I’m generally a conservative-libertarian person of faith. On most issues you’ll find me in the middle of a square roughly defined by Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Charlie Kirk and Michael Youssef.
I was so energized after the 2024 election, as were most friends and businesspeople I know. We had dodged the awful prospect of four more years of absurd policies: flooding our nation with millions of people from who-knows-where, with unknown intent, at a large cost to our security, our schools, and our healthcare systems. And four more years of crazy mandates for everything green, no matter the cost or efficacy. Increased funding for anything and everything, with more and more national debt. Thankfully the Democrats lost in 2024.
Instead, after the election we looked forward to the end of that utter border madness. And we would have less regulation. Smaller government. Lower taxes. No more DEI foolishness. Cheaper energy. More growth. Better markets. Less waste. Lower inflation. More common sense.
And then it was January.
If you read this post and think that I’m opposed to the majority of the President’s policies, and don’t want him, and instead want the Progressive Socialists
back in charge, you would be very wrong. What I fear is that despite real success, often against great odds, in so many of the above areas, because of a few of the President’s inexplicable policies, and, primarily, his capricious, self-centered and often inexplicable behavior, the Progressive Socialists will in fact regain power. Conservatives will seize defeat from the jaws of what should be a great long-term victory because of bad advice and inappropriate behavior. Terrible. Self-inflicted. Dumb.
First it was the tariffs. Who voted for tariffs? By their very nature they harm us, even before other nations hit back. For a reasoned review of one of the most-settled consensuses in all of Economics, see The Trump Tariff Whisperer.
But let’s cut to the chase. What is the basic mechanism by which tariffs work? By raising prices and costs. And what is the goal of this Administration? Affordability—lowering prices and costs. Hello? How is that going to work out? Need we say more?
Tariffs are a consumption tax which also reduce choices and increase the costs of manufacturing inputs, like for affordable housing, which is a connection not often made. A few jobs are created in protected industries, which shows well on the news, but many more jobs are either eliminated or 
never materialize. Houses not being built and even more workers not being employed because rising construction costs make building those houses infeasible. Not building houses is hard to capture on video for the news, but the negative results are no less real. So overall economic activity—including jobs and income—may be protected here and there, but they are lower than they would have been without the tariffs. Crazy. Harmful. Bad policy. Why?!?
And these tariffs have been imposed willy-nilly: on one day, off the next, up one week, down the next. This chaos adds a huge amount of uncertainty to every business decision. With increased uncertainty, the best course for most businesses is usually caution, waiting until there is more clarity. So investments are not made, and people are not hired, especially by small and medium-sized businesses, the backbone of our economy. NOT what our nation wants or needs.
And now we have a whole new Tariff Advocacy Gang, from Soybean Farmers to Auto Manufacturers, trying to make crony deals with the Administration
for their special groups, while in every case consumers pay more. Not what conservatives usually stand for.
Finally, tariffs imposed on our most loyal, strongest allies and trading partners are particularly dumb and counter-productive to our collective future.
Despite all those clearly negative tariff impacts, on January 30th the President wrote a 1,200 word Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal bragging about how wonderful they are and how smart he is. This is how he ended his open letter: “Given the results of the past year, and the spectacular economic numbers coming out every single day, perhaps it is time for the tariff skeptics at the Journal to consider putting on one of my favorite red hats—the one that reads, ‘TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!’”
Think about the best, most effective leaders in your own life whom you trust and admire, and who have had a positive influence on important decisions, whether in government, business, the ministry, education, healthcare, or non-profits. Can you imagine any of them thinking like that about themselves, much less writing that line in all caps for millions to read? What does that say about the person who does?
There is one possible bright spot with these tariffs for the Fed to act upon immediately: Since the tariffs are already a huge brake on our overall economy (they raise many individual prices, but that is not the same as general inflation), and since we don’t need a second brake, the Fed should cite tariffs as the reason to significantly lower interest rates at their next meeting.
Right behind the tariffs came waffling on Ukraine and cozying up to Putin, a thug, who has no interest in ending that war, despite our President’s phone 
calls to do so. We could impose tougher sanctions, but instead Trump hopes Putin will relent because of future business and investment. Putin doesn’t care about that in the least—overnight he destroyed the twenty-five years of Western investment so many of us poured into his country, as many of us tried to bring Russia into the international network of trade and progress. Putin just doesn’t care, and President Trump must learn that while he may love to make deals, Putin doesn’t, and won’t. So America needs to fully back Ukraine against Putin’s war of aggression. Period.
I give Trump great credit for backing Israel against Hamas, and for taking down Iran’s proxies and their nuclear weapons capability. But in the months since then, we seem to have lost our way. We find it easy to start something, but then what are we now actually doing in (fill in the blank)? Gaza? Venezuela? Iran? Cuba?
And of course, Trump’s inexplicable focus on Greenland, which seemed to combine all our recent bad policies in one: threats to our closest allies, tariffs, half-baked aggression and petulant self-absorption (the Nobel Peace Prize). What’s different about the US demanding to absorb Greenland for security purposes and Russia demanding to absorb Ukraine for security purposes? Might makes right? Is that our new conservative/Christian standard?
Domestically, besides the tariff disaster, there’s the lawfare being waged by Trump’s departments against his enemies, which we have to call out as 
wrong just as much as we blasted Democrats for waging lawfare against him throughout his first term, and beyond. This is so far below what we should be as a nation. OK, the Dems started it, but our parents taught most of us about two wrongs not making a right.
Then the big one: ICE and Immigration. Yes, this ongoing disaster is the result of the Biden Administration’s terrible policies. Yes, sanctuary states and cities are wrong. Yes, local police should turn over actual illegal immigrant criminals to ICE when they have them, and not let them out into our streets. Yes, we should round up and deport actual criminals, especially violent ones, which is what the early explanation of ICE policy was.
But most of us now know, first or second hand, real, hardworking and tax-paying housekeepers, gardeners, employees—or their DACA
grown-children—who have been rounded up and summarily deported without any process. Adding to the affordable housing issue, there were pictures in Tuesday’s WSJ of half-finished homes in Texas—the men who were building them are afraid to continue working because of repeated ICE raids on their work sites, and there are no readily available replacements.
This is not what I signed up for in voting for Trump, and all the personal experiences and visuals are going to make it almost certain that the nation will vote for a return to a Democratic majority in November. Won’t that be great?!? These ICE raids are a technically correct policy gone totally off the rails in practice, and one which is guaranteed to bring back disastrous progressive Democratic policies, upending what we all expected from Trump’s second term.
Our President’s self-absorption in conversation and speeches has always concerned me, right from the first. But now I worry that this self-focus is moving into actual policy decisions, both domestic and international. That would not make him a king, as some bleat—just a very bad, and possibly dangerous, president, virtually guaranteeing a progressive triumph. California, New York City, Minnesota and Virginia policies are on the way to all of us. Ugh.
A couple of months ago I wrote about Five Big-Picture Issues on which the president should now focus—by solving them, as no one else has been able to do, he would be a genuine hero and leave behind a very positive legacy for generations to come. One of the five is, of course, Immigration Reform. That’s the difficult but ultimately doable agenda President Trump should be working on with Congress, Governors, and Policy Experts. And he should speak and text only when absolutely necessary.
And, looking to the next Presidential election—assuming the outcome has not been predetermined by the Progressive gerrymandering of conservatives out of any say at all in so many states—is there not a statesperson on the conservative bench who can champion commonsense truths along with a bit of humility, long-range vision, wisdom, faith, humor and concern for others? I hope she or he will step forward quickly.
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