I give up. Just what is it going to take in this election campaign to bring the jaded, grandstanding, obstinate and utterly defeatist Never Trump forces back to the Republican Party? They have treated this decision between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as one they cannot make and have holed themselves up in a Masada-like fortress where they have been planning a mass political suicide. Yes, they still have their principles — spitefulness being paramount among these alleged virtues. Yes, they still have their once-influential periodicals of conservative thought – that are now merely nay saying dissertations written for a chosen few.
But do they have a candidate? Obviously they cannot consider the Green Party’s Jill Stein as a serious alternative and how can you vote for a man like Libertarian Gary Johnson – a man who boasts about eschewing alcohol while smoking marijuana and who responds to any question about person, place or thing outside of the United States border with a dumbfounded expression and even dumber response?
And there’s Evan McMullin. I’m hearing a chorus of “Who?” already. McMullin may be earnest, but he lacks the necessary stature, experience and name recognition to be taken seriously but has nonetheless proved an enormous pain the butt in Utah.
And Hillary? Yes! Some of them are actually supporting Clinton – as if they are making some huge ideological sacrifice in the process for the good of the nation. “This is difficult to do, you must understand, but I’m willing to lay down my political life that this nation might not endure a Donald Trump presidency…”
OK, brave people, how about another Clinton presidency? As the WikiLeaks e-mails drop from cyberspace every day like Manna from Heaven, it seems that no revelation is so damning that it induces any second thoughts about their abhorrence of Trump. You say the King of Morocco put $12 million on the table for privileged access to Secretary Clinton? Can’t be as bad as Trump’s bad temperament, you say. What about buying the Department of Justice so that the guy investigating Clinton’s unauthorized e-mail account just happens to be married to a Democratic Party-financed candidate? I know, you’d rather talk about Trump’s inflammatory speech and all that riff-raff attending his rallies.
You know what? That’s the real reason these self-appointed ivory tower “principled” conservatives can neither fathom Trump’s appeal nor stomach the possibility of his winning – his core followers. This angry and ragtag team of angry blue-collar ruffians just won’t doesn’t belong in the same social circles.
They all appeal to the memory of the very articulate and always patrician William F. Buckley, Jr. for ideological defence, but what do you think Buckley would say?
The National Review founder – and he wouldn’t recognize his own smug magazine today – famously quipped that he “should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”
That statement is a thousand miles away from the self-imposed political exile of the conservative elites who would rather watch the building come down in flames than ask for help from the Trump’s deplorables.
Well, if you think the honest working men and women of America are deplorable, just wait until the Clintons get back into the White House. If there’s a book to be written about how to get rich quick in politics, Bill and Hillary should co-author it. If you think it inadvisable that Trump should be empowering all these little people, than watch what kind of people Hillary will empower and who will be in enriched in a Clinton White House.
Trump is far from perfection but I can’t think of a U.S. president who was close to it. Ultimately, when the private lives of the two candidates are really not an issue, it’s the public policy positions that matter. And there is no more salient public policy than who should be appointed to the Supreme Court. These justices have been framing and implementing public policy as a de facto second legislative body for decades. So you better makes sure that you cast your vote for the kind of court you want when you select a president who will appoint that sort of judge.
We’re not asking you to check your principles at the door, GOP holdouts – but please take a reality check. Your hubris is actively working to elect Clinton.
