Being #NeverTrump is just so last month. The going fad this Autumn will be #NeverHillary and #EhOKICanVoteForTrump and that’s a good thought. It’s almost as nice a thought as never having to see hashtags before words, phrases, and sentences ever again – but we must not be greedy.
The time has come for setting aside our disappointments and frustrations with Donald Trump, his supporters, and the circus-like media frenzy we’ve suffered under for well over a year. There will probably never come a time when I don’t scoff at the thought of The Donald as the Republican Nominee, but the world is more dangerous and more complicated than our petty partisan infighting seem to indicate.
The Democrat Party has a very different vision for our future than that of Republicans, Libertarians, Conservatives, Constitutionalists, and most Moderate Independents. Hillary Clinton isn’t the most liberal or even the most Statist Democrat to ever run for office. She’s probably not as “left-wing” as Presidents Wilson, Carter, and Obama.
However, unlike these Presidents, Secretary Clinton will not be representing the liberal fringe of the United States of America. She’ll be representing the individuals, organizations, corporations, and foreign powers which fund her global foundation.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, this likely means that the Republican Party has lost the United States Senate and the ability to put important economic legislation on the Presidents’ desk. We’re talking about our 410K’s, the equity in our homes, our take home pay and disposable income. A vote for Hillary is a vote for a bad economy and further stagnation in the United States Congress.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, we can expect more chaos in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan. That’s not to say that Donald Trump has an erudite foreign policy – but if I have a choice between letting Republicans and Democrats decide our foreign policy, I prefer putting Republicans in charge.
If Hillary Clinton is elected, we’ll suffer under a liberal Supreme Court for twenty five years. No, I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton or her Supreme Court will actually come after our guns, but I do think they’ll make gun ownership more difficult and will institute draconian measures which could one day be used as a justification to confiscate firearms in America.
Presidents do not write legislation. 90% of everything Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have promised they’ll do as President of the United States are impossible to accomplish on their own through their position as President. The most important branch of the Federal Government remains the U.S. Congress.
The job of the President of the United States is to execute the will of the people through their representatives in Congress. Obama has on several occasions tried to overreach and on several occasions his own courts have pushed him back. Making decisions on who to vote for on the basis of “campaign promises” and speeches, is… frankly… naive.
Republicans who remain opposed to Donald Trump usually have a few specific things in common. They are angry that their candidate of choice lost. They want everyone to pay attention to them and they want you to pat their heads and slap their backs when Trump loses, as they dance, naked, in circles around pagan fires screaming, “I Told You So!”. They have no principles or viable conscientious alternatives to offer anyone.
The anti-trump crowd – be they Bush supporters, Rand or Cruz supporters, or Vermin Supreme die-hards aren’t interested in the health and future of the Republican Party. They are the ones quitting their local committees, stopping their donations, and harming every single Republican on the ticket in November. They don’t care about the party or about principles or about conscience. They are mad their candidate lost and so they want the candidate who won to be embarrassed in November. They are short-sighted, disloyal, uninspiring, and directionless.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of us are going to vote for Donald Trump in order to stop Hillary Clinton.
Many people will believe they are voting for the lesser of two evils – just as they felt they were voting for the lesser evil in 2012, 2008, 2004, and 2000. I am aware that Jesus never said anything about voting for the lesser evil, but I don’t recall Jesus having a whole heck of a lot to say about Republican politics in general.
If you are still on the fence and you aren’t making a spectacle out of yourself on facebook, then the chances are good that you will end up pulling the proverbial lever for Donald Trump in November. So why put it off.
Is this an awful election cycle from which we are all desperately seeking merciful release? Of course, but we’re still going to vote for Trump.
Now, I know for many of you, the reason you don’t want to say publicly that you are going to vote for Donald Trump is because, of all the horrific terrors, tortures, and demonic evils that exist in this world, nothing is quite so unnerving as making a Trump Supporter happy. I get it. Telling a Trump supporter that you are voting for Donald Trump tends to warrant a scolding hot shower involving Brillo Pads and corrosive acids. It’s the only way to feel clean again.
I tell you, there are worse things than the smug satisfaction of a Trump Supporter. With practice, patience, and a sincere dedication to the biblical virtues of long-suffering, you too can utter the words, “I’m voting for Trump”, even in front of smug Trump supporting evangelists.
We’ll all have to make sacrifices to ensure that Hillary Clinton is not the next President of the United States. I know it’s hard – but if I can do it, you can too.
36 comments
So you really want a president that suggests committing war crimes, using nerve gas, using nukes (he actually asked his aides, “Why can’t we use nukes?”), creating a registry of and denying immigration rights to a group of people based solely on their religion/ethnicity, who mocks people with disabilities, runs numerous businesses into the ground, exploits the American bankruptcy protection laws, cheats businesses that make less money because he can, suggests to people that they should shoot another presidential candidate, is in bed with a KGB dictator, who actually believes he’ll get Mexico to pay for a completely impossible wall at our border, and talks of “making america great again” while he sends thousands of jobs overseas to make his shitty clothing lines that are designed by his actually illegal alien wife? Please, go on.
