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The Faster of Two Phoenixes
I have been a Republican since I was eight years old. Reagan was my gateway into the party, and I followed his presidency any way I could. When I was nine, I watched the nightly news and talked about media bias with my father who was a Reagan Democrat. I was not old enough to vote until the first Clinton election and I have voted Republican ever since. I even won $100 off of a liberal college professor because I bet that Newt Gingrich would take the House in 1994. I love the conservative movement and I have always worked to make the Republican party more conservative.
So that brings me to Trump. I supported Governor Scott Walker, Senator Marco Rubio, and then Senator Ted Cruz. I implored all my friends and family to vote against Trump and for whomever was most likely to win in a given state. But while I thought I was comfortable in the #NeverTrump camp, I’ve found that stance to be increasingly troubling. I can’t imagine not voting against Clinton and I feel that is my patriotic duty to oppose her at nearly any cost. And yet, Trump is also horrible.
A Trump presidency will be a crap shoot. Since Trump is in the race for himself and his only principles seem to be his own power and success, his presidency will be a mess. He will surely do some conservative things as president, but he will do liberal things as well, all based on what he calculates will benefit him most politically in the moment. We’ve already seen Trump “growing” and “changing” on some issues, and it’d be foolish for him not to court the Left where he can. Trump was built for triangulation between liberals and conservatives, and his goal will be to get people to believe they are “winning” through him.
The worst part of his presidency will no doubt be foreign policy, where Trump’s understanding of the world is narrow-to-non-existent, and his ability to understand non-American cultures is close to zero. He will likely make large, dangerous, and deadly foreign policy blunders. Which brings me to the last point Trump’s crimes: Trump will almost certainly commit crimes while in office. His sense of self-importance and the principle of his success trumping all other concerns will lead him as it did Nixon to commit crimes while in office.
In a way Trump will be like a third Nixon administration but with fewer principles. We will get a few conservative things, a lot of liberal things, and nothing will change for the better. Trump will never see limits to his own power and so will not tame the administrative state but will seek to increase presidential powers, thereby increasing his own power and do even more damage to the constitution.
Given these things, I’ve come to think that one of the more powerful arguments for a Trump presidency was that he could be impeached while Clinton will not: Clinton could murder Speaker Paul Ryan on 5th Avenue and still keep her job; Trump already has support problem. My bumper sticker for the campaign: “Vote Trump; he’s the one we can Impeach.” Not, admittedly, a very strong argument.
President Clinton, of course would be fearful, harridan of vengeance, hate-seeking her enemies through fair means and — more joyfully for her — foul. She would run the government as a criminal conspiracy to acquire power for herself and her cronies at the expense of all that is good and holy. The only upside to a Clinton presidency is that I think she might clear the very, very, very low bar of being better on foreign policy than either Obama has been or Trump would be. Considering all the down sides, that is very weak. So Hillary must not be president.
Given these two scenarios, I thought I had to stay in the #NeverTrump camp: I could not vote for a man whom I am certain will commit crimes and cost lives in foreign policy blunders just to win a few random conservative issues domestically, even the Supreme Court. It seemed the height of selfishness to do that to our country as whole for a few potential gains. So I was left with the fact that Trump could be impeached but that was not enough for me to vote for him.
But I have now found another reason to vote for Trump. A Trump win will likely destroy the Republican party much as Nixon did, but a Trump win will also destroy the Democrats. Just think about it. If Clinton loses to Trump, it will destroy the Obama/Clinton legacy and throw the Democrats directly into the arms of insane people. The Sandersnistas will go after the party leaders like a proverbial peasant mobs in the classic horror movies and the whole Democratic party infrastructure will burn down. The Democrats’ leaders are all in their 70s and they have no bench. The Republicans, however, have young governors, senators, and congressmen aplenty, and some of them will regain their credibility when we have to impeach Trump. So while Trump will wreck terrible havoc on the Republican party, it is actually placed better to recover than the Democrats are.
