Republicans

Ron DeSantis 2024: A President, Not an Idol

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

Having established that conservatives and Republicans would have to be brain-damaged to nominate Donald Trump for president again, the question now becomes who we should pick instead as our 2024 standard-bearer. As evidenced by the fact that Trump got nominated the first time, the GOP talent pool is usually slim pickings, to say the least.

Fortunately, this time around we have a Republican who for years has been proving himself an aggressive, effective leader, a genuine movement conservative, and a skillful communicator. Someone with all of Trump’s perceived strengths and none of his fatal defects: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Results, Results, Results

First and most importantly, DeSantis’s record reads like a conservative Christmas list, a collection of results almost too good to be real. Let’s start with an excerpt from a March 2019 rundown by Deroy Murdock:

• DeSantis pioneered Florida Deregathon — a one-day summit in which agency heads targeted red tape, especially in occupational licensing. While eye surgeons and airline pilots should certify their competence, why do nail polishers and boxing timekeepers need Tallahassee’s permission to work? Florida’s 1,200-hour training requirement for new barbers, for instance, stymies competition by boosting costs and headaches for new entrants.

DeSantis summoned the chiefs of 23 professional-licensing boards to Orlando to “discuss, debate, identify and recommend substantive regulations that can be targeted for immediate elimination,” as his letter told these officials. “I see this event as a first step toward creating a regulatory climate as welcoming as the Florida sunshine.”

• DeSantis signed an executive order instructing the commissioner of education to “eliminate Common Core (Florida Standards) and ensure we return to the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic” and “equip high school graduates with sufficient knowledge of America’s civics, particularly the principles reflected in the United States Constitution, so as to be capable of discharging the responsibilities associated with American citizenship.” DeSantis also supports legislation to expand school vouchers.

• DeSantis demands accountability. He accepted the resignation of Broward County elections director Brenda Snipes and Susan Bucher, her Palm Beach County counterpart, for their spectacular incompetence, if not corruption. DeSantis called Bucher’s operation “the Keystone Kops of election administration.”

He also sacked Broward County sheriff Scott Israel for totally bungling the deadly Parkland mass shooting in February 2018, then exacerbating that toxic failure with a deluge of finger-pointing and a drought of self-criticism.

• DeSantis replaced the entire South Florida Water Management District with appointees not beholden to the heavily subsidized sugar industry — a notorious polluter whose fertilizer, pesticides, and other agrochemicals befoul Florida’s waterways. DeSantis was one of only three members of Florida’s 27-member U.S. House delegation who voted last May to curb the disastrous sugar program. DeSantis’s appointees should make Big Sugar clean up its bitter harvest.

• DeSantis’s tax proposal is modest, but it steers levies the right way: down. His budget cuts taxes $335 million: $289.7 million in property-tax reductions; a three-day, $39.5 million back-to-school sales-tax holiday; and a one-week, $5.8 million disaster-preparedness sales-tax holiday before hurricane season.

It cannot be stressed enough that DeSantis did all of the above in just the first two months of his governorship, during which we can already see a key contrast between him and Trump: DeSantis came in and quickly recognized the need to fire holdovers before they could do additional damage and replace them with subordinates who shared his vision. Trump left in place countless Democrat resisters and saboteurs who undermined his voters’ agenda every step of the way (fun fact: Trump rejected his advisers’ urgings to fire ex-FBI Director James Comey as soon as he took office, and we all know how that turned out), not to mention hiring scores of officials for key posts whom he came to not only regret but detest.

Since then, DeSantis has cut more taxes, cut more spending, strengthened election security, punished election fraud, pioneered legal remedies to internet censorship, banned late-term abortions, required parental consent for minors’ abortions, worked to defund Planned Parenthood and stop the illegal distribution of abortion pills, ousted a prosecutor for refusing to enforce pro-life laws, barred men from women’s athletics, toughened penalties for rioting, banned localities from restricting gun rights, allowed more teachers to undergo training to carry guns on school grounds, banned sanctuary cities, sent Florida law enforcement to Texas and Arizona to help secure the southern border, shipped illegal immigrants to leftist enclaves that advocate open borders mandated E-Verify for public employers and government contractors, banned anti-Semitic propaganda in public education, strengthened transparency and parental consent for sex education in public schools, cracked down on foreign influence in higher education, signed laws requiring that high schools teach the evils of communism & totalitarianism, that colleges make civic literacy a condition of graduation, and requiring colleges to conduct annual assessments of intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity on their campuses; embarked on a comprehensive purging of woke indoctrination from public education, required schools to provide silent time students can use for daily prayer if they so choose, banned transgender mutilation of children, punished venues that expose children to pornographic drag displays, taken the lead in a multi-state effort against leftist hijacking of corporations, ended Disney’s self-governing sweetheart deal with the state, banned localities from giving the environment legal rights (yes, that’s a thing leftists actually want to do), prevented the state pension system from investing in companies complicit in the anti-Israel “boycott, divestment, & sanctions” (BDS) campaign, curbed China’s ability to buy influence in Florida, and more.

