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| Home Front: Politix |
| VDH: The Case for Trump |
| 2016-10-18 |
| h/t Instapundit ...Those who are soured on Trump certainly can cite lots of understandable reasons for their distaste -- well beyond his sometimes grating reality-television personality. In over-dramatic fashion, some Against Trumpers invoke William F. Buckley Jr.’s ostracism of John Birchers from conservative circles as a model for dealing with perceived Trump vulgarity. He is damned as an opportunistic chameleon, not a true conservative. Trump’s personal and professional life has been lurid -- as, again, we were reminded by the media-inspired release of a hot-mic tape of past Trump crude sexual braggadocio. The long campaigning has confirmed Trump as often uncouth -- insensitive to women and minorities. He has never held office. His ignorance of politics often embarrasses those in foreign- and domestic-policy circles. Trump’s temperament is mercurial, especially in its ego-driven obsessions with slights to his business ethics and acumen. He wins back supporters by temporary bouts of steadiness as his polls surge, only to alienate them again with crazy nocturnal tweets and off-topic rants -- as his popularity then again dips. He seems to battle as much with GOP stalwarts as Clintonites, often, to be fair, in retaliation rather than in peremptory fashion. ...The counterarguments for voting Trump are by now also well known. The daily news -- riot, terrorism, scandals, enemies on the move abroad, sluggish growth, and record debt -- demands a candidate of change. The vote is not for purity of conservative thought, but for the candidate who is preferable to the alternative -- and is also a somewhat rough form of adherence to the pragmatic Buckley dictate to prefer the most conservative candidate who can win. The issue, then, at this late date is not necessarily Trump per se, but the fact that he will bring into power far more conservatives than would Hillary Clinton. No one has made a successful argument to challenge that reality. ...Nor is the election a choice even between four more years of liberalism and a return of conservatism; it’s an effort to halt the fundamental transformation of the country. A likely two-term Clinton presidency would complete a 16-year institutionalization of serial progressive abuse of the Constitution, outdoing even the twelve years of the imperial Roosevelt administration. The WikiLeaks revelations suggest an emboldened Hillary Clinton, who feels that a 2016 victory will reify her utopian dreams of a new intercontinental America of open borders and open markets, from Chile to Alaska, in the manner of the European Union expanse from the Aegean to the Baltic. ...Trump’s defeat would translate into continued political subversion of once disinterested federal agencies, from the FBI and Justice Department to the IRS and the EPA. It would ensure a liberal Supreme Court for the next 20 years -- or more. Republicans would be lucky to hold the Senate. Obama’s unconstitutional executive overreach would be the model for Hillary’s second wave of pen-and-phone executive orders. If, in Obama fashion, the debt doubled again in eight years, we would be in hock $40 trillion after paying for Hillary’s even more grandiose entitlements of free college tuition, student-loan debt relief, and open borders. She has already talked of upping income and estate taxes on those far less wealthy than the Clintons and of putting coal miners out of work ("We are going to put a whole lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business") while promising more Solyndra-like ventures in failed crony capitalism. ...We worry about what Citizen Trump did in the past in the private sector and fret more over what he might do as commander-in-chief. But these legitimate anxieties remain in the subjunctive mood; they are not facts in the indicative gleaned from Clinton’s long public record. As voters, we can only compare the respective Clinton and Trump published agendas on illegal immigration, taxes, regulation, defense spending, the Affordable Care Act, abortion, and other social issues to conclude that Trump’s platform is the far more conservative -- and a rebuke of the last eight years. There is a reason the politicized media -- from biased debate moderators to New York Times reporters who seek to pass muster in the Clinton team’s eyes before publishing their puff pieces -- have gone haywire over Trump. Contrary to popular anger against them, Never Trump conservative op-ed writers and wayward Republican insiders do not have much direct influence in keeping Trump’s party support down. Indeed, even after the latest gaffes, it creeps back up even as he is alienating women and the suburbs. The problem is more nuanced. Never Trump conservative grandees help flesh out the Clinton narrative of a toxic Trump that is then translated through ads, quotes, and sound bites to more numerous fence-sitting independents and women: Why should they vote for a purported extremist whom even the notables of the conservative movement and Republican party cannot stomach? |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 Since VDH never ran for, was elected to, or held public office, he's not qualified to lecture on politics. That is, if you subscribe to Crusader's Genuine War Hero™ Rule for qualification. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2016-10-18 20:22 |
| #3 Good read, glad I found the time. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2016-10-18 20:15 |
| #2 Her SCOTUS appointments will complete the end of the Constitution as a written contract between the people and its government and will become simply an unwritten constitution of opinions. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-10-18 07:53 |
| #1 Yes, it's long, much longer than g(r)om posted, but read the whole thing. I'm going to print it for my wife, who can't vote for Trump because he's "too scary". |
| Posted by: Bobby 2016-10-18 07:31 |