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Trump or #NeverTrump? Haley Barbour and Charles Murray Disagree
On the podcast today, Rob and I interviewed two genuinely brilliant men. Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi, has dedicated the better part of his life to the Republican Party. He helped transform the South into a central component — perhaps the central component — of the GOP base, then served in the Reagan administration (where he and I became fast friends), and then as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Charles Murray has written half a dozen books, including two of the most important works the conservative movement has ever produced. His 1984 masterpiece, Losing Ground, detailed the case that the expansion of welfare did more harm than good to the very people it was intended to help; twenty-eight years later, Coming Apart chronicled in heartbreaking detail the growing gulf between a prosperous new class and those beset by wage stagnation and dissolving families.
Although Haley and Charles joined us at different points in the podcast, Rob and I asked each man the same question: If Donald Trump were to capture the Republican nomination, should we vote for him or support an independent candidate instead? Rather than paraphrase, I’ll let each explain, in his own words, how he answers the most important question conservatives may face this year.
Here’s Barbour:
And here’s Murray:
Two patriots, two fine, deeply-informed minds—and two utterly opposed answers.
Over to you, Ricochet.
Published in Politics
Here’s what I don’t get: 4 years ago, Pat Caddell went around announcing (including on the Ricochet podcast) that he was going to spearhead a “draft Hillary” campaign to knock Obama out of office, since Obama was such an obvious failure.
At the time, the unanimous reaction on the right was “of course we don’t like Hillary, but she’d be orders of magnitude better than Obama.”
Now that Obama can’t be elected anymore and Hillary is a strong contender, suddenly Hillary is obviously worse than Obama?
If we must, it’s time to bring back the Hamilton Rule.
Tyler wins.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I have absolutely no idea which would be worse in the abstract.
But a Clinton presidency will be worse to live through than the Obama presidency (in which, despite it all, by historical measures most of us still had it pretty good), because we will reap all that he has sown, in full measure, with a president thoroughly prepared to make it worse.
Of course, if the difficulty of the next 4-8 years will be recovering from Obama’s damage, I also don’t see how a trade war that makes consumer goods more expensive while curtailing our exports helps us out much either.
We’ll never know. The choice was never a conservative President. That’s a pipe dream. It wasn’t Cruz vs Rubio either (on immigration Rubio = Obama = permanent minority status for the GOP.) The plan was always a brokered convention. Nobody would have hit Cleveland with 1237. Bush had the party pros behind him; If he were still in, his money men wouldn’t be with Cruz, and Lindsey Graham & Co. would still be trying to do Cruz in.
Last September Bruce Bartlett wrote that if Trump can peel some of the black vote away from Clinton in swing states, he could win big.
A recent Survey USA poll has Trump polling at 25% among black voters.
From Politico:
The choice is between conservatives being an almost powerless rump faction in minority wing of the UniParty (which is what Bush and the 14 stalking horses were supposed to ensure) and conservatives being part of a party undergoing a huge shakeup but which is the party of the President of the USA.
Not “party loyalty over all.” Not “business as usual” either.
That’s because it won’t help. Yet if Trump is in office, the GOP and by extension the conservative movement will have to defend it, and will have no way to challenge it. Trump and his outright stupidity will be placed around our neck the way Herbert Hoover was placed around the neck of the GOP after 1932. #NeverTrump.
At least Herbert Hoover wasn’t a scumbag.
I’m going to wait and see who gets the nomination before I consider abandoning all hope. Nearly every conventional wisdom prediction about presidential elections since the Great Depression has been proved false.
Personally, I’m not persuaded Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat’s nominee. There’s lots of time to be delighted between now and Labor Day.
Pessimism is native to conservatism. Despair is a sin. I already have a full dance card for my next confession.
Charles Murray is absolutely correct. The GOP can recover better as the opposition to Hillary than as the party of Trump. Oh, and Trump is a fascist.
The argument seems to be that she lied about Benghazi and her email server. However, if we put such a high value on honesty, we mustn’t forget that Trump has already lied about his opposition to the Iraq war, the BBB rating of his university, and probably a billion other things (hence his refusal to release his tax returns).
Haven’t listened yet and only read a few comments…but as if there was any doubt which way Haley Barbour would really go.
I don’t know enough about where they were when he took over, what his real policies were but….
Mississippi ranks 49th in Overall Health, according to United Health Foundation…http://www.americashealthrankings.org/MS
51st in the nation for education according to Education Week…http://msbusiness.com/2014/01/report-ranks-state-schools-performance-51st-nation/
Last in building ‘new economy’ http://www.clarionledger.com/story/money/business/2014/06/19/study-ranks-mississippi-last-building-new-economy/11032065/ (and has ranked last every year since they started measuring in 1999, except a 49th in 2007)
It’s also the fattest state for the 10th year running…http://calorielab.com/news/2015/10/31/fattest-states-2015/
Maybe he was great. Maybe they would’ve finished even further last without Barbour’s bold leadership. But personally, I don’t think he’s got a real great record to point to.
Normally I shrug off any mention of someone being tagged with the ‘establishment’ label but in Barbour’s case it might fit. I do feel like he did a great job with Katrina but “one of Washington’s all-time mega-lobbyists” is not who I personally want to mold “conservative” policy after.