As we speak, DeSantis is gearing up for an ambitious legislative session that is slated to deliver expansions of school choice, the Parental Rights in Education law against LGBT indoctrination, and E-Verify to the private sector; banning forced deduction of union dues from paychecks, legalizing concealed carry, tort reform, strengthening private citizens’ ability to sue media outlets for defamation, beefing up the Office of Election Crimes and Security, allowing tenure reviews of faculty in public academia, banning abortion once a baby has a heartbeat, a Digital Bill of Rights ranging from data privacy to online censorship to child exploitation, protecting doctors who dissent from the federal health bureaucracy, and legislatively codifying various aforementioned reforms that currently exist as executive actions. [NOTE: this section may be continually updated as more wins accumulate.]

Name a current or recent elected Republican who has pursued or delivered a more comprehensive conservative agenda. Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

Leadership in a Time of Corona

Even if DeSantis hadn’t prioritized tackling so many problems of grave concern to conservatives, his response to the COVID-19 outbreak alone arguably would have been enough to secure his standing as the best executive-branch leader in America. As Daniel Horowitz summarized in May 2020:

They said DeSantis was killing his state’s people by not issuing a stay-at home order early enough and never issuing a full lockdown against church services and other activities. Then, on May 4, he decided to end even the tepid lockdown. Last in, first out. What are the results?

Despite the fact that Florida is the haven for those most susceptible to the virus, the elderly, the state’s numbers beat almost every comparable state […]

While it wasn’t as cool and heroic as locking up every healthy person with near-zero risk in their homes, DeSantis quietly barred hospitals from sending COVID-positive patients to nursing homes – the exact opposite of what Cuomo and many Democrat governors did. He also used the National Guard to secure nursing homes rather than to spy on people.

The results?

In New Jersey, 51 senior care residents out of every 100,000 people died. In New York, nearly 27 per 100,000 have died. Even in smaller and younger Colorado, more than 10 nursing home residents have died per capita. In Florida? Just 3.5 per 100,000. In the state of “God’s waiting room,” just .008% of the population died of COVID-19.

DeSantis was even pressured by the White House to go along with the flat-earth lockdown science. But he understood that the threat of the virus is limited to a known population and that outdoor transmission is negligible. So he put his resources where they were needed.

Florida’s COVID numbers were so impressive that, as Horowitz notes, leftists were reduced to falsely accusing DeSantis of cooking the books to explain them away. In March 2021, even the Associated Press admitted that California’s vastly more restrictive policies didn’t save more lives than Florida’s targeted, freedom-friendly approach, despite Florida’s large elderly population. On top of the health outcomes, DeSantis’s leadership saved hundreds of thousands of jobs and spared his state the large-scale destruction of businesses that plagued the rest of the country (despite Florida’s tourism industry being particularly vulnerable to the fear of travel that gripped the rest of the country).

Along the way, DeSantis defended the rights and choices of Floridians from the COVID maniacs, undaunted by the wailing of the media: standing against school closings, vaccine passports, mask mandates, and local lockdowns; pardoning those persecuted by rogue localities, suing the Biden administration over its ban on the cruise ship industry, and embracing therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine and monoclonal antibodies.

Admittedly, DeSantis was initially supportive of the Trump administration’s rushed COVID vaccines (albeit focused on prioritizing them for the elderly, who faced the greatest risk from COVID itself and for whom vaccination therefore seemed the most reasonable at the time). Fortunately, as the data against them has grown clearer, he has gotten on the right side of the issue, including calling out their ineffectiveness, recommending against them, and even petitioning for a grand jury investigation of their manufacturers.

The COVID-19 pandemic—more specifically, the resulting panic and exploitation thereof—was one of the biggest tests of leadership in a generation. More so than any other sitting governor (despite what you may have heard about South Dakota’s Kristi Noem) or former president, DeSantis aced it.

A Full-Spectrum, Non-Establishment Conservative

The above already paints a reasonably broad cross-section of DeSantis’s conservatism, from fiscal to social to liberty issues. Still, it’s worth noting some highlights from his pre-gubernatorial career, which show he’s also rock-solid on issues beyond what he’s had to deal with as a state governor, and that he’s long been on the right side of the divide between the Republican Party’s leadership and its grassroots.

An inaugural member of the House Freedom Caucus, Congressman DeSantis introduced legislation to empower states to ban investment in Iran, ban post-government lobbying by scores of ex-government officials, force members of Congress to use the same health care plans Congress would force on the public, ensure Americans could keep their pre-Obamacare health plans, prohibit recognition of and foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority unless and until it truly reformed (including but not limited to allowing free elections, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, ending its boycotts of Israel, ending its promotion of and support for terrorism, and dismantling Hamas), force the Justice Department to answer to Congress for failure to enforce federal law, and ban foreign aid to countries that receive Guantanamo Bay detainees only to let them to return to the battlefield.