Can you explain how supporting Trump is supposed to increase the likelihood of electing downstream candidates when most downstream candidates have chosen to distance themselves from Trump?
BTW Most of those pesky Chritians subscribe to the Trinity, so they don’t squirm about whether God the Father or God the Son said something or inspired Solomon to write something. Anyways, Jesus would probably affirm Proverbs 20:23, “The Lord detests double standards; he is not pleased by dishonest scales.”
Must go, firewood is hard to find.
— I remain
Your attention-starved, affirmation-seeking, sans-principles dancing pagan
Can you explain how your support of Clinton is good for “conservatives”? And can you do that without referring to Donald Trump?
Interesting presumption, if arrogant and wrong. Much like me asking you if your court-ordered ankle bracelet chafes — I’d have to be as much of an ass to do that as a troll would be in asking the question you asked. So I won’t ask you about your ankle bracelet.
Let me see if I have this right — your comments here have relied on evaluating Randidate “R” as suitable solely because he is not a duplicate of Candidate “D” — a subjective evaluation that is not supported by existing records and now you want to transition to a discussion of absolutes?
So my answer is that Clinton is what hapens when power hungry people achieve high positions in public office. Her rival, Candidate “R,” is proof of what happens when silver-spoon-born, power hungry people achieve high positions in the private sector. They are both serial liars trailing multiple failures behind them, promising to be disasters in the Oval Office. That’s why I can only support downstream Republican candidates.
I understand you don’t like Trump. You are here everyday to bash him, so I get that; you don’t like Trump. However, you insist (incorrectly) that one cannot justify voting for a candidate by considering the faults of the alternative candidate. So I asked you to defend your support of Clinton without referring to Donald Trump, and I see by your answer that you cannot do it. Are you claiming that you are not supporting Clinton? In this very thread below, you go out of your way to defend her again. Though you are careful to instruct us that they are both equally undesirable. Your tortured logic always depends on the assumption that they are equal; one is not worse than the other. You defend Clinton as being no worse that Trump, and then dismiss those of us who believe she is indeed far worse than Trump. So I ask again, why are you supporting her? And can you please tell us something other than she is just as bad/good as Trump?
I’m not supporting her.
I see this election as the prisoners’ dilemma in political form. Democrat die hards tell their voters that a third party vote is akin to a vote for Trump. Republican die hards tell their voters a vote for a third party is a vote for Clinton. But that’s not true. A vote for a candidate is a vote for a candidate. Die hard Democrats and Republicans? There voting for their candidate because they like that candidate.
But voters who are voting for a candidate because their party convinced them to fear the other candidate? They are playing rudimentary game theory — the electoral prisoners who turns on their fellow prisoners for a reduced sentence.
No, Republicans and Democrats, who are not traitors to their party tell their voters what amounts to the truth about a third party vote.
You are supporting her. You have no loyalty to anything but your mailbox with those government checks in it.
Ah, the hall monitor.
@FrankUnderwoodSr, this is the troll I mentioned earlier.
You call everyone a troll who disagrees with you. Enough with the troll name calling.
Not my definition. Wikipedia. “In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,[3] often for their own amusement.”
Then doesn’t your behavior fit your definition perfectly as a good Clinton troll?
I certainly have been guilty of being diverted by trolls, but no. (And perhaps naively, here’s one more attempt to take you as something besides a troll.)
Here’s the author’s statement: “They are the ones quitting their local committees, stopping their donations, and harming every single Republican on the ticket in November.”
Here’s my question: “Can you explain how supporting Trump is supposed to increase the likelihood of electing downstream candidates when most downstream candidates have chosen to distance themselves from Trump?”
It’s a question about the author’s logic, not a comment on his loyalty, or patriotism, or his source of income, as you and others have jumped to.
You’re off topic. If you want to discuss why you feel downstream votes are connected to Trump’s success and not hindered by his run, feel free to articulate, but try to do better than “no you’re wrong.” Add something to the discussion besides your unhelpful diversions.
I live in Northern Virginia. This is one of the only viable forums in Northern Virginia for discussion of conservative issues. I’m a conservative and I’m not going anywhere. The sooner you get used to that, the better for every reader of TBE.
It is your own logic that is faulty, not the author’s. You falsely asserted “most downstream candidates have chosen to distance themselves from Trump” and then asked the author to defend his position on the basis of your false assertion. You are simply wrong.
I still don’t understand where he connected those issues, or why you would take such extraordinary measures to call somebody wrong when you could try to explain the link yourself. Or just choose to remain silent.
