President-Elect Trump

So…That happened.

Sorry, busy couple of days aside for the election (still work on that dissertation, even though I fully expect the backlash from academia to basically keep me in exile for at least another 4 years even though I supported a giant space rock.)

I will confess to being a bit cautiously optimistic here. Clinton would have been a disaster aided by the media (and a likely democrat senate.) Now we only have the potential for a disaster!

Let me be clear though, for conservatives the fight is not over. Trump, while he may be promising to appoint a conservative to replace Scalia, is no conservative. Indeed, it’s arguable we got that concession by backing him into a corner. There’s no assurance that the “Notorious RBG” won’t be replaced by a Justice Maryanne Trump Barry if passes during this administration. (Note, before the left tries to pin anything on me, I’m not wishing death on RBG, but she’s old and honestly looks like she’s been clinging to life for about 10 years now.)

The only way a Trump presidency won’t be a disaster for conservatives is if we continue to push our goals. This is going to take a few different forms. Firstly, be sure to hold your representatives accountable, especially if they’re nominally conservative (if you live somewhere like Illinois, you’re hosed, sorry.)

Secondly, to all the people who swore they’d “never work in a Trump administration” I implore you to change your mind (well if you’re conservative, the rest of you can suck it!) The only way to steer this thing is from the inside. Walking away might save your hide, but it dooms the rest of us. Now I know this is a call unlikely to be heeded. The DC crowd is more concerned with their personal records than with the health of the nation, so they like surgeons who won’t take risky cases to keep their stats up, these folks won’t try to help. But I really do urge you to reconsider. I know it’s easy for me to say sitting here in my Midwest home without a job and all that jazz, but I mean it. If the Trump administration called and said “Hey you want to be assistant to the Undersecretary for piddley research stuff at HHS” I’d say yes. And up until the point I was ordered to do something I find unconscionable I’d try to steer things in a conservative direction.

Thirdly, I think it’s important that we keep talking and discussing what conservatism is. We can do that since Hillary Clinton won’t be turning a weaponized IRS at us to keep us quiet, so let’s take advantage of it. Yes it might be rancorous, even hostile at times, but it’s important that we keep fleshing out our ideas.