While in Congress, DeSantis also cosponsored and/or voted for the full range of conservative priorities, including the REINS Act, Kate’s Law, right to work, concealed carry reciprocity, defunding Planned Parenthood, reforming the Veterans Administration, withholding funding from the United Nations’ “Human Rights” Council and climate agenda, and letting states opt out of No Child Left Behind, as well as backing enough tax and spending cuts to earn the title of “Taxpayer Super Hero” from Citizens Against Government Waste.

Additionally, during his House tenure DeSantis distinguished himself as willing to call out establishment GOP leaders such as Trump’s onetime friend and ally Paul Ryan for ducking the fights that needed to be fought. In April 2016, DeSantis was among the Republicans pushing to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen over the agency’s targeting of conservative Americans for political persecution.

“I think what’s holding it back, I think the leadership is worried about being criticized by inside the Beltway media and stuff,” DeSantis told Breitbart at the time. “We are going to try to force the issue potentially in a way that at least people have to go on the record […] I think the American people are so sick of, you know, government imposes all these rules on them and if they run afoul to it there are consequences, yet, the people in positions of power, they are never held accountable and that just cannot last.”

DeSantis was also among the conservatives who recognized that the House GOP’s Ryan-backed first stab at an Obamacare replacement wasn’t good enough because it, as he said, “retain[ed] the core features of Obamacare.” Trump, by contrast, attacked the DeSantis wing of the party for holding out for a better bill, because Trump just wanted to sign something he could take credit for. Patient attention to detail: what a concept!

He Fights! …Competently

Some of Trump’s greatest strengths, we were told, were his ability to stick it to the Left rhetorically, his talent for channeling and reflecting the perennially-neglected feelings of the GOP base, his knack for speaking bluntly in a way that was both entertaining and free of the faux civility that defines most of the stuffed-shirt Republicans in national office. And that was all true, as far as it went…it just didn’t go far enough to win a second term, #BuildTheWall, #DrainTheSwamp, #StopTheSteal, #LockHerUp, or get Congress to go along with any of the other legislative objectives we elected him for.

There are two basic reasons for that: because lacking a filter can be a double-edged sword, leaving one just as likely to say stupid, self-damaging things as to speak harsh truths; and because talking a good game is no substitute for the principles, knowledge, and skills needed to translate words into action.

Fortunately, here too DeSantis runs circles around Trump. In public appearances he regularly displays a clear, conversational style that makes the issues easy to understand, reveals a strong command of the facts, forcefully frames the stakes and identifies the guilty parties in our current debates, and eviscerates fake news more effectively than Trump ever did…and all without making a fool of himself, generating distractions from the objective, or sparking endless inane arguments about taking him “seriously versus literally”:

Whereas Trump impotently blustered about media outlets’ ratings while repeatedly giving prestigious liberal reporters in-depth interviews, DeSantis effectively conveys how little respect the corporate media really deserves, from treating conservative and alternative outlets as the legitimate press while branding dishonest mainstream outlets as smear merchants to be shunned. 

Add it all up, and you have a rare political talent capable of turning a razor-thin victory into a nearly-twenty-point landslide reelection in the most populous swing state in the nation, complete with inroads among historically Democrat-supporting areas and ethnic groups—all while selling undiluted conservatism. It would be political malpractice of the highest order not to apply that talent nationally.

His Own Man 

One of the most important differences between DeSantis and Trump can be found within an especially-lame attempted hit published by Politico in May 2021:

RON DESANTIS is looking ahead to reelection next year and quite possibly a 2024 bid for president — but he’s left behind a trail of former disgruntled staffers and has no long-standing political machine to mount a national campaign, DeSantis vets say.

We talked to a dozen or so onetime aides and consultants to the Florida governor, and they all said the same thing: DeSantis treats staff like expendable widgets. He largely relies on a brain trust of two: himself and his wife, CASEY DESANTIS, a former local TV journalist. Beyond that there are few, if any, “DeSantis people,” as far as political pros are concerned.

Yes, DeSantis recently hired highly regarded operative PHIL COX. But there’s no savant that he’s been through the trenches with, like a KARL ROVE or DAVID AXELROD — let alone an army of loyalists. That’s probably not fatal to his White House prospects, but it can’t help.

To the Swamp, few things are more horrifying than insufficient regard for themselves. But to those not easily cowed by the complaints of disgruntled staffers (who are naturally going to dislike a boss who doesn’t hang on their every word), there’s a different takeaway here:

Wait, so DeSantis accomplished all of the above without consultants or pollsters having to tell him what to do?

His stellar record isn’t the result of a PowerPoint presentation or taking direction from handlers. It comes from his own values and instincts, from not just listening to conservatives’ concerns but understanding them on a personal level because he shares them. From caring enough about problems to figure out solutions. This, perhaps more so than anything else, explains why he’s a cut above most Republicans and offers genuine assurance that his decision-making will continue to be generally solid.

After Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, one might have reasonably expected political insiders to have learned that rejection of their swampiest priorities and tendencies was what their constituents wanted. But one of the biggest ironies of the era is that not even Trump learned this from Trump. Despite having certain stylistic instincts and perhaps an insight or two about the base that served him well, on policy his advisers constantly led him around by the nose, to disastrous effect.

Ron DeSantis obviously does not have that problem.

Cautions and Caveats

None of the above is to suggest DeSantis is flawless, and it’s essential that his supporters remain clear-eyed about his missteps, which so far have been rare but do exist. 

Last year he signed an extension of a COVID-related medical liability shield that yours truly criticized at the time, and while fears of unintended consequences seem not to have materialized and its potential downsides seem to be negated by his many other positive COVID actions, his office never gave a straight answer to critics’ concerns—perhaps because they felt they could get away with ignoring them.

More recently, he gave Tucker Carlson a position statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine that, while careful to avoid disavowing any defensive aid to Ukraine or U.S. interest in the conflict, strongly implied a reversal of the clear-eyed understanding of Russia’s ambitions and the importance of checking its aggression that DeSantis articulated while in Congress, replete with gratuitous lines that he surely knows are nonsense but he apparently felt were necessary to appease the frothing quasi-isolationist voices that currently dominate conservative media.

As a pure matter of policy substance, I remain confident that DeSantis would execute a prudent, Reaganite foreign policy in line with his congressional record if he becomes president, and that his answer to Carlson was a mere political calculation to help him through the GOP presidential primary. But therein lies the problem.

It was a rare instance of DeSantis following rather than leading, and in one fell swoop, it confirmed that, at least to some extent, he is willing to put political calculation above principled authenticity in his public statements. That he is not above pandering, and that he fears the isolationist bloc enough to recklessly give his opponents an opening to credibly accuse him of flip-flopping, in the process undermining the air of unshakable, confident conservative principle that is so integral to his political identity—all to satiate a faction that will most likely stay mostly with Trump anyway, while potentially shaking the confidence of more serious-minded voters (and donors) hungry for new blood.

Managing Expectations and the Citizen-Candidate Relationship

As alarmed and disappointed as this observer was by DeSantis’s unforced blunder on the issue, his overall legeder remains incredibly lopsided. Of course he is clearly still the best candidate currently available to us and would be a tremendous president. But there is a silver lining to seeing a promising candidate get a screw-up out of the way early. It reminds us that our politicians, even the best ones we ultimately embrace, are not demigods or superheroes (as Trump so desperately wants to be seen as) to be worshiped and unconditionally defended, but fallible humans to be supported, used, and worked with but also to be constantly scrutinized with realistic expectations and occasionally chastised to steer in better directions.

It’s okay to admit that our picks are still capable of mistakes, even big ones. One of the reasons Trump never improved was because his fans and allies never forced him to; instead talk radio fed him and his fans a steady diet of adulation signaling that his performance was good enough and that there was always an excuse for his failures. If conservative media had been more ruthlessly demanding instead of giving in to sycophancy, Trump would probably be halfway through his second term right now and DeSantis would have even smoother sailing to the 2024 nomination. It would be an ironic tragedy if, in our zeal to replace Trump, we allowed the same thing to happen to the best (and only) real alternative to him.

This is a lesson the conservative movement desperately needs to re-learn. It was right and necessary to support Trump in the last two general elections (as it will be again if, God forbid, we’re stupid enough to nominate him once more), but that doesn’t mean his ascent didn’t carry serious costs. One is his narcissistic desire to return to the White House despite being a massive electoral liability; another is his army of crackpot fanboys and grifter apologists that spend every day making the discourse on the Right dumber, uglier, more subservient, and less conservative.

A not-insignificant portion of the Right is being habituated to a conception of the individual’s relationship with his elected representatives that is antithetical to the American Founding’s conception of officeholders as servants of fixed principles ultimately accountable to the people, rather than idols served by the people. Now is the time to destroy this trend before it destroys us.

In Conclusion

By every honest, objective standard, Ron DeSantis is smarter, more moral, more disciplined, more eloquent, more conservative, more appealing to more voters, and more effective than Donald Trump. He also matches all the other hypothetical 2024 Republican contenders in character, competence, and communication ability, and exceeds all of them in results. On top of his substantial merits, he is also our only realistic option for finally breaking the Trumpian stranglehold on the conservative movement.

Not since Ronald Reagan has the choice been this clear. 

Vote accordingly.

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The Civic Negligence of Third-Party Voting

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

Note: the following article is partially adapted from a piece I wrote in 2016 about the last presidential election, and is meant as a companion to my case for reelecting Donald Trump; please read that as well for my complete argument on how to view the 2020 presidential election.

