On national television Sunday morning, the current frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination refused to disavow being publicly supported by racists not once, not twice, but three times.
Just another in a multitude of reasons why I will #NeverTrump – even if he is the Republican nominee.
And spare me your sanctimonious rambling about, “but if he’s the nominee we have to vote for him or Hillary will win.” First of all, most of the thumb-suckers saying this have sat on the sidelines during this primary process, refusing to get their hands dirty doing everything they could to stop the GOP from nominating another sure-fire progressive loser/betrayer once more.
But I did.
My wife and I mortgaged every asset and resource we have to help Ted Cruz win the Iowa Caucuses. And we’ve got the sleepless nights, as well as the scabs from the pretend friends who stabbed us in the back, to prove it. Funny thing is, I don’t remember seeing much of the Team GOP sycophant crowd those many months while the bullets were flying. So if you didn’t do whatever you could to help someone who actually stands for what we’re supposedly fighting for, whether that be Cruz or one of the other candidates not named Trump in the race, spare me your whining.
As the great prophet Travis Tritt once sang, “Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.”
Not to mention, we all just did this in the 2014 mid-term elections, and how did that turn out? Despite the fact we have the fewest elected Democrats in the legislative branch nationwide since before the Great Depression, all of Obama’s schemes are fully-funded and outside of a few places like Texas the country still lurches leftward. Therefore, it’s clear that just voting for “anybody but (fill in the blank Democrat)” works about as well as the Obamacare website launch.
“But wait,” some of you will say, “if you don’t support Trump as the nominee you’re responsible for everything Hillary says and does.” By that elementary logic that means if you’re voting for Trump then you’re responsible for everything he says and does as well. And this leads me to my second point.
I am a 42-year old conservative evangelical. My generation and the one behind me have been charged with more than preserving American Exceptionalism. We actually have to re-teach it to a dying culture before it’s too late. In other words, we’re in evangelism mode more so than partisan activism mode. You can’t harvest a crop before you till the soil. You can’t mobilize masses that don’t exist.
For many people in my generation and the one behind me, this is how they define what I stand for: endless wars, growing government for “too big to fail” corporatists but complaining when Democrats do it for the little guy, and doing nothing substantive about preserving the family and ending the abortion holocaust, other than using these things as wedge issues to attack Democrats.
In other words, too many Americans equate conservative evangelical with George W. Bush – for better or for worse.
Now we’re talking about attaching our brand to an unrepentant serial liar and adulterer that has clearly demonstrated during his 70 years on this planet he stands for nothing but himself. Despite the fact some of us, me included, gave him every opportunity at the beginning of this race to prove this time that wasn’t the case.
However, campaigns do not build character but reveal it.
The searing, 24/7 spotlight of today’s media environment allows no one to truly hide who they are anymore, provided enough people choose to be informed and know (see Obama 2008). And as we’ve reached the apex of this primary it’s become abundantly clear that Trump is who his detractors always said he was, and is taking advantage of every negative stereotype the left has of conservatives to excel in this race. Everything he touches becomes corrupted and distorted.
For example, who among his big name endorsements has more credibility now than they did before endorsing Trump? The only person that has benefitted off of Trump’s campaign is Trump and his brigade of boot-lickers.
The left has always played the long game. They’ve always tried to win generations while we tried to win elections. They’ve always tried to win on public policy while we tried to win on public opinion. As a result, there is not a sector of this culture in which we are not out-flanked by progressives. They control every influence center in the country, including the leadership of both major political parties.
While I still agree this GOP primary is the most important election of my lifetime, it is still just one election. As a Christian I am to always play the long game, with eternity in mind in acknowledgement that God is still on the throne. According to that view, allowing Trump to redefine what is left of conservativism, to a country sorely in need of it, has a better chance of finishing us off than Trump as president has of pleasantly shocking us all (he won’t win the general election anyway).
Conservativism is supposed to be about conserving the things that created American Exceptionalism—not defining them down to play a part in a cult of personality. Neither is it supposed to be about race-baiting, ethnic tribalism, authoritarianism, support for Planned Parenthood or progressivism. That’s the left, but that’s also Trump, who’s just repackaging our opponent’s views in pro-American terms.
Therefore, should Trump be the nominee I will not lend my name and an ounce of integrity to this reality television star’s charade. Now, should you feel compelled to vote for him because he’s not Hillary, I want you to know I won’t condemn you, either, provided you’re not being intellectually dishonest in the process.
I understand there really are no cut-and-dried options in such a Kobayashi Maru scenario, which is why I’ve done everything I can to help a principled candidate like Cruz win the nomination in the hopes this wouldn’t have happened. And I hope Cruz still can win. Super Tuesday is upon us, and Trump only has 6% of the delegates it takes to win the nomination.
I’m simply stating why this is the option my conscience has chosen, for when this current cultural self-immolation is over something must emerge for the future untainted by it. Because if a Trump candidacy/presidency turns out the way it looks like it will, there will be a need for a movement capable of rising from the ashes that maintains enough credibility with the culture to save it.
