The MAGA Movement Has Become a Problem for Trump

NYT is beating the Project 2025 dead horse because that's all they got.

Consider the source.

NYT is listening to the voices inside it’s own head.

I was never much for fan fiction, this is some of the worst of it.

I pay so much attention to everything the New York Times says and then believe exactly the opposite.

You can’t make this $#!+ up. Oh wait, yes you can.

“Even the most wonkish of presidents..”...yeah, wonkish globalists who got us into this mess. It’s hard to imagine willfully remaining in the leftist mindset, isn’t it?

It’s one of those analogy quizzes. Project 2025 is to the New York Times as the Necronomicon is to H.P. Lovecraft. It’s a scary book of unknown horrors that might release the orange haired Cthulhu to rome the Earth again.

I hate auto correct. Rome -> roam.

Kamala has this in the bag... That’s why she needs that second debate and Trump doesn’t need it????

NY Slimes. And Project 2025 is CORRECT. I read it.

They’re right. MAGA can’t win. I’m joining team Kamala ...

/sarc

NYT: 100% anti-MAGA articles since the day Trump descended the escalator.

Obligatory CYA from NYT to cover Kamel’s ads. See, the candidate says, the NYT and WP and CNN all agree Project 2025 is Trump and Trump is Project 2025 and both are whatever we say they are. Don’t ask what they are.

Ezra Klein falls to a new low level of stupidity, wow.

Everything opposite of the think tank 2025 points is everything MAGA is against. Harris 2025 is the end of the Republic as we know it.

Ezra Klein: “ The Constitution is like over 100 years old.”

The thing is the left completely made up a false narrative about what Project 2025 is. If you want to see everything they lied about watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf4BJZW9pY4&feature=youtu.be

Maybe it should be “...Rome the earth again....”

Never let the enemy define you.

As Freeper griswold3 says at Post #19 “Don’t let your enemy define you”, and ZULU says at Post #11 “NY Slimes. And Project 2025 is CORRECT. I read it.”, they point to same thing:

This is the Left trying to define how you should think, and sadly, it has largely worked where even many Conservatives wish to distance themselves from it.

We don’t have to adopt Project 2025 en mass. But it doesn’t mean we have to reject it en masse, either. It is an enormous white paper, and is NOT meant to be adopted as a whole, though to be fair, I cannot see how that would make us worse off as a country than we are.

I am sick of this “evil Project 2025” thing that even ignorant conservatives seem to have bought into. (Not you-this appears to be part of the “story”)

I’ll bet money this turd at the NYT hasn’t read it.

I read more than half of it. I was going to document the salient points and post them here so people who didn’t have the time or inclination to read it, but I found out after the fact I couldn’t in any way go back in and extract the key points of it, and didn’t have further time to invest in it.

After reading what I did, however, I find plenty of reasons not to condemn it, and very few (if any) TO condemn it.

But I found a LOT of reasons why Leftists have got their panties in a twist about it. If is full of things they would abhor, all of them having to do with redefining how various parts of the government should be organized, and eliminating others.

One of them is the recommendation to eliminate the Department of Education.

Any conservatives on here disagree with that item? There may be a few, but not many. But to the Left, this concept is anathema to them. It is a hill to die on. Because it involves control and programming of our children.

And this is just one example.

I readily admit there were plenty of things I didn’t appreciate or fully understand, and in those cases, I made the attempt to read and understand the justification by the authors.

In military matters, there were some things that I didn’t understand the gist of what they were driving at, particularly with the Marine Corps (and was waiting to ask an acquaintance of mine who was a 30 year veteran of the USMC his thoughts) but other military matters dealt with modernizing nuclear weapons, and bringing up to date the tactical uses of nuclear weapons on a battlefield which are likely decades old, but I didn’t reject those concepts out of hand.

But I fully understand why Leftists do. Here is a sample of the opening summary:

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Military service is the most difficult task we ask of our citizens, and our nation is enormously blessed that so many young, patriotic Americans eagerly volunteer to carry such a heavy burden. We owe them everything, and we must do better. To do better, however, means recognizing and implementing four overriding priorities:

Priority No. 1: Reestablish a culture of command accountability, nonpoliticization, and warfighting focus.

Priority No. 2: Transform our armed forces for maximum effectiveness in an era of great-power competition.

Priority No. 3: Provide necessary support to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) border protection operations. Border protection is a national security issue that requires sustained attention and effort by all elements of the executive branch.

Priority No. 4: Demand financial transparency and accountability.

This chapter offers recommendations for improving our armed forces and the civilian organizations that support and oversee them.
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Anyone see anything wrong with that? I sure don’t. But I sure do see why Leftists, RINOs, and other Deep Staters scream like scalded cats.

