After a hard week of legislative work, I headed to the river tonight to unwind. The rise of a haze-encircled moon over the Potomac was consistent with the mood I have thinking about my party. Like many Americans, I see the election of Hillary Clinton as an existential threat to our constitution, our freedom, and our culture. Never has anyone who ever sought the presidency had a more egocentric focus than she does. A liar, and craven opportunist, and an unindicted felon, Clinton represents everything I despise in the sort of leadership that has put our country in a path to demise.
She possesses a distorted view of our nation, its founding, and its principles while adhering to an Obama-like socialist utopianism that is completely inconsistent with faith, family, and freedom. More ominously, she epitomizes the wicked devotion of a totalitarian in embracing an “ends justifies the means†campaigning style that—with the help of a compliant and servile media—is corrupt to the core.
Our Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is not a choir boy, to understate the obvious. And the media is doing all they can to remind us of that every minute of the day while totally ignoring the Clinton emails that tell you all you need to know about what Clinton did, said, or thought about a number of things even while she continues to look us in the face and lie to us like we are trash. Indeed she thinks we’re trash.
Those Republicans who refuse to support Trump are deluding themselves if they think we can “weather†a Clinton presidency until “rational republicans†step up in 2020. They seem to forget that in the span of 4 years, she can set the Supreme Court on a liberal footing for 20 years.
Let me be clear. Trump was not my pick. Rubio was. But tonight Rubio is running to keep his senate seat in Florida and Donald Trump is running to stop Hillary.
Some who oppose Trump do so as a matter of principle. I got it. But something I learned in combat was this. You fight with the team you have. That may not be the team you wanted, but opposite a determined enemy who will destroy this country, color me “in the fightâ€.
What will I say if we lose? I will say I fought against a certain evil with a very imperfect candidate.
What will I say if we win? Thank God we stopped Hillary Clinton.
18 comments
Hillary will do damage, that’s for sure. The “end of civilization as we know it” talk that we hear every four years is scaremongering. What we can’t know is whether Trump will do more damage than Hillary. It’s a very complicated predictive calculation. Most are oversimplifying the calculation. I don’t blame them. But please stop trying to use the Hillarypocolypse to scare me into supporting something that a careful analysis suggests might well be just as bad or even worse.
What you miss is that Hillary has already done great damage. While Trump was supposedly groping women, she was selling national secrets, including special access secrets that get spies killed and critical technology stolen.
Now put her in the White House to do further national damage and her husband in the Lincoln Bedroom to play patty cake and you have the perfect combination of crime and perversion.
What a dreadful choice we have.
Actually, we have no choice. Hillary is a criminal and a traitor. Trump may be a a lot of negative things, obviously exaggerated by the liberal media, but he is no criminal and loves America. If Trump is able to accomplish a tenth of what he proposes, the country will come back from the disaster of Obama.
“We have no choice” gets really tiresome. There will be other names on the ballot. They’re not there by accident. They’re offered to us a potential choices. I won’t narrow my mind to a binary selection between two horrible candidates. I hate the the leading candidates both are so bad. That’s why I called this a dreadful choice. But it’s still a choice.
Rational and totally correct assessment but alas the Republican state party has if not actively encouraged this anti nominee nonsense has at the very least truned a blind eye to well known and vocal party wings that carry this message day in and day out.
Great article, Delegate L. There is a new Wikileaks out where her brigades discuss destroying bumper stickers and yard signs, and generally antagonizing Trump supporters.
Nice Rivah photo. I can’t say much for someone that wanted Rubio, but you nailed it on the SCOTUS. Let’s get real, there is no delusion, the GOP Never Trumpers are the same crowd that wants open borders and are the globalists aka Uniparty. They want the country to go down w/the Beast, they believe they will have their turn at power in 2020 and will get the slim pickens of the leftovers to control that power. They are sadly mistaken, there will not be an America left if the Beast wins. It is just that simple, it isn’t about Trump, or what he can and can’t do, it is about what the Beast will do to put the final nail in our coffin.
Delegate Lingamfelter —
Creative use of “air quotes” to convey your derision not withstanding, you are opposing an “end justifies the means” candidate with another candidate of the same persuasion.
I fail to understand how any educated American, especially one who swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, could fail to understand the checks and balances built into our government by the Constitution. Are you saying they won’t stop a Clinton? Then they certainly won’t stop a Trump.
Two lessons I learned BEFORE I went into combat:
1. The troops know B.S. when they hear it
2. Wrong is wrong.
I call B.S. Knowing that and speaking that is the explicit duty of commissioned officers. It’s time for the courageousness you were taught about at VMI. It’s time to call out wrong inside your own ranks. You obviously have the bravado to call Hillary Clinton wrong. But do you have the courage to state pubicly that Donald Trump is every bit as wrong, or will you stand quietly in ranks, letting him reach his full destructive potential, claiming you were just doing your duty?
Then the obvious answer is to just surrender. How can I re-call my absentee ballot so I can join you in kneeling along the banks of the Potomac to await our fate?
