The Left is out for blood. In recent years, they have come to see their ideological opponents not as fellow Americans with whom they happen to disagree on certain issues, but as fundamentally bad people who do not deserve a voice and who should be silenced. If they ever gain power in government again, they will not seek reconciliation with the other side or to bridge the partisan divide. Instead, revenge will be the order of the day.

It is absurd to think that the same people who consider Donald Trump a fascist and his supporters “deplorable” want anything other than revenge. Someday, Democrats will regain control of the House, Senate and Presidency; if not in 2020, then in 2024 or later. And when that day comes, conservatives had better be prepared. Polls show that Republicans are much less enthusiastic than Democrats about voting in this year’s midterms. Conservatives must turn out to vote in November. The stakes are too high for them to stay home.

Protests on Innauguration Day, 2016 (photo credit: Jack)

Most Republicans don’t realize just how dire the situation is. If Democrats regain the House in 2018, that will be the end of the Trump agenda, and conservatives may not get another chance to implement such an agenda. Democrats in Congress will probably attempt to impeach President Trump, which will likely fail in the Senate, but the attempted impeachment will divide the country like nothing else since the Civil War.

The next Democratic president will likely appoint very liberal justices to the Supreme Court who have no respect whatsoever for the Constitution. A Leftist Supreme Court would tear the Constitution to shreds, and you can say good-bye to your 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. If the Supreme Court can find abortion and same-sex marriage in the 14th Amendment, meant to give citizenship to freed slaves, God knows what else they can find in the Constitution. Perhaps in the future the Supreme Court will rule that the 1st Amendment right of freedom of speech doesn’t apply to hate speech, or that the 2nd Amendment actually mandates gun control.

Undoubtedly any liberal who reads this will think I am being paranoid, and that I am guilty of the slippery slope fallacy. But the slippery slope is not a fallacy if we are currently sliding down it. If you told liberals 20 years ago or even 10 years ago that not only would same-sex marriage be legal in the whole country but that you could be fined refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple, they would call you crazy. And yet here we are.

The slippery slope is the modus operandi of the Left. Leftists just call it “evolving” on issues. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “evolved” on same-sex marriage a few years ago. Who knows what other issues the Left will “evolve” on?

Republicans shouldn’t focus on issues such as tax cuts or opposing same-sex marriage, universal healthcare and legalized marijuana. Many swing voters have liberal positions on these issues, and Republicans can’t afford to alienate any of their voters. All hands on deck are needed for the midterms.

Instead, Republicans should focus on reducing immigration, supporting gun rights, economic nationalism and building the wall, which are far more popular both with their base and swing voters. Many voters are not Leftist but vote for Democrats anyway because Republicans don’t have anything to offer them, while Democrats at least give them a social safety net. The sad fact of the matter is, a welfare state once instituted is almost impossible to destroy. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed this country into a welfare state, the Democratic Party has been dominant.

Ever since polls on the subject have been taken, more Americans have identified as Democrats than Republicans. Democrats won five elections in a row from 1932 to 1948, and the only Republican elected between 1932 and 1964 was the moderate Dwight D. Eisenhower, who promised not to touch New Deal programs. Richard Nixon was also fairly moderate, as was Gerald Ford.

Ronald Reagan, easily the most popular post-World War II Republican president, was a Democrat for the first few decades of his life. He insisted that he hadn’t left the Democratic Party, but they had left him, and he hadn’t changed his views. He was a lot more moderate than people on both sides of the aisle realize. After all, as Governor of California he signed liberal laws on no-fault divorce and abortion. George H. W. Bush in effect won election as Reagan’s third term. Since Reagan left office, a Republican had won the popular vote only once, in 2004, as a result of Americans not wanting to change horses in the middle of a stream during the Iraq War and after 9/11.

Trump won Pennsylvania and Michigan for the first time since 1988 and Wisconsin for the first time since 1984 because like Reagan he was seen as favorable to the working class, as opposed to other Republicans who are seen as more favorable to corporations. Since inauguration, he has governed like a conventional Republican and unless that changes ,he is unlikely to win those states in 2020.

The key to winning the Rust Belt is protectionism. One of the founding principles of the Republican party was protectionism. From 1861 to 1933, all but two presidents were Republicans, both of whom were elected in part because of divisions in the Republican Party. Such a winning streak probably won’t happen again, but protectionism is popular with workers, since it protects their jobs from foreign competition.

If the Republican party is to have any future, it will be as a pro-workers party. And to do that, the party’s establishment will have to give up on free trade and “corporations are people.”

Perhaps the most important issue at stake right now is tech censorship of ideological dissidents. Trump was able to win the 2016 election in large part because his supporters were able to bypass the mainstream media and disseminate their views through the alternative media, which is almost entirely online. Leftists in big tech want to make sure that such a victory can never happen again. They can’t have the child telling everyone that the emperor has no clothes.

On Twitter countless accounts both big and small have been suspended for “inciting hate.” The most prominent example of this was Alex Jones’s simultaneous ban from YouTube, Facebook and Apple. Why should a small number of individuals who have almost the same political views which are greatly out of touch with the American people get to decide who can and can’t have a voice?

Twitter, Facebook and other Internet platforms should be treated as public utilities, since that is essentially what they are. Just as the telephone and water companies can’t ban you for your political views, tech companies shouldn’t be able to either. Will the Trump presidency be seen as the beginning of a new era, or will this just be a blip on the radar? We have to make sure that the Trump revolution bears fruit, or else it will just be a speed bump on our road to oblivion.

Thomas O’Malley can be contacted at thomasomalley861@yahoo.com