Contrast that with the situation if Clinton wins, leaving the Democrats in power for one or two more cycles while the Republicans recriminate each other.
In sum, with both parties destroyed — and the country suffering from terrible disasters — the Republican’s deeper leadership bench will help them recover faster than the Democrats. This is not what I would have wanted for the country. People are going to die and the disasters will be real and serious if either Clinton or Trump wins, but a Trump victory gives conservatives a better chance of picking up the pieces of the disaster than does a Clinton win. “So vote for Trump; after the disaster, we have a better chance of winning.”
So there you have it. Is that enough of a reason to vote for Trump or is my thinking completely flawed? Let me know what you think.
Published in General
Let me be more clear. I cannot conceive of a situation that would lead Clinton being impeached sort of a 2/3rd Republican majority in the Senate. So that will not happen. I could conceive of Trump being impeached but it would depend on the crime.
So I don’t think that Trump is likely to be impeached but it is at least possible to impeach him. That makes him better than Hillary. Four years into Trumps first term who know what the circumstances will be if it is in the political interests of the Republican party to abandon him they will. The party as a whole is less “wedded” to Trump then we have been to almost any other Presidential candidate since Ford, I think.
We delude ourselves if we think that we are voting against Hillary. Our system does not work that way. On the ballot the question is not who do you oppose, but rather who do your support. Voting is a positive act of affirming support for a nominee. To vote for Trump is to lie, not just to the ballot, but to myself. I refuse to do that.
I completely respect that position completely especially in the face of the prospect of voting for Trump. I am driven partly by feelings here when I say that sitting out the election is giving me problems.
Agreed. My point is that the chances are sufficiently remote that I could not, in conscience, hand the keys over to Trump. Given how awful the choices are this year, I understand someone choosing otherwise, but this is a lot of risk for a very small chance of gain.
But far more united than many would have thought under the circumstances and we’re just a few weeks into this. Once Trump becomes President Trump, the tendency to rally to his side will be even stronger and — in many ways — more justified.
Which will make impeaching him all the more difficult; I mean, look at the level of recriminations we’re throwing at each other and it’s not even November. If #NeverTrumps* are quislings for refusing to vote for him now, what analogies are we going to turn to when it’s a matter of impeaching President Trump so close to 2020 and handing the White House over to eight years of President Elizabeth Warren?
* Stipulation that plenty of the pro-Trump epithets are equally inflammatory.
Well, the long term is dictated by us regular people. That will direct what Trump sees as his long term options, at least in this country. That’s why The Left is going nuclear on changing every aspect of culture while it can, the culture, the people’s interests, will determine the framework any future pol will perceive to be operating under. He can chase the winds all he wants but it’s the climate, so to speak, that charts the ultimate course. International affairs are somewhat different but the exact same forces at work on culture here are at work at ground level in all those other countries too. It’s a global game now but the game is always the same.
Recognizing that this election is a choice between pretty bad and a whole lot worse, I find three reasons to vote for Trump:
I don’t disagree exactly but circumstances are everything. How has Trump governed? Has his triangulation, I believe this to be his natural instinct, really upset enough in the party to turn against him? Have you been thrown enough bits that he does not look so bad now? What was the nature of the crime that Trump committed? Did he blunder us into a war? We can’t know the exact circumstances of a Trump first term. But there are a few important questions we can give an answer to.
In the face of a Hillary presidency and with a massive desire to protect the Republican party as a viable way of running for and picking presidents the party establishment and leaders are rallying to Trump. Hillary is his opponent, if the Democratic front runner was Jim Webb would things be the same, I doubt it. Plus if you don’t rally around the fairly picked Republican nominee what do you tell the supports of Trump who won? The process doesn’t count for me? Republicans politicians can’t do that.
However after Trump wins and starts to govern and uses the Republicans in congress as a foil to triangulate against and essentially blackmailing them for support on some of his issues how loyal will they remain?
