Elections Have Consequences: How Trump’s Second Term Challenges the Political Status Quo

“Elections,” Barack Obama told a group of cowering Republican lawmakers early in 2009, “have consequences.” He then drove the point home by reminding them, “I won.”

In truth, Democrats tend to understand this law of the political universe more clearly than do Republicans.

The usual rule is this: when Democrats win elections, they wield power. When Republicans win elections, they seek, or at least agree to, compromise.

In Suicide of the West, the political philosopher James Burnham quotes the nineteenth-century French writer Louis Veuillot, who summed up the essence of this political dialectic in one elegant sentence. Quand je suis le plus faible, je vous demande la liberté parce que tel est votre principe; mais quand je suis le plus fort, je vous l’ôte, parce que tel est le mien. “When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.”

For examples of the latter, I invite you to ponder the behavior of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, especially the behavior of the despicable Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, these last three and a half years.

Had the Democrats won the 2024 election, we would have seen many more examples of this principle in action. Assuming the Dems had kept the Senate, we would have seen them dispense with the filibuster, thus turning that chamber into what outgoing West Virginian Senator Joe Manchin called “the House on steroids.” They would have packed the Supreme Court, adding a few new “progressive” members to the bench to counter the power of Justices like Clarence Thomas. They likely would have imposed term- or age-limits on the Justices as well.

Elsewhere, I endeavored to provide a brief inventory of the “consequences” of a Harris victory. Donald Trump would have been bankrupted and jailed. It is likely that the same thing would have happened to Elon Musk. Just as John Kerry promised, the First Amendment would have been gutted if not discarded altogether in order to further the censorship and surveillance regime of the woke, progressive elite. A virtual ban on fracking and the mining of coal would have been enacted, further depressing America’s prosperity. The trans insanity of the last decade would have been extended, destroying women’s sports and disfiguring, mentally as well as physically, many thousands of confused teenagers.

The country just dodged that fusillade. What now?

To the surprise of the inattentive, Donald Trump is not acting according to script. In 2017, he was allowed to assume office but not to take power. That was because the order of the universe had dictated that only Democrats were allowed to take power. Even before he turned the key at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there were calls for his impeachment. He had hardly clicked on the lights in the Oval Office before the Russia Collusion Hoax—organized and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign—got underway.

Some seem surprised that Trump and his team have not docilely lined up for a rerun of his first term. But they haven’t. Last week, I noted some of the many ways the newly minted, forthcoming Trump administration differs from his first go-around. Various bad hats were clamoring to declare their reformation, and the economy responded to the decisive Trump victory with a 2000-point shot of adrenaline. Above all, one sensed a collective sigh of relief as it was borne upon us that we were finally awakening from the rancid nightmare of woke hysteria.

Suddenly, it became clear that, unlike 99.7 percent of politicians, Trump meant what he said when he promised to Make America Great Again.  He hadn’t brought along Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy for political window dressing.  He had brought them aboard for the same reason he picked J. D. Vance as his running mate: to field competent lieutenants to help realize his agenda of making America richer, freer, more secure, healthier, and more efficient.

The commentariat was still blinking in disbelief at what had just happened to their political and social assumptions when Trump began making his Cabinet nominations and other senior appointments.  Susie Wiles for Chief of Staff: super competent and the first woman in that position. Hmmm.  The China hawk Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. Hmmm again.  I think everyone’s favorite appointment was Tom Homan, former ICE director under Trump, as the new “border Czar.”

But then, last week, Trump really demonstrated that he meant business. He nominated Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services, and Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General.  All three nominations set the respectable, housebroken world of the punditocracy and political yes’em on fire.

Perhaps the quaintest response came from the Trump-allergic National Review, whose editorial oscillated between outrage and ad hominem abuse. According to the editors, Gaetz is “an unqualified toady” whose nomination should be “swiftly rejected” because “Gaetz is unfit.”  Why? At least in part because the FBI had investigated him for “sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, obstruction, and other unsavory conduct.” Here comes the best part: “To be sure, Gaetz was not charged. He has denied any wrongdoing. And allegations, even colorable ones, are not evidence.”

Indeed. And those are my italics, by the way. If the DOJ had anything, anything at all, that they could have nabbed Gaetz for, you can be sure they would have done so before you could say “Donald J. Trump.”  Remember the concept of being “presumed innocent?” That courtesy is not accorded to one’s political opponents. And what if Gaetz had been the object, as so many regime critics have been, of a groundless DOJ witch hunt? After all, the establishment hates Matt Gaetz, especially people like Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray who have suffered under his cross-examination.

NR concludes by sniffing that “the standards of fitness for an office of high public trust—and it doesn’t get much higher than attorney general—are considerably loftier than whether one manages to evade criminal prosecution.”  But how about if that prosecution was actually politically motivated persecution?  We have been treated to that spectacle again and again as the fate of the J6-ers and Donald Trump and various parents visiting school board meetings will remind you.  The Department of Justice has been weaponized and turned into a partisan tool.  That indeed, was one reason the voters delivered such a rousing victory to Donald Trump: to clean up the rotten, two-tier maladministration of justice in this country.

Responding to a CNN report that Trump is skipping FBI background checks for some of his cabinet nominees, including Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard (Trump’s pick to be Director of National Intelligence), the gimlet-eyed attorney Cleta Mitchell observed that “Obama didn’t have FBI vet his nominees because the nominees were corrupt; Trump isn’t having FBI vet his nominees because the FBI is corrupt.” Bingo.

Why would Trump nominate such controversial figures? Megyn Kelly gets it in one.  After his first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, collapsed and fed Trump to Robert Mueller, James Comey, and the rest of the corrupt Stasi-like brotherhood, Trump wants someone he can trust. Will Trump prevail?  Will controversial nominees like Matt Gaetz get confirmed?  Former Congressman and present faux-conservative commentator Trey Gowdy is one of many who say no. At one time Gowdy seemed like a rising star. It’s not clear what happened, but he long ago joined the ranks of the also-ran. I suspect that Gaetz will be confirmed, following, no doubt, the usual quota of Sturm und Drang. If not, then I suggest he follow Elon Musk’s suggestion and take a spot in the Department of Government Efficiency. “We will give him,” Musk said, “the task of auditing the FEC reports of the US Senators who opposed him.” An excellent idea. 

Why do I think Gaetz will ultimately be confirmed?  Because the public at large just elected Trump decisively, revealing a new spirit—what some commentators are calling a “spiritual shift”—in the body politic. The political weather has changed in America. As Mollie Hemingway put it on the same talk show Trey Gowdy participated in, “We don’t have a department of justice, we have a department of injustice, and that’s why you get Matt Gaetz as a nominee.” And that’s also why Gaetz will be confirmed. Elections have consequences.