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Hillary Vs. Trump: Godzilla Vs. King Kong?
When and if it comes down to a vote for one of just two candidates in the remaining Republican primaries, a majority may still vote for Ted Cruz, which at this point I think is the far wiser course. In November, like most conservatives I’ll probably hold my nose and vote for whoever is the Republican nominee--unless, of course, she or he is arrested or indicted or springs a private server on us.

But will the so-called establishment do the latter?

...Mostly unmentioned, except for a few bolder Republicans, is the specter that elites and establishment types really will form a third party, stay home, or vote for Hillary Clinton. We can dispense with the triad of choices, because there is only one choice: staying home or forming a third party, despite all the high-minded professions, is a vote for Hillary Clinton, or rather a third term for Barack Obama. And there lies the dilemma that everyone dreads.

So the looming questions for the elite concern whether Godzilla Hillary would be better than King Kong Trump.

...In other words, staying home or voting for a third party will elect the most unethical politician in recent memory, one who stayed out of court or jail only because of her connections and candidacy. Her exemption from indictment in itself will be a stain on the entire judicial system for generations to come.

...Lots of us have contextualized Trump's boorish crudity in the long tradition of American politics. In truth, for all his bombast he is no Wallace segregationist, much less a Hitler-lite brown shirt. His melodramatic excesses are firmly within the Obama or Reagan tradition of bring a gun to a knife fight/get in their faces/punish our enemies and "if it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with"--only serial rather than episodic.

His quips are or are not as uncouth as those of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on abortion and Eric Holder and Obama on race. When Trump crudely starts talking of the positive aspects of aborting black babies, or referring to whites as "my people," or lamenting that the slain Nicole Simpson might have looked like the second daughter he never had, I'll reconsider that assessment and agree he is racist.

...I imagine that on paper in terms of the economy, taxes, immigration, deficits and debt, Obamacare, Supreme Court appointments, the military, and abortion, the latest incarnation of Trump would be more conservative than the latest incarnation of Clinton. The key in any general election for a conservative is to vote for the more conservative candidate--if his or her character is no worse than the alternative. Sitting out is more principled, but it is a vote nonetheless for the less conservative candidate with as many or more ethical defects.

...I hope the egoist John Kasich drops out as soon as possible. Perhaps in the remaining head-to-head primaries, Trump will lose to Ted Cruz and thus remind Republican voters that he cannot win in such one-on-one elections.

But in the meantime, we should get ready for our Godzilla vs. King Kong decision ahead, and quit talking about sitting out or voting for a third party as anything other than a vote for Hillary Clinton.

2016 really is about the past and the future: the unfortunate past has given us the apparent likelihood of a Trump, and the frightening future may well give us something I fear even worse in Hillary Clinton.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-03-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=449740