By Daniel Payne
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Donald Trump is not worthy of your vote. He is manifestly
unfit to be the president of these United States; he is perhaps the least
qualified, most unqualified candidate to ever secure a party’s nomination.
Nothing that happens between now and Election Day can possibly change this. He
has proven himself irredeemably incompetent for the presidency. You should not
vote for him.
You should vote for Hillary Clinton instead.
My colleague Tom Nichols made the conservative case for
Hillary earlier this year. The case still stands. Hillary would be an awful
president—incompetent in her own right, self-serving, scheming, inept on the
world stage and heavy-handed at home—and she would also usher in another four
to eight years of screeching, grating identity politics, this time on behalf of
America’s professional, perpetually aggrieved feminist class. Even one term of
Clinton would be awful.
Yet there are two reasons to vote for her. The first is
that she would provide a useful rallying point for conservatives; nothing could
prove the necessity of conservatism like eight years of American government
with Hillary Clinton heading the executive branch. The first election after
Hillary’s tenure has ended will be tailor-made for a Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or
Scott Walker.
The second and most important reason to vote for Hillary
is this: she is not Donald Trump. Rather than dance around it, it is more
worthwhile to simply make the case that Trump is radically unsuited for the
presidency and should be kept from it at all costs.
1. Donald Trump Is
a Serial Liar
Trump is perhaps the most serially dishonest person to
have ever sought the presidency; he makes Bill Clinton look like a cherub in comparison.
He lies easily and with an unstudied grace, as if it were a second language
taught to him from an early age.
To take just a small sampling of his profound and
profligate dishonesty: he lies about posing as his own P.R. flack. He lies
about the woman his campaign manager assaulted. He lies about accusing other
people of lying. He lies about the size of his winery. He lies about his
knowledge of the Klu Klux Klan. He lies about his position on tariff policy. He
lies about black-on-white crime. He lies about the Ford Motor Company’s
manufacturing decisions. He lies about how many books he’s sold. He lies about
the gross domestic product.
He lies about self-funding his campaign; he lies about
the amount of money spent opposing him; he lies about how much money he
contributes to his own campaign. He lies about the September 11 terrorist
attacks. He lies about his position on American detainees in Iran. He lies
about American infrastructure. He lies about ISIS. He lies about his net worth.
He lies about Muslims in New Jersey. He lies about U.S. tax policy. He lies
about the number of votes he’s received. He lies about the campaigns of his
competitors. He lies about the unemployment rate in Wisconsin. This list is not
exhaustive.
Perhaps more than anything, Trump’s serial lying makes
him unworthy of your vote if for no other reason than this: if you’re voting
for him because of his position on a certain issue, you can be virtually
certain he is lying about it in some way. This is what he does: he lies
repeatedly to rise a little bit in the polls and get a few more primary votes.
He simply cannot be trusted.
2. Donald Trump Is
Not a Conservative
Let us imagine for a moment that Trump has stopped lying
and will tell the truth for the rest of the campaign season. He is still unfit
to be president under the banner of the Republican Party, for the simple reason
that he is not a conservative. He himself admitted almost as much a short while
ago: after assuring us that he is in fact a conservative, he recently told
George Stephanopoulos: “This is called the Republican Party. It’s not called
the Conservative Party.”
A great many of his policies—although they could easily
be lies, every one of them—are hardly conservative and even anticonservative.
To name a few: he telegraphed his support for raising the minimum wage. He
called for raising taxes. He is an economic protectionist. He believes health
care and education are two of the top priorities of the federal government. He
praised the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo
v. New London, which allows the government to take private property and
hand it over to another private entity for private development. He expressed
support for government-run health care.
Pursuant to his inane idea to make Mexico pay for his
stupid border wall, Trump pledged to “impound all remittance payments [to
Mexico] derived from illegal wages,” which is code for “spy on all U.S. mail
and wire transfers going into Mexico.” Trump lambasted Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that forbid the
government from censoring free speech under the First Amendment. Trump has
called Super PACs—which are simply organizations of American citizens
expressing their right to free speech—a “scam.” Regarding legalized abortion in
the United States, Trump claimed: “At this moment, the laws are set. And I
think we have to leave it that way.”