When you discourage people from voting for Trump, you cause lower turnout. You turn a presidential election year into a off-year election in terms of turnout. It also impacts GOTV efforts, fundraising, and every other measure of political activity, including the most important one, votes on election day. Therefore, every Republican candidate will be hurt if people don’t want to vote for Trump, not just Donald Trump.
And no, votes for Gary Johnson do not help. Most people understand that a vote for a third party candidate is just a waste of time. Those votes go into the same dumpster as all the Ross Perot and Ralph Nader votes. Those are just meaningless non-votes which don’t matter in determining who becomes president. If you want to vote for Johnson, just write his name on a piece of paper and then put it directly into the trashcan. No sense in wasting gas to drive to the polls.
So you have it completely backwards. Not voting for Trump doesn’t help downstream Republicans at all. If people don’t turnout for Trump, downstream candidates are in deep deep trouble.
Are we finally ON TOPIC???
Okay so your first paragraph — give that Trump is the most controversial candidate in recent years, it’s likely that a higher than average number of people are discussing pros and cons of voting for him. Unless you have some historical data on voter trunout in major contests, I call B.S. and say voter turnout will be higher Because of the controversy. Maybe not for Your candidate, but it will be higger. The primary turnout supports my point. I will further submit that a polarizing contest will draw more, not less support to the local efforts. And clearly since the third party presidential candidates have no downstream equivalents, any conservative who votes for a third party president is by virtue of being at the polls more likely to support the downstream ballot.
If you want to talk about third party voting — really talk about it, it’s off topic. So I’m glad to but not on this thread.
Post an article on the topic and we can continue in the comments section.
I tried to help you. You continue to dream up Alice in Wonderland nonsense. No, the turnout will not be higher if people decide not to vote for Trump. Sheeesh. I give up.
Okay so your assertion is that conservatives who, as a resuly of reading this blog, become convinced not to vote for Trump will stay home from the polls altogether? Do you have any basis in fact for that claim?
(Note me avoiding petty insults here.)
I think I already explained the difference in terms of turnout. No sense repeating it.
But I am much more interested in why you persist in trying to convince people not to vote for Trump. I understand you won’t vote for Trump, and that’s fine. But, why are you proselytizing your NeverTrump opinion?
Mark Belling made some good points about this today, by suggesting that NeverTrumpers and Trump supporters should both stop antagonizing each other because it’s way past time to focus attacks on Clinton rather than each other. Continuing to proselytize the NeverTrump movement is totally counterproductive, especially if you care about downstream candidates. That is only going to benefit the Democrats. For my part, I would like to see more of the anti-Trump Republicans give Trump a second look. A large number of former anti-Trump people are coming over every day, but we will need as many as we can get to win the election. So I know that some will never see the light, but I don’t want to argue about it anymore, and it is not useful to antagonize good Republicans about it. Assuming you are really a Republican, I hope you will do the same.
Polls so far are showing that Johnson is drawing the same votes from both sides. Earlier in the year he drew more heavily from Clinton. The linked article accurately quotes the RCP summaries https://alibertarianfuture.com/2016-election/presidential-polls/rcp-average-proves-gary-johnson-taking-evenly-trump-clinton/#sthash.9d5vWDKm.dpbs.
Without discussing effects further.
The sentiment you express is interesting. First, you’re labeling as proselytization any discussion that isn’t your viewpoint. Next, my views are listed outside the set you define as “good” Republicans.
Finally, you seem to be missing something: had you not taken exception to my question, this thread would be about 20 comments shorter.
The difference between you and me is simple: I have a lower limit of what I choose to accept to from the GOP’s menu. You take what you’re given every time and rail at the poor governance you’ve gotten from GOP politicians.
I have to take exception to misguided efforts that are hurting the prospects of electing the Republican nominee. I hope you’ll reconsider.
That’s entirely appropriate sentiment when you’re talking to your (fellow?) committee members.
But you’re not. This isn’t the committee or a Trump rally. This is the commons and what you are objecting to is First Amendment free speech, and it is on topic here. Further, I’m making assertions based on fact. If facts are hurting the candidate’s prospects, you have an issue with the candidate, not me.
As far as reconsidering, I do reevaluate my decisions every day. But so far, the arguments for altering my decision on Trump are heavy on emotion but light on facts, or fact free altogether.
I’ll tee one evaluation up for reconsideration — my evaluation that one can support downstream candidates without supporting Trump. You argue that is incorrect. What facts can you cite to substantiate the claim?
What nonsense. You really think Trump voters are supporting him because the Republican party convinced them to fear Clinton? You really think a vote for a third party candidate is just another vote for a candidate, not meant to peel off support from one of the two candidates that can win? That is nonsense.
