Former President Donald Trump is barreling toward the GOP presidential nomination according to recent polls and the ruling class establishment is petrified.

Trump said he would be a dictator, at least that’s how corporate media framed his words. In a recent interview with Sean Hannity, Trump was asked,

“Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked Trump in the interview taped in Davenport, Iowa on Tuesday.

“Except for day one,” Trump responded. Trump said on the “day one” he referred to, he would use his presidential powers to close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling.

This is apparently the “Trump the dictator” bit, meaning that Trump on the first day of his potential presidency, would reinstate his first term policies, his duty to preserve, protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.

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What Trump’s myriad opponents are having conniptions over is that he might treat his political opponents, the same way Obama and Biden treated their opposition, weaponizing the government against opponents in a manner that Stalin or Mao would approve.

For those worried about Trump trashing the Constitution, that ship has long sailed under the current regime.

Trump may be the last and only chance to resurrect the Constitution. 

The Wall Street Journal editorial board, once a bastion of conservatism, now identifies with the ruling class, neocons, big donors, and the open borders, endless wars branch of the modern Republican Party.

In a recent op-ed they wrote,

The pundits are saying that Donald Trump emerged unscathed from Wednesday night’s debate because only Chris Christie attacked him as a would-be dictator. But that misses something important about what happened on stage. Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis warned GOP voters that Mr. Trump is likely to fail in a second term and explained why—and the best evidence is the record of his first term.

The record of his first term? Does the WSJ not appreciate his first term achievements?

Here are a few.

A massive economic boom with low unemployment, wage growth not just for the laptop class but for all workers, rich and poor, black and white. Add middle class tax relief, massive deregulation, energy independence, fair trade deals, and Middle East peace with the Abraham Accords.

He remade the federal judiciary and nominated three constitutionalist justices for the Supreme Court, partially secured the border despite Congressional opposition, rebuilt the military and kept America out of foreign wars, supported religious liberty and pushed back against socialism and wokeism.

President Biden is delivering the opposite and the Wall Street Journal apparently prefers Biden’s American malaise and disfunction. As do the donor and ruling class elites. They all prefer endless wars and open borders, to heck with working class America.

The ruling class elites include the media, big tech, big finance, academia, Hollywood, woke corporations, and everyone else who has theirs, living safely in gated communities. They send their kids to private schools, not dysfunctional public schools where few graduate knowing how to read or write. They care not a whit about middle class Americans working with a power tool rather than a laptop, driving a used Chevy truck rather than a shiny new Tesla.

What do the voters say? Do they agree with the WSJ that a second Trump term would be a dictatorship and a mess of incompetence? Or do voters prefer the last three years get tossed in the Jimmy Carter trash bin of history next November?

Rasmussen Reports just released a poll showing, “Former President Donald Trump now has a double-digit lead for 2024, as support for re-electing President Joe Biden has faded in the past month.”

Specifically, “In a two-way contest between Biden and Trump, 48% of likely U.S. Voters would choose Trump and 38% would vote for Biden. Another 10% say they’d vote for some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.”

Going further Rasmussen noted, “This is a reversal of our November survey, when Biden led by four points, with 46% to Trump’s 42%. The new survey also shows stronger support for third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

My how things have changed in the past few months. RFK Jr, as a liberal Democrat, is not a threat to Trump. He will likely take more votes from Biden than from Trump.

Are these numbers a fluke? What do other polls say about the upcoming presidential election?

The RealClearPolitics poll average for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination places Trump at 60 percent, with Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley in the low teens, the others in low single digits. Trump’s lead is “yuuuge” as he would say.

DeSantis and Haley have had months to get their message out. Fox News has given them ample airtime, genuflecting whenever they interview either of them. Chris Christie is treated as royalty by CNN and MSNBC. If the Haley or DeSantis messages resonated with voters, they would be polling higher than 12%. The Koch brothers and Mitt Romney may like the message, but Joe the Plumber does not.

In Trump’s wake are candidates, who for the most part represent the failed ghosts of elections past – Mitt Romney, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and the like. These were establishment choices to manage America’s decline, not make America great again. They would tap the brakes on America’s slide toward Marxism, rather than saying “hell no” and turning the sinking ship around.

Most voters don’t care about Trump’s personality, his big mouth, his Queens accent and attitude, or his mean tweets. They want a president willing to kick the deep state hornet nest and if necessary, make a big mess, to restore American peace, prosperity, safety, and greatness.

Another gauge of voter sentiment is the Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll, which as of December 15 shows Trump four years ago at 49% total approval, compared with Biden at 43% total approval, reflecting the comparable points in their respective presidencies.

Rasmussen Reports also found that among likely U.S. voters that only 30% think the country is headed in the right direction compared to 64% who believe America is headed down the wrong track. Who is the conductor today of the American train cruising down the wrong track? Joe Biden.

Even the Wall Street Journal begrudgingly acknowledges that the voters may know more than their editorial board. In their recent poll,

President Biden’s political standing is at its weakest point of his presidency, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds, with voters giving him his lowest job-performance marks and favoring Donald Trump for the first time in a head-to-head test of the likely 2024 presidential matchup.

Biden lags behind Trump by 4 percentage points, 47% to 43%, on a hypothetical ballot with only those two candidates.

CNN piles on to the Biden trainwreck. “CNN Polls: Trump leads Biden in Michigan and Georgia as broad majorities hold negative views of the current president.” In Georgia, Trump leads Biden 49% to 44%. In Michigan Trump’s lead is 50% to 40%.

It will be challenging for those states to “find” enough ballots to overcome such a lead after they halt vote counting at 10 p.m. on election night to assess Biden’s deficit and figure out a way to reverse that by the time ballot counting resumes the next day.

Wait, there may be election cheating? Am I an election denier or a conspiracy theorist? Let’s ask voters if they followed the voting rules.

Rasmussen Reports did just that and found, “More than 20% of voters who used mail-in ballots in 2020 admit they participated in at least one form of election fraud.” How many more did not admit it? So much for the 2020 election being the “most secure in history.”

For those pining for another Ronald Reagan, good luck. Trump is the closest thing we have had to Reagan in the past four decades. Not the Bushes or any of the other big talk, little action GOP Reagan wannabes since then. 50 years from now, America may wish for another Trump, but these types of leaders are rare as they buck an extremely entrenched and powerful administrative state and candidate “selection” process.

Both the Republican and Democrat parties have morphed into a single uni-party with little difference, except on the fringes of each party. Voters see through this and by supporting Trump are saying enough. Forget the RNC or DNC and find us a candidate who wants to focus on America rather than personal and political power and money.

As James Carville once said about the economy, for this election, “It’s the voters stupid.” How refreshing if the GOP for once would listen and respect its voters, rather than heaping scorn and ridicule on the base of their party.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor, Substack Dr. Brian’s Substack, Truth Social @BrianJoondeph, and LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph.