“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.” —Samuel Adams (1780)

I get it. I get the residual Donald Trump appeal after 2020. It is all about unfinished business and reconciling injustice.

In 2016, after eight long years of Barack Obama and his corrupt sidekick, Joe Biden, grassroots Americans wanted someone to represent them again. I am enormously grateful that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.

But what he did not defeat was the Left’s deep state corruption cadres that plagued Trump’s administration.

Today, we have almost eight years of analysis documenting the conspiracy between Clinton and her collaborators, former FBI Director James Comey (and his lieutenants Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok), in concert with former CIA Director John Brennan. And the fingerprints of Obama and Biden are all over the crime scene.

It was high-level corruption in plain sight, and yet not one of Clinton’s “Russia collusion” collaborators has been arrested.

The message to Americans: There is no accountability or justice inside the Beltway.

Then, just before the 2020 election, came the massive cover-up of Biden’s corrupt ChiCom connections. A cabal of high-level former intel officials and the Demos’ Leftmedia publicists arranged to black out all the evidence and reports about that corruption. But not one of those politicos or media outlets has issued an apology.

The message to Americans: There is no accountability or justice inside the Beltway.

After all the political charades and deep state collusion, to finally defeat Trump required massive systemic election corruption — the Democrats’ bulk-mail ballot fraud strategy, which they justified with government mandates and manipulation of the ChiCom virus pandemic. Most of those fraudulent ballot measures are still in place for 2024, ensuring that your authentic vote no longer matters.

Again, the message to Americans: There is no accountability or justice inside the Beltway.

And today, despite the bulk mail balloting schemes, a substantial majority of American voters believe Trump would have won reelection if not for the Leftmedia’s Pulitzer Prize-winning fake news disinformation campaign to cover up evidence from Hunter Biden’s computer implicating Joe Biden’s corruption.

For the record, despite only serving one term, and the fact that no president has ever been more relentlessly assailed by the enemies of Liberty than Trump, his administration’s record of achievement was substantial.

That notwithstanding, his biggest presidential blunder was making Anthony Fauci the de facto commander-in-chief of the economy and society, resulting in his draconian pandemic decrees and mandates, which ironically empowered Demos to justify their bulk-mail balloting fraud.

As a result of the lack of accountability and justice inside the Beltway, contributing to Trump’s 2020 loss, of course grassroots Americans want a reckoning — they want Trump to go back to the Beltway and kick butt. Trump has declared that 2024 will be his “final battle” against his Beltway enemies and is so confident of his primary victory that he is skipping straight to the general election.

But can Trump win in 2024?

There is trouble on the horizon. About 60% of Republicans indicate they support Trump, and his support in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada is in the mid-40s. Republicans can’t win a national election without 100% of Republican votes combined with substantial support from moderates and even Demo crossover voters.

Does Trump have the integrity and character to unify Republicans and attract enough moderates and Democrats voters to win?

There was an era not too long ago when strength, moral clarity, humility, and faith prevailed, when those traits defined the character of a great president. Some reading this were not yet born when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, but his character and leadership were inspired by the greatest president in American history, George Washington.

On his integrity and character, Reagan won two elections with support that extended far beyond his grassroots base.

I had just graduated college prior to Reagan’s first election in 1980, all four years prior under the catastrophically failed domestic and foreign policies of Jimmy Carter. From the ashes if those failures, Reagan rose, defeating Carter in the general election by carrying 44 states. Unlike any other president in the preceding decades, Reagan was, in fact, a uniter — so much so that he was reelected in 1984 by historic margins, winning 49 of 50 states. He lost only Minnesota, the home state of his opponent Walter Mondale, Carter’s former vice president, and by only 3,800 votes at that. Oh, and, of course, he lost the bureaucratic stronghold District of Columbia vote.

No other presidential candidate in American history has matched Reagan’s 525 electoral votes. Strength, moral clarity, humility and faith were the key elements resulting in both of his election victories — combined with a dose of good humor.

