College Republicans: an existential election

On the evening of July 13, 2024, President Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. For a moment, the world stood still as it appeared the worst had come to pass — a President killed, a movement extinguished and the tenuous fabric of a nation irreparably shattered. 

But out of the chaos emerged the former President, his fists raised, his face visibly scarred by the marks of battle. “Fight, fight, fight!” he declared. By the grace of God, Trump’s life had been spared that day. To quote the Emperor of the French Napoleon, destiny had made him “invulnerable, unassailable,” until the goals to which fate pushed him had been realized. 

For President Trump, this goal is finishing the project he started when he rode down the golden escalator to declare his candidacy in 2015. Taking the political world by storm, he upended establishment orthodoxy by decrying a system that had served the interests of globalist elites at the expense of ordinary Americans. He challenged the failed, neoliberal consensus forged within both parties — that of mass-immigration, unfair trade and forever-wars — that turned America into nothing more than an economic zone to be ransacked by the highest bidder. He envisioned a ruling elite that once again was rooted in faith, family, love of nation and above all, put America first. Against all the odds, he won.

During his time as President, Trump made significant strides towards realizing such a vision. Economically, manufacturing employment grew the fastest in thirty years, wages grew at the fastest rate in decades and the U.S. became a net exporter of energy. On immigration, net migration declined significantly, and illegal border crossings hit their lowest levels in modern history. On foreign policy, Trump made significant breakthroughs in relations in North Korea, the Middle East and wisely avoided starting any new foreign conflicts. Finally, the Trump Administration was an ardent defender of Christian and traditional values. Trump’s judicial picks were responsible for overturning the barbaric Roe v. Wade decision as well as gutting anti-white policies like affirmative action. His administrative state also did important work in pushing back against the Obama Administration’s promotion of transgender ideology in public schools. 

In just four years, the Biden-Harris admin has waged a crusade to undo the progress of the Trump years, and the collateral damage has been the common good of the American people. On the economy, costly spending bills like the “Inflation Reduction Act” and cumbersome regulations on the energy sector have contributed to massive price increases for ordinary Americans. As a result of this inflation, the Federal Reserve increased interest rates to a 23-year high, making it onerous for Americans to buy a home or start a business. On foreign policy, Biden-Harris has presided over one of the most geopolitically unstable periods in recent history, from a disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan that left 13 U.S. veterans dead to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the ongoing war in Gaza. They have failed to make meaningful progress to quell any of these crises. Perhaps worst of all, however, has been Biden and Harris’s open cooperation in an invasion on the U.S. southern border. Estimates suggest more than 10 million illegal aliens have entered the country since 2021, a total greater than 41 U.S. states. Many of these illegals have committed other serious crimes upon arrival, such as the brutal rape and murder of college student Laken Riley earlier this year. These policy failures have made Joe Biden one of the most unpopular Presidents in U.S. history. Before being forced to exit the race, Biden responded to his failing poll numbers by attempting to jail his political opponent. Even the Kremlin wasn’t so obvious. 

If elected President, Kamala Harris would ensure that the damage of the Biden years is irreparable. The clearest way in which she would achieve this is through her radical expansion of mass immigration. During her campaign for President in 2019, Harris promised to decriminalize all border crossings and offer amnesty, free healthcare and other benefits to illegal immigrants on the taxpayer dime. The current 2024 DNC platform has even called for an increase in immigration levels with little to no vetting of personal backgrounds. Such proposals are not the result of incompetence or ignorance. Rather, they are a deliberate attempt to undermine the fabric of American society through displacing the native population, importing a reliable voting base and distorting America’s traditional cultural practices. 

Vice President Harris’s resentment for traditional conceptions of order and civilization is also evident in her approach to crime. She has endorsed significant cuts to police budgets, the abolition of cash bail and has called for the extension of voting rights to violent terrorists such as the Boston Marathon Bomber. Her running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, took no action as the city of Minneapolis suffered historic riots after the death of George Floyd in 2020. Harris even bailed out the few that were actually charged with a crime. 

Finally, on economics, Harris proposes dangerous price controls on everyday goods and services as part of a strategy to divert blame onto “corporate greed” for the inflation of the last four years. The result of such a disastrous policy, if implemented, would be massive shortages in essential goods, bankruptcies and a subsequent economic crisis. She also plans to pass the Green New Deal, a 93 trillion dollar plan that seeks to forbid nuclear and fossil fuel energy sources in favor of wind and solar. This proposal kills two birds with one stone, both bankrupting the nation’s finances and ensuring mass-scale deindustrialization.

Harris and Walz are fundamentally anti-civilizational candidates, ideologues who detest the order and tradition that built the West and seek to use the full force of the state to dismantle them. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance embody the opposite of this pathological ethos —  visionary leaders who have lived the American dream and seek to preserve it for future generations. If elected to a second term, Trump will finish what he started. He will reduce immigration and secure the border. He will revitalize the economy by continuing to bring home American manufacturing, bringing down inflationary spending and unleashing the American energy sector. He will negotiate a just end to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. And he will continue to fight for the Christian values that made Western civilization the greatest in the world. 

November 5th, 2024, will mark the most existential election in American history. But together, we will heed Trump’s rallying cry on that fateful July day. We will fight. We will win. And we will make America great again. 

Shri Thakur