In the unlikely event that the big favorite in the 2020 election should lose, Donald Trump will not fade away like old political soldiers do. He will not be like George Washington, the Cincinnatus who retired to his plow, sitting on the porch at Mount Vernon by his fig tree and vine, watching the sun setting on an illustrious career.
After four or eight years of contesting the rigged election—how else could he have lost except by foul play?—well, he can always go back to the practice of being the world’s greatest real estate salesman, enjoying the sight of his greatest achievement, the one-hundred-story Trumpskaya Towerski that will soon rise in Greater Downtown Metropolitan Moscow, and owning the most golf courses in all of Russia and the former Soviet republics.
But would that be enough? Nyet. Every four years in the heat of an electoral season, the vegetable oil in the brains of a political animal starts to bubble.
President Trump emeritus would not be like George Washington, happy to be drinking mint juleps on his Mount Vernon veranda. His role model my guess would be more Millard Fillmore. After serving as our thirteenth president, Fillmore returned to the political wars as the candidate of the Native American Party, renamed the American Party, commonly known as the Know Nothing Party in the 1856 election.
No existing established party would be a comfortable fit for a former chief executive with so many achievements as President Trump emeritus. Along these lines, I am proposing a new party that might replace the Grand Old Republican Party (Born 1857; Died 2016) he has managed to destroy in only four years in office.
I’m not talking about a third party. We already have the Tea Party. Worse, they always fail.
What the country needs is a fourth party, one that appeals to a large body of voters who feel underrepresented by existing parties, I’d call it the American Idiot Party (AIP).
The AIP would be the party for those angry citizens who are sick of both the socialism of the Democrats and the old fartism of the Republican Party. It would be the voice of the folks who have grown tired of the objectivity of Fox cable news. Too fair and balanced. Our demographic studies show that potential AIP voters are the people who get all their political news by listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, and for balance, Sean Hannity on TV.
It would be a party that stands four square for the verities, a party that recognizes we once had a president who is a Muslim who wasn’t born in this country—never again!—a party that is against that hoax of climate change; a party that is for patriotism, God, guns, and true grit; Christmas; good olde time marital status; and lower taxes for the rich, and that believes adultery is between a man and a woman.
This is not meant to deprecate Trump supporters. Some of his followers are not, as I have previously implied, idiots. The term is used loosely. Some of them are morons. Mainly, they include people who feel cheated by our political system, who are disgusted with all politicians, regardless of race, creed, or party affiliation.
A lot of them are just ordinary folk, people who live by the Bible and keep AK-47s in their closets against the day when the government tries to take their guns away. They are people who hate gays and love guns and God. People who hate foreigners, especially from Mexico, although they are not too fond either of Guatemalans and Hondurans! It does not matter that we are all descendants of emigrants, starting with the Mayflower steerage crowd. You call them crazies. I call them the salt of the earth.
The AIP would appeal to this hitherto-overlooked minority. It would bring this forgotten voting bloc out of the shadows.
They want a candidate who knows how to use their favorite medium of information, TV reality shows, who looks like a million bucks, even if he is always on the verge of another bankruptcy.
The typical AIP voter would choose a candidate based on his (never her) personality, rather than the old lame idea of issues. They want a candidate who would reduce the size of government, while increasing spending on the military, while balancing the budget. How would we do this? As political scientist Rich Little suggested during the first Reagan administration, by having two sets of books.
They want a candidate who would spare no expense in building a wall across the border with Mexico that would stop our country from being invaded by drug dealers, rapists and chefs introducing un-American fusion cuisine. They want a candidate who doesn’t mind insulting a friendly power with which the country shares a 1,000-mile-plus-long border. So what if we risk disrupting friendly relations with a nation vital to US interests that could argue for the right of return after the Mexican-American War of 1847 of such Hispanic treasures as Texas and California.
The AIP, of course, would hold a national convention and nominate candidates for prez and veep. It would also hold state conventions, nominate guvs, congressional people, and so forth.
The beauty part of the 2024 campaign is one candidate already stands out as the standard-bearer of the AIP.
I’d need to run this past Laura, Rush, Hannity, Tucker, and Ann Coulter, the real powers in American politics today, of course. But, as of today, my support goes to the one man guaranteed to run not on divisive issues but his personality. He alone would appeal to that overlooked minority, all the folks who get their political news from television, mainly Sean Hannity and the Fox Channel, those who believe in patriotism, God, guns and grits, religion, marital status, sexuality, the gold standard, and the real Americans who want the wall.
And that man is, let me check my notes here, Donald J. Trump!
For vice president, the party might turn to a well-qualified former governor who could see the vice presidency from her front porch, Sarah Palin, who was just such an idiot in the 2012 campaign.
Out of the ashes of the destroyed Republican Party will rise not another Phoenix, but a Tucson. A Trump-Palin ticket will make America even greater again in 2024.
Or am I not the oracle in chief!
Go fourth, America!