Top 10 Highlights of 2018

Now that I have already provided my list of the top 10 lowlights of 2018, let’s end the year on a high note.  Take a look at the top 10 highlights of 2018:

1.      The Confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  After a long, arduous, and slanderous confirmation process, the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by a razor-thin margin. Ultimately, Republicans may not have enjoyed the modest success in the 2018 midterm elections had they not decided to unify behind Kavanaugh in spite of the smear campaign orchestrated against him.  Even President George W. Bush, a critic of President Trump on many issues, made phone calls on behalf of Kavanaugh; who once worked for the younger Bush as a Staff Secretary.   

2.      The 2018 midterm elections.   While the Republicans lost control of the House and some governorships, they ended up increasing their majority in the Senate; something that rarely happens to the President’s party in a midterm election.  Chuck Schumer tried to downplay the positive Senate results during his meeting with the President and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, saying “when the President brags he won Indiana and North Dakota, you know he’s in real trouble.”  Schumer neglected to mention that Republicans ousted a three-term Democratic Senator in Florida, a swing state.  The results of the 2018 midterms have given President Trump a stronger majority that will expedite the appointments of judges and other cabinet positions, including Attorney General, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of the Interior, and Secretary of Defense.  The Republican success in the 2018 Senate elections can also help to insulate them from a potential “blue wave” in 2020.  Republicans will almost certainly find themselves on the defensive in Colorado and the Democrats will probably also push hard in Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina.  Republicans have their best target in Alabama.  If the Republicans failed to make any net gain in the 2018 Senate elections, they would have found themselves in a much weaker position going into 2020.  Now, the Democrats would need to net at least four seats to take back control of the Senate in 2020; that number would shrink to three if President Trump loses re-election.  In addition to Alabama, conservatives also have ripe targets in Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire that may become competitive if President Trump carries all three of those states. 

3.      The reshuffling of the Trump cabinet.  While the media will do their best to portray the reshuffling of the Trump cabinet as an example of chaos at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the American people should appreciate the fact that the President has replaced people who, with all due respect, did not exactly share his worldview with people that do.  He replaced Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who most, if not all conservatives agree has done a much better job than Tillerson; who has spent his “retirement” attempting to impress the media by taking shots at the President, who all too happily punches back. President Trump also replaced globalist former Goldman Sachs insider Gary Cohn with Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC personality who has served as a far more effective advocate for the Trump administration’s economic agenda than Cohn. The last shakeup of the year came with the sudden resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis, who announced his departure not long after President Trump announced that he would pull United States troops out of Syria; an action that directly contradicts the Washington establishment’s wishes.  Christian Whiton, a former advisor to both Presidents Trump and President George W. Bush, wrote a very convincing op-ed explaining why replacing Mattis would not result in the end of the world, contrary to the media hysteria.  According to Whiton, “while Mattis had the proven skills of a highly successful combat commander to battle our enemies abroad, his strength was not fighting for the President’s policies in the halls of Congress or in media appearances to influence public opinion.” In addition, he also demonstrated hostility to many of the President’s “America First” foreign policy ideas, including pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, which even Chuck Schumer voted against; moving the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the actual Israeli capital of Jerusalem, and the decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord. 

4.      President Trump’s appearance at the March for Life.  Last year, I included Vice President Pence’s appearance at the March for Life on my list of the top 10 highlights of 2017.  While President Trump did not actually attend the March for Life, he addressed the pro-life congregants gathered at the National Mall from the Rose Garden; making him the first President to do so.  Previous Republican Presidents have addressed the March for Life via audio.  The Never-Trumpers who spent all of the 2016 election season talking about how President Trump was not a “true conservative” definitely have a lot of explaining to do. I included some tidbits about President Trump’s address in my final blog post before beginning my internship at the National Journalism Center. 