So, to recap: Trump wants to raise taxes, inhibit free
trade, keep health care and education in the federal government’s hands, seize
private property for private use, spy on U.S. mail, proscribe or at least
denigrate free speech, and leave pro-abortion laws firmly in place. Some
conservative.
3. Donald Trump
Promotes Political Violence
Trump has brought disgrace upon the presidential primary
process by inciting and promoting violence throughout his campaign. At a rally
in Missouri earlier this year, Trump lamented that “nobody wants to hurt each
other anymore.” At another rally he tacitly encouraged violence against
protestors: “If you do [hurt them], I’ll defend you in court.” In Las Vegas he
said of a protestor: “I’d like to punch him in the face.”
In Iowa he told his fans: “If you see somebody getting
ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?” (He again
promised to pay legal fees if his fans were taken to court.) After a protestor
was removed from an event in Birmingham, Trump mused: “Maybe he should have
been roughed up.” When faced with the possibility of a brokered convention in
Cleveland, Trump implied that his fans could get violent: “I think you’d have
riots,” he said.
Let’s be brutally honest: a man who pits Americans
against one another—who encourages American citizens to hit, punch, and strike
each other, as well as destroy property and cause domestic mayhem—has
disqualified himself from being considered for president. He is not fit to be
even a clerk at a city council meeting. This is a stain upon the American ethos
and a debasement of our political system. And Trump revels in it.
4. Donald Trump Is
a Gleeful and Unrelenting Debaser of Women
These days we’ve become used to the usual feminist
shrieking every time a man says something they don’t like. We’re all sick of
liberals wining about “male privilege” and the “War on Women.”
But Trump is different: he is historically crude, mean,
nasty, and wholly ungentlemanly towards women. As The New York Times recently reported, he has a history of
insulting, harassing, and demeaning the women who have worked for him and the
women he has found himself around. When he felt Fox News host Megyn Kelly had
unfairly questioned him, he blamed it on her menstrual cycle. He also retweeted
a tweet calling Kelly a “bimbo.”
The insults he has levied at various women include:
“slob, “dog,” “grotesque,” “unsexiest woman alive,” “fat, ugly face,”
“disgusting.” He once told a contestant on his reality show, “It must be a
pretty picture, you dropping to your knees,” a thinly veiled reference to oral
sex. During a deposition, a lawyer requested a break to pump her breast milk
for her baby, and for this Trump called her “disgusting.” Regarding Trump’s
philosophy of women, the
man himself claimed: “You have to treat ‘em like shit.”
This is, once again, a disgrace, a political and a
societal stain on our country. One of the problems our society faces today is
an astonishing lack of gentlemen: a great many young men of my generation have
forgotten how to be courteous, respectful, attentive, and kind towards women.
We need a gentleman’s renaissance in this country—a revitalization of
chivalry—and the last thing that will help such a project is a Donald J. Trump
presidency. He would encourage countless young men to be simply terrible
towards women.
5. Donald Trump Is
An Unabashed Flip-Flopper
Over a decade ago, Republicans rightly derided John Kerry
for flip-flopping on a great many important political issues. Yet now the GOP
is poised to nominate a man who is just as bad as Kerry, if not worse.
Years ago Trump used to be very strongly pro-choice; now
he claims he is pro-life. The pro-life movement of course welcomes anyone with
a commitment to stopping abortion, especially people who used to be pro-choice.
But Trump can’t even keep his own abortion opinions straight: earlier in the
spring he took five
different positions on abortion within three days.
That’s not his only flip-flop, however: he is guilty of
plenty of them. He flipped his position on the war in Afghanistan. He flopped
on ordering the military to torture terrorists and kill their families (thank
goodness he changed his mind, but then again he could be lying). He walked back
his previously hardline immigration stance in March: “Everything is
negotiable,” he said. He changed his mind on the H-1B visa program. He changed
his mind on Syrian refugees. He changed his mind on the minimum wage.
These are not small changes to minor details; these are
major policy considerations that Trump just cannot make up his mind about. At
best, we can assume that he is simply very stupid and incapable of forming a
coherent position on these critical issues. At worst—and far more likely—he is
simply willing to change his position on any given issue whenever it suits him.
How could we trust him on anything
once he was in the Oval Office?
The answer is simple: we could not.