And here is specifically a section on personnel:

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DOD PERSONNEL
The men and women of America’s armed forces are the most critical component of our national defense strategy, but in recent years, they have been overextended, undervalued, and insufficiently resourced. Their families help them to carry the burden of service, but the assistance they receive is disproportionately less than the sacrifices they make. Young civilians who would thrive in a military environ- ment are disenfranchised when educators and influencers discourage them from learning about military service and preparing for the honor of wearing America’s uniform.

The United States military is an extraordinary institution, staffed by exceptional people who have defended our nation and changed the course of history, but the Biden Administration, through word and deed, has treated the armed forces as just another place to work. We must restore our military to a place of honor and respect and recruit and retain the individuals who will meet the rigorous standards of excellence that are required for membership in the world’s greatest fighting force.

Needed Reforms
****Rescue recruiting and retention. Recruiting was the worst in 2022 that it has been in two generations and is expected to be even worse in 2023. Some of the problems are self-inflicted and ongoing. The recruiting problem is not service-specific: It affects the entire Joint Force.
1. Appoint a Special Assistant to the President who will maintain liaison with Congress, DOD, and all other interested parties on the issue of recruiting and retention.

2. Improve recruiting by suspending the use of the recently introduced MHS Genesis system that uses private medical records of potential recruits at Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS), creating unnecessary delays and unwarranted rejections.11

3. Improve military recruiters’ access to secondary schools and require completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery(ASVAB)—the military entrance examination—by all students in schools that receive federal funding.12

4. Encourage Members of Congress to provide time to military recruiters during each townhall session in their congressional districts.

5. Increase the number of Junior ROTC programs in secondary schools.

****Restore standards of lethality and excellence. Entrance criteria for military service and specific occupational career fields should be based on the needs of those positions. Exceptions for individuals who are already predisposed to require medical treatment (for example, HIV positive
or suffering from gender dysphoria) should be removed, and those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service. Physical fitness requirements should be based on the occupational field without consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.

****Eliminate politicization, reestablish trust and accountability, and restore faith to the force. In 2021, the Reagan National Defense Survey found that only 45 percent of Americans have “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military”—down from 70 percent in 2018.

1. Strengthen protections for chaplains to carry out their ministry according to the tenets of their faith.

2. Codify language to instruct senior military officers (three and four stars) to make certain that they understand their primary duty
to be ensuring the readiness of the armed forces, not pursuing a social engineering agenda. This direction should be reinforced during the Senate confirmation process. Orders and direction motivated by purely partisan motives should be identified as threats to readiness.

3. Reinstate servicemembers to active duty who were discharged for not receiving the COVID vaccine, restore their appropriate rank, and provide back pay.

4. Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.

5. Restrict the use of social media solely for purposes of recruitment and discipline any armed services personnel who use an official command channel to engage with civilian critics on social media.

6. Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.

7. Reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military. Gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service, and the use of public monies for transgender surgeries or to facilitate abortion for servicemembers should be ended.

****Value the military family. Military service requires extreme sacrifices by families.
1. Support legislation to increase wages and family allowances for active- duty enlisted personnel. No uniformed personnel should ever have to rely on social benefits like as food stamps or public housing assistance.

2. Improve base housing and consider the military family holistically when considering change-of-station moves.

3. Improve spouse employment opportunities and protections, including licensing reform,14 and expand childcare.

4. Audit all curricula and health policies in DOD schools for military families, remove all inappropriate materials, and reverse inappropriate policies.

5. Support legislation giving education savings account options to military families.15
Reduce the number of generals. Rank creep is pervasive. The number of 0-6 to 0-9 officers is at an all-time high across the armed services (above World War II levels), and the actual battlefield experience of this officer corps is at an all-time low. The next President should limit the continued advancement of many of the existing cadre, many of whom have been advanced by prior Administrations for reasons other than their warfighting prowess.

****Reduce the number of generals. Rank creep is pervasive. The number of 0-6 to 0-9 officers is at an all-time high across the armed services (above World War II levels), and the actual battlefield experience of this officer corps is at an all-time low. The next President should limit the continued advancement of many of the existing cadre, many of whom have been advanced by prior Administrations for reasons other than their warfighting prowess.

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Again. Much of this seems common sense to me. But to the Left, these hard-won victories for the degradation of the military (and defeats for us who care) that adversely impact military readiness, retention, and morale, to have them rolled back would catastrophic for their plans, and good for America.

I am distressed that many on our side want to throw Project 2025 into the incinerator. And I am disappointed in Trump that he responded the way he did, though that is Trump in essence when he speaks off the cuff. We get the good with the bad, and I am certainly one who would “Let Trump Be Trump” as Cory Lewandowski appropriately titled his book. I would have liked it much better if Trump had said “I have not read it in detail, and we intend to follow our own course. This is a white paper from a think tank, and if we find ideas in there that fit, we will adopt and integrate them.”