How did Donald Trump Lose?

Trump's speech at CPAC was a call to the Republican party to wake up. Among other things Trump attacked several Republican politicians who failed to support him during his term and after his stunning loss. When one looks at Trump's popularity, his successful policies, his huge electoral turn-out, his very long electoral coattails, his loss is baffling. How did it happen? How did Trump lose?

First, let's do not be afraid of calling this what it is. Joe Biden did not run an election campaign. His election was the culmination of a plan that began to take shape June 15, 2015 when Donald Trump came down the escalator of Trump tower to announce his run for Presidency. Donald Trump is a threat to "The New World Order Republicans," "The Socialist Democrats," and the Social Justice Warriors both religious and secular. 

Pharisaical evangelicals told us that we could not vote for Trump because he lacked virtue;  Voting based on virtue totally ignores the Biblical measure of character. The leaders God chose were hardly virtuous. Abraham was a liar; Gideon was an idolater; Samson a fornicator, David an adulterer and murderer, Solomon, a greedy polygamist. God judged character base on faithfulness to his call on their lives. Trump's faults were too public for the Christianity Today crowd. Instead they told us we could voter for Biden despite his criminal enterprise and depraved social policies because he is a "nice grandfatherly type." His faults were not so obvious.

 I have several friends on social media who told me, "well, I can vote for Biden," and disagree with him on abortion, government spending, LGBTQ rights because he's such a nice guy. Many of those people "unfriended" me when I responded, "the last time I heard the guy who drives the get away care is guilty of robbery." When one votes Demonrat, but doesn't agree with them, strictly for appearances, who is the greater hypocrite? Donald Trump who refuses to confess his sin, and sometimes publicly flaunts them, or the person who just hides them under the veneer of sanctification. The establishment Republicans and Pharisaical evangelicals may hate Trump more than the Demonrats. 

"The New World Order" Republicans like Ambassador John Bolton, who believed that their erudition, education and experience and years of repeated failures made them more qualified to govern than an unsophisticated often uncouth outsider. Trump they believed was immoral and dangerous, not because of his past billionaire playboy lifestyle, but because of his rejection of their expert advice who knew better than the voter what's best for the people. 

The socialist Demonrats who really believe our Constitution is immoral and that our founders were racists and that "white people" are inherently oppressive want to shape society based on the will of what elitist determine is in our common. Trump may have lost because some people are apparently will to sacrifice freedom for appearances.  

But most of all Donald Trump lost because he ran a poor re-election campaign. I watched many of the rallies, and they were impressive for the crowds, but I felt they all lack something that the rallies had in 2016- a vision for the future. More than just a litany of his accomplishments, Donald Trump needed to come to the 2020 voters with a clear vision for where he was taking the country. What was the health care plan? How was he going to bring law and order to the cities? What was he going to do about the millions of illegals living in the country?  How was he going to respond to the climate alarmists, and how were we going to arrest the media overreach. Those were issues he and his campaign failed to address. He needed to show more compassion for the Coronavirus sufferers? Would it really have undermined his authority to have worn a mask? By refusing to wear a mask he gave the democrats as issue. Every interview or commentary I watched on an unfriendly media started it's presentation questioning "why Trump did not wear a mask?" Those were democratic issues and without addressing them their was little "cross over" vote. 

First, the Republican party's leadership failed Trump by failing to work with him to craft a health care plan. Every interview I saw with Trump from an unfriendly source asked about "health care." Although Trump could point to many actions he had taken executively, none of those had gone into effect prior to the campaign, and Trump offered no new plan. I believe this was the single greatest failure of the Trump campaign. While it may have been the President's intention to provide a panoply of free-market solutions, he needed to explain and defend that vision.

Secondly Donald Trump failed at issues that Reagan capitalized on that created the demographic of "Reagan Democrats," while Trump won them in 2012 they either stayed home or voted Democratic again is 2016. Donald Trump failed to get control of the violence in American cities. At nearly every Trump appearance he talked about the violence in "democrat-run cities." He said we can end the violence gave his actions in Minneapolis as an example but then let the cities burn. He seemed inept. I believe had Trump intervened to stop the riots in Portland, and the anarchy in Seattle, the American people would have supported him.

Thirdly, his campaign failed to control the communications battle over the Covid pandemic. Trump's herculean actions to stem the tied of pandemic went largely unrecognized for several reasons. Trump himself constantly praised and gave credit to the governors. Trump allowed too many bureaucrats, Fauci, Burkes and others to be the spokesperson for Covid relief, and the media focused more on specific point of difference between Trump and the experts than they did on what Trump was doing. The media used every opportunity to paint Trump as uncaring.

The interview with Bob Woodward never should have ocurred. Woodward has made a career of disgracing and disparaging Presidents especially Republicans. He was no friend of Trump and he use Trump sometimes unguarded language (such as the phrase "I talked down the China virus) to make Trump look callous. The Trump people should have know what was going to come out of the Woodward interview. He should have declined it, but many on his campaign staff were not acting in his best interest.

Trump's campaign officials did little to intervened with State Legislatures and Secretary-of-States prior to the election to insure election integrity. Frankly with all that had gone on for 3 years prior and history of Demonrat cheating his campaign legal team needed to be assertive long before the election. Campaign officials should have met with state party officials prior to the election, and should have take legal action long before a single vote was taken. The reason the Demonrats were able to manipulate Covid to change election rules was that Trump's team let them do it. 

Trump's to restore law and order. He repeatedly said, he could, he would. He repeatedly failed to do so. That failure along with the perception the media was able to create around the Coronavirus caused a tremendous turnout of Demonrat votes. Yet there is hope.

It does seem like the party is unifying around the Trump agenda, whether they ultimately re-nominate him matters little. The America first agenda is now the agenda of Republican party. Trump controls the party's future. The actions Biden has taken in the first 6 weeks of his Presidency will have disastrous consequences. If the Republicans State legislatures can re-establish appropriate election rules and can rally around the Trump agenda they can win in 2022 and 2024. However, they must be proactive. 

The Demonrats have a tremendous advantage. They control two branches of government, and so far SCOTUS has been unwilling to set boundaries on their misconducts. Local Republican officials must begin acting now to prepare for 2020. But it can be done. The Republican Party can re-emerge victorious with or without Trump at the helm. I pray they will. We cannot afford to lose the next two elections.