So, once again, it comes down to Wisconsin. In recent years, we’ve grown accustomed to being at the center of American politics, and this occasion is no different. In the next two weeks, we have the chance to stand athwart the GOP’s slouch toward the abyss and yell “Stop.”
We take our responsibility seriously; Wisconsin must be a fire wall of rationality in the madness that is the current GOP campaign. That is why we are today endorsing Ted Cruz as the only conservative who has a plausible chance to stop the political and moral disaster of a Trump nomination.
The New York Times reports that the campaigns increasingly view Wisconsin as “pivotal.”
Central to this plan is stopping Mr. Trump in Wisconsin, the next major showdown after contests that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz are expected to split this week in Arizona and Utah.
On Thursday, the Club for Growth sent a threepage memo to influential Republican donors promising to spend as much as $2 million in Wisconsin and arguing that “the only viable option to defeat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz.”…
We readily acknowledge that Cruz was not our first choice. We would have preferred Scott Walker or Marco Rubio. Some of us would have been more than happy with several of the other candidates who have fallen by the wayside. And we are not unaware of the rap on Cruz or of the reluctance of many Badger state conservatives to embrace the Texas senator. Nor is this the time to critique John Kasich, who is a good man and effective governor, even if we disagree with some of his policies and cringe at his rhetoric and wonder what he hopes to accomplish in a race he cannot win.
Our endorsement of Ted Cruz is both tactical and substantive. Trump cannot win Wisconsin if conservative primary voters coalesce around a single choice. If, however, they split their votes between other candidates, Trump could sweep Wisconsin’s delegates, despite winning only a narrow plurality of the vote.
Unfortunately, that has too often been the story of this campaign. It must stop here.
But our endorsement is also substantive. As National Review’s editors wrote, Cruz is a solid and principled conservative:
Cruz is a brilliant and articulate exponent of our views on the full spectrum of issues. Other Republicans say we should protect the Constitution. Cruz has actually done it; indeed, it has been the animating passion of his career. He is a strong believer in the liberating power of free markets, including free trade (notwithstanding the usual rhetorical hedges). His skepticism about “comprehensive immigration reform” is leading him to a realism about the impact of immigration that has been missing from our policymaking and debate. He favors a foreign policy based on a hard-headed assessment of American interests, one that seeks to strengthen our power but is mindful of its limits. He forthrightly defends religious liberty, the right to life of unborn children, and the role of marriage in connecting children to their parents — causes that reduce too many other Republicans to mumbling.
Over the last year, we have made our feelings about Donald Trump well known. Last summer, Charlie Sykes wrote:
Donald Trump is a cartoon version of every leftist/media negative stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right. Except that he’s not a cartoon. He is the leading GOP candidate for president at the moment. Trump’s surge not only risks sidetracking the GOP into a swamp of permanent unelectability, but also of reducing conservatism to an ideological clown show, where serious policy discussions are replaced with lowest-common denominator sloganeering of the most juvenile sort.
Conservatives win when their ideas are better, their arguments more cogent and realistic. But right now conservative ideas are being drowned out by bombast and serial insults… with a third grade vocabulary. Unfortunately, conservative media (including national talk radio, Drudge, elements of Fox News) are pumping up the volume and, thus, helping to dumb down the marketplace of ideas. Maybe it makes for good ratings, but it’s hard not to think we are reaching a tipping point of sorts.
To be clear, Trump is not only a cynical opportunist and an incoherent ideologue, but a generally repellent human being. Even reading his tweets makes you dumber…
Since then, nothing has changed except that Trump is now on the verge of seizing the GOP nomination, with all of the attendant consequences for the party, conservatism, and the coarsening of our culture. Along with a sizable number of primary voters, we have made it clear that we will not support Trump even if he wins the nomination.
But that is not yet inevitable. Wisconsin voters stand between Trump and the prize he is so anxious to debase.
This is a time for choosing and we choose not to cower in the shadows or attempt to placate or appease the rough beast of Trumpism.