Character matters.

Fact is, run a Republican with Reagan’s character against Joe Biden — or one of his likely 2024 replacements, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Michelle Obama, or Robert Kennedy Jr. — and in the inimitable words of Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

There are good GOP primary candidates, but one in particular fully rises to the Reagan executive experience, character, and broad electability tests — and his candidacy terrifies the socialist Democrat Party. What scares the Demos most is, in that candidates’ 2022 gubernatorial reelection, he won, much as Reagan did nationally, with broad appeal deep across party lines into Democrat voting blocs.

I am referring of course, to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who defeated his Democrat challenger by nearly 20 points, including substantial Hispanic crossover votes.

But can he gain enough traction to win next year’s primary when Democrats and their Leftmedia lemmings are doing everything they can to ensure Trump is the nominee?

What, you say? They are trying to indict him and are even resorting to using the 14th Amendment to keep him off of ballots.

Despite appearances to the contrary, the Demos’ Trump indictment strategy is to anger Trump’s base and invoke them to keep him high in the primary polling. Four indictments include more than 90 felony counts that may result in convictions on some federal, state, and local charges — which is to say who Trump choses as his vice presidential candidate may have immediate consequences if he is elected.

The Demos’ 14th Amendment charade is also to keep Trump supporters fired up, and it is working!

But Trump has a lot of hurdles to overcome. In 1980, President Reagan ran on his promise to “Make America Great Again,” a slogan borrowed by Trump in 2016, but Reagan was reelected because he was a uniter, and he won massive votes across party lines. Trump got the slogan right from a policy standpoint but was as effective at disuniting Americans as Reagan was in bringing the nation together.

Reagan and Trump advocated for similar domestic and foreign policies but were men of vastly different character, and consequently, vastly different populist appeal.

For his part, Trump is too often his own worst enemyl with petulant remarks, especially when he shoots from the hip and thinks he can’t miss. He has a long record of hurting his own brand by unforced errors.

He demonstrated that unfortunate predisposition last week in two televised interviews when he badly fumbled questions on issues that are important to his grassroots base.

First, in an interview with Megyn Kelly regarding the Left’s gender confusion orthodoxy, one of the most important and contentious cultural questions of our time, she asked a simple question: “Can a man become a woman?”

Trump’s answer was typical of his cultural equivocation: “Ummmmmm, in my opinion, you have a man, you have a woman. I, I, I think part of it is birth. Can the man give birth? No, although they’ll come up with some answer to that also someday. I heard just the other day they have a way that now the man can give birth. No, I would say I’ll continue my stance on that.”

The simple answer is, “No.”

Then in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, who herself lied repeatedly about the Democrats’ extreme position on abortion, Trump assailed Republicans. Ironically, he accused them of speaking “very inarticulately” about abortion.

As for his position, he declared: “Both sides are going to like me. … We’re going to agree to a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it, and both sides are going to come together and both sides — both sides, and this is a big statement — both sides will come together. And for the first time in 52 years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us.” Asked whether that agreement would be a state or federal policy, Trump replied: “It could be state or it could be federal. I don’t, frankly, care.”

He added: “Democrats … don’t want to be radical on the issue. They don’t want to kill a baby in the seventh month or the ninth month or after birth. And they’re allowed to do that, and you can’t do that.”

As astute political analyst Ben Domenech notes, “[Trump] has now placed himself as the furthest left candidate on the abortion issue.” Brit Hume added, “[Trump] is now clearly pro-abortion rights.”

Seeing the error of his ways, Trump is now backpedaling, rightly noting that it was his Supreme Court nominees who overturned Roe v. Wade.

