Wednesday, December 30, 2020


Trump Is now the Most Admired Man in America, Edging Out the Top Democrat

President Donald Trump finally defeated former President Barack Obama for the title of most admired man in America in Gallup’s 2020 survey. Trump had tied with Obama in 2019 while Obama beat him in 2017 and 2018. Meanwhile, incoming President Joe Biden came in third, while incoming Vice President Kamala Harris came in second to former first lady Michelle Obama for most admired woman.

In 2019, Trump and Obama tied, with 18 percent of Americans naming each of them as the most admired man in an open-ended survey. This year, 18 percent of Americans again named Trump while only 15 percent chose Obama, according to Gallup.

Trump took the top spot arguably because Republicans consolidated around him. While only 39 percent of Americans approve of his job performance (thanks, no doubt, to the legacy media’s attempts to suppress the news of the president’s major accomplishments such as peace in the Middle East), 48 percent of Republicans named Trump, with no other public figure receiving more than 2 percent of Republican votes. Only 45 percent of Republicans named Trump last year.

Democrats, by contrast, proved divided. Only 13 percent of them named Biden while more than twice that number (32 percent) named Obama, down from 41 percent who named the former president as their most admired man last year.

The remaining top 10 include Pope Francis, Elon Musk, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, basketball player LeBron James, and the Dalai Lama.

The year 2020 marks the 10th time Trump has finished among the top 10 men, including four times before he ran for president: 1988, 1989, 1990, and 2011. Gates has finished in the top 10 a total of 21 times, while Obama has done so 15 times and the Dalai Lama 11 times. Biden had only cracked the top 10 once before.

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Survey: The Future GOP Voters Want Can Be Summed Up In Three Simple Words

The party has changed. We all saw this in 2016. Four years later, the transformation is complete. President Donald J. Trump is the Republican Party. Those on the Hill unwilling to fight could see themselves out of a job soon. Well, maybe not all, there are annoying folks, like Mitt Romney, who will probably represent their states for life given the demographics, but the Olympia Snowe’s of the GOP are either being primaried out or forced out. The party is more populist. It’s bluer collar. And to the liberal media’s chagrin—actually is more diverse. Trump gained among non-white voter blocs and nearly doubled his share of the LGBT vote. He did suffer marginal losses with white working-class voters in the Midwest, but those voters can and will probably come back once Joe Biden screws up the economy.

Yet, we’re not here to discuss the 2020 election. This is about the future of the GOP. Nearly 75 percent of Republican Party members are quite clear regarding what they want to see the GOP become in the future. Three words describe the trend: more like Trump (via Breitbart):

Three of four GOP supporters want their legislators to “be more like President [Donald] Trump” in 2021, according to a Rasmussen survey of likely voters.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken December 21-22, as GOP legislators debate how to counter or cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden and how to regain the House majority in the 2022 midterm elections.

The poll asked: “As the Republican Party reorganizes itself next year, should it be more like President Trump or more like the average GOP member of Congress?”

Republicans picked the “more like President Trump” option by 72 percent to 24 percent, while conservatives split 67 percent to 28 percent.

Rasmussen’s survey shows that 72 percent of GOP voters wish to see the party continue on its Trumpian track. Why? Well, for starters, it showed results. The Trump agenda create the best job market for black Americans—ever. It created millions of jobs, incentivized companies to dole out bonuses to workers, and reinvest their capital here. Consumer and small business confidence reached their highest levels in years under Trump. Countless records closings with the Dow Jones. Oh, and unemployment reached its lowest levels under Trump in nearly 50 years. Also, the man delivered endless uppercuts to the liberal media establishment, knew their moves before they did, and executed expert trolling of liberal America that drove them insane.

For once, we have a Republican who didn’t show these people any respect since they didn’t deserve it. He exposed how terrible they were at their jobs and how they were no more than cheap sluts for the Democratic Party. We all knew it, but Trump made sure to shame them on national television and at rallies pervasively.

