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Dennis Prager Talks To #NeverTrump
Yesterday, Dennis Prager wrote a well-reasoned column to those who have declared they can not — or will not — vote for Donald Trump. He addresses the conscience issue, then gives nine reasons why a conservative should prefer a Trump presidency to a Democrat presidency:
- Prevent a left-wing Supreme Court.
- Increase the defense budget.
- Repeal, or at least modify, the Dodd-Frank act.
- Prevent Washington, D.C. from becoming a state and giving the Democrats another two permanent senators.
- Repeal Obamacare.
- Curtail illegal immigration, a goal that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with xenophobia or nativism (just look at Western Europe).
- Reduce job-killing regulations on large and small businesses.
- Lower the corporate income tax and bring back hundreds of billions of offshore dollars to the United States.
- Continue fracking, which the left, in its science-rejecting hysteria, opposes.
He closes:
For these reasons, I, unlike my friends, could not live with my conscience if I voted to help the America-destroying left win the presidency in any way.
Your thoughts?
Published in General
For the record, Charles Murray has a vehement response on NRO.
I’m still mystified by how many people accept a system that delivers two felons as the only realistic candidates for president-and just accept that. I’m not persuaded by the dismissive attitude of “well, we can’t do anything about that now.” However, I am persuaded that (while probably not consciously or deliberately, by all of them) the media played a huge role in advancing Donald Trump, and that the media is overwhelmingly pro-liberal and pro-Hillary, and that there may be only one candidate in America whom Hillary could beat: Donald Trump. What a coincidence! And knowing that, I’m supposed to overlook all that and consent to what the media gives me?
I’m not a “take what we give you and you’ll like it” kind of guy. I reject that kind of intimidation.
See, what I most resist is the notion that we must vote for Trump because he’s not Hillary … well, neither was Cruz nor Rubio nor Walker nor any of the others. The pro-Trumpsters were pushing Trump long before he was the only alternative, so please don’t pretend now that being-the-only-alternative is a solid rationale.
I am not voting for Donald Trump for President.
All I need to do is run the audio of Trump blathering about Ted Cruz’ dad being in the same picture of Lee Harvey Oswald, why was he there, what was his involvement with JFK, and relying on the National Enquirer for news and I am reminded of how far this man falls below the threshold for public office (the Presidency and anything down the chain). Neither Hilary or Trump are acceptable candidates; I simply don’t believe anything either of them says.
When the primaries were in full swing and we were having these Ricochet debates over Trump I made the point that Trump supporters were going to have to factor in that there would be people (like me) who would never get behind this guy. They voted for him anyway and got the most unpopular candidate in history. It looks like they got their work cut out for them.
I always value Dennis Prager’s opinions. To me, they always seem well-thought out and reasonable (for conservatives) and, this one is no exception.
In my opinion, DT cannot be trusted to adhere to any conservative principle and I don’t think he will follow any of the agenda items listed by Mr. Prager.
To me, choosing between DT and HC is akin to choosing between having your right or left leg chopped off with a machete: I choose neither. If it happens that I lose a leg, it’ll happen without my consent.
I cannot look at myself in the mirror, 4 years down the road, and say, “He was the lesser of two evils.” At this point, I will be “writing in” a candidate in November rather than choose between Hitler or Stalin.
Remember when people were complaining that Trump wasn’t a conservative and thus shouldn’t be given the nomination? And remember how the electorate ignored this and blindly went forward with nominating him, because anger? The argument just wasn’t convincing for them. They didn’t care even if the people making the argument were right.
Well, now the shoe is on the other foot. These arguments about Hillary being so bad that some must vote for the antithesis of everything we believe just aren’t convincing, so stop trying. Get over it. You’re not going to browbeat anyone into capitulating. That doesn’t win hearts and minds. When a candidate is chosen who offends the very core of many people’s identity, don’t be surprised when that has consequences.
These arguments are pathetically inadequate when you pay attention to the character and rhetoric of the man himself.
That’s a persuasive argument. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, you should never vote because the chance that your vote will decide anything is virtually nil. That is the reality we inhabit. Work out the game theory on that proposition. It has some interesting equilibria.
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Trump despite all his flaws, I believe to be a patriot who loves his country and wants to do right by it.
Clinton is a corrupt crony politician who put National security at risk in order to shield herself from public scrutiny.
There are other choices, and if I were an American I would vote for Gary Johnson.
But in a contest between the two I really find there is no contest.
We’ve reached the point where everything’s been said, and virtually everyone has had a chance to say it (although please continue to comment on this post, who knows, maybe I can break the 500 mark like DocJay just did).
May as well let the discussion sit until October when we know who the candidates will be, and whether either has committed some existentially devastating misstep.
Falling under the heading of “Why do you hate children?”
Prager was awesome, as usual. Thanks for opening the conversation on his very good piece!
Prager did a great job laying out some of the reasons Trump is not as bad as Hillary.
As for the case that we should vote for the lesser evil, it was to the point, and that is a very good thing!
I’ve been thinking the same things all along, since I wrote “Why I Vote Republican:” that we should support the lesser evil, but that there are exceptions when the lesser evil involves something so evil that supporting it is inexcusable.
Prager either disagrees that there are exceptions, or disagrees that elections are one of the rare exceptions: “circumstances almost always determine what is moral.” Good for Prager for being on point!
If the only way to save ten Jews from the Nazis is to help them by personally executing five, presumably Prager and I agree you must not support the lesser evil.
But maybe elections are not an exception.
Continued:
Continued:
So Prager got me thinking: It’s not just the nature of the evil that makes an exception to the rule that we should act to prevent the greater evil. It’s also the nature of the support, isn’t it? A vote may be such a minor way of contributing to inexcusable evil that the vote itself is permissible to resist a greater evil.