Far more than Trump’s propensity to shoot himself in the foot, Demos are counting on his barrage of endless fratricidal attacks against any and all upcoming 2024 primary opponents because he is not capable of abiding by Reagan’s 11th Commandment: As President, he advised that in primaries, “When the decisions are made as to who the candidates will be, then the 11th commandment prevails: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” And Trump’s reckless fratricidal attacks after the primary will continue to foment division in down-ballot races.

That is precisely why Trump will not pledge to commit his support for any other candidate winning the primary, just as he did in 2016.

Indicative of Trump’s dearth of loyalty is the fact that he turned on those who served him with dignity and honor. Most notably, that included his former chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, who he demeaned as he had previously done with Gens. James Mattis“ tag.

The fratricidal attacks and disloyalty factor, combined with the colossal "fear and hate Trump” factor (a.k.a. “Trump Derangement Syndrome”), present formidable political obstacles.

But a far greater obstacle for Trump will be the Demos’ gender gap voters, their largest constituency being women voters who Democrat strategists assume are emotionally incontinent dupes.

Their gender gap held in the 2016 election popular vote, even though Trump managed to defeat Clinton in the electoral college vote. A majority of women (54%) voted for Clinton while a majority of men (52%) voted for Trump.

But by by the 2020 election Trump had generated a surplus of fear and hatred among the soft Democrat and independent voter blocs President Reagan won over in his landslide 1984 reelection. That was particularly true of women, and the Democrats masterfully amplified their “toxic feminism” factor.

In 2020, continuing the gender gap trend, a majority of women (57%) voted for Joe Biden, while a majority of men (53%) voted for Donald Trump. Notably however, among white voters, majorities of both men (61%) and women (55%) voted for Trump. But these numbers may not reflect the extent of the gender gap because of the aforementioned massive bulk-mail ballot fraud in mostly Democrat states.

Consequently, Trump was defeated in 2020 by the weakest Democrat ticket in five decades, becoming the first incumbent president since 1932 to lose both the presidency and control of both the House and Senate, the latter losses being indicative of a broader dislike for Trump by 2018 and 2020. This despite the fact he received 13 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.

To be clear, Biden’s narrow 51.3% majority of the popular vote (81,283,501), giving him 306 electoral votes, was the result, as I noted previously, of the Democrats’ corrupt bulk-mail ballot fraud strategy, which they will fully implement again in 2024. Trump received 46.9% of the popular vote (74,223,975) and 232 electoral votes.

Moreover, the election was closer than appearances would imply. Biden’s seven million vote margin was mostly in California and New York, but he actually won the presidency by fewer than 43,000 votes in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

But the results of the 2020 election and the abysmal 2022 midterm Republican gains, are both clear indicators of what is likely to happen in 2024.

The 2022 gender gap vote stopped Republican gains. As National Review summarized the gender gap issue for the Republicans “red wave” fizzle: “Men voted Republican by a 14-point margin, while women voted Democratic by an 8-point margin. That’s a 22-point gender gap.”

If Trump’s fratricidal attacks continue, and the gender gap vote holds, the GOP’s 2024 platform can be aptly summed up in the words of Walt Kelly’s iconic comic strip character Pogo Possum: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

All that said, however, Demos may have overplayed their hand in assuming Trump is the candidate they can most easily defeat based on the 2020 election results.

If Biden remains their nominee, the chances of Trump actually defeating him continue to climb, with the latest polling indicating that Trump would defeat Biden if the election were held today.

The news regarding Trump’s swing state support is equally good. And I note as well that, much to the surprise of Demo strategists, Trump’s Hispanic and black voter support is rising.

Trump can count on his grassroots and pragmatic voters. Despite the fact that I think DeSantis is the better candidate for the future of the Republican Party, I am both a principled and pragmatic voter. I have voted for Trump twice, and I will do so again in 2024 if he is the nominee.

Fact is, the 2024 election may be Trump’s to win despite his character deficits because Biden’s deficits are even more of a liability. One caveat, however: If Trump wins the presidency, he will enter office older than Ronald Reagan was when he left office.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

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