In March, I gave the keynote speech at a dinner for conservative members of the Minnesota state legislature, who were demoralized: They were a veteran group, used to operating in a state that even Ronald Reagan hadn’t won.
“He Californianized our state in one legislative session.”
“How is it possible that we’ve moved so far left and your state of Iowa has moved so far right?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever recover from what’s happened to our state.”
I’m hearing all of this from people just two hours away from me who have experienced what happens when a certain kind of left comes to power. And I fear that if he loses to Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in November’s election, we’ll all be saying the same thing in four years.
But if you are one of those people who genuinely thinks that ordinary people will openly and unashamedly embrace Marxism in 2024, then quickly learn their cosmic lesson and turn around in 2028 to vote for a candidate more obviously to the right of Donald Trump, like Ron DeSantis, then I’m going to sell you Western European countries with Conservative parties and “conservative leaders” like Emmanuel Macron.
This isn’t about Trump. This is about us now. Will it be the Trump New York of the 1980s and ’90s, or the progressive hell of today?
That’s not the case. None of this works that way.
Just ask California, the mother of the Reagan revolution, where Republicans once won seven out of ten elections. Today, Republicans are lucky to get 40% statewide support in a presidential election. There was no heaven-sent resurrection, the GOP is gone for good, and now it’s the biggest exporter of the zeitgeist to the nation.
It’s far more likely that the US will follow the same path as California and Western Europe, rather than move further right in the wake of a Republican defeat in 2024. It was a destructive Trump that got ruthless DeSantis elected in Florida in the first place. And no one knows that calculus better than DeSantis. That’s why he ran this election, despite the odds being stacked against him. He said throughout his run that this election was irredeemable. So if that means raising tens of millions of dollars for the guy who beat him, so be it.
DeSantis has set aside his pride, his ego and his ambition for something much more important: his country. This is a crucial election in terms of worldview. The differences in worldview have never been starker, and the fact that Trump is the Republican nominee makes that fact all the more striking.
I have fundamental philosophical and ethical differences with Trump, and frankly, I don’t think any Bible-believing Christian could do otherwise. But my differences with Trump pale in comparison to the tyranny and depravity that Harris-Waltz represents. This will be the most significant election I have ever voted in in terms of opposing worldviews, and I believe it may be the last election we ever vote in, if the worst-case scenario currently unfolding in Orwellian Britain plays out here too.
Some of you think you’re being principled by making this all about Trump. But the reality is, you risk being just as self-centered as Trump is claiming to be. You are putting Trump and your feelings about him above your own interests and the interests of your family and country. This is no different fundamentally from what you accuse Trump’s most despicable shills of doing.
Listen to me: If Harris and Walz win, we’ll be watching as they appoint replacements for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and wishing we could do it all over again.
Watching as they turn this country into a rape refugee zoo like the UK
As they watch to oblige with yet another venomous jab.
You watch as they fund the Ayatollahs to wage more and more wars in which your sons and daughters will fight and die.
Watching as they slaughter children across the country for as long as they have their pinkies in the birth canals.
Watching them “ban free speech over misinformation.”
Watch as they ramp up the Green New Deal.
I see them viciously racist-trolling the country in a way that would make Barack Obama blush.
While they watch San Francisco and Minneapolis impose themselves on the rest of the country. I hope you like poop maps and child pornography, because that’s what you get.
This isn’t about Trump, or about longing for a future that isn’t guaranteed at all. This is about us, and about us now. Will it be the New York of the 1980s or ’90s with Trump, or the hellish progressivism of today?
One is not nearly perfect, but it won’t hate you or try to destroy you. The other is hell on earth. Choose who you will serve today while you still have the choice.
