The Coalition for Regime Change: Part 2

This is a follow-up to my post The Coalition for Regime Change.

Things are going swimmingly -- for now. Support for the Coalition is impressive in private polling. Assuming no ballot counting/stuffing shenanigans, Barnes & Baris on People's Pundit Daily estimate a 319-219 Electoral College victory. But that is today, not November 5.

Following the conversations on X.com, there are three threats I see to the developing Coalition: (1) intensifying personal smears of RFK Jr. by Democrats, (2) unease about Trump's commitment to "pro-life" positions, and (3) talk of forming a Unity Party for 2028. Each of these things is designed to reduce (assuming Democratic actors are promoting them), or can have the effect of reducing, the electoral support for the Coalition. Let me deal with each in turn:

Smear Campaign

This, of course, is nothing new. It is a pretty standard technique employed by all sides in varying degrees. My response is always, "Ideas are orphans." That is to say, you look at the policies and the ideas behind them to evaluate merit. Yes, the person behind the idea counts in terms of whether they are to be trusted to implement it. But you have to debate the idea first. Because if the idea is both good and has popular support, someone is going to want to implement it. Then pressure will be placed on whoever stumps for its implementation. I also say, "Don't fall in love with a politician." If you don't fall in love, you are less susceptible to being influenced by a litany of personal failings (true or not) than by the ideas the politician is promoting (and needs support from others to implement, in any event).

Trump as Weak Pro-Life Champion

Fresh from getting abortion policy out of the courts and back into the hands of the people of the various states, the tom-toms are now beating to get a federal nationwide abortion ban. President Trump is not supporting that, and, as a consequence, some people are suggesting they can't support him anymore. I don't want to be pejorative, but IMO it is incoherent that you would withdraw support at this juncture and maintain an abortion-loving government in place.

One pastor posted about his concerns about continued support for President Trump because he is not promoting a nationwide abortion ban. In my response, I highlighted how President Trump took the abortion question out of the courts and put it back in the hands of the pastor's congregation and neighbors. It was now the pastor's responsibility to get their hearts in the right place, not put them in the hands of federal politicians. You can't promote federalism until you succeed and then turn around and demand an anti-federalist solution. If you think it through, what rationale can't you come up with to eliminate federalism altogether?! I cannot think of a better way to give the Democrats what they want.

The Unity Party

Naomi Wolf remarked on X that calling the Coalition the "Unity Party" is a mistake; referring to it as "the Unity Movement" is spot on and powerful. I agree. I have remarked before that parties are ideological ciphers -- they have a mission to obtain and maintain power without regard to ideology. They require discipline and hierarchy. Internal stresses weaken their effectiveness and blunt their message. By contrast, movements are entirely reliant on numbers. Numbers are gained by individuals giving priority to points of agreement and setting aside, at least temporarily, points of disagreement. The priority of the Coalition is regime change -- to remove from power those individuals who are abusing power. Every member of the Coalition has been affected by abuse of power and knows, instinctively, that we are running out of time; that while freedom will at some point always assert itself again, it could be a very long, long time.

The reality is that a Coalition win in November will create some real debates about the form of government operating in 2025. There is a lot of diversity of opinion within the MAGA camp alone over the proper exercise of governmental power. The Coalition's range of opinion is even greater. The Unity Movement has a better handle on the abuse of power than it does on use of power. For the time being, that is where the focus should be. Because if we start prematurely debating the use of power, then we take our eyes off of the abuse of power — and then we lose in November.

I think we can all agree that America in 2024 is very different from America in 1974, 1924, 1874, 1824, and 1774. We understood in 1774 the sources of abuse of power and set to the task of forming a new type of government. We created a form of government based on the "consent of the governed". That "consent" was too narrowly placed in the formation of our Constitution, but has expanded through time. The changes in our nation and the world have presented challenges to federalism and representative government. There have been many missteps, but IMO the fundamentals hold.

The challenge to the Unity Movement is the challenge of America: forming a more perfect, but imperfect, union -- one under the control of its people and not one controlling the people. That is a complicated matter with so many wanting different things. We have to accept that in a pluralistic society if government is ever perfected it will be in the hands of despots. We must prepare ourselves to live in a society with persistent disagreements on many things so long as our Constitutional principles are upheld. To focus on those disagreements now is to give up a chance to debate them later.