Are you sick of winning yet? I’m not! And one of the biggest winners is Chronicles Magazine.

While one of the biggest losers is National Review, a shadow of its former self, the great magazine I grew up with in the 1960s to the 1980s. NR besmirched itself by attacking Trump all along, especially its February 2016 Symposium, “Conservatives Against Trump.”

It’s a bookend to the March 2003 screed, “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” attacking those who presciently opposed the Iraq War from the get-go, by David Frum; who 13 years later also screeched against Trump, in October predicting “a scorched period of recrimination ” against Trump supporters after he loses “as big as he’s going to.” Frum (now with The Atlantic), like most NR writers, has a 1930s Moscow purge mentality.

Why does anyone subscribe to NR, or give it money, when Chronicles is the magazine of real conservatism – and real prescience? (Subscription info here. What a great Christmas gift! Donations info here.)

I bring this up because on Scott “Dilbert” Adams’ blog someone reminded me of my own early Nostradamus imitation, right here in Chronicles, on the Trump phenomenon. On June 11, 2014, more than a year before Trump’s surprise announcement of his run on June 16, 2015, I wrote, “Right now the immigration issue is lying in the street for whatever Republican presidential candidate, if any, is willing to pick it up. . . . That’s shown by Tuesday’s primary defeat of Republican House honcho Eric Cantor, what Tom Piatak called ‘a victory for America.’”

That’s now also an apt name for Trump’s victory on Nov. 8, 2016: A victory for America.

I continued, “It’s too bad Pat Buchanan will be 78 for the 2016 presidential election. He only would have to rerun his 1996 platform to sweep the GOP primaries, then beat Hillary or whomever in the general election. He was 20 years ahead of his time.” Which is exactly what Trump ended up doing, using the new social media to his advantage by going above the Main Sleaze Media that had trashed Pat. Buchanan + Trump Tweets  = Trump Victory.

Then on Dec. 17, 2014, I predicted, “But immigration will be the issue of 2016, especially in the GOP primary gauntlet.” I didn’t predict the candidate. Trump was rumored to throw some locks of orange hair into the ring, but that rumor had been around since the late 1980s.

After Trump’s announcement of his candidacy, I wrote here three weeks later, on July 7, 2015, an article headlined, “Trump seizes immigration issue.” Referencing my 2014 articles, I wrote, “I had no idea who the candidate might be.

“Turns out it’s Donald Trump. . . . Trump called for building a wall with Mexico and otherwise enforcing U.S. immigration laws. That gained him publicity, as did the backlash against him by politically correct companies he had done business with, as well as New York’s Stalinist mayor, Bill de Blasio.

“So much for ‘free speech’ in America.

“Jeb Bush attacked him, to which Trump responded, ‘I am very proud to be fighting for a strong and secure border. This is a very important issue, which all the other candidates would have ignored had I not started this important discussion. I will fix the border—no one else knows where to begin.’”

I even predicted the key states that would put Trump over the top: “Especially affected are towns in the ‘swing states,’ such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Their welfare and school systems are being overloaded with poor immigrants who receive far more in benefits than they pay in taxes. It’s an issue that’s easily a winner for Republicans because Hillary already strongly has backed amnesty.”

On election day, Trump handily won both states even though Obama had won each, twice.

There are many reasons Chronicles is so prescient, but a major one is that its writers and editors largely live in the Real America. By contrast, NR’s writers and editors are clustered in what Buchanan derides as the Acela Corridor. In particular, NR’s DC denizens have no clue about what’s going on in the rest of the country.

Buchanan does, although living in Washington, because as a man of principle, he’s one of the few DC folks in tune with the whole country. Others were the late Joe Sobran and Bob Novak. All three, among many others, were denounced in 2003 as “unpatriotic” by the delusional mud-thrower, Frum.

It’s true that I’m stuck out here on the Left Coast, getting soft while basking in the 64 degree weather while the rest of you are buried under a “global warming” blizzard. But I live in Orange County, in the past called Goldwater Country or Reagan Country. Much of the conservative movement started out here. But in the late election, Hillary became the first Democrat to win OC since the Great Depression. That’s because so many immigrants have moved here, voting 70 percent Democratic, the county now is a preview of what will happen to the rest of America if immigration is not halted.

And believe me, you don’t want to live in a Venezuela-style One Party State, with every socialist scheme possible pushed on you. The only thing that “saves” California is that it’s still attached to the rest of you. The Calexit movement is a joke. So the Trump Revolution will roll through here too—whether Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris and the rest of the Fidel Castro wannabes like it or not.

Given my predictive abilities, what’s next? Will NR, the Democrats and the Neocons (basically the same people) sabotage Trump and his plans to Make America Great Again? As LBJ used to say, “Power is where power goes.” On Jan. 20, 2017, it goes to Donald Trump. And he will use it. Success will build upon success.

Already, we’ve seen him save Carrier jobs and start negotiations for normalizing relations with Russia, avoiding the nuclear war Hillary really was risking. The stock market is zooming and the jobs creation is booming. Trump likes to build the suspense for major actions. So I think announcing plans for building the Trump Wall will await his actual assumption of power.

Of course, NR and the Left say he’s a liar and is “switching” positions. Actually, he’s negotiating how to achieve his goals, first with the voters, then with whatever political reality meets him on Jan. 20. But the goals will be met.

No, he won’t be perfect. It’s crucial that we criticize him when he goes off course. I remember when I was in the Washington, D.C. in the 1980s, Reagan administration officials would tell conservatives writing articles that we needed to criticize President Reagan when he departed from conservative principles. Otherwise, they said, the only criticism would come from the left, so Reagan would move that way to mollify them. By contrast, when the right also criticized him, he could say, “I’m just following a middle course.”

But now is a time to celebrate winning. Trump’s victory, to use Piatak’s phrase, is a victory for America. And, finally, we have a president for America.

 

Former Orange County Register editorial manager John Seiler now writes freelance. Hire him. Email: writejohnseiler@gmail.com