Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

I doubt Trump can pass his immigration plan.  The two sides are so far apart no compromise may be possible.  So, let’s have an election, in November, with this as the leading issue.

Trump realizes that the Dreamers are not going to be deported.  Most Americans are too soft-hearted to ever let that happen.  So Trump will simply allow them to remain in their current status until after the election.  The INS has lots and lots of other things to attend to – millions of them, in fact.  There’s enough of a backlog in other areas (overstayed visas, etc.) to keep them busy.

Immigration hawks have to face political reality.  They can’t achieve all of their goals at one fell swoop.  I’d like to see reduced legal immigration, but that can wait.  Take what we can get, especially if it’s the end of uncontrolled chain migration.

But let’s do it after the election.  The 2018 election shouldn’t be about Trump.  It should be about immigration.  If that is the case, we’ll do just fine.

As to the wall, what is a wall, after all?  Walls need not be entirely structures of concrete and steel.  The Berlin Wall was as real as walls get, but there wasn’t a wall all round.  Barriers need not be walls.  Mine fields are not walls, for instance.

In the English language, words can have flexible, even fanciful, meanings.

 

When we saw what the IRS did to squelch the Tea Party, we should have realized just how bad things had gotten.  It was the government muzzling the people, for God’s sake.

If it was that bad at the IRS, why did we think it was any better at the FBI?  This is the agency whose Deputy Director had taken out a President, an agency with a tradition of putting itself above the law.  They think they have some special status, outside the political system, so they naturally think they get get away with undermining a President.

The FBI and the Justice Department don’t need a special prosecutor investigating them.  They need new leadership, from people who are ready, willing and able to clean house, wholesale.  A prosecution will get a few convictions, perhaps.  It’s won’t hose down the stables, which is what is needed.

I’m starting to feel better about the November election.  A lot of people are seeing a tangible personal benefit from the tax cut.  They may not say they’re for Trump.  It’s best not to, in the company they keep.  And they don’t have to like him.  But they admit to themselves he’s doing a good job.

I suspect there’s going to be a hell of a lot of good economic news in the next nine months.  Economic momentum is building.  The animal spirits are loose.

That’s what matters.  The rest is smoke.  There is no there there.  It’s all just chaff, designed to distract.

The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

One of the defining political events of 2018 will be the replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, due to retire in June.  His replacement by another Gorsuch would give strict constitutional conservatives a majority on the Supreme Court for the first time since 1936.

This is the big one.  This is the one that tips the scales.  Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, and a host of other judicial atrocities will, eventually, be overturned by the new conservative majority.  Everyone understands what’s at stake.  This could well be the big political story of the year.

Soon after the 2016 election was over President-elect Trump offered the vacancy on the Supreme Court to Senator Ted Cruz, who declined.  Senator Cruz was determined to maintain his political viability as a possible future President.

That was then, and this is now.  Ted Cruz can do more for his country as the fifth solid conservative than he’ll ever do in the Senate.  He is not in his natural element in the Senate.  And the likelihood of him succeeding Trump in the Presidency is fanciful, at best.

Ted Cruz is a patriot, who wants to be of service to his country.  That’s why I think he’s the next Justice of the Supreme Court.

 

The American Peace began with Japan’s surrender on August 14th, 1945.  Since then, none of the great powers of the world have made war on one another.  It is the goal of American foreign policy that none of them do so in the future.  Wars kill people and are bad for business, and the American people will attempt to prevent the outbreak of war whenever possible.

America has done all of that for the last 73 years, and will continue to do so, for as long as it can.  We’re able to do it because of our unique position in the world.  We are the strongest country, and will be for the foreseeable future.  And because we live on a island of hemispheric proportions, we are far more secure than any power on earth.  We have half the globe, from 150 degrees East to 30 degrees West of Greenwich, all to ourselves and our friends and dependents in North and South America.

We have no territorial ambitions, and no worries.  Our hemisphere is an autarky – economically self sufficient, if need be.  The other great powers of the world, Russia, China, Japan and Europe (and, perhaps, India) have inherent conflicts with one another.  We have no skin in any of these disputes, and are able to act as a disinterested and fair minded referee.  We brokered the peace between Japan and Russia in 1906, and our natural role is one of honest broker.

Before World War One there was a general peace of a hundred years, from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to 1914.  It was a balance of power peace, with Great Britain as the balancing power.   It is the the years of the World Wars, from 1914 to 1945, which will be looked back on as an aberration.

The American Peace, which began in 1945, could last for God knows how long.  I was born in 1945, five weeks in to the American Peace, and it’s the only thing I’ve known.  It’s our gift to the world.

 

 

 

 

James K. Polk had four goals in mind when he was elected in 1844.  He wanted to bring Texas into the Union, resolve the Oregon dispute with Great Britain, take California from Mexico, and bring order to the government’s finances.  He got them all done, and did not run for a second term.  There was no point.

At the end of his first term, Trump will have:

1.  Appointed at least two solid conservatives to the Supreme Court, giving a majority to constitutional conservatives for the first time in 80 years.
2. Through tax and regulatory policy, ignited an economic boom to equal, if not surpass, the Roaring 20’s.
3. Restored sanity to our immigration policy for the first time in 50 years, secured the border, and built the wall.
4. Virtually singlehandedly, he will have reestablished “America First” as the touchstone of all trade agreements, now and in the future.
5. Reasserted American leadership across the globe, and reversed the drift toward world government.  American national self interest is once again the basis of all foreign policy.

The next three years may see additions to this list, such as revitalizing the military, an infrastructure program, separate strategic accommodations made with China and Russia, dunuclearization of North Korea, overthrow of the mullahs in Iran, passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment through Article V, and countless others.

So what’s Trump planning for his second term?  Whatever he’s got in  mind, it can’t top the successes listed above.  It can’t come close.

Second terms are never as good as the first.  If Trump runs again he’ll be 79 when he leaves office.  I say he goes out in a cloud of glory, having remade the Republican Party in his image, and having done more positive good for the country than any President since James K. Polk.

There’s glory for you.  And a long life ahead to enjoy it.