsically evil, that America’s founding is akin to original sin. I fear the growing self-censorship that guides many people’s every utterance, and the leftist vigilantes who view every personal choice — from recipes to hairdos — through their twisted prisms of politics and culture. An entirely Democratic-run Washington, urged on by progressives’ media allies, would no doubt only accelerate these trends.

Nor do Biden’s national-security positions reassure me. While he promises a welcome change in style and a renewed respect for U.S. alliances, Biden would, like Trump, pull our troops from the Middle East and South Asia. Worse yet, he would slash defense spending and likely renew the Obama administration’s misbegotten love affair with Iran’s tyrants. Then there is the Democratic Party’s hostility to the state of Israel. Biden supporters will clamor that the candidate’s history is very pro-Israel, but as president would he be strong enough to stand up to the new Democratic Party’s less-than-ardent support for the Jewish state?

Quote:Danielle Pletka is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In 2016, I never considered voting for Donald Trump. The Johnny-come-lately Republican and his nasty schoolyard jibes seemed to me the worst degradation of American politics. But in 2020, I may be forced to vote for the man.

Hear me out.

I don’t need a bumper sticker or a lawn sign to convey my distaste for Trump — his odious tweets, his chronic mendacity and general crudeness. Over the past four years, like an oil slick that besmirches all it touches, Trump himself has managed to obscure his administration’s more-substantive accomplishments, such as focusing the world’s attention on China’s threat to global security and brokering a new era of Middle East peace.

I fear Trump’s erratic, personality-driven decision-making. His contempt for NATO is alarming, as is his delusion that he can manage rogue leaders. I don’t doubt that his eagerness to withdraw U.S. troops from their stability missions in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq will encourage conflict and terrorism. And I fret that his bizarrely isolationist attitude toward international trade will hurt the U.S. economy and splinter the global trading juggernaut that over the past half-century has brought the world amazing prosperity, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty.

But I fear the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party even more.

What is there to be afraid of? I fear that former vice president Joe Biden would be a figurehead president, incapable of focus or leadership, who would run a teleprompter presidency with the words drafted by his party’s hard-left ideologues. I fear that a Congress with Democrats controlling both houses — almost certainly ensured by a Biden victory in November — would begin an assault on the institutions of government that preserve the nation’s small “d” democracy. That could include the abolition of the filibuster, creating an executive-legislative monolith of unlimited political power; an increase in the number of Supreme Court seats to ensure a liberal supermajority; passage of devastating economic measures such as the Green New Deal; nationalized health care; the dismantling of U.S. borders and the introduction of socialist-inspired measures that will wreck an economy still recovering from the pandemic shutdown.

I fear the grip of Manhattan-San Francisco progressive mores that increasingly permeate my daily newspapers, my children’s curriculums and my local government. I fear the virtue-signaling bullies who increasingly try to dominate or silence public discourse — and encourage my children to think that their being White is intrinsically evil, that America’s founding is akin to original sin. I fear the growing self-censorship that guides many people’s every utterance, and the leftist vigilantes who view every personal choice — from recipes to hairdos — through their twisted prisms of politics and culture. An entirely Democratic-run Washington, urged on by progressives’ media allies, would no doubt only accelerate these trends.

Nor do Biden’s national-security positions reassure me. While he promises a welcome change in style and a renewed respect for U.S. alliances, Biden would, like Trump, pull our troops from the Middle East and South Asia. Worse yet, he would slash defense spending and likely renew the Obama administration’s misbegotten love affair with Iran’s tyrants. Then there is the Democratic Party’s hostility to the state of Israel. Biden supporters will clamor that the candidate’s history is very pro-Israel, but as president would he be strong enough to stand up to the new Democratic Party’s less-than-ardent support for the Jewish state?

Are there problems on the right — horrible nasties on a par with the violent protesters who have lately inflicted untold damage on many U.S. cities, businesses and lives? You bet. These execrable gun-toting racists have received too much tacit encouragement from Trump. But they do not represent the mainstream of the Republican Party or guide the choices of the vast mass of Republican members of Congress. A year ago, I thought the Democratic Party was similarly insulated from the extreme left. But I don’t anymore, not when so much of the party’s thinking is driven by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — all of whom were once on the fringes.

With Donald Trump, I know what I am getting. He wears his sins on the outside. For good and ill, he runs his administration. I worry more about his incompetence and vacillation than I do about any dictatorial tendencies. On the other side, however, I am increasingly persuaded that what I see in Joe Biden — whom I first met in 1992, and whom I believe to be a decent person — would merely be the facade for an administration, fully backed by both houses of Congress, with an agenda that would seriously damage the nation. The corrosive left-wing extremism of 2020 would be ascendant, while a smiling President Biden assures the country that everything is fine. Trump, for all his flaws, could be all that stands between our imperfect democracy and the tyranny of the woke left.