The troops I work with know BS alright. And they don’t need an officer to point it out. They know the sickly sweet stench coming from the bi-partisan benefit review panels is all the reason the troop needs to vote for Trump. They don’t even bother to hide their plans to un-volunteer from the all volunteer force because of the BS being imposed.
Given mandatory retirement limits, an active duty servicemember has a finite number of occasions for voting by absentee ballot. How many have you submitted so far?
If you’re on active duty, I suggest you follow the example of a soldier named George A. Marshall, who was supremely aware of the reflection he made on his service.
What branch are you serving in?
We aren’t talking about how many votes in a career, we are talking about one ballot next month.
Marshall brilliantly utilized his innate abilities to fill the role of Chief Military Paper Pusher. His mastery didn’t go so well in a cold war with fixed targets. Today’s DoD is full of Marshall followers, checking their blocks to the stars. As you may have guessed, I am more of a Patton fan.I tend to believe that if there is a threat, you don’t pussyfoot around playing benevolent nation builder. But it’s about 14 years too late to change that plan though. Now we are broke, the existing hardware is worn out, and the new stuff is in-survivable under the current deployment schemes, Meanwhile a couple of guys named Putin and Xi have been expanding new zones of global influence, using our own money to find gaps in US political and military doctrine.
But some say the GOP and America’s voters should forget all that and surrender, because of the foibles of a dirty old man, instead of filling the airwaves with the nefarious exploits of our leaders who sell the citizens down the river for a few pieces of increasingly worthless fiat.
C’mon Man!
Marshall brought the military side of mobilization together in a way that made a war-winning difference, and helped set the US and Europe on a path to postwar prosperity.
But that wasn’t my point. Marshall felt the American public deserved not only freedom from military influence during elections, but also freedom from fear of military influence during elections. He was so adamant about it that he did not vote while on active duty. While his decision to abstain from voting was a little extreme, his keen appreciation for civil-miitary relationships is important and enduring. It is the job of every uniformed American to keep the military visibly out of elections, and to speak in political forums only as civilians.
A giant part of the current state of military affairs is our choice of national military strategies. That’s way beyond here, but suffice it to say if we matched our ambitions with our budgets, purchased reasonable systems, and used them wisely, our forces wouldn’t be in disrepair.
What makes you think Hillary Clinton would cut the military budget? As a Senator, she supported the military. And weren’t you implying you are connecting from some far-flung overseas post? Those posts are being used by Democrats, and have been for eight years now. They’ll gladly fund future procurement so they can continue their policies. Hillary knows darn well if she wants to work another regime change, she’s going to need Strike Eagles and Ospreys and carriers…
This isn’t about surrendering anything. This is about using our brains. This apocalyose narrative is meant to corral voters with fear. In reality, our system of checks and balances prevents any president from going that far. And if you feel the checks and balances aren’t working, they need your attention, not the presidential race.
And Obama has just effectively declared war on Russia assuming that they will do nothing. He is a great danger and Hillary will follow in his footsteps – she has already said so if you believe the Wikileaks dumps.
We won’t have a Constitution when Hillary gets through with it. Even now we have a Potus who hates us and who thumbs his nose at it.
Downstater, if one branch of the government can accomplish these apocalyptic goals, doesn’t that mean that one or both of the other branches of government are already broken? If so, why are we focused on somebody who will use a functional executive improperly, and not the presumably nonfunctional legislative or judicial branches?
Michael Parkyn, I don’t know you and I don’t know if you went to VMI. But if you did feel free to lecture me on what you think I should have learned there. You would have that right and I would respect it.
In the meantime, I suspect the air must be quite thin high atop the mountain of moral superiority where you reside. Try coming down to sea level for a while and see things as they are, now has you might wish them to be.
Wow! First you deride anybody who won’t quietly acquiesce to the paranoia of Trump, now you cry foul at anybody who won’t buy onto your conflicted reasoning.
I’m just a guy who listened in class when separation of powers was the topic. I’m just the guy listening to this muckraking doomsday talk, and finding it irresponsible.
I don’t need to have attended VMI to know what every Army officer has been taught as basic professional military education. Your assertion that only a VMI grad would understand is indicitave of arrogance and ignorance.
Moral superiority? That’s when somebody lifts a quote used by Donald Rumsfeld (you go to war with the army you’ve got) and you play it into your personal effort to capitalize on voter frustration to get some free votes in the next election. That’s when somebody implies they will share nuggets of wisdom from their bayonet charge into Iraq while forgetting American Government 101. Thanks for the wisdom, Sgt Rock, but stick to facts next time.
Here’s the problem with dragging out your combat veteran status: in Northern Virginia, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a combat veteran. Stop wrapping yourself in the American flag — it’s crowded with hypocrites in there and people who respect our flag don’t like it.
I live at sea level. If you see my standards as unreasonably high, its a wakeup call to you that your own moral code is slipping into the low ground. You don’t know me? We can fix that in any forum of your selection. I’ll come over from Stafford any time you want to discuss the three branches of government. My education wasn’t anything special, but unlike you, at least I remember what I was taught.