Usually in the context of discussing former President Trump’s political “lawfare” battles, the political punditry proffer something banal like, “we can’t go or look back.” 

As if by osmosis, that sentiment has infiltrated the thinking of several the of the Republican Party’s presidential candidates.

However, since a majority of Americans feel we’re on the wrong track, backtracking may be the best direction along the space-time continuum. 

During the third Republican presidential debate, candidate Nikki Haley insisted, “we can’t live in the past,” in response to a question that invoked Trump.

In his closing statement, candidate Ron DeSantis exhorted that we must reverse our country’s decline. 

Um, reverse means going backwards.

There’re a plethora of wise words from various thinkers that intimate the same notion:  “Sometimes one has to go back to move forward.”   Indeed, the slogan MAGA acknowledges American exceptionalism by looking backwards to our former glory as a shining beacon illuminating an otherwise dark world.  That's the City on the Hill that candidate Chris Christie mentioned during the debate.

Actually, it is not Trump who might take us back to undesirable times and places, but backwards Biden. 

“Leadership” by Biden is as bad as Obama’s “leadership from behind.”  But in betwixt their anti-American efforts to fundamentally transform the Last Great Hope of Earth, was a certain Donald Trump.

No wonder he’s trouncing the Republican candidates in the polls, and even humiliating media-darling Biden in the battleground states:  Voters would prefer to “live in the past” when America was great again.  Besides, given the decline in America, if we don’t look back how can we rediscover lost values?

Yet Haley doesn’t want to live in Trump’s past.  Her presidential campaign motto is “Stand for America,” which may be tricky for her since, as described by Vivek Ramaswamy, she’s a “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.” 

Indeed, in response to Vivek’s insult last night, she claimed she can run in those heels.

It would be interesting if she could also do a graceful, backwards-sliding moonwalk in them. After some contrition, Haley could still be a useful Trump minion – perhaps send her back to the U.N. to shake up those corrupt, Hamas-supporting ignoramuses.  Send her back to the future.

Many political commercials contain strident attacks, but one that resonates because it uplifted the American spirit was Ronald Reagan’s 1984 classic, “It’s morning again in America.”  Let’s do that again.  Let’s go back to the future.  Let’s even Make America Great Again.

Image: Screen shot from Rotten Tomatos Classic Trailers video, via YouTube