What’s a voter to do when both major-party candidates for president are unappealing? For a vocal minority, the answer is to either vote for a third-party candidate or write in a name. Such choices are usually accompanied by platitudes about “sending a message” or casting a vote that “reflects my values.”

In the vast, overwhelming majority of cases, the third-party candidate will not become president, and in the vast, overwhelming majority of cases, the third-party voter knows it. He generally justifies his conscious decision to cast a vote that will not affect the outcome1—to forego the opportunity to help bring about a more positive outcome or prevent a more negative one—as a symbolic gesture, or a personal statement.

I submit that, in the vast, overwhelming majority of cases, this is grievously irresponsible for one simple reason: your vote affects other people. The ballot box isn’t a personal survey; elections have direct short- and long-term consequences for the freedom, safety, health, and prosperity of more than 330 million Americans other than yourself.

How you vote isn’t about you, your reputation, or your self-image. It’s not about symbolism, messaging, how any of the candidates make you feel, or even what any of the candidates “deserve.” It’s about what happens to millions of your countrymen—whether their personal freedoms expand or contract. How many innocent children they have to let be legally killed before birth. How much money is taken out of their paychecks. Whether job opportunities are allowed to grow or are suppressed. What kind of schools they can send their children to. How safe their communities are. What the government does with their money. How many dangers of the world spill over into their country. And even whether they’ll retain any means of reversing their government’s direction in the following elections.

To whatever extent voters should weigh notions of a candidate’s “fitness,” character, style, or temperament, morally they must give greater weight to the real-world consequences that candidate would have for the well-being of the American people. Further, voters cannot weigh those consequences in a vacuum, but in comparison to the consequences of the alternative winning instead.

Simply put: every American has a clear, overriding moral obligation to choose the viable candidate whose election would spare his or her countrymen the greatest amount of net harm.

But what if both candidates would be equally harmful? First, that might be theoretically possible, but if a third-party/write-in voter genuinely believes it, then he would have to justify his decision by making a case to that effect, and leave the my-vote-is-all-about-me platitudes behind.2

Second, moving from theory to reality, it’s plainly false that both choices before us in this election—Donald Trump and Joe Biden—would be equally harmful. Readers can click here to read my full case for that contention; here I’ll simply note that there are vast, clear policy differences between a mismanaged center-right executive branch and a unified hard-left one…among them the fact that (for reasons explained in the piece linked above) a Biden victory carries the very real danger of the nation our children inherit being transformed into one of single-party rule, one in which our constitutional order has been gutted beyond repair.

It is not hyperbole to say that the modern Democrat Party is opposed to every major principle of the American Founding. A Democrat takeover of the executive branch poses a clear, potentially existential (in the sense of permanently losing the freedoms and safeguards that make America America) threat to the country. Voting for Jo Jorgensen (the kind of person who supports the legal power to have one’s child executed in the womb, by the way) won’t do a thing to prevent that, or to advance any of the non-evil causes she and her fans claim to value. Nor will writing in a name in protest. Only by voting for Trump—distasteful though he is—do we stand even a chance of preventing it. (For those understandably unenthused about the incumbent, think of a Trump vote as a vote to keep the seat reserved for four years so a constitutional saboteur can’t occupy it, buying us time to hopefully work on finding someone better for 2024.)3

Of course, many reject the premise that their vote holds that much influence. While technically true in the sense that national elections never literally come down to a single vote, it’s also painfully obtuse—votes add up, particularly in light of the Electoral College, under which a few thousand votes in a few states can make the difference for the whole country.

The only circumstance in which it would be at least defensible to vote for a third-party presidential candidate would be if a voter of one party lives in a state absolutely dominated by the other, like Republicans living in California. It’s safe to say Biden will take the Golden State no matter how they vote.

Even so, while at least such voters won’t harm the electoral outcome, there’s still another consideration to keep in mind. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in electoral votes, but lost the popular vote (thanks mostly to, again, California), which gave the Left a useful propaganda point they’ve relentlessly deployed ever since. Even if you don’t care about how that affects Trump or the GOP politically, you should certainly care about how it’s used to undermine the Electoral College, one of the pillars of our system of government.4

Large swaths of our culture have been conditioned to internalize a conception of voting that, at its core, is narcissistic. But the truth is that voting is a service, and a hugely consequential one at that (which is why the Founders believed in placing conditions on who could exercise it). As such, those who chose to participate are assuming an awesome responsibility. Ultimately, the only truly moral way to exercise that responsibility is to vote as if your vote will be the one to tip the balance between the top two competitors, whoever they may be.

Footnotes:

1. The idea that a third-party vote doesn’t affect the outcome assumes that the voter doesn’t have a consistent pattern of voting for either party. But that isn’t the case if he is a longtime voter for one of the parties. If someone normally votes Republican but chooses to make an exception for Trump, it obviously helps Biden by reducing the number of votes the Republican nominee would have otherwise gotten (and vice versa).

