Don’t let America go the way of California and Minnesota

I keynoted a banquet for conservative members of the Minnesota state legislature in March. They were demoralized — and this was already a veteran group used to serving in a state that not even Ronald Reagan could win.

“He California-ed our state in one legislative session.”

“How is it possible your Iowa moved so far right while we moved so far to the left?”

“I don’t think we will ever recover from what has happened to our state.”

These were all things I heard from people who lived through what happens when a certain kind of leftist gains power, just two hours away from my home. And I fear these are the things we’re all going to be saying four years from now if we lose the election to Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in November.

But if you are among the ones who truly think masses of normies are going to knowingly accept open and unabashed Marxism in 2024 and then immediately learn some cosmic lesson, turn right around in 2028, and vote for a candidate demonstrably to the right of Donald Trump such as Ron DeSantis, then I have Western European nations with “conservative leaders” like the Tories and Emmanuel Macron to sell you.

This isn’t about Trump. This is about us right now. Will it be Trump’s New York of the 1980s and ’90s, or will it be the progressive hellholes of today?

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

Ask California, a state where Republicans once won seven out of 10 elections and midwifed the Reagan revolution. Today, Republicans are lucky to garner 40% statewide in any presidential election. It is gone for good, minus any kind of heaven-sent revival, and is now the chief exporter nationwide for the spirit of the age.

It is far more likely the United States will go the way of California and Western Europe than go further right in response to a 2024 Republican defeat. Because it was a disruptive Trump who was the gateway to a ruthless DeSantis being elected in Florida in the first place. And nobody knows that math better than DeSantis, which is why he ran for president this cycle despite long odds against him. He said this was the election we could not afford a mulligan on the entire time he ran, so if that now means raising tens of millions of dollars for the man who beat him, then that is what he is going to do.

DeSantis is setting aside pride, ego, and ambition for something more important than any of those things — the country. This is a terminal election from a worldview perspective. The differences in worldview have never been starker, and the fact that Trump is the GOP candidate makes that fact stand out all the more.

I have fundamental philosophical and ethical differences with Trump. Frankly, I’m not sure how a Bible-believing Christian could not. But the differences I have with him are dwarfed by the tyranny and depravity the Harris-Walz ticket represents. This will be the most significant election in terms of conflicting worldviews that I have ever voted in, and I believe it could be the last one we vote in if the worst-case scenario currently unfolding in Orwellian England happens here.

Some of you think you’re being principled by making this all about Trump. The reality is you risk being every bit as narcissistic as you claim he is. You have put Trump and your feelings for him ahead of your own self-interests and the interests of your own family and country — which is fundamentally no different than what you accuse the most grifty Trump shills of doing.

Mark my words, if Harris and Walz win, you’re going to wish you had a do-over as you watch them appoint Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito’s successors.

As you watch them turn this country into a rape-fugee zoo like the U.K.

As you watch them mandate more poison jabs.

As you watch them fund ayatollahs and more wars in which your sons and daughters will fight and die.

As you watch them slaughter children nationwide as long as a pinky toe remains in the birth canal.

As you watch them impose “no free speech for misinformation.”

As you watch them put the Green New Deal on steroids.

As you watch them poisonously race-bait the country in ways that would make Barack Obama blush.

As you watch them impose San Francisco and Minneapolis on the entire country. I hope you like poop maps and child porn, because that’s what you’re going to get.

This isn’t about Trump, nor is this about pining for a future that isn’t remotely guaranteed. This is about us and about us right now. Will it be Trump’s New York of the 1980s and ’90s, or will it be the progressive hellholes of today?

One isn’t close to perfect but doesn’t hate you or promise to destroy you. The other is hell on earth. Choose you this day whom ye will serve, while you still have a choice.