Wisconsin voters have risen to the challenge time and time again. We need to do so once again, by voting for Ted Cruz on April 5.
http://www.rightwisconsin.com/opinion/perspectives/why-we-are-endorsing-ted-cruz
We take our responsibility seriously; Wisconsin must be a fire wall of rationality in the madness that is the current GOP campaign. That is why we are today endorsing Ted Cruz as the only conservative who has a plausible chance to stop the political and moral disaster of a Trump nomination.
The New York Times reports that the campaigns increasingly view Wisconsin as “pivotal.”
Central to this plan is stopping Mr. Trump in Wisconsin, the next major showdown after contests that Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz are expected to split this week in Arizona and Utah.
On Thursday, the Club for Growth sent a threepage memo to influential Republican donors promising to spend as much as $2 million in Wisconsin and arguing that “the only viable option to defeat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz.”…
We readily acknowledge that Cruz was not our first choice. We would have preferred Scott Walker or Marco Rubio. Some of us would have been more than happy with several of the other candidates who have fallen by the wayside. And we are not unaware of the rap on Cruz or of the reluctance of many Badger state conservatives to embrace the Texas senator. Nor is this the time to critique John Kasich, who is a good man and effective governor, even if we disagree with some of his policies and cringe at his rhetoric and wonder what he hopes to accomplish in a race he cannot win.
Our endorsement of Ted Cruz is both tactical and substantive. Trump cannot win Wisconsin if conservative primary voters coalesce around a single choice. If, however, they split their votes between other candidates, Trump could sweep Wisconsin’s delegates, despite winning only a narrow plurality of the vote.
Unfortunately, that has too often been the story of this campaign. It must stop here.
But our endorsement is also substantive. As National Review’s editors wrote, Cruz is a solid and principled conservative:
Cruz is a brilliant and articulate exponent of our views on the full spectrum of issues. Other Republicans say we should protect the Constitution. Cruz has actually done it; indeed, it has been the animating passion of his career. He is a strong believer in the liberating power of free markets, including free trade (notwithstanding the usual rhetorical hedges). His skepticism about “comprehensive immigration reform” is leading him to a realism about the impact of immigration that has been missing from our policymaking and debate. He favors a foreign policy based on a hard-headed assessment of American interests, one that seeks to strengthen our power but is mindful of its limits. He forthrightly defends religious liberty, the right to life of unborn children, and the role of marriage in connecting children to their parents — causes that reduce too many other Republicans to mumbling.
Over the last year, we have made our feelings about Donald Trump well known. Last summer, Charlie Sykes wrote:
Donald Trump is a cartoon version of every leftist/media negative stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right. Except that he’s not a cartoon. He is the leading GOP candidate for president at the moment. Trump’s surge not only risks sidetracking the GOP into a swamp of permanent unelectability, but also of reducing conservatism to an ideological clown show, where serious policy discussions are replaced with lowest-common denominator sloganeering of the most juvenile sort.
Conservatives win when their ideas are better, their arguments more cogent and realistic. But right now conservative ideas are being drowned out by bombast and serial insults… with a third grade vocabulary. Unfortunately, conservative media (including national talk radio, Drudge, elements of Fox News) are pumping up the volume and, thus, helping to dumb down the marketplace of ideas. Maybe it makes for good ratings, but it’s hard not to think we are reaching a tipping point of sorts.
To be clear, Trump is not only a cynical opportunist and an incoherent ideologue, but a generally repellent human being. Even reading his tweets makes you dumber…
Since then, nothing has changed except that Trump is now on the verge of seizing the GOP nomination, with all of the attendant consequences for the party, conservatism, and the coarsening of our culture. Along with a sizable number of primary voters, we have made it clear that we will not support Trump even if he wins the nomination.
But that is not yet inevitable. Wisconsin voters stand between Trump and the prize he is so anxious to debase.
This is a time for choosing and we choose not to cower in the shadows or attempt to placate or appease the rough beast of Trumpism.
Wisconsin voters have risen to the challenge time and time again. We need to do so once again, by voting for Ted Cruz on April 5.
http://www.rightwisconsin.com/opinion/perspectives/why-we-are-endorsing-ted-cruz