Of course an “all-time mega lobbyist” would be okay with Trump.
Forgot the link for that one in case anyone is wondering: http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2011/02/barbour-im-a-lobbyist-033321
But again, nothing wrong with lobbying. Lobbying is how citizens talk to the government. But come on…
Hear, Hear.
If Trump and Hillary were not associated with parties, and were both running as independents, I think I’d likely vote for Trump. Trump has said some awful things, like about Tiananmen Square, but his bad acts are qualitatively less evil than the terrible crimes Hillary has apparently committed. If Trump were running as a Democrat, and I was forced to vote for a Democrat, he’d be my first choice. Hillary is a gangster in a party that is already basically a protection racket. She doesn’t make it any worse. Trump could possibly make the Democratic Party better, if he was running as a Democrat.
What gives me pause is, I feel like Hillary is a computer virus that makes my computer inoperative, but I can still get it working again if I take it to Geek Squad. I feel like Trump, when he runs as a Republican, is actually destroying the back up systems on my computer, so that even if I take my computer to Geek Squad, my data will not be recoverable. Hillary doesn’t make the Democrats worse than they already are, but Trump makes the Republicans much worse than they could be.
The fact that this is a close call for anyone who calls themselves conservative and cares about the principles that Reagan stood for is shameful. It tells you how broken the conservative movement already is. It’s obviously moved far into the racket stage that all causes eventually progress toward.
The patient is dead. Trump is a vulture swooping in to claim the body. Time to blow it up, there is no reviving the body. A new vessel is needed for the conservative movement, the soulless, unprincipled brand of politics that Trump represents cannot be accommodated by conservatism.
Trump is certainly not the savior of the GOP! He is rather the wake-up call. Murray actually thinks that Hillary is somehow on the same level as our candidate? That her positions bear parsing in comparison? What a goof he is. Haley is the voice of wisdom.
I agree. I think it’s about a 50/50 split between Trump and Cruz for the nomination at this point. If Rubio’s delegates are added to Cruz’s, they are almost tied. If Cruz ends up with more delegates than Trump, they can replay Trump’s quote that the one with the most delegates should get the nomination.
Haley Barbour is everything wrong with our political system. He is one of the most successful lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and has lined his own pockets and those of his clients while screwing over voters and helping to erode what’s left of conservatism in the process. He has spent good bit of his career convincing politicians to cash in their principles for political gain. He does not act in the best interest of America or its future. If you seek causes as to why the GOP has imploded, look no further than the likes of Haley Barbour.
He’s also a coward for saying we have to support Donald Trump. Enjoy your fascism and ignorance Haley, I thought you were smarter than that. Party before principles I guess.
What is a major difference between Hillary and Trump? Both want amnesty. Both want to raise taxes. Both don’t understand the constitution. Both oppose freedom. Both are sympathetic to universal healthcare. Both are pro-choice. Both don’t care about the seoncd amendment. Both have disasterous foreign policy ideas. Only Trump wants to shut down Mosques and ban Muslim entry to the country. Only Trump has never worked in any capacity for the govenrment in a leadership position. Hillary is better than Trump politically and substantively. Trump is more in favor of state power than Hillary on some issues, and equivalent in all others. Trump would be a disaster and destroy conservative GOP policy positions for at least a decade, if not two.
Thank you. It needed to be said.
It doesn’t impact the way I view him at all. Peter is still wonderful but if he didn’t have any of those thoughts, it’s a great representation of how the bubble sucks you in. You don’t even know you’re in it.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the whole establishment versus anti-establishment thing. Trump is the “anti-establishment” candidate, yet Barbour, who is far more an establishment Republican then Murray, can reconcile with voting for Trump while Murray cannot.
I’ve always been skeptical about the criticism of the “RINO establishment,” but if the establishment Republicans, people like Barbour and Paul Ryan, end up supporting Trump over Cruz, that will prove to me that the bad things I hear about them are true.
I don’t agree with Donald Trump on a variety of issues. But rather than go through the litany of principles I’d have to violate to vote for him, let me highlight one.
He has tripled down on his policy of murdering innocent children. To be clear, this is not a reconsideration of how we evaluate the possibility of collateral death when considering military targets. He proposes killing children as a means to achieve a goal.
I will never be on that side. He will never have my vote.
Bartlett is mentally unhinged as his Twitter feed makes clear. I’d care about his analysis if I thought calling people “wanker” was the hallmark of a great intellect (which many Trump supporters probably do).
Compared to McCain, I think Buckley had a point.
Going with Murray on this, but I am in a deeply red state (North Dakota) where voting conscience is all but certain not to have any deleterious consequences.
Thanks. I’m not on Twitter.
As the poll I linked to says, Trump seems to be at about 25% now in that demographic. It’ll be an epic battle to get there and keep it in the pivotal states… and it’ll be interesting to see who the people are holding Trumps markers if the black votes proves to be the margin for Trump.
It didn’t, but the Commentary podcast did..
Bartlett might or might not be mentally unhinged but his viewpoint is frequently bizarre, self contradictory and yet firmly on the Left for nearly a decade. He has some personal demon that has so embittered him to the point of endless vituperation while creating the illusion of being a Reagan Conservative. I suspect Bush derangement syndrome.