By Jim Dickson
As I write this, it’s been almost a month since the election results were in, and to most people’s surprise and relief, it didn’t take two months and multiple lawsuits to come up with the winners. By now most of the dust has settled and the experts, pundits and assorted “Talking Heads” around the country have all been heard from and told us how, why and who was responsible for the somewhat unexpected results.
So, you will be happy to hear, there is no need for me to add my two cents here, I think it’s now time to move on and hope that the voters have made the right decision.
A little over half of the country is, I am sure, delighted with the outcome, and a little less than half are a bit shell shocked and trying to figure what happened and why. If history is a teacher, the doomsayers who are telling us that the Democratic Party is in complete disarray, and may not regain power for generations to come, will be wrong again. Just as they were wrong when these same people told us that after the Republican “Red Wave” of 2020 never happened, that the Republican Party would be out of power for at least two terms and maybe never again.
They told us that people of color will never vote for Republican candidates, that they are owned by the Dems and their policies. Somehow that didn’t work out too well this time. It seems that Americans pretty much share the same hopes and dreams whoever they are, and when you put those hopes and dreams at risk you lose them. That fact should put a smile on everyone’s face.
Someone asked me if I was happy that Mr. Trump won. My response was that even though I didn’t care for many of the things he has said and done, I was delighted that he won. I was in that 70 percent or so that felt strongly that the country was heading in the wrong direction, and maybe President Trump was what we needed to shake things up and turn them around in the right direction. Time, of course, will tell if we were right.
On the local front, which many times means more to all of us than national politics, things could not have worked out better. All of our Beaufort County legislative delegation was overwhelmingly returned to office. They will now return to Columbia with the seniority that they have accumulated over the years which enables them to head powerful House and Senate committees.
For many years, Beaufort County was sending money to Columbia and getting very little back. Through the efforts of our delegation that has turned around and we are now receiving state funding for schools, roads and various programs for the county and cities that we need.
I don’t often find myself agreeing with much that Opinion Page contributor Carol Lucas has to say, but I must admit that as I read her piece in the November 28 edition of The Island News, I was shaking my head in agreement. With all the success that we had in the last election there is one place where we, Republicans, could have, and should have done better and that was in the case of our first district Congresswoman. We had an excellent opportunity in the primary election this year to elect a highly qualified and respected candidate, and we failed. Hopefully in two years we will succeed.
Much needs to be done to undo the damage that the Biden Administration has done to the country, and I hope and pray that most Americans will step back and give President Trump and his cabinet a chance to correct that damage. However even as I write this, I know that Trump Derangement Syndrome runs so deep in many of us that it will be hard to overcome, but as I said, hope springs eternal, and time will tell.
Born, raised and educated in the Southwest, Jim Dickson served in the U.S. Navy Reserve in Vietnam before a 35-year business career. Retired to St. Helena Island, Dickson and his wife are fiscally conservative, socially moderate and active in Republican politics, though they may not always agree with Republicans. Having lived around the country and traveled around the world, Dickson believes that the United States truly is the land of opportunity.