5.      Passage of pro-life legislation at the state level.  Part of this kind of goes in tandem with the results of the 2018 midterm election.  The pro-life victories began earlier this year, when Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law a “heartbeat bill” that would ban abortion after an ultrasound machine can begin to detect a fetal heartbeat.  While the law not surprisingly faced an almost immediate court challenge, her willingness to shows that lawmakers have a very strong appetite to protect the sanctity of human life; at the state level.  Months later, voters in West Virginia and Alabama approved measures that would ban public funding of abortion.   

6.      President Trump’s visits to Iraq and Germany.  Just hours after NBC News published an article complaining that President Trump became the first President not to visit the troops at Christmastime since 2002, President Trump touched down at a military base in Iraq, with his beautiful bride, First Lady Melania Trump, at his side.  Melania became the first First Lady to visit the troops in half a century; yet the media did not seem to care. While the media nitpicked every second of the trip, President Trump had originally planned on spending Christmas vacation in sunny South Florida at his Mar-a-Lago golf club; he ended up cancelling his trip so he could remain at the White House in case Democrats decided to abandon their open borders agenda and compromise when it came to accepting at least some degree of wall funding.  President Trump definitely had the optics on his side; while he visited the troops and remained in Washington committed to reopening the government, without sacrificing the much-needed and long overdue wall funding, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi vacationed at a luxury resort in Hawaii, likely surrounded by walls. 

7.      The renaissance of conservative TV.  More than twenty years after its initial run on ABC ended, the sitcom “Roseanne” made a reappearance as Hollywood, apparently out of original ideas, began running reboots of other more liberal-friendly shows such as “Will & Grace.”  While the star of the show, Roseanne Barr, had spent most of the past two decades as a left-wing activist who ran for President on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, found common cause with President Trump on many issues; especially when it came to Israel.  Therefore, the reboot featured her beloved character on the show, Roseanne Conner, as a Trump supporter, while her sister Jackie saw things a bit differently, to say the least.  The “Roseanne” reboot came to a sudden halt when Barr made the unfortunate decision to send out a late night tweet saying that Obama ally Valerie Jarrett looked like the product of an ape and the Muslim brotherhood.  Conservatives only had to wait a few months after Barr’s blunder for the reboot of “Last Man Standing” to begin airing on Fox.  The previous installment of “Last Man Standing,” which aired on ABC from 2011 to 2017, featured a conservative main character played by Tim Allen, a conservative in real life. The reboot brought back a lot of the characters from the original installment, albeit with different actors playing them in some cases.

8.      Pro-America and pro-liberty Supreme Court decisions.  Three years after the disastrous Supreme Court term of 2015, conservatives actually enjoyed some victories when the Supreme Court voted to uphold President Trump’s travel ban, despite the best attempts of liberal judges on the Ninth Circuit to gut it.  In addition, the Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had demonstrated hostility towards the religious beliefs of Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who faced the wrath of the SJW mob for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.  The other big losers of 2018, at least when it comes to the Supreme Court: public sector unions and radical feminists.  According to the Janus decision, public sector unions cannot force non-union members to pay fees for collective bargaining.  In a separate case, the Supreme Court struck down a California law requiring crisis pregnancy centers, specifically designed to encourage women to choose options other than abortion, to inform them of their options at state-sponsored clinics; including abortion. Hopefully, with Kavanaugh on the Court, the era of liberal judicial activism, at least at the Supreme Court level, will finally come to an end. 

9.      The post-election press conference.  The day after Election Day, President Trump held a press conference where he said out loud what many Americans think every time they turn on CNN; telling Jim Acosta “you are a rude, terrible person.”  Grab the popcorn and watch the entire video; the reason behind its presence on the top 10 list of highlights will become crystal clear.

10.  The record low number of tornado-related deaths.  I thought I would end on a unifying note with something that both Democrats and Republicans should definitely see as a highlight. While 2018 certainly had its fair share of hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires, some of which I included on the list of the top 10 lowlights, this year featured a record low number of deaths caused by tornadoes.  While an average of 69 Americans die each year from tornado-caused deaths, only ten people lost their lives at the hands of a twister this year.  2018 also marked the first time since 1950 that no “violent” tornadoes hit the United States.  Amen to that.

Happy New Year and check back later this week for my first blog post of 2019.