By SKIP TUCKER, Alabama Daily News Featured Columnist
I reached the frightening thought that it might be a good thing for the left to win the midterms. To my mind, too much power, even in the right direction, is too much. While I intend to vote, I considered a throwaway write-in.
President Trump recently said an unsettling thing. He said, “If we win the midterms, we will get anything we want.” No president should wield that strong a scepter. Obama had it and look what happened. He hadn’t an inkling of how to handle the immense power of the office and wouldn’t have anyone around him who might’ve.
Donald Trump has handled immense power his entire life, and there is no president in my long memory who has tried to keep his promises the way Trump has tried. He has engineered the strongest economy, the best foreign policy and set the best tone for America vis-a-vis foreign countries.
We hear little of those accomplishments. What we see and hear from the ineffable wild-eyed libs on TV is their latching on to minor things to try to blow them into major things.
Last week I was out to dinner. The restaurant had MSNBC on. I paid attention to learn its latest rants. I am hard-bitten, so to speak, from experience. I’ve seen major media suppress important things, with aforethought, and entertain the wildest flights of fancy to support its political agenda.
But I was shocked by the recklessness dishonesty displayed by people who couch themselves as honest journalists and newspeople. Words of hate fly from their mouths.
There was no honesty. What appeared to my wondering eyes was an hour of unmitigated vitriol thrown toward the president of the United States. Lies. Mishandled reports. Things taken out of context.
At one point, the three-person panel got so heated I came to expect a war whoop and a call to take Trump’s scalp. One man was so overwrought I thought he might jump onto the desk, stand on his head, and twirl like an Olympic ice skater.
The reason came clear. The histrionics were not meant to persuade. It was a darker thing. MSNBC’s purveyors know its demographics. Its audience is the far, far left and needs no convincing. No. The purpose of spewing enough garbage to make a buzzard puke is to GOTV. Get Out The Vote. MSNBC goes hysterical to get its watchers to go vote against Trump.
Here’s why: In a Clinton campaign punctuated with grave misjudgments and major mistakes made with metronomic consistency, the gravest error (other than her own lack of discipline) was Hillary’s continuous blather about her untouchable lead.
The liberal media, which pretty much means 99 percent of it, crooned her tune. Shoutouts of deplorable, stupids, ignorance enraged conservatives. It served to make sure all would vote. One imbecile wrote that Clinton’s odds of winning were equal to a professional kicker making a field goal from 20 yards out.
All of that meant this: Trump’s supporters would vote, Clinton’s supporters didn’t feel the need.
Insofar as political strategy, it was a blunder of such magnitude there is no scale for it. GOTV is one of about four essential parts to a political campaign and is emphasized in Political Science 101. It was drummed into my mind by top shelf national political consultants in three statewide campaigns.
Frauds like MSNBC now realize it. They know they and their sister stations helped create the debacle that likely removed Hillary Clinton from national political contention forevermore.
So I was not surprised to see MSNBC’s poll numbers claim a 7 percent lead for Democrats running in the mid-term. Seven percent coincidentally happens to be a perfect number. It claims a lead two points above the normal poll’s margin of error, and says, “We’ll win this thing if you go vote.”
The irrational spectacle continued. I believe they would happily lick Trump’s blood off a sidewalk had they the chance.
Again, the major media and crazed leaders of the Democratic party have confounded themselves. In its riotous frenzy to kill the Kavanaugh appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, it told such transparent lies, beat so wildly the leftist drum, it ate its own liver.
Because it did indeed energize the vote. Trump’s vote. Reliable polls show that support for the president zoomed upward during media’s madness. The president now enjoys the most positive support of his term.
Thanks to the astuteness of folks like those on MSNBC.
This, though. If Republicans hold on to a majority in Congress after the Tsunami of hate by the national media, it means only one of one only thing. The national media, supposedly our honest watchdog, has lost touch with America. Its yowls are sound and fury, and signify nothing.
Perhaps a word from Oliver Cromwell, England’s leader of ancient times, might be in order. Arguing before the austere leaders of the Church of Scotland, he said:
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, to consider the possibility you might be mistaken.”
Amen to that. And now I’ll vote the straight Republican ticket, save for one or two of the RINO persuasion.
(Next week: Get Out The Vote.)
Skip Tucker was editor of the Daily Mountain Eagle in Jasper, then communications secretary for gubernatorial folks like George McMillan, Charlie Graddick and Jim Folsom. He ran Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse for in Montgomery for 15 years. He has published one novel, Pale Blue Light, a spy thriller set in The Civil War. He’s now a regular contributor for the Alabama Daily News at www.ALDailyNews.com.