In short, Prager’s great, and even if he’s wrong he’s wrong in the right way, and I need more tea and more time to think about this stuff!
Did you ever read Sophie’s Choice? In your opinion, what was the best decision for Sophie?
I was trying to remember Sophie’s big decision. Then I realized I’d only read Sophie’s World.
Again, it depends how one sets up the scenario.
If we set up the scenario to be this election between these two people and evaluate only the decisions they may make during their 4 year term then the analysis might make sense.
If we set up the scenario to be an election within an ongoing battle between two different worldviews within the entire context of America over time then the analysis might not make sense.
In the first scenario we have a simple scale. In the second we have a scale connected to a complex machine. It is quite possible that the correct answer in each scenario is different.
Therefore, we ought not evaluate the analysis but ask which scenario is most important to analyze.
Oh, my stars!
I vote Republican because it has always been the lessor of two evils.
But is it the lesser of two weevils?
Only if you take the blinkered view that the only reason to vote is to cast a lottery ticket for being the vote that decides the election. But there are other reasons to vote, expressive reasons in addition to decisive reasons.
It doesn’t contradict reason, for example, to cast a vote because you enjoy supporting a particular party, or to cast a protest vote to express disapproval of the likely winner(s).
I know some people who habitually vote “no” for every candidate on every judicial retention ballot, in full knowledge that the judges are always retained (very few voters ever cast a “no” vote), just to protest the fact that the judges are always retained.
Of course one can reap some hedonic rewards for voting. But that was not the context of the discussion. But then it comes down to trading off voting against time spent other pleasurable ways: at the gun range, drinking a couple of brews, going to a concert, reading a book, going to the beach. I didn’t think this discussion was about the full panoply of human activity.
If voting makes you happy, move to Chicago where you can vote more than once ;)
Keep on voting in the afterlife!
In Chicago, it’s difficult to register Republican in the afterlife. Or at all, for that matter.
Sorry, Dennis, but the list is built on wishful thinking and zero evidence. Trump is unfit for office. Hillary should be in prison. Therefore I will vote for neither.
Which means you’re voting for Hillary! ;)
Not just hedonic rewards, of a masturbatory sort that communicates nothing to others, though. Casting a vote is also submitting information, and a protest vote is an admittedly very weak, but still non-null, signal that neither lead candidate is receiving a voter’s support.
Even when protest votes are likely to be very sparse, as they probably are on the judicial retention ballots I mentioned, where skipping (as most voters do) really does count as implicit approval, communicating to a judge that 2%, or even 0.2%, of voters disagree with him being retained isn’t identical to communicating to him that there apparently isn’t a single voter out there who’s willing to disagree with him being retained. People making a habit of protest-voting on judicial retention ballots, and of teaching that habit to others, are doing very little, true, but not precisely zero.
Sometimes people weigh the utility of entering the decisiveness lottery (choosing between the top two candidates when they’d really prefer another) as greater than the expressive, communicative value of voting for who they really want, and sometimes they weight it as less. Especially given the super-long odds on the decisiveness lottery, it’s hardly crazy for people to reason, “I think communicating that I approve of neither lead will actually send a healthier political signal than entering myself into the decisiveness lottery this time”.
Yeah, I’ve heard that particularity inane remark batted around. About 16 years ago. Only then it was lefties yelling “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush!” at each other. It wasn’t true then and isn’t now.
Voting just seems to confer legitimacy. “I won.” If we all hold our noses and vote for Trump so Hillary doesn’t win, and he beats her by a landslide, it would indicate he has a mandate and free rein to indulge his whims.
Not voting communicates the same weak message at a lower cost. In large numbers, it’s not so weak. Indulge me with the following Gedankenexperiment. Let’s say the turnout in this year’s national election is 40% instead of usual ~55% of the voting age population. There would be a tremendous gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands by the commentariat. You must agree that it would definitely be noticed. An extinction-level threat to democracy! Oh, wait, that motto is already taken.
If you doubt this, consider the big deal that was made of the increased turnout in 2008 when the Great One was anointed compared to 2004. Turnout was 52.6% in 2004 and 58.3% in 2008. Less than six points of difference and they wouldn’t shut up about it.
Again, I think it depends on what you want to do. It’s not unreasonable to avoid entering the decisive lottery for one office, but to still enter it on another office. Maybe I reject the premise “it’s an A/B test” for senator or president, but not, say, for certain state officials downticket – maybe I’m happy to use my downticket votes to enter decisive lotteries between lead candidates (where my odds of deciding the vote may be better anyhow).
Also, people may wish to protest-vote from the right or left, if that’s an option for them. And yes, we all know the perils of that, but it’s still true that the direction you choose to protest from is an additional signal, however weak.
Most conservatives I know would probably choose to vote for third-party candidates they perceive as being on the right if they were forfeiting the choice between the two leads, but other conservatives I know advocate choosing the third-party candidate on the left instead. Since signaling protest from the opposite side you’re really on is probably rather eccentric behavior, it’s probably reasonable to infer, though, that more protest votes lodged for Greens or Socialists most likely signal increased dissatisfaction from the left rather than right, and so on. Populist, “centrist”, or “third way” parties are more ambiguous, I realize.
Observing my own voting habits, yes, there are times when I decide just staying home has greater utility for me. But that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to stay home entirely come November as the only efficient means of protesting about the lead presidential candidates, if I decide to protest.
No disagreement here. In my jurisdiction, the vast majority of the down-ticket races are solid Left. In much of California the strongest statement might well be to stay home. Given that the Republican Party is almost nonexistent here, the message that will be noticed the most is that turnout declined precipitously. Otherwise, it’s just business as usual: Democrats handily get elected to most offices.