Never Trumpers Risk Irrelevance
NeverTrumper (n) – a vocal, once-semi-influential, self-described “movement conservative,” usually a wealthy white man, who, in 2016, refused to vote for either presidential candidate, wasted a vote on a write-in, or voted for Hillary Clinton.
Liberals’ opposition to a Republican president is understandable, but residual conservative opposition to President Trump only makes sense if it’s based on snobbery, personal animosities and/or self-interest.
How, you ask – and, believe me, I’ve been asked – can anyone support President Trump? After all, “He’s (…fill in the blanks…)!”
It’s simple, really.
Granted, Donald Trump doesn’t often score high on style points, but most conservatives have been won over by the president’s genuinely-conservative policy initiatives.
The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto observed that “’NeverTrump’ is more about taste than about policy.” Even David French, once one of National Review’s most intransigent NeverTrumpers, eventually confessed that “Trump’s policies aren’t nationalist populist but rather conventional and conservative.”
Longtime readers know I was skeptical of, even hostile to Trump’s 2016 nomination, but now view the president’s personal idiosyncrasies as secondary to his first term results, second term goals, positive message and his clear affection for America and Americans. Donald Trump’s policies have been the most conservative since President Ronald Reagan’s. Indeed, some of his successes surpass Reagan’s.
For example, the president has been restoring balance to the federal judiciary by appointing originalist judges who are faithful to constitutional norms. This week, President Trump will carry out his constitutional duty to appoint a new Supreme Court justice.
Under this president’s leadership, America has become the world’s largest energy producer, an energy exporter, and is now largely energy-independent.
President Trump’s other successes include reviving a moribund Obama/Biden economy, massive job growth, especially among minorities and women, increased household incomes, reduced poverty, across-the-board tax cuts, a rebuilt military and improved border control. In a historic foreign policy triumph, Mr. Trump brokered an “impossible” Middle-East peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates soon to be joined by other Arab states.
Moreover, there’s a broad sense of outrage this year among people, even once-unlikely Trump supporters, who are fed-up with annoying left-wing ankle-biting, with the media’s childish anti-Trump hysteria, and with four years of Democrats’ nonstop efforts to overthrow an elected president.
Because Trump backers and Republican-registered NeverTrumpers generally agree that Democrats cannot be trusted to run America, it’s unimaginable that an ancient grudge could make any true or leaning conservative consider voting for a Democrat. Nevertheless, even though the Democrats’ socialist wing has hijacked their platform and forced their nominee to adopt radical positions, some NeverTrump Republicans inexplicably support Joe Biden.
Biden’s Democratic Party stands in active opposition to every conservative core value, including, but not limited to fiscal and personal responsibility, First and Second Amendment rights, free markets, private health insurance/medical care, conventional energy, law and order, secure borders and the sanctity of life.
An Issues and Insights editorial sagely observed, “Any self-described conservative who thinks that the wreckage caused by Biden’s far-left agenda can simply be undone by a (socially acceptable) conservative somewhere down the road is fooling themselves.
“Once in place, government programs, even supposedly temporary ones, are impossible to eradicate. As [economist] Milton Friedman…put it: ‘Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.’”
Furthermore, Democrats embrace a “cancel culture” that dictates how people may think, act, speak, and where and with whom they may congregate; they engage in divisive identity politics stoked by press allies and social media; and the party’s violent, militarized wing has used contrived grievances as excuses to loot and torch corruptly-misgoverned Democrat-run cities. Militants’ future ambitions include America’s suburbs.
After Democrats finally caught on that months of denying and tacitly, sometimes openly supporting left-liberal rioting were hurting them, Biden and others began shamelessly – psychotically – blaming President Trump for their side’s lawless urban violence.
It’s fair for conservatives to apply the same standards to a Republican president as they do to Democrats; it’s acceptable to criticize the president when he’s wrong; but, it’s essential to support him when he’s right, and focus on the larger, more important conservative objectives in President Trump’s policy portfolio.
Genuinely-conservative NeverTrumpers will reunite with Trump voters – Republicans, Independents and traditional Democrats – to embrace commonly-held goals, preserve already-won policy gains and continue America’s progress.
Intractable NeverTrumpers have no political future. Conservative Republicans don’t like turncoats, and Democrats will just use, then discard them.