Tens of millions flock to his banner. The president commands masses that are loyal, passionate, and pissed off over the 2020 results. Trump has hinted that he could run again in 2024—pulling a Grover Cleveland. Should that happen and he declares, the primaries are over. The field is cleared. And anyone who dares to run against him is assured total destruction. There’s simply not enough Trump skeptic Republicans to pull off an upset.

Money is not an issue. We know there is a lot of anti-Trump GOP money out there. How did that fare in 2016? Jeb Bush had a $100 million war chest and failed miserably, amassing a whopping four delegates during his failed run.

The GOP right now is loaded with energized and battle-ready patriots. They’re a pugnacious bunch. There’s nothing wrong with that. we need to understand that the other side is dishonorable. They’re trash. They’re bad people who cannot be trusted. Why shouldn’t the default setting be to pick a fight with them? The new GOP adds new zest to the landscape right now. Some might be worried about the rise of the so-called far-right elements. Some might say it's extreme, but it’s also the counterbalance to the left-wing cancer engulfing the Democratic Party. It’s not a hard choice, folks. If job creation, loving our country, supporting free speech, and ensuring a strong and secure America at home and abroad is far-right extremism, then I’m a proud right-winger.

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Trump's Legacy: Foreign Policy Achievement

Not just cleaning up after the previous president, but expanding American success.

When President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he had a serious foreign policy mess on his hands from eight long years of Barack Obama’s blame-America malfeasance. Trump, the Art of the Deal businessman and foreign policy novice, reversed course with a novel approach: “America First.” And boy did it pay dividends.

As Obama left office, Mark Alexander aptly summed up the lowlights of his terrible legacy:

Under his tenure we witnessed the “Russian Spring” in Crimea; his hollow “Red Line” in the Syrian sand; the Middle East meltdown in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Jordan and Gaza; his political retreat from Iraq — discarding all the blood and treasure spent there to establish stability; the Benghazi cover-up ahead of the 2012 election; the dramatic resurgence of al-Qa'ida; Obama’s reference to ISIL as the “JV team”; and the rise of the Islamic State and an epic humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.

While Obama claims to have ended wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, American troops are on their way back into both theaters. …

Obama heralded his Iran nuke “deal” as one of his greatest foreign policy achievements: “I shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot.” The fact is, his acquiescence and coddling of Iran resulted in the re-emergence of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, which is now metastasizing into Western Europe and North America.

Additionally, Obama and Kerry took a parting shot at Israel, undermining our historic relations with this essential Middle Eastern ally.

Moreover, Obama subjected our nation to the Paris Climate Agreement and flung the doors open wide for a wave of illegal immigration, both of which threatened our security and our economy.

Progress on just two or three of these problems would have been laudable, but the Trump administration — particularly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — significantly moved the needle on every one of them.

Despite Obama literally scoffing at the idea that Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe, he then accused and investigated Trump for supposedly “colluding” with the Kremlin to win in 2016. Trump has always had an unfortunate penchant for saying flattering things about thug dictators like Vladimir Putin, which made the charge believable for some. But in practice, Trump thwarted much of Putin’s plans. He fueled energy exports that undercut Russian dominance in Europe. He also gave aid to the Ukrainian military against Russian aggression — as he humorously put it in one of his debates with Joe Biden, “While he was selling pillows and sheets, I sold tank busters to Ukraine.”

Donald Trump was impeached for talking to the Ukrainian president; Joe Biden actually offered the quid pro quo.

In the Middle East, Trump redoubled U.S. efforts to defeat ISIS, and though it is not gone, it is a shell of its former self. One might even finally be justified in calling it a “JV team.” He stabilized the U.S. response in Syria and Afghanistan. His record isn’t perfect, primarily because he very much values the “deal” even if it’s with the untrustworthy Taliban and, too much like his predecessor, he often seems more interested in “ending” wars than winning them. But the Middle East is a far quieter place today than it was in 2017.