6. Donald Trump Is
Avowedly Anti-Free Speech
As noted above, Trump takes a dim view of Citizens United, the Supreme Court
decision that correctly decided for free speech and against censorship. Any
politician that sets himself up against Citizens
United has also set himself up against the First Amendment.
But Trump’s opposition to Citizens United is not the only indication that he is anti-free
speech. He has vowed, once in office to “open up” libel laws to make it easier
to sue newspapers that write negative things about him. Taking a cue from
Trump’s demonstrable hostility to free speech, Roger Stone said that, as
president, Trump should “turn off CNN’s FCC license.”
Years ago, an author wrote some critical things about
Trump; Trump sued him not because he had a legitimate grievance but simply “to
make his life miserable.” Frivolous, expensive lawsuits are a common tactic
people use to censor their critics. This is what Trump does; he admits it,
proudly and unabashedly.
Trump is signaling to the American people that he is
pro-censorship and anti-free speech. Free speech is one of the most precious,
inestimable civil rights in the United States Constitution. To hand over the
executive branch to a man so manifestly opposed to the First Amendment would be
catastrophic.
7. Donald Trump
Could Ruin the Reputation of Conservatism
It is clear, as I wrote above, that Trump is no
conservative: he is simply a liberal who has seized upon conservatism because
it is convenient for his own selfish purposes. With Trump in office we might be
treated to something along the lines of a third Obama term: government-run
health care, heavy-handed federal involvement in education, hostility to free
speech, an invasive and overbearing government.
But because Trump is an unreliable, abrasive, and
egomaniacal crackpot of a politician, he could do serious damage to American
conservatism simply because people will come to associate conservatism with
Trump.
Just think: in addition to all the insane, cruel and
unbalanced behavior listed above, Trump entertained and promoted wild-eyed
conspiracy theories about Cruz’s father; he intimated that Mexico is “sending”
rapists to the United States; he mocked a decorated war veteran for being
captured by enemy forces; he called for banning the entirety of Muslim
immigration to the United States; he promoted the idea that Jeb Bush’s
immigration policies were inspired by Bush’s wife’s ethnicity; he indirectly
praised the Chinese government for the Tiananmen Square massacre; he stoked
fears that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered; he openly and gleefully
mocked a journalist with a physical disability; and he has in general comported
himself with narcissism, self-aggrandizement, vanity, and deliberate
boorishness.
A man like this—a man with these psychological hang-ups,
these awful tendencies, and this kind of reckless behavior—would do incredible
if not fatal damage to American conservatism. For at least four years, if not
more, the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) could point to Donald J.
Trump and say, “That’s what American conservatism is. That’s what conservatives
are all about.”
Many, many people would believe it. Come 2020 or 2024,
conservatives would be up the creek, and liberals could be looking at a
generation of smashing victories at the federal, state, and local levels. All
because of Trump.
Clinton Is
Horrible; Trump Is Worse
There is no good reason to vote for Donald Trump. There
is not a single, solitary good reason to cast your ballot for this dangerous
and unstable person. There is, of course, the opportunity to vote “third party:”
if you simply cannot bring yourself to vote for Hillary, then you can perhaps
vote for the Libertarian candidate or else just do a write-in. That’s perfectly
defensible.
Then again, the principal electoral purpose of the 2016
campaign season, for every good and decent American, should be keeping Donald
Trump out of the White House. The best bet for doing that? Voting for Hillary
Clinton.
It should be clear at this point that I think Hillary
Clinton would be a bad president. She would probably even be a terrible one.
But she would also be what Trump is not: predictable, arguably sane, able to be
reasoned with to a certain degree, unlikely to order soldiers to torture and
kill women and children, and so forth.
Under Hillary Clinton our country would probably get
poorer, less pleasant, and less free. But under Trump all of these things would
still happen—and we would have the added horror of being ruled by a strongman
with a quick temper, an insanely delicate ego, and a penchant for inciting
violence. Plainly, Hillary is the better and safer option of the two.
This might have been a difficult choice even a few months
ago. But the choices are very clear at this point. Trump is a man unfit for any
office. He is dangerous, he is reckless, and his candidacy should scare us all.
Walker, Bush, Rubio, Cruz—they all fell by the wayside.
Now there is only one person with any hope of keeping Trump out of the White
House. Her name is Hillary Clinton. And you should vote for her in November.
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