With the departure of Steve Bannon, Donald Trump has cast off the training wheels. The road has been rocky and complex as he has navigated his presidency through such adversarial efforts as no new president has ever faced:
His friends on the new right were his so long as he did their bidding. When he didn’t, they lambasted him and pouted privately and publicly.
The Washington swamp is always ready to embrace any president it can control and equally ready to destroy any president it can’t.
The Obama holdovers and other tried and true liberals, mired in their irrational hates and prejudices against all things Republican, American, traditional, and patriotic are both predictably incoherent and just as predictably unified in their opposition to Trump, root and branch.
The Democratic Party structure is not quite as implacably opposed as others on the left but it is as close as one can get to it without using the word “psychosis.”
The Republican establishment in D.C. quietly sniffs that their “brand” is being sullied by this “oaf.” They oppose Trump because they like attending liberal Democrat parties and like getting good reviews in the media and other approbation from the left. They are loathsome because of the triviality of this reason and because of their pathetic sideline, stone throwing existence.
This brings us to the worst of the lot, the federal bureaucracy — the establishment. The establishment opposes Trump in dark and indirect ways. It does so with a determination that surpasses all of the others. In recent years, the bureaucracy has come alive and understands that it is a possessor of true power and jealously guards it. Trump wants to shrink and harness it. The establishment will resist until it is brought to heel. This will be a long and brutal fight.
Eight years ago, Barack Obama had almost no such opposition at the outset. The establishment embraced him, the left protected him, and the right worked with him — at first. He held the support of a unified government. Everybody wanted him to succeed. However as his real agenda of centralized power, globalism, and far-left social policies came to light, much of the unification fell away and the country became more divided than ever since the Civil War.
In no small way, the Obama presidency gave us Trump.
Under Obama, we were going to be a different place and the Left was going to see it done. The great liberal dream of centralized power, globalism, and American diminution on the world stage reaching all the way back to Woodrow Wilson and beyond was coming true. America was going to deny its exceptionalism, take on all of the sins of the world as being of our own origin and pay penance to everyone — absolutely everyone. We would bow and apologize to everyone because of the self-loathing of the liberals and the distaste that they have for nationalism and our unique sense of ourselves.
Trump ran on reversing this course. He was elected to govern away from the destination charted by the Left. His first months in office have been spent in trying consensus horse after horse to ride to that destination. He has finally figured out that he needs to ride his own horse and, having started on that lonely path, others may join but the path will always be his. This is how Reagan governed and how Trump must govern as well.
The Trump presidency is growing and learning and quietly vanquishing each of its detracting groups in turn. There is a turn in the Trump presidency at present and that turn is toward the overarching principle of Make America Great Again — MAGA. Reagan had the Soviet Empire and Trump has globalism to unite us and Make America Great Again.
The truth of this is in the simple fact that while almost every clique of D.C. is against him in one way or another, the people outside of D.C. are with him. Polls and their various manipulations aside, the ruling party throughout this country by any measure is the Republican Party. Trump utterly owns the Republican Party.
The Bushies and “Silk Stocking Republicans” deny this and fight for control but there is no doubt they are unsupported outside of D.C. The Republican Party has become the Party of Trump and he is its unifying force. Every electoral contest so far has proved this and his personal control is growing.
Congress is starting to get it and is looking seriously at new leadership (because Ryan doesn’t get it). State parties are getting it and slowly building candidacies sympathetic to MAGA rather than opposing or ignoring Trump as an aberration.
By the midterms, few Republicans will be elected who do not run with Trump and by his re-election election, Trump will own the party as completely as Reagan did. This is the intractable will of the Republican electorate.
By off-loading Bannon, Preibus, and others, Trump has declared his independence from the D.C. cliques of power. He is going to be his own president representing the millions of Trump-Republicans who believe in MAGA.
He will deal with the Democrats when MAGA requires, he will state uncomfortable truths when MAGA requires and he will act compassionately as MAGA absolutely requires.
Trump has turned a new leaf and MAGA will be the governing principle which will lead him to success. On this new page, those on the right must follow or be relegated to insignificance and those on the Left can only watch what little they had slip away.
Michael Patrick Flanagan represented the 5th District of Illinois in the historic 104th Congress. Prior to his Congressional Service, Michael was commissioned in the United States Army Field Artillery. Michael and his firm, Flanagan Consulting LLC, have represented both large and small corporations, organizations, and associations. In 2009, Michael entered public service again with the United States Department of State in Iraq as the Senior Rule of Law Advisor on the Maysan Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Maysan, Iraq. For more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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