You claim you haven’t been bashing Trump, and you claim you are not supporting Clinton. And you see a “majority” of GOP legislators backing away from Trump. Wrong again.
You were also wrong when you predicted Trump would not be nominated. You are clearly wrong about Trump voter motivations. Apparently you still haven’t figured out why people are voting for Trump.
Please — count the number of pro-Trump/anti-Clinton comments on this thread. There are a total of 3 that aren’t objections to people who left comments questioning Steve’Steve’s article. Jeanine applauded the article, and @Stonewall Jackson and @Warmac9999? Predictions of Armaggedon. 2 to 1. Numbers don’t lie.
I’m wrong about GOP legislators?Ok, how many GOP legislators have endorsed Trump openly? How many have backed away openly?
Didn’t realize I made a lot if predictions saying Trump would not be nominated. Where did you see those?
Assertion without substantiation is nonsense. Denial — it’s not just a river.
LOL… So you don’t recall losing a $100 bet that Donald Trump would not be nominated? You were so certain that the RNC delegates would not nominate him that you bet $100, and you were dead wrong. Just like you were wrong about a ‘majority’ of GOP legislators opposing Trump. You really are missing what is happening in this election. You continue to be absolutely delusional about the support within the party for Donald Trump. The majority of Republicans are NOT with you. Yes, he was not the first choice of many of us, but the vast majority of Republicans are going to try to help him win this election.
The bet was over the delegates bringing dump Trump to the floor and getting it up for a vote. You’re having a senior.moment.
I’ll give you a chance to refresh your memory. If you insist of being embarrassed, I can repost the whole thread. I said “Your dream of dumping Trump is completely absurd. You’ll never get the convention delegates to act like a bunch of frightened lemmings and destroy themselves in unison. It ain’t going to happen”. You said they would dump Trump in order to keep the House and the Senate, because “the delegates will see blind allegiance to Trump as the self-destructive course of action.” I said “BS. They will not dump Trump.” and I immediately challenged you to $100 bet. Need I remind you what actually happened? Who is having the senior moment?
Whatever. You are so stupendously way off topic it’s dizzying. Repost anything you want. Post your name with it if you have a spine. I’m here on this thread trying to discuss links the author sees between upstream and downstream candidates. Take it off thread. Email it. Drop by my house and convince me. I don’t care. You’re a troll. Discussion ended.
I also want to address your view that I’m bashing Trump. I don’t see it that way.
Bashing somebody is when you ask them what government tit they’re sucking. You asked me that question. It was loaded with scorn and a little queen to boot. THAT was bashing.
I don’t see me bashing here. I see a discussion blog whose authors make assertions about their candidates. On this thread, what you characterize as Trump bashing was to ask Steve to further explain his assertion of the link between a Trump election and downstream elections. I don’t understand that, because I see the majority of GOP legislators backing away from him.
I’m confident both candidates have fan club pages where commenters should restrain themselves to mutual affirmation, like on Facebook — nothing but likes. I won’t make comments there that would be seen as off topic, because those pages aren’t about dialogue between locals.
This page is. It’s not a Trump fan page. It’s not a Trump hate page. It’s a page for idealists, pragmatists, holdouts, sellouts, whatever, as long as they regard themselves as conservatives.
No.
Look guys for the last time… and for emphasis…
IF YOU DO NOT REVERSE THE IMMIGRATION TIDES THAT DEMOCRATS ARE USHERING IN AT A BREAKNECK PACE….
CONSERVATISM IS DEAD. Third worlders want government handouts. Barack Obama knows this… Hillary Clinton too.. The Morons at Bearing Drift don’t seem to get this..or don’t care because they represent the Chamber of Commerce…
I don’t care about the #$%ing GOP with its establishment that has more in common with the Democrat establishment than it does conservatives. There is nothing conservative about the Bushes… NOTHING. AND that was in action in decades in government.
Y’all like to fantasize about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan would never be governor of California now thanks to? Amnesty 1986.
Maybe Trump is lying about plans to control immigration… but he laid out the case without the usual PC that you usually get from GOP E. The Cucks at Bearing Drift for example had the vapers over Trump’s immigration statements. That is good enough for me.
One quibble with this excellent post, Obama has written his own policies and laws by executive order. Hillary has already promised to do the same.
So if the President can do that (a form of legislation), then Steve’s assertions about the impact of losing the Senate are invalid. That’s one of the fundamental weaknesses of this line of thinking — that a megalomaniac like Clinton will use the power of the office to run roughshod over Congress, while a Megalomaniac like Trump can be handled by Congress.
Anyone who votes for Donald Trump, a madman, who creates chaos on a near daily basis is a fool. The country will follow suit.
Anyone who votes for Hillary Clinton, a traitor who sells the country to the highest bidder on a near daily basis is insane. The country will follow the chaos that is Obama.
Lets compare the 2 candidates: