“I tell ya, you’re forgetting one thing -- you don’t have a [blanking] choice.”
Such was the one-line conclusion to a brief exchange between a good natured but evil drug lord (Brad) and his unwilling “mule” appointee (David) in the cryptic comedy “We’re the Millers”, (caution, very salty language) the latter to run a mission between Mexico and the United States to illegally import tons of marijuana. The movie was made in 2013 when cultural conditions in America weren’t nearly as dire as they are now. It’s highly doubtful anyone would find the situation funny these days no matter how much slapstick humor is involved.
There’s not much to laugh about in 2024 and it has nothing to do with placing someone in an impossible situation to fulfill the plot of a Hollywood film. We’re in the midst of a presidential election year (yes, I know it’s still only January) and lots of folks are in a sour mood over the perceived lack of choice between what appears to be the sure thing nominees for each party.
Hint: The two gentlemen bear a striking resemblance to the candidates from 2020.
What to do? Plug your nose? Sit out? Write-in someone who can’t/won’t win? Stage a political coup at this summer’s conventions? What are the choices again? In an opinion piece titled “Trump vs. Biden? America should vote ‘none of the above’”, Joseph Curl wrote at The Washington Times last week:
“Donald Trump lost badly in 2020 (don’t believe a word the ex-president says; he got his clock cleaned). Four years earlier, Americans turned out in droves to vote against Hillary Clinton, but last election, they hit the polls to vote against Mr. Trump. Joe Biden? Joe Biden??!! He’d run for president three times previously and dropped out early every time (once over charges of plagiarism, which were totally true). Mr. Biden couldn’t even beat a first-term senator from Illinois for the 2008 nomination. But in Mr. Trump, he found an opponent he could beat — from the comfort of his own basement...
“Both Messrs. Trump and Biden are too old to be president — way too old. How many more examples do we need that prove this? But the bigger question is, how are Joe Biden and Donald Trump the two best candidates for president in a country of 330 million people?
“Here’s one option for Election Day 2024. Don’t show up. NOBODY show up. If neither Messrs. Trump or Biden gets a single vote, we’d have to start all over again. Maybe then we can find a candidate who isn’t a million years old and out of it.”
Okay, okay, Curl doesn’t appear serious in suggesting no one show up, and therefore neither Trump nor Biden get a single vote. Besides, if we’d still be looking for a candidate at that point, wouldn’t we simply have bothered not to vote in the primaries, not waiting until the general election to completely withdraw?
Certainly there are a multitude of polls and surveys that reveal Americans are purportedly not happy with the likely final combatants in this year’s general election. To the extent that said voters are ever happy about anything… well, that’s a subject for another time.
It’s understandable why Americans aren’t thrilled with Biden. He is too old, too corrupt, too idiotic, too shady (all the creepy, handsy behavior?), too physically and mentally challenged and too ill-informed to even qualify to be president. But those things were just as true in 2020 as they are now and the rest is… history.
Time and again the Democrat grassroots has voiced its displeasure upon being forced to digest another Biden candidacy, but the party establishment and leadership clings to the notion that senile Joe equates to election wins, so the fact that he’s a shuffling poster child for political elder care facilities doesn’t matter a darn to them. Plus, everyone knows Kamala Harris is waiting in the wings for that one Biden stumble that takes him out, and this scares the heck out of liberals.
But to all those Republicans or conservatives who either hold out hope that Nikki Haley’s campaign will miraculously rise from utter electoral obscurity to one, challenge Trump in a legitimate either/or horserace and two, actually accumulate enough delegates to nominate her – I would recommend that you view Ted Cruz’s comments on the recently concocted Senate immigration “compromise” hammered out between the truly awful Democrat upper chamber leader “Chucky” Schumer and the gutless Republican establishment idiot Mitch McConnell.
If there are still, after all this time, some Republicans and conservatives (I’m guessing the latter group is much smaller in number) who can’t understand how or why a man like Donald Trump, charged with a few less than a hundred felonies in four different court jurisdictions, can nonetheless be so successful in corralling and winning the loyalty of strong majorities of Republican voters, all you need to grasp the concept is examine what’s happening at the southern border.
That’s it. Game, set, match. Final gun. Or the third out in the bottom of the ninth inning in the seventh game of the World Series. Or, (insert your sports analogy here). Decent American folks pay attention to the coverage of federal border agents cutting the state of Texas’s razor wire in order to allow for more passage of illegal alien invaders and immediately understand how dire the situation is.
You don’t have to live in Texas or Arizona or… one of the other border states that routinely elect Democrats and therefore practically don’t count, to know that the fate of the entire American experiment lies in the balance this November. Those who are paying attention reason that Joe Biden certainly won’t do anything about the problem. He’s had over three years to be informed of what’s going on (since he doesn’t visit) and the best he can do is first assign cackling Kamala Harris to head up the administration’s efforts to stop the invasion and then summarily look the other way as millions of uninvited foreigners brazenly crossed the border and weren’t sent back in the direction from which they came.
One doesn’t need to be a PHD in Physics or hold a Masters degree in some useless liberal arts subject to project how damaging this invasion was to the integrity and sovereignty of the United States of America. Blue city mayors aren’t shying away from complaining about the influx of illegals now inhabiting their sidewalks or taxing their resources to the maximum anymore. A few brave ones have pointed the dirty end of the stick directly at the leader of their party.
The establishment media have even been compelled to devote time to relaying the situation, though their coverage is sometimes sympathetic to the “humanitarian” challenges of the invaders themselves. Conservatives such as Ted Cruz have highlighted how dangerous it is to be so lax in enforcement of the border, which only encourages more would-be adventurers to come and risk the journey. Women are raped. Human trafficking is rampant. The Mexican cartels make a fortune off of drug and human smuggling.
It's bad. Really bad. And there is one politician who stands out from the rest for his firm stance against the whole operation and has since the beginning – and that’s Donald Trump. Those who’ve followed Trump since the launch of his political career know that he’d never shy away from identifying the crux of the issue, nor limit his authority or means to solve the dilemma. Trump would “dictate” a closing of the border on day one of his new administration.
I think if you listen hard enough you can hear applause coming from somewhere – and see the Trump 2024 signs waving along with the sound.
Who else would do it… Nikki Haley? The former Trump U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor keeps talking about signing the most stringent illegal immigration enforcement bill in the country. If this were so, why wouldn’t more neutral observers be talking about what a border hawk she is?
And it’s not as though Republican primary voters weren’t given a pretty solid smattering of candidates to potentially choose from if they really didn’t want Trump. There were young and up-and-comers (Vivek Ramaswamy), old guard representatives (Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie), an identity politics-style woman candidate (Nikki Haley), a “good guy” minority unifier-type candidate (Sen. Tim Scott), conservative governors with solid records (Ron DeSantis and Doug Burgum) and a handful of others who didn’t earn enough support to gain recognition.
Yet the Republican voters have apparently chosen Trump from among those candidates. Writers like Curl may not want a Trump vs. Biden rematch, but the people in the states that matter apparently do – or at least they like one half of the equation.
Trump’s backers are as solid as oak for their candidate, which all-but guaranteed his success in the primaries regardless of who was running against him. Trump himself attempted, without achievement, to discourage potential rivals from even mounting the challenge. Besides, if the name “Republican candidate X” was substituted for Trump in the “vs. Biden” hypothetical, would the poll numbers be all that different?
Neither Trump nor Biden are perfect candidates by any means, though both do represent a stark choice between competing worldviews. Both men achieved results for their sides during their respective presidencies, and if elected in 2024, would either completely reverse the current course or most assuredly perpetuate it.
So, to advocate for a “none of the above” response to the 2024 candidates is not only absurd, it isn’t even necessary. Here’s thinking Americans will likely respond to the binary options presented to them in November, and there will be a lot less grumbling about candidate choice then – for one side, at least. Non-participation is not an option. This election is that important.
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RINOs
Marjorie Taylor Green
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2022 elections
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