This does not stop us from debating the choice of the President and thereby, Dux liberae mundi, leader of the free world.

In fact, most of our commentariat condemned Trump in 2020 and overwhelmingly preferred the compromised, incapable Biden.

GREATEST

This was notwithstanding the fact that on the delivery of good policy, Trump had proved to be the greatest leader of the free world since Ronald Reagan.

The choice in 2024 will be crucial, with the US now fighting an internal enemy far more dangerous than any foreign power.

The spectre of communism that Marx and Engels long ago saw haunting Europe has mutated, and dangerously so.

Just as the German High Command’s delivery of Lenin to St Petersburg in a so-called sealed train inserted, as Churchill put it, a bacillus plague into the Russian Empire, so a new strain of communism is infecting the West.

This is despite the fact that the original strain resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of human beings, the impoverishment and enslavement of over a billion, with, as Mark Levin declares in American Marxism, Marx being “wrong about almost everything”.

The mutated bacillus has dropped the failed class struggle for ones based on race, sex, and an invented new categorisation, gender.

Drawing on once fashionable eugenics, there is a frantic push to meld increased abortion into infanticide, impacting disproportionately on the poor and the black.

Add to that, the discredited theory of man-made global warming, as scientific as the alchemy of turning lead into gold, net-zero benefitting Beijing while the West has been seriously weakened by their foolish adoption of that brutal communist-designed response to their Wuhan virus, the lockdown.

While the English-speaking world, unlike the Latin, had a natural immunity to old-style communism, too many have fallen head over heels for this ugly mutation.

INDOCTRINATION

The infamous “long march through the institutions” has resulted in much of education and swathes of the media becoming mere agents for indoctrination, while big business increasingly adopts climate and other policies.

There is a distinct resemblance in this to the corporate fascist States of Europe, the model adopted by Beijing after the Maoist disaster.

All this calls for a leader of the free world who can reverse the tide as effectively as Donald Trump did in his first term.

In the meantime, post-mortems continue over the US mid-term elections.

As noted here last week, partisan gerrymandering and States still tolerating practices encouraging fraud, such as ballot harvesting, have had their impact.

But these alone do not explain the Republicans’ failure to secure an even higher vote in the House and to gain seats in the Senate.

Democrats, mainstream press, and the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell blame Trump.

The real villain is the Republican establishment, dominated by Rinos, Republicans in name only.

This was explained by one of the great Republican leaders, Senator Ted Cruz, at a meeting of the Republican senators’ conference in the beautiful old Senate chamber where in 1856, Representative Preston Brooks beat slavery abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner almost to death with his cane.

UNDERFUNDING

Cruz pointed out that McConnell has acquired dictatorial control of US$300-400m of electoral funding, using this to advance those who will support him, usually so-called moderates, while underfunding or even not funding conservatives close to the base, such as Cruz.

Cruz pointed out that hitherto elections for leader were carried by acclamation with no agenda for the term discussed. This time Rick Scott was standing.

Cruz said that over the past two years McConnell, whom polling suggests is the country’s most unpopular Republican, has allowed all the Biden legislative program to pass with the votes of “moderate” Republicans.

Dispirited, too many in the Republican base are tempted not to vote.

Cruz challenged McConnell to name just one thing he would be prepared to fight for in the coming term.

Rather than answering, McConnell pointed to each senator recalling how many millions he gave for his or her election campaign.

Cruz argued that the Republicans had levers over funding which could be used to block or amend the worst Democratic Party measures.

Current ones, he said, could include blocking the withdrawal of tax exemptions from churches, schools and charities who do not support gay marriage, the dismissal of unvaccinated soldiers or the funding of 87,000 additional IRS tax staff to harass political enemies.