Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Open Letter to Marco Rubio: Run for President
Dear Senator Rubio:
I’m writing to ask you to run for President of the United States against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
I understand that in doing so, you would be breaking a promise you made during the campaign. But such promises are never absolute. Franklin Roosevelt ran in 1940 on a promise not to send American boys to fight in any foreign wars. He broke that promise. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he would have been betraying his oath of office not to do so.
More generally, consider a situation in which you agreed to take your family on a road trip with a friend, who you promised to let drive the car. But then you discovered that he insisted on drinking and playing chicken with oncoming traffic. Would you keep your promise to let him drive, putting your children’s lives at risk? I don’t think so, and no sane person would fault you for breaking your word to keep your family safe. Well, we now face an analogous situation, and it is the country that is at risk.
Consider the crisis we face in the present election. On the one hand, we have Hillary Clinton, a corrupt social democrat who would continue the disastrous policies of Barack Obama for another four or more years, notably including the cancerous expansion of the hyper-regulatory state that is strangling our economy and imperiling our freedom. On the other, we have Donald Trump, a vicious con artist who is engaging in xenophobic demagoguery to mobilize mob support behind an agenda of unlimited government, socialist policy, and unconstitutional one-man rule, and who moreover is committed to gutting the Western alliance and the global system of free trade, the two principal pillars supporting the security and prosperity of the civilized world since 1945. As if that were not enough, Mr. Trump also evidences clear symptoms of megalomania and mental instability, so much so that you yourself publicly stated that you would fear to have his finger on the nuclear button. Indeed, having a crazy person in charge of our nuclear arsenal would place every human being on this planet at risk, including your children and mine. So campaign promise or not, the only moral course of action for you is to try to seize the wheel.
It would be a fight against the odds, certainly, but there is a chance you could win. Here is why.
- Both Clinton and Trump are widely detested. Indeed, their principal appeal in the coming campaign would be that, in a two-person race, each is the sole alternative to the unspeakable other. Furthermore, they will both be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to amplify this situation by running torrents of powerful negative campaign ads to demonize each other. They would not start directing fire against you until after you became a clear threat, and by then it could be too late for them to stop you.
- You are no doubt aware of the large numbers of anti-Trump Republicans who would seize the opportunity to vote for you, but you should also consider the anti-Clinton Democrats who might go your way as well. Almost half the Democratic Party base is so distressed with Clinton that they are still holding out for the hopeless Bernie Sanders campaign. Many of these people desperately want someplace else to go after Hillary gets the nomination. The smell of xenophobia from the Trump campaign is likely to be so repellent to them that they couldn’t support him, regardless. But many of them might be willing to support you.
- The real Republicans want someone who will defend the Constitution and the principle of limited government. The sincere Democrats want someone who will stand for the weak against the powerful, the ordinary citizens against the privileged. Everyone wants a chance to vote for a decent person. Neither Trump nor Clinton represents any of those ideals. You represent all of them.
- It may be that you might be too late to get on the ballot in every state, but this would not be a show stopper. In the three-way race, you don’t need to contest every state, or even most of them. If you were to win even a handful of states (and I think you could do much better than that) you could stalemate the Electoral College and throw the decision into the House of Representatives, where your winning chances would be excellent.
There are those who say you should not do this, because if you were to fail, you would increase the prospects of a victory by Clinton. But this makes no sense, because while Trump might possibly nominate Supreme Court Justices less destructive than those that would be recommended by Hillary, this is very small beer compared to the catastrophic potential for global depression and large scale conflict that would be unleashed by Trump’s program of trade war and the abandonment of Western collective security. So, though the collection of camp followers and careerists now seeking sinecures in a Trump administration might find your frustration of their ambitions very upsetting, one way or another the mad Don must be put down. If not by you, then by Hillary; if it is not be by Hillary, then it will have to be done by you.
Furthermore, whether it is you or Hillary who gets to take Trump’s scalp as a trophy to the White House, by running you will greatly increase the chance that Republicans will hold onto the Senate, the House, and innumerable state and local offices that now stand to be lost as millions of Republicans choose to stay home rather than soil themselves by pulling the lever for Trump or Clinton. So there is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by giving it a try.
So sir, I ask you to take heart, raise the flag and sound the battle cry of freedom. There are millions of us who will rally to your standard. The fate of the republic is at stake. You know it, and we know it. Don’t desert us, and we won’t desert you. Lead and we will follow. Charge and we will fight. Together, we can prevail.
Fortune favors the brave.
Published in General
I believe that too. In fact that is the perfect description of my concern.
Here’s the thing, Casey. I believe he likes what I like so I’m looking forward to his presidency.
And that’s exactly it. You are gonna get what you like. That you and others don’t see a problem with a president as soda jerk is what is so depressing.
You don’t get capitalism apparently, but I do.
I know I’ll get what I want because Trump isn’t afraid to break the rules and kick a** when he has to. I’m fed up voting for lawyers with no sense whatsoever of how to fight to make an entrepreneurial buck even in a so-called democracy.
One needs to manipulate and engineer; if you aren’t up for the game, move elsewhere.
So, we need a central planner in the White House?
What else is new? We just need a good one that works in the best interests of our country’s economy and national security.
And you, apparently, don’t get how constitutional republics work.
Edit: But thank you for being honest and openly coming out in favor of authoritarianism. It will be very helpful going forward.
Well, you get business. I get capitalism.
But I’m not sure why either matter in a discussion of politics. After all, he is running for president.
I am up for the game. Just the limited government game. Not the my dad can beat up your dad game.
Republics don’t work without prosperous economies.
Huh? That’s the best part of being an American.
Big government is poison for the economy.
Better than ice cream and hot dogs!?
Ok, I like chili dogs with all the fixings as much as the next person, but I like American aggression even more. :)
Chili dogs with all the fixings have given me some aggression sometimes.
Please spare me that remark in light of the fact that Obama has passed countless executive orders that have harmed a free economy. I look forward to executive orders that allow capitalism to thrive.
I look forward to no more executive orders. Looks like I get to keep waiting.
It isn’t going to happen! Pandora is out of the box already; D.C. is virtually unfixable so I’m focusing on the candidate who can at least keep NASDAQ happy and our country safe. Take what you can get.
So sign me up as the pragmatist.
I can’t comment on Vox — I’ve only followed him second hand — but I have great difficulty imagining Derb joining us.
I say this as someone who’s exchanged some emails with Derb, purchased his books and who wrote a rather nasty email to Rich Lowry when he was axed from NRO. I was a paid subscriber to Radio Derb while it was at Taki’s Mag. I even wrote a post here defending him and race realism’s better manifestations.
Then, for God’s sake, he went to VDARE.
It’s not that I refuse to look at his stuff, it’s just that I can’t in good conscience seek it out.
So… the New Trumpublicans be like,”Man the cello, Patriot, the passengers need music!”
Ima be like,”I’m good, I just be over here making a raft outta the furniture, but good luck with that.”