KEEP U.S. ON RIGHT TRACK
The United States is a center-right country in 2020. The Democratic Party is nowhere near the center-right, or even the center, so we don’t believe a representative of that party is appropriate to lead the country as president.
The other choice is the current Republican president, whose policies before the novel coronavirus had the U.S. moving in the right direction on so many fronts but whose personal name-calling, tone deafness and intractability confounded us long before he was elected in 2016.
Four years ago, we did not endorse Donald Trump after the revelation of his vulgar tape about women from a decade earlier, but we urged people to support Republicans for the good of the country.
Like most people, we did not expect him to win, and we admit we underestimated the drastic change that people wanted after eight years of an arrogant administration that seemed to lead against the will of much of the electorate.
With Trump, voters elected a businessman who was used to doing things his way and who like a brawler was willing to dish out in equal measures what he took. They overlooked his womanizing, his cruel insults, whether or not they got a look at his income tax returns and his assault on the national media that many thought was long overdue.
What they got in return was rather remarkable considering the president had a target on his back from the political left before he ever took the oath of office.
The country got a tax cut, regulation rollbacks that spurred business growth, the lowest recorded unemployment in history for Black and Hispanic Americans, the near complete destruction of the terroristic Islamic State, the excision of two Middle Eastern terror leaders, peace deals between Israel and nearby Arab neighbors, the movement of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, record money for historically Black colleges, criminal justice reform with the First Step Act, two (perhaps three) constitutionally sound Supreme Court justices and the near wind-down of two wars, just to name a few things.
For his trouble, he received a previous administration that plotted against him, a nearly three-year investigation into his and his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, impeachment in the House over a phone call, probes that attempted to have his income taxes (under which he is under no compunction to reveal) exposed, hateful slurs repeated about him, his wife, children and family, and an opposition party that refused out of sheer hatred of him to work with him on legislation for the American people.
In all likelihood, Trump easily would have won re-election in November had not the coronavirus become a global pandemic and affected millions in the U.S., not the least of which are more than 215,000 dead.
By putting into place an early ban on travel from China — which now-Democratic nominee Joe Biden vehemently opposed — and by ordering Operation Warp Speed to develop a vaccine, the president took decisive, vital steps.
Nevertheless, the virus has become the sword the political left has used to flay Trump where the collusion investigation and impeachment previously did not cut deep enough. Because the modern world has never been through a virus quite like this one, what was done, not done or should have been done between the China travel ban and the advent of a vaccine has had no playbook.
However, minus the frequent insertion of his non-medical opinion and not setting an example by wearing a mask, Trump has handled things about as well as any other president might have. Biden, by dint of his rejection of a travel ban, by the mistakes the Obama administration made during the swine flu epidemic and by Biden’s vow to shut down the country again if necessary, shows he would not have done better.
Indeed, the former vice president has much to recommend against his election. Perhaps most telling is his drift to the far left of the party. Moderate positions he once took on abortion, law and order, immigration and energy, among other things, have now been rejected.
By selecting the woman recently named the country’s most liberal U.S. senator (Kamala Harris) as his running mate, and by creating a pact with Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, he has cemented his far left standing.
Also concerning are Biden’s age and cognition. Though at nearly 78, he is only four years older than Trump, the president seems infinitely more energetic. Biden, meanwhile, often seems confused and prone to gaffes. To imagine a more enfeebled Biden is to imagine an acting President Harris, or eventually a President Harris.
With the vice presidential nominee’s past support for unfettered illegal immigration, the Green New Deal, Supreme Court packing and slave reparations, among many issues, the country’s center-right population core would find themselves in a place they never sought and don’t want.
Our recommendation in order to continue the economic recovery and return to the employment records we reached earlier this year, to prevent the remaking of the country into a one-party state, and to secure a safer, freer and more prosperous nation for every American is — as we said four years ago, and has been the tradition of this page — to elect Republicans throughout the ballot.