DID THE DEMS SUFFER A CAREER-ENDING INJURY TUESDAY NIGHT?

Pelosi listening to Trump destroy her party

President Trump is an acquired taste. After Tuesday’s boffo address to a joint session of Congress, millions more are acquiring it.

It was the first time the president’s words have risen to the level of his deeds. I loved even the parts announcing policies I don’t like, because they are superb politics.  How superb?  Just look at Shell-Shocked Pelosi to see how.

Last November, conservatives and Republicans divided into four categories:

(1) You had concerns about Trump, but you voted for him anyway, because the alternative was Hillary.

(2) You were enthusiastically for The Donald from the get-go.

(3) You didn’t vote for either Trump or Hillary.

(4) You voted for Hillary as the lesser of evils.

Nearly 63 million voted for Trump in November. He got a scoche more than 14 million votes (45 percent) in the primaries.

Statistician Nate Silver, extrapolating from the GOP Congressional vote, estimated the size of Category (3) at about three million. But because it contained most of the conservative intelligentsia, it’s more important than the raw numbers.

Category (4) was comprised chiefly of women offended by Mr. Trump’s alleged misogyny, and by national security experts – including our friend Ralph Peters – alarmed by Mr. Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin.

The superb national security team he’s chosen should have allayed concerns about Mr. Trump’s bromance with Vlad. As Lee Smith points out here, if he’d actually done anything improper, we’d have learned about it by now.

The immigration policy outlined by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly last week attacks core problems in ways popular with most Americans, Hispanics included. President Trump’s policy is almost identical to what Marco Rubio proposed during the primaries.

Rather than just revoking President Obama’s executive order on transgenders, Mr. Trump leaves it up to state governments to determine if people with male genitalia may relieve themselves in girls’ bathrooms.

Let’s hope most states behave with sanity and say no. Nonetheless, as David French notes, Mr. Trump’s emphasis on federalism gives the lie to the charge he’s a would be dictator.

President Trump’s budget is the most boldly conservative in generations. Yes, National Review, much of it is financed by pixie dust. No, this Congress won’t approve it in anything like its present form. But by shooting for the moon, the president is likely to get a bigger increase in defense spending and bigger cuts in federal bureaucracies than if he’d made a more “realistic” proposal.

Many must now think it better Mr. Trump is president than if Republicans they preferred, like Scott Walker or Marco Rubio, were in the White House.

Would more conventional GOP pols have chosen such an outstanding, outside-the-box national security team as Mattis, Kelly, Tillerson and McMaster?

Would Walker or Rubio have confronted so directly and effectively the Lying Swine?

Mr. Trump got elected by blue collar whites who normally vote Democratic. They don’t want anyone messing with their government benefits. It is politically shrewd of the president to keep his hands off entitlement programs.

And to propose big spending on infrastructure. Is there a better way to drive a wedge between industrial trade unions and public employee unions than by creating tens of thousands of high paying construction jobs?

Some in the conservative intelligentsia were catching on before the president’s speech, I noted in last week’s HFR.

But most Americans – especially those in the Imperial City – pay more attention to words than to deeds. Which is why the president’s speech was the most important SOTU in my lifetime.

Those in Categories (1) and (2) must be reassured by Mr. Trump’s words. Most in Cats (3) and (4) certainly should have gained new respect for him.

Hours before his speech, The Donald issued an executive order to beef up support for historically black colleges. If he can deliver on the promises he made with regard to school choice and inner city violence, it’s probable support for the GOP among blacks will rise by several percentage points.

It’s unrealistic to think black support for Republicans will rise above 15 percent anytime soon, but if it reaches that level (and everything else stays pretty much the same) Dems can kiss goodbye Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future.

The president’s speech was a smash in part because expectations were low.  But his tone was pitch perfect (most of the gossip in Washington Wednesday was about who wrote it), and I’m awed by how well Team Trump staged the event. They anticipated what the Dems and the Lying Swine were likely to do, and sandbagged them.

Most memorable was Carryn Owens tearing up during the tribute to her husband, Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, killed during a raid in Yemen last month. Trump “became President of the United States in that moment,” said former Obama aide Van Jones.

There’s now no way Dems – or the Lying Swine — can use the alleged failure of the raid (which wouldn’t have been Trump’s fault even if this were true) as a weapon against him.

By inviting victims of violent crime perpetrated by illegal immigrant felons – especially Jamiel Shaw Sr., father of a black teenager murdered by an illegal immigrant gang member — Trump made those Dems who made illegal immigrants their guests look as petty and small as in fact they are.

And did you hear Democrats groan when the president announced plans to highlight illegal immigrant crime?

It was fun to watch cognitive dissonance among Dems as they tried to decide whether to applaud Mr. Trump’s endorsement of stuff they’ve favored – e.g., infrastructure spending and “paid family leave.”

The expressions on Nancy Pelosi’s face indicated how much trouble the Dems are in.

It’s an overstatement to say, as Roger Simon did, that Tuesday was “the night the Democrat Party died.”  But it may well be on life support in Intensive Care, while the president’s job approval is now over 50 percent to stay.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  Until his retirement in January 2017, he was the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.