That’s largely because Trump, Pompeo, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have driven several peace agreements between Arab nations and Israel. (You know, the same Netanyahu who Obama regularly insulted and tried to defeat electorally.) This Israeli-Arab coalition is a huge hindrance to Iran’s designs on regional hegemony, and is thus an engine of peace. As it turns out, keeping the quarter-century-old American promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was a sign of alignment and backing for Israel that spoke volumes to its Arab neighbors.

It’s safe now to laugh at John Kerry’s 2016 declaration that “there will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world.” His successor, Mike Pompeo, almost certainly is.

Did we mention that, for all his Middle East work, Trump has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize? Obama won it; Trump deserves it.

Also, as promised, Trump pulled the U.S. out of Obama’s bogus Iran nuclear deal and his ill-advised Paris agreement.

Joe Biden promises to rejoin both, and to generally reverse Trump’s foreign policy.

A notable mention goes to Trump’s termination of Iran’s leading terrorist, Qasem Soleimani.

To the consternation of the establishment, Trump saw NATO as another festering problem — an alliance of European deadbeats who weren’t pulling their weight but were instead mooching off the might and wealth of the United States. No more, he said. Four years later, more NATO nations are pulling their weight in terms of defense spending. Trump’s transactional view of American defense spending and responsibilities is not the traditional conservative approach, but his out-of-the-box thinking changed this status quo for the better.

In fact, that goes to a larger point: American leftists routinely grouse that we’re “less respected” in the world than when “citizen of the world” Obama was “leading from behind.” Well, the globalists might like us less, but that’s because they know we’re no longer a pushover and a sucker. Like and respect aren’t always synonymous.

On top of all of that, Trump moved to secure America’s economic interests abroad, including reworking NAFTA into the USMCA. His boasting was typically hyperbolic, but the new agreement does modernize and improve trade with our North American neighbors.

Trump’s tariffs against China were not our preferred solution, and they had the unintended consequence of higher consumer prices for Americans and necessitating bailouts for farmers due to the inevitable retaliation. But this president rightly took on China in a way that none of his predecessors did, including challenging the blind loyalty to “free” trade with China at all costs — costs that sent American jobs and wealth to China.

Importantly, the designation of greatest geopolitical threat now goes indisputably to China, which much of the world views more negatively now thanks to both the China virus and Trump’s work to destroy the ChiCom facade. That includes pulling U.S. money and credibility from the World Health Organization, which everyone now knows is a Chinese puppet.

Just a reminder: Joe Biden is in Beijing’s pocket, too.

Speaking of Chinese puppets, Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in order to block the Hermit Kingdom’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The verdict is mixed: North Korea is still an unstable menace, but it’s also no longer regularly threatening U.S. ally Japan.

Trump’s failure with China is his silence in the face of its totalitarian actions to crush freedom in Hong Kong.

On immigration, Trump began building his wall (though it remains far from what he promised), and he generally made progress in a number of areas to tighten the border and the process so that the flood of illegals crossing our border slowed significantly. There is much work yet to be done, and, unfortunately, Biden will likely undo much of Trump’s progress. But that doesn’t take away from Trump’s earnest efforts to solve a problem the rest of Washington was content to treat as a campaign fundraiser.

Trump might only be a one-term president, but his achievements in foreign policy — again, due in no small measure to Pompeo — are matched by precious few. As Bruce Thornton put it, “Trump, like the ‘amiable dunce’ Ronald Reagan, understood that the establishment’s narratives were endangering our security and interests. He brought some practical wisdom, common sense about human nature, and real-world experience to foreign policy, and recalibrated it with a few simple, Reaganesque principles: We win, they lose; America’s interests are paramount; and we should always be ‘no better friend, no worse enemy,’ a foundational principle of foreign relations that Obama had turned on its head.”

Indeed, Trump challenged and changed a lot of Beltway groupthink, and the end result is that America is stronger on the world stage than it was four years ago.

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http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

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