Donald Trump Gives Us a Fighting Chance

The most recent YouGov/CBS News Battleground Tracker shows Donald Trump with a four point lead over fellow outsider Ben Carson in Iowa and commanding, double-digit leads in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Instead of underestimating his candidacy, the hand-wringing talking-heads and Republican leaders are beginning to consider the real possibility that Trump very well could be the Republican nominee.

Meanwhile, his supporters are still considered by the “intellectual crowd” as little more than knuckle dragging, uneducated, pitchfork toting, personality-cult following populists hellbent on putting their guy in the White House no matter what.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The fact that Trump’s base keeps growing, however, casts doubt on the caricature.

Take me, for example. I’ve followed politics my entire adult life, and consider myself as “conservative” as they come. I fully understand the nuances of the anti-Trump argument. I’ve read plenty of articles purporting to convince me that supporting Donald Trump is not only a bad idea, but apparently makes me a terrible person as well (or something like that).

Like anyone who loves this country, I’ve sadly watched America fall farther and farther into the abyss with scant chance of reemerging. Lately it seems as if it really doesn’t matter who occupies the White House – things remain the same. I voted for George W. Bush twice only to see him let us down time and time again. And don’t even get me started on this Republican Congress that was supposed to take a stand. Our country is becoming an unrecognizable place to what it was 20 years ago, and I can’t imagine what it will be like in another 20, if it’s here at all.

This election cycle, I’ve watched a strong Republican field, perhaps the strongest in recent history, with much interest. Can one of them win and begin to right the ship?

When Donald Trump began his campaign, I liked what he had to say but I was skeptical. Would he stick to his guns? Would the slightest misstep doom his campaign? Yet, like a Teflon Don, he’s managed to weasel out of trouble time and time again and gain more and more support all the while.

Can Donald Trump turn this ship around? I don’t know, but I do know that more experienced and “ideologically pure” politicians have had their hands on the reins for the duration of this collapse. Why should I trust more of them?

Sure, I understand all of the issues Glenn Beck, Matt Walsh, and the talking heads on FoxNews have written and spoken about Donald Trump. Sure, maybe he’s a narcissistic, pompous, egomaniac blowhard. Yes, he relentlessly attacks people who criticize him to assuage his fragile ego. Indeed, he often says stupid things that reveal his lack of depth on some issues and, frankly, don’t always make sense. Maybe he’s held every position on every issue under the sun (except trade, which he has been refreshingly consistent on) and likely is only running for president so he can attach a Trump logo on the side of the White House.

All that may very well be true, but you know what?

I don’t care.

Excoriate me all you want, but I’m finished voting for traditional politicians. We’ve tried that, over and over again, to no avail. Sure, from a purely ideological standpoint I like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul better. They are fantastic candidates and they seem like good, genuine people. Maybe they’d do great.

Problem is, they can’t win. At least not in today’s America. I don’t think people realize just how far we’re gone. We are at a place demographically and ideologically where it’s become very difficult, if not impossible, for a Republican candidate to win a national election. The Democrats could run a scandal-ridden Hillary Clinton, an old and fat Al Gore, or the bones of Franklin D. Roosevelt and they’d all beat any career politician we decide to trot out, likely in a landslide.

To do this, all they really have to do is keep Florida, and, given the demographic changes there that have taken place over the past decade, even if Republicans choose a Floridian like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio it won’t be all that hard.

This year we’ve got to do something different to have a chance. Thankfully, “different” has presented itself in the form of a bombastic, iconic, billionaire from Queens known for brilliant business moves and firing people on live television.

What American voter, after all, doesn’t want to just up and fire the entire Washington elite?

The awesome thing is, Donald Trump can win. He has shown it by maintaining and increasing his support week after week. He can garner a higher percentage of the Black vote than any Republican in modern history. He can appeal to moderates. He can sway independents and even attract a few Democrats. If Trump can get past the GOP field, I’m convinced he can win the general election in one of the last election cycles where Republicans have a snowball’s chance.

And if he does win, what he has promised to do could very well give us at least a fighting chance going forward.

None of us will ever agree with every candidate on every issue. That said, there are two issues which are absolutely critical to the future of this country – immigration, because our policy of allowing unlimited, unskilled, and generally unassimilable Third Worlders will bankrupt us and irreversibly destroy us as a cohesive society; and trade, because when the playing field isn’t level American workers suffer in a big way. If we don’t start MAKING things again our country will be economically doomed.

Guess what? Trump is fantastic on both of those issues. He and I may disagree on plenty of other things, but if he even BEGINS to fix those two issues, particularly and most importantly immigration, our ship could very well begin to head in the right direction. At that point, maybe, we’ll still have a country left to save.

We can argue about all the other stuff then.

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