2. I acknowledge that third-party and write-in votes may be more defensible at the state or local levels, where there may be lower stakes and greater variation among Republicans and Democrats. That said, such decisions should still be made on the basis of the relative outcomes, not on the use of the ballot box as a vehicle for self-expression.

3. None of this is to deny the many severe defects of Trump and the Republican Party. Whether the GOP is beyond reforming is a very open question, and the desire to burn it down so something better can take its place is entirely understandable. But reforming and replacing a major political party are difficult tasks, and there is no evidence that third-party presidential voting brings us any closer to accomplishing either of them. It’s worth noting that when the GOP replaced the Whig Party in the 1850s, it was channelling powerful preexisting discontent with its predecessor, not driving that discontent. As dysfunctional as the modern GOP currently is, one need only look at Trump’s approval rating within the GOP to see that today’s inter-party discontent is still nowhere near that level. (Also, the Libertarian Party is an impotent pack of amoral fools who don’t deserve to become one of the two major parties. But that’s another conversation.)

4. For voters who are also public figures, such as political activists or commentators, there’s one more reason you should vote for the better major-party candidate even if the opposite party dominates your state: setting a good example for members of your audience who live in states where their votes still can make a difference.

Mitt Romney and #NeverTrump’s Selective Regard for Presidential Character

Calvin Freiburger Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As has been abundantly covered by now, freshman Senator Mitt Romney rang in the new year with a Washington Post op-ed lambasting Donald Trump’s character—you know, for the five people still unaware that Romney considers the “very not smart” Trump a “fraud” guilty of “dishonesty,” “greed,” and “bullying.”

He had a few valid criticisms and a lot of shameless pandering to the Left (pledging to condemn “racist” or “sexist” presidential statements, for instance, tacitly endorses the smear that Trump is not merely flawed, but bigoted). But while much has already been said of Romney’s reasoning and motives, the sympathetic reviews—and the broader debate on the subject—reveal much more we’ve yet to discuss.

David French insists Romney was merely “say[ing] things that are true and stak[ing] out a future” for a Trump-free conservatism and GOP. Jim Geraghty muses that after watching Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush, many conservatives decided “good character was no advantage in politics and possibly a liability.”

A few days before Romney, Jonah Goldberg wrote his own (but far from his first) declaration of Trump’s low character. He claims “most of the angry responses” he gets about it “are clearly rooted in the fact that they do not wish to be reminded,” and chides those who “assume that I am referencing the president’s style” rather than substance.

I grant that Trump’s character is abysmal, and must confess to finding most of his defenses unpersuasive on this particular point. But that’s an utterly banal observation, and #NeverTrumpers are disastrously wrong about everything preceding and inferred from it.

First, it’s one thing to (rationally and truthfully) criticize Trump offenses as they happen, and quite another to periodically repackage general diatribes about obvious propositions that have already been beaten to death. The former is about accountability; the latter is about you. How many of these pieces bring new information to the debate? What’s their purpose beyond signaling fealty to the #NeverTrump tribe? (Which is hardly necessary in Romney’s case, given his diligence in renewing his membership every few months.)

Second, the idea that it’s some unprecedented crisis or compromise to accept such a president—that voting for Trump is too high a price to defend 320 million Americans from a leftist administration—should be alien to any self-respecting student of the Founding or of human nature.

Given the option, of course a more upstanding president would be preferable. But while the Founders knew America needed a moral citizenry, they didn’t expect moral leaders to be the norm. That’s why we need a Constitution in the first place; it’s how checks and balances were expected to work—the Founders counted on officeholders’ ambition, not their altruism, being “made to counteract ambition.” The work of good government doesn’t indefinitely pause just because neither choice on the ballot is pure enough for our liking, and the difference between four years with an administration of flawed allies versus one full of enemies is bigger than any one person.

Finally, all of the above rests on the comforting-yet-poisonous fiction that Trump represents a moral decline from his Republican predecessors.

Never mind that Bush abandoned an innocent subordinate to a malicious prosecution, swore on a Bible to uphold the Constitution then signed a law he admitted might violate it, and considers a probable rapist his “brother from another mother.” Never mind McCain’s own marital history and Trumpian mean streak, his attack on Vietnam veterans who spoke out against John Kerry, or his judgment that Americans should’ve kept suffering under Obamacare just because Democrats weren’t given a chance to sabotage repeal. Never mind that expediency seems to change more than a few of Romney’s values.

Speaking of which, Mitt, perhaps someone who entered politics as a defender of abortion should consider a little humility on the subject of other Republicans’ character…

In 2016, a few months before writing that Trump’s “low character is disqualifying,” Kevin Williamson argued that Marco Rubio’s blatant lying about the contents of the Gang of 8 amnesty bill shouldn’t dissuade voters, because while others “demand that a president” be a “moral mascot for the country […] I just want to know what I can use him for.”

I don’t recall anyone at National Review, Weekly Standard (RIP), or Commentary challenging Williamson’s transactional case for ignoring Rubio’s dishonesty.

