The other day I was finishing up lunch at my favorite little bistro spot in Carroll Gardens, savoring the last sips of my wild raspberry hibiscus tea and pondering, as I am wont to do these days, the imperiled future of our Republic. My reverie was interrupted when a total stranger, as they are wont to do these days, engaged me unprompted in a conversation that just so happened to validate my political opinions. In this particular instance, the total stranger was my waitress, a young woman whose demeanor on that sunny day was somber and downcast.
“Mr. Pundit,” she said, “I appreciate your heroic efforts to stop Trump thus far. I admire how you brought the full array of your scholarly acumen, your charisma, your rapier wit to bear against that horrible orange monster of a man! But it’s beginning to look like he’ll seize the nomination regardless.” She sighed before continuing, “Mr. Pundit, I think I speak for all sane, rational, non-fictional young conservatives who totally aren’t just invented out of whole cloth for the sake of an anecdote when I say the prospect of a Trump presidency chills me to the bone!”
Here, she looked me straight in the eyes, real distress creeping into her voice, “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. What if… what if once I graduate, I don’t have to compete for an IT job against dozens of Indian H-1B visas who will do the same work I would but at a fraction of the cost to my potential employer? That would feel… that would feel just like welfare! I can’t bear the thought! You have to do something!”
In that moment, upon hearing the plaintive cry of this poor waitress just trying to do right by our GDP, I knew I couldn’t surrender my #NeverTrump crusade. And so I hastened forthwith to my apartment, grabbed another herbal tea from my refrigerator, and sat down to type what you see before you here: the moral case for a third party run against Donald J. Trump.
Now, OK, before you ask, I do understand that there are certain practical and political arguments to be made for why the Republicans ought to unite behind his candidacy. Trump has proven to be a somewhat competent political operator, systematically destroying the campaigns of sixteen other would-be nominees despite spending millions and millions of dollars less than his top competitors and suffering months of sustained and overwhelming hostility from all quarters of the media. So it’s perhaps possible that he could outmaneuver Clinton in the general and deliver us a win. Who knows?
It also must be admitted that he has inspired a certain enthusiasm, a certain—dare I say it?—high energy in our grassroots. I wouldn’t say the excitement has reached the same intensity that Romney inspired with his electrifying 2012 run, but it exists nonetheless. There’s also the argument that we pundits and politicians should maybe consider respecting the electoral voice, expressed unequivocally in Trump’s record-setting popular vote totals, of the people we have made a career of pretending to care about.
But I think we can all agree that none of these reasons to support Trump, as superficially reasonable as they may seem, can counterbalance the sheer moral ickiness of doing so.
An exhaustive list of Trump’s moral failures, not to mention all the times he has said rude things, would be too long to print here. But consider some of the highlights.
Trump’s disapproval of illegal aliens is racist demagoguery, and his proposal that we temporarily pause the enthusiastic importation of jihad is racist demagoguery that’s Islamophobic to boot! His rejection of globalism is nationalistic, possibly even nativistic. He espouses an obviously Nazi-derived America First foreign policy, an isolationist attitude toward perpetual Middle Eastern wars, and a blatantly protectionist answer to the question of whether foreign countries should be allowed to continue ripping us off for the remainder of the 21st century.
His ableism, his sexism, and his misogyny are all matters of public record. And his predisposition for narcissistic megalomaniac tyranny would be a matter of public record if any of the thousands of people who have worked for him over the years weren’t living in mortal fear of the man and would attest to it. He’s also a fascist, either of the neo-, the crypto-, or the plain old vanilla variety, and he addresses the concerns of normal, working class Americans in a way that can only be described—contemptuously—as populist.
In short, he’s a horrorshow of vulgarian opinions.
So, yes, I can see what some unprincipled pseudo-cons are saying when they argue that Trump represents a bold and dynamic pivot for the GOP, a long overdue repudiation of our feckless “elites,” an opportunity to reconnect with our alienated base, and so forth.
But those are hazy abstractions, verbal legerdemain, smoke and mirrors! And compared to them the morally principled case against him is clear: racism, misogyny, fascist xenophobia, Hitler, gross, bad, stop that! We simply must pursue other options, as radical as they may seem.
Of course, I haven’t yet decided whether Paul Ryan or Ben Sasse or even that Tom Coburn fellow will be our champion in the fight against our presumptive nominee, and all three of them have been returning my calls less and less frequently…
But when I do pick one, I hope that you will follow your conscience and rally to him with me—for my sake, for the sake of that waitress girl who really does exist, for the sake of your soul.
Editor’s Note: Conservative Pundit is a satirical thought leader who shares his well-respected insights on Twitter every day @DemsRRealRacist. (RELATED: The Man Behind The Hilarious Conservative Pundit Parody Account Speaks Out)