Monday, January 30, 2017

The outsider candidate

trump pence ryan

When the 2016 Primaries were beginning to shape up, grassroots Republicans began a push for what they termed as an "outsider" candidate, someone who was not a career politician. The idea being, besides the notion of returning the country to government by civilians, that a non-political lifer would not be beholden to self-interest and self-preservation of a lifetime appointment/career in politics.

Much of what drove voters to Donald Trump was the belief that a wealthy man would not be able to be swayed by the graft of lobbyists and as a man with a full career outside politics, he wouldn't worry about being re-elected and would instead do the "right" thing for the country and his supporters.

The danger of a political novice in the White House was that there might be blunders, perhaps even on an epic scale, by someone who simply doesn't understand how government or the world works. So you have a bit of the double edged sword when the outsider/political novice becomes President.

And that's pretty much what we've seen in Trump's first week in office.

Some of his Executive Orders have been good -- stopping the payment to Palestinian terrorists Obama tried to sneak through in the last hours of his Presidency, setting the stage for repealing/replacing Obamacare, money for increased border patrol agents, tasking the military to draw up actual plans for defeating ISIS, stopping funding for sanctuary cities and so on. Even the temporary ban on immigration isn't as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Even man-god Obama restricted immigration during his 8 years in the Oval Office. Throughout this country's history, we've restricted immigration from time to time. This is a 120 day stay and increased vetting for those travelling to and from countries designated as sponsors of terror.

Not sure what all the hubbub is about. Other than lefties and Hollywood are so determined to lash out at anything Trump does, they're in full meltdown at the moment. I liked Mark Levin's tweet about having all Syrian refugees and immigrants from these terror countries be housed in Beverly Hills.   heh

Of course, there has been the bad, particularly in the way President Trump has handled the press and coverage of him. One would hope he will outgrow that. But with a large portion of his supporters cheering him on every time he or one of his agents attacks the press, I fear we're in for a rather inelegant four years from the Trump administration.

To his credit, he seems to be trying to deliver on his campaign promises. And that's what we're always screaming about when a new President is elected -- "You campaigned on [this] or [that] . . . why aren't you pushing ahead on it?!"

Well, he seems to be trying. It's only one week in, 207 weeks to go.

We'll see.

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