To Trump’s character critics, none of the above threatens membership in the pantheon of “good Republicans,” nor do countless other acts of deceit, promise-breaking, or moral compromise by these and other better-mannered leaders. That’s why the “#NeverTrump fixates on style” charge sticks—it’s not that there aren’t substantive Trump critiques, it’s that they’ve never minded poor character before as long as it came in sufficiently-civil wrapping.

To say that voters dropped character in 2016 ignores two simple truths: that Trump’s low character was still higher than Hillary Clinton’s, and that the GOP had already been defining character down for years. Many of us held no illusions that our pre-Trump votes were for good men either; we were backing the only options we had to advance conservatism and protect the country from leftism.

If those most troubled by Trump’s character really want a more principled future for conservatism, perhaps reflecting on how their own approach to immoral leaders—who generally didn’t even honor their ends of the bargain—helped pave the road to 2016 would be a bit more productive than “Isn’t Trump Awful, Nineteenth Edition.”

Awful #NeverTrump Arguments, Part 1: Steve Deace

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The intense disgust Donald Trump inspires in most conservatives is unquestionably valid, seeing that he’s a loathsome, unqualified buffoon who ruined the best chance we’ve had since 1984 to put a truly worthy movement conservative, Ted Cruz, in the White House. The emotional difficulty of looking past his offenses and weaknesses is understandable, and there are legitimate concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, chances against Hillary Clinton, and representation of the Republican Party.

However, it’s increasingly apparent that Trump Derangement Syndrome has so consumed most of the #NeverTrump movement that they’ve lost the ability to objectively evaluate both Trump’s weaknesses and the consequences of another Clinton presidency. Not only are opposing arguments ignored without serious consideration, many NeverTrumpers hurl indignation and condescension at any suggestion there are opposing arguments. Ugly though it sounds, it’s hard not to conclude that some have decided that the future of their country is less important than projecting their self-image as morally and ideologically purer than the rest of us.

It’s time to start calling out this arrogant negligence. The following is the first in a series of posts calling out the shoddy logic and irresponsible flippancy dominating #NeverTrump arguments. To be clear, not everyone we’ll discuss is guilty of all the sins described above, but all display a distinct lack of seriousness unworthy of the future generations who will suffer if they get their way and Hillary wins. Continue reading →

New at American Clarion: Disappointment in Paul Ryan Provides Clue to America’s Current Mess

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Wilfred McClay of the University of Oklahoma best summarized the root cause of conservatives’ unpleasant choice for president this fall: “when a political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising essential topics, the electorate will soon turn to ‘unrespectable’ ones” like Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, the punditry remains slow to recognize this, and nothing symbolizes its cognitive dissonance more than the reactions to House Speaker Paul Ryan supporting Trump despite Trump’s attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel. The past few weeks have been filled with fears and lamentations over the threat to Ryan’s standing as, Wisconsin radio host Charlie Sykes puts it, “the intellectual leader of the conservative movement in the GOP.”

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg sums up the sentiment in writing that it’s “more difficult for me to write than it should be” that Ryan’s “a disappointment”:

[P]hilosophically and temperamentally, I’ve long felt that Ryan is my kind of politician, and that judgment didn’t change after getting to know him (which is rare, given how most politicians are all too human). His vision for government’s role and the kind of party the GOP should be has always resonated with me, even if I didn’t agree with him on every policy or vote.

It should tell you all you need to know about the sorry state of the Right that disappointment in Ryan took this long for so many.

Read the rest at American Clarion.

National Disgrace Marco Rubio Wants to Inflict Himself on America Again

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The one silver lining to this disaster of an election was supposed to be that at least we’d be getting rid of Marco Rubio. Unfortunately, Rubio has just decided he wants to stay in the Senate after all.

If the Right really held honor at a premium, the very possibility would have been met with such a unanimous hail of incredulity and disgust that Rubio never would have considered it (then again, if that were the case his presidential ambitions never would have gotten past a momentary delusion of grandeur).

Rubio ran for Senate claiming to be an anti-amnesty candidate, then when he got there he repeatedly lied to the country on behalf of the Gang of 8 amnesty bill. That left the GOP base even more distrustful they could trust anybody in elected office, giving Donald Trump his opening to gain a real foothold with the electorate. Not once has Rubio taken responsibility for his dishonesty.

Then, when he ran for president, he repeatedly lied about Ted Cruz, the only plausible alternative to Trump. Finally, he ensured Trump’s victory by helping to split the conservative vote and screw over Cruz’s delegate prospects long after it was clear he wasn’t going to become the nominee…and yet, after all he did to both Cruz and the country, Rubio has the gall to ask Cruz to help his new vanity campaign?

You have no honor, Mr. Rubio. The country cannot trust you. For the incalculable harm you’ve done to your country, the only way you could regain a sliver of your honor would be to acknowledge you don’t belong anywhere near public office.

New at American Clarion – Trump Won Because Conservatives Let Him

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Now that we’re stuck with the ugly choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, we’re long overdue for a chat about just how easily this mess could have been avoided. Shocking though it may be that such a cartoonishly unqualified and un-conservative figure could sweep the Republican nomination, it was inevitable that the mistakes and blind spots that establishmentarians and conservatives allowed to fester for years would eventually blow up in our faces.

Most agree on the first cause: feckless Republican leaders, whose record of surrender has made their base desperate for someone to take a wrecking ball to Capitol Hill, and doubtful that anyone from within the party could suffice. So when Trump swept in sounding like that someone—and making immigration, the issue on which party and base are most divided, his centerpiece—of course he forged an emotional bond impervious to subsequent reviews of his record.

It’s not Trump’s fault nobody stepped in to fill that demand first—even Ted Cruz, who fought the establishment from day one, underestimated the stridency he needed to project, or how moves like his poison pill amendments to the Gang of 8 bill would backfire.

Read the rest at American Clarion.

Should You Vote for Donald Trump?

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After decades of lackluster presidential nominees who embodied various diluted forms of center-right thought, this year we finally had an authentic, passionate movement conservative to rally around in Ted Cruz. Finally we had an opportunity to restore the Constitution, liberty, and prosperity; to take real steps toward ending the massacre of abortion, to shrink government rather than slow its growth, to turn the tide of America’s culture war and put the Left on the defensive for a change. Finally we had our chance to vindicate conservatism against the cancerous moderation espoused by the Republican establishment.

And we blew it. Thanks to a perfect storm of primary voters letting themselves be conned by a clown and divided among a half-dozen mediocrities and vanity candidates, and too few conservative leaders willing to show leadership and make clear that Cruz was the only serious choice, instead we’re now stuck with Donald Trump as the GOP nominee for President of the United States. A choice so manifestly terrible that it seemed inconceivable a year ago. Yet here we are.

So patriots have a decision to make: hold our nose and vote for Trump to protect the country from Hillary Clinton, or stay home to protest Trump’s lack of character, competence, and conservatism? My answer has wavered back and forth over the past year, so I hope this review of all the arguments for and against will help similarly conflicted conservatives find a definitive answer.

Before diving in, let’s dismiss two unserious options out of hand: voting for Hillary Clinton (such a despicable, asinine idea that those who’ve written and published it should be ashamed of themselves), and voting for a third-party or independent candidate (no, not even that obnoxious imbecile Austin Petersen who gives Glenn Beck such a tingle up his leg). It’s simply delusional to believe the latter could actually become president, so if you’re doing it for the symbolism it’s functionally no different than staying home. If you absolutely must put down another name at the ballot box, at least choose a deserving and likely future nominee by writing in Ted Cruz.

(Caveat: if by some bizarre, infinitesimal, miraculous twist of fate a quality conservative somehow uncovers the secret path for an independent candidate to reach the White House, I of course reserve the right to take that back and revise the conclusion of this post.)

That said, let’s begin. Continue reading →

New at Live Action: Donald Trump’s Amendments to GOP Platform on Abortion Would Be a Disaster

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If it wasn’t already clear that Donald Trump doesn’t really understand how pro-lifers think, he’s doing a bang-up job of reinforcing the point every few weeks. As Live Action News’ Danny David covered earlier, Trump said the following on the Today Show:

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: The Republican platform, every four years, has a provision that states that the right of the unborn child shall not be infringed. And it makes no exceptions for rape, for incest, for the life of the mother. Would you want to change the Republican platform to include the exceptions that you have?

TRUMP: Yes, I would. Yes, I would. Absolutely. For the three exceptions, I would.

GUTHRIE: Would you have an exception for the health of the mother?

TRUMP: I would leave it to the life of the mother, but I would absolutely have the three exceptions.

Pro-life activist Abby Johnson had some choice words in response:

Read the rest at Live Action News.

Rick Santorum Abandons His Own Principles to Endorse Marco Rubio

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For a while in 2012, I enthusiastically supported Rick Santorum for president. He made some blunders that forced me to reevaluate his viability, and his blend of fiscal, social, and defense conservatism was largely obsolete this time around thanks to Ted Cruz, but I always retained a soft spot for Rick, thanks to him being a pro-life, pro-marriage champion, rock-solid on national defense, and having the strongest immigration record in the 2016 field.

Well, I’m sorry to say my respect for the man is gone for good, now that he’s decided to endorse Marco Rubio, and in doing so signaled that the values he’s spent his career fighting for aren’t so important after all.

During his latest (and hopefully final) presidential campaign, Santorum’s message was that he was the truest true conservative in the race, so much so that Cruz just wasn’t strong enough on same-sex marriage (the National Organization for Marriage disagrees) or immigration (Jeff Sessions, Tom Tancredo, and Steve King disagree) to measure up to him.

So what does he do once he drops out? Endorse the worst major candidate on both of those issues. Continue reading →