My opinion of President Trump has most favorably improved especially in this respect, he has convinced me and much of America that he indeed will keep his promises. This makes him unique among presidents since Ronald Reagan and unique among Republicans for as long as I can remember.
What many Trump enthusiasts assumed was opposition to Trump was to other more disinterested observers support for Ted Cruz.
My objection to Donald Trump was as much in revulsion to the deification of the man as to his actions during the campaign. I was especially offended by his unforgivable attacks against Ted Cruz family, claiming his father was somehow complicit in the murder of John F. Kennedy, for example. I was offended by many conservatives who discarded rational thinking to defend Trump, or rather to defend Trump's character, on this and other issues. But once the choice was narrowed down to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, I joined just enough Americans to defeat Hillary Clinton.
Supporting Trump, however, should not require abandoning conservative principles, otherwise, we descend into a cult which becomes the mortal enemy of every conservative value and leads to the political wilderness after Trump.
My wrangles with Trump supporters had as much to do with indignation over their vigilanteism, their jihadist mentality, their bloodlust for the zot, their cannibalistic appetites against fellow conservatives as it had to do with opposition to Trump the candidate. I believe they abandoned reason and resorted mindlessly to the ad hominem. All of this is lethal to the soul of liberty, to the very raison d'être that we live as conservatives.
I still gnash my teeth when Donald Trump gratuitously feeds the Marxists with grist for their mill with ill-considered remarks or tweets, or even ambiguous and therefore vulnerable comments such as Charlottesville, yet I understand that that is how he has overall so effectively communicated.
I wish he would do several set piece speeches, he has spoken only once from the Oval Office, explaining with inspiring gravitas why we are in an existential fight with China, why Iran must not get the bomb, why immigration does so much harm to working Americans, to the children of America and the sick of America. I understand that elections turn on emotions, and Trump clearly knows how to elicit emotions beautifully but to the degree that his presidency lacks respectability, he should take the steps to repair that part of his image with serious, albeit boring, speeches. These would not be designed to move the masses, they would be intended to reassure the country that we are embarked in pursuit of a vision that ties together. Why are tariffs necessary now if we are not to be broken in time by China. Why do tariffs and immigration relate in a world of "globalism?" How is it that the Democrats, not Donald Trump, have sold the country to Wall Street and K St.? It would serve as an attempt to build a firewall against the picture sought to be painted by the left of a chaotic administration that is the product of a chaotic mind, a narcissistic mind that hops from issue to issue as the ego requires feeding. It would instead create common ground upon which the nation could and would unite to survive and thrive.
Donald Trump is from New York, more particularly even, Queens. That is his mentality and I think much of the nation has come to terms with it. What early on seemed to the whole country to be naked narcissism is but a New Yorker's way of being heard in the crowd. That recognition puts a certain floor on the downside of his favorables. I'm trying to find ways for the electorate to conclude that it is socially if not politically correct to endorse his policies, and necessarily even the man, for another term.
That is also why I am stressing the video image of Trump as president. These images he has recently created go a long way toward brushing aside his narcissistic, New York image and will be remembered by voters who can comfortably vote knowing they are re-electing not a saint but a real president and for good reasons.
