By Mona Charen
Monday, May 23, 2016
Washington State’s Republican party just defied the
stampede toward “unity.” Meeting over the weekend, they awarded 40 of the
state’s 41 delegates to Ted Cruz. Washington’s Republicans have refused to be
sheep.
The past few days have featured hectoring demands of
Never Trump people to “get over it.” These have come not just from the more
bullying precincts of Trump fandom, as in “Get on the Trump train or get run
over,” but also from party regulars and office holders suggesting that failure
to endorse Trump now is a kind of stubborn self-indulgence. “While you sit out,
Hillary gets elected,” huffed one of my critics, for example.
Yes, if there is a binary choice (not completely clear as
of this writing) between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, it is possible that
voters in swing states who decline to support Trump may be assisting Clinton.
This is not a secret. Some Never Trump voters may have to live with that
miserable outcome rather than violate their consciences by voting for an
authoritarian ignoramus.
The genuflection to party loyalty that has spread like a
rash in the past two weeks has more of the quality of a salute than a clear
evaluation of the stakes. Some of Trump’s supporters are exulting at recent
polls showing a slight Trump lead, while scorning those who advised as recently
as a few weeks ago that a Trump nomination could lead the Republican party to a
Goldwater-type debacle. But one of the points the Never Trump people have
stressed is that there were two equally painful possible outcomes of a Trump
nomination: He loses or he wins.
The Democrats remain the majority party in presidential
contests, having won five of the past six popular votes. They begin with an
average 247 to 196 Electoral Collage advantage. That said, Hillary Clinton may
well be the only major political figure in the country who could possibly lose
a general election to Donald Trump. In fact, as two political scientists argue
in the New York Times, Bernie
Sanders’s support seems to come chiefly not from socialist young people but
from “disaffected white men.” If white men turn out in droves for Trump in the
general, it might affect the outcome. On the third hand, an analysis by
Political Machination suggests that while Trump did bring out some new voters
in the primaries, the newly minted Trump Republicans were too few in the states
examined to make up the 2012 Romney deficit.
The Never Trump commitment is not a matter of being
excessively fastidious or too good for this world. Recognizing the imperfection
of politics and of life is part of being a grown up.
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would do damage to
the nation. Both have demonstrated low character, an embrace of appalling
policies (in some cases, the same policies!), and a capacity for dishonesty
that rocks the Richter scale. But he is arguably even more dangerous than she.
Both will abuse power and pursue execrable ends, but . . .
If Hillary Clinton is president, a united Republican
party will oppose her. Assuming Republican control of the House, she will not
be able to pass a single piece of liberal legislation. She may attempt — as she
has promised on the campaign trail — to rule by executive order in the manner
of Obama. If she does, there will be pushback by Republicans. Just this month,
a federal judge ruled in favor of the House of Representatives in its suit
against Obama’s use of executive orders in the implementation of Obamacare. If
she nominates terrible judges to the federal courts, a Republican Senate
(assuming Republicans hold the Senate) could decline to confirm. If she
attempts to reprise or even exceed the many arrogations of power Obama has
attempted, Republicans will block her as best they can. It will be ugly, and
Republicans will not always be successful.
If Donald Trump is president, by contrast, there will be
no united opposition among Republicans. As we’ve seen in the past few weeks,
the urge to bend the knee is very strong. How much more intense will it be if
he sits in the Oval Office? Republicans will actively assist President Trump in
undermining conservatism. From entitlements to trade to NATO to nuclear
proliferation to universal health care to abortion, President Trump will get a
free hand. He thus has it within his power to sabotage the whole conservative
enterprise.
So remaining Never Trump is not disloyal — it’s the only
way to safeguard conservative principles.
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