(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)
During former President Donald Trump's term, it became shockingly clear how much better America could have been — for decades.
America under Trump was a country with no new wars, a booming economy, energy independence, low unemployment across all demographics, rising wages, renewed manufacturing and domestic production, and controlled immigration.
Unbeknownst to most of us, we had been suffering under the control of a uniparty whose policies were crippling our country: hobbling the economy with oppressive regulations and taxes, exporting jobs and importing poverty, coddling criminals, poisoning foreign relations, starting — but not winning — wars in which America had no real interests, and sending debt skyrocketing with expenditures purportedly needed to "address" problems the government's policies caused in the first place.
Republicans told their voters that Democrats were responsible and that GOP control would solve everything. But in 2017, with neither a Democrat nor a RINO in the White House, Americans could see that the real political dynamic — at least since Ronald Reagan (and quite likely prior) — had been something else altogether: Democrats pushed for whatever policies they wanted, and Republicans made bank pretending — sometimes — to oppose them.
Republican voters were baffled that their candidates could win elections and then magically lose their nerve. By way of recent example, the GOP got control of the House in 2012, then said they needed the Senate. Voters gave them the Senate in 2014, then were told there needed to be a Republican in the White House to get anything done.
But after Trump won the presidency, Republicans still struggled to fulfill their campaign promises, including and especially repeal of the bloated and bureaucratic Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare").
Then-House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate leader Mitch McConnell made no secret that Trump wasn't their kind of Republican. Trump actually intended to improve the economy, to bring back manufacturing jobs, to get NATO to pony up, to keep the U.S. out of unnecessary wars, and to fight the Democrats' disastrous policies.
Trump's 2016 election and the relentless attack by the "deep state" thereafter exposed what few Americans had dared to consider before: that the interplay between Congress and the White House was largely political theater intended to distract the public from the real power being wielded behind the scenes by people we never elected.
The 2020 election of President Joe Biden and its aftermath made this truth even clearer. How could a doddering old man run the country?
The answer, of course, is that he didn't and doesn't. Biden signed the 142 executive orders and 691 presidential memoranda that were drafted for him. He was forbidden to go off-script when talking with reporters.
He has taken an extraordinary amount of vacation. He is surrounded by cabinet members who — just like Biden — do exactly as they are told. (And first lady Jill Biden ran the last cabinet meeting.)
Candidate Biden, at least, had a lengthy political career that the public could be impressed upon to recall. And yet even for Biden, the powerless puppet modus operandi of his presidency became impossible to pretend away when he mumbled, stumbled and fumbled his way through the June debate with Trump.
Biden was forced out of the race and his feckless vice president, Kamala Harris, was installed as the replacement candidate for the presidency.
Harris represents the next stage of the empty-suit presidency. There is barely even a pretense that she has the expertise or qualifications to be President of the United States; it's all about "joy" and "brat" and "vibes," thinking about "what can be," unburdened by having to explain the Marxist origins of what that really is.
Harris launched her political career dating former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and moved up through the ranks by skillfully playing the San Francisco political fundraising circuit. She exaggerated her trial record as a district attorney and violated campaign finance laws; one of the major laws she coauthored as California attorney general was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court; she got no major legislation passed as a U.S. senator. She was picked as Biden's vice president strictly because he'd painted himself into a corner by promising to select a "Black" woman, and her primary role was being the "border czar," a task it's nearly impossible to have botched worse than she did.
Americans are now asked to place Harris into what is (in theory) the most powerful political position in the world, even though she cannot cogently articulate a single policy statement besides unlimited abortion.
This history explains not only why Democrats like former President Barack Obama, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi are so comfortable with a manifestly unqualified individual as president of the United States, but why certain well-known Republicans (like Ryan, former Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen. Mitt Romney and former Vice President Mike Pence) either expressly back Harris or refuse to endorse Trump.
There are unspoken rules behind today's political power, and Trump refuses to play by them.
When those in Harris' camp — regardless of their political affiliation — yell, "We're not going back!" they don't just mean they're not going back to the days before Roe v. Wade was decided. That's a red herring.
What they really mean is, "We have no intention of going back to the time when the Constitution controlled our government, and American citizens had the power to choose political leaders who answered to them and looked out for their best interests and those of the country."
A vote for Trump is a vote for retaking control of our nation. A vote for Harris isn't a vote for "freedom" or "joy."
It is a decision to cede further control to the anti-American globalists, cultural Marxists, multinational corporatists, radical, anti-human environmentalists, weaponized law enforcement and other unelected members of the bureaucratic "deep state," pulling the strings behind the curtain.
Don't vote for the empty suit.
Laura Hollis is an attorney and university professor who has taught courses in law and business for more than 30 years. Her legal publications have appeared in the Temple Law Review, Cardozo Law Review and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. She is a nationally syndicated columnist whose work has been featured in dozens of print and online publications. Read reports by Professor Hollis — More Here.