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/02/why-i-will-nevertrump
Just another in a multitude of reasons why I will #NeverTrump – even if he is the Republican nominee.
And spare me your sanctimonious rambling about, “but if he’s the nominee we have to vote for him or Hillary will win.” First of all, most of the thumb-suckers saying this have sat on the sidelines during this primary process, refusing to get their hands dirty doing everything they could to stop the GOP from nominating another sure-fire progressive loser/betrayer once more.
But I did.
My wife and I mortgaged every asset and resource we have to help Ted Cruz win the Iowa Caucuses. And we’ve got the sleepless nights, as well as the scabs from the pretend friends who stabbed us in the back, to prove it. Funny thing is, I don’t remember seeing much of the Team GOP sycophant crowd those many months while the bullets were flying. So if you didn’t do whatever you could to help someone who actually stands for what we’re supposedly fighting for, whether that be Cruz or one of the other candidates not named Trump in the race, spare me your whining.
As the great prophet Travis Tritt once sang, “Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.”
Not to mention, we all just did this in the 2014 mid-term elections, and how did that turn out? Despite the fact we have the fewest elected Democrats in the legislative branch nationwide since before the Great Depression, all of Obama’s schemes are fully-funded and outside of a few places like Texas the country still lurches leftward. Therefore, it’s clear that just voting for “anybody but (fill in the blank Democrat)” works about as well as the Obamacare website launch.
“But wait,” some of you will say, “if you don’t support Trump as the nominee you’re responsible for everything Hillary says and does.” By that elementary logic that means if you’re voting for Trump then you’re responsible for everything he says and does as well. And this leads me to my second point.
I am a 42-year old conservative evangelical. My generation and the one behind me have been charged with more than preserving American Exceptionalism. We actually have to re-teach it to a dying culture before it’s too late. In other words, we’re in evangelism mode more so than partisan activism mode. You can’t harvest a crop before you till the soil. You can’t mobilize masses that don’t exist.
For many people in my generation and the one behind me, this is how they define what I stand for: endless wars, growing government for “too big to fail” corporatists but complaining when Democrats do it for the little guy, and doing nothing substantive about preserving the family and ending the abortion holocaust, other than using these things as wedge issues to attack Democrats.
In other words, too many Americans equate conservative evangelical with George W. Bush – for better or for worse.
Now we’re talking about attaching our brand to an unrepentant serial liar and adulterer that has clearly demonstrated during his 70 years on this planet he stands for nothing but himself. Despite the fact some of us, me included, gave him every opportunity at the beginning of this race to prove this time that wasn’t the case.
However, campaigns do not build character but reveal it.
The searing, 24/7 spotlight of today’s media environment allows no one to truly hide who they are anymore, provided enough people choose to be informed and know (see Obama 2008). And as we’ve reached the apex of this primary it’s become abundantly clear that Trump is who his detractors always said he was, and is taking advantage of every negative stereotype the left has of conservatives to excel in this race. Everything he touches becomes corrupted and distorted.
For example, who among his big name endorsements has more credibility now than they did before endorsing Trump? The only person that has benefitted off of Trump’s campaign is Trump and his brigade of boot-lickers.
The left has always played the long game. They’ve always tried to win generations while we tried to win elections. They’ve always tried to win on public policy while we tried to win on public opinion. As a result, there is not a sector of this culture in which we are not out-flanked by progressives. They control every influence center in the country, including the leadership of both major political parties.
While I still agree this GOP primary is the most important election of my lifetime, it is still just one election. As a Christian I am to always play the long game, with eternity in mind in acknowledgement that God is still on the throne. According to that view, allowing Trump to redefine what is left of conservativism, to a country sorely in need of it, has a better chance of finishing us off than Trump as president has of pleasantly shocking us all (he won’t win the general election anyway).
Conservativism is supposed to be about conserving the things that created American Exceptionalism—not defining them down to play a part in a cult of personality. Neither is it supposed to be about race-baiting, ethnic tribalism, authoritarianism, support for Planned Parenthood or progressivism. That’s the left, but that’s also Trump, who’s just repackaging our opponent’s views in pro-American terms.
Therefore, should Trump be the nominee I will not lend my name and an ounce of integrity to this reality television star’s charade. Now, should you feel compelled to vote for him because he’s not Hillary, I want you to know I won’t condemn you, either, provided you’re not being intellectually dishonest in the process.
I understand there really are no cut-and-dried options in such a Kobayashi Maru scenario, which is why I’ve done everything I can to help a principled candidate like Cruz win the nomination in the hopes this wouldn’t have happened. And I hope Cruz still can win. Super Tuesday is upon us, and Trump only has 6% of the delegates it takes to win the nomination.
I’m simply stating why this is the option my conscience has chosen, for when this current cultural self-immolation is over something must emerge for the future untainted by it. Because if a Trump candidacy/presidency turns out the way it looks like it will, there will be a need for a movement capable of rising from the ashes that maintains enough credibility with the culture to save it.
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/02/why-i-will-nevertrump