As bad as Nixon was people stopped subscribing to National Review in droves because they would not support him in his time of trouble. Many Republicans rallied to him out of party loyalty. But enough were really to walk away from him that he had to resign. This is what I would suspect happen to Trump. Just enough would walk away from him to make his term untenable.
At that point the Democrats should gain massively as they did with Nixon but I think they will be in the midst of a terrible civil war as various interest groups in the Democratic party start a trail of strength to see who will actually rule in that party and they will have no reliable, trusted statement under the age of 75 they can turn to.
Finally we know that Trump can rally people to him but want set of principles will the Trumpkins support when Trump is gone? The force of Trump’s appeal is Trump. Trump by his nature can’t have an heir. That is why I think the Republican party is not actually wed to him. Triangulation only works if the Republicans stay conservative, it can’t become the new Republican governing philosophy.
Trump may have killed political correctness. Not immediately, but perhaps eventually. I’m not sure anyone else could have so effectively blown off the PC forces and their effective strategy to make non-progressive thought unacceptable.
Here’s to Donald, now and in the future.
This goes with my line that domestically Trump would be better than Clinton. However is that worth Trump blundering us into another war? Is it worth it to have Trump policy become Republican policies? One problem the Republic faces is the over weening and unconstitutional power of the Supreme Court. We have been trying to fix the court with Nominees since the 80s but we never quite manage to fix it and that is because the role of the Supreme Court is far to powerful. If the court became a star chamber against Conservatives that would at least focus our minds on limiting the power of the court instead of just trying to turn the court to our own ends.
We can all come up with lists of things that Trump will probably be better on than Hillary, I mean we are setting the bar extremely low, but you have to look at Trump’s over fitness for office and his over all effect on the country and the party before you actually support him. I think the prospect that he will be a successful president in any sense of the word successful is very, very small but I think that his victory might very well destroy the Democratic party that is something worth considering…
I have wondered sometimes if there’s not a significant portion of the Democrat voter base, and parts of the power structure, who wouldn’t mind getting rid of the Clintons once and for all, and whether there will be that much wailing and gnashing of teeth if she loses. I’m sure they believe that Trump would be a one-termer, and that they could compete with new blood in four years having finally delivered the coup-de-grace to Hill and Bill. (Although they should perhaps take heed of Winston Churchill’s story about the man who, upon receiving a telegram containing news of the death of his mother-in-law and asking for instructions on what to do, wired back “Embalm, cremate, bury at sea. Take no chances.”)
Should Hillary win, the Dems are stuck with her, and them, probably for the next eight years, and I suspect that grates on many of them, as it does the rest of us.
I don’t think it is Clinton worship that is the problem but the nature of the Democratic party. The Democratic has many competing interest groups in it. Their is a reason that the Democrat top contenders are all in their 70s they came of age the last time the party was unified. So all current factions bow down to these elder statesmen. However once the Clinton’s are gone who rallies the party? What faction of the party sits in the catbird’s seat? The white liberal Sandernistas? The radical racial activists and community organizers in minority communities? The SJWs and their transgendering norming and gay-wedding agenda? These are real questions and the prize of the Democratic party is a big one. The war will be fierce and most likely prolonged. There are a lot of factions that the Democrats can’t win without but they are a party without any kind of majority faction in it. I think the problem for the Democrats is real and very serious. Hillary has barely kept the lid on it because of Black support and the strength of the aging feminists and old line Democrats. That coalition disappears with her and it becomes free for all.
To everyone thinking about sitting home this November: Consider going to the polls, voting for your Local and State Candidates, and writing in “No Confidence” for the President. I did that very thing back in 2008.
I know that things are out of whack now, but we should remember that in a constitutional republic such as ours that our local affairs are important. We, as individuals, have more sway over our local communities and our states than we do over the nation as a whole. I know that Federal money is becoming more prevalent in the politics in our localities, but we will have to be the ones to say “no more” cut them off, and deal with the consequences. I have a gut feeling that to redress federal government overreach we will have to first control our communities, then our states, and that there will be challenges and hardships I can’t even begin to foresee.
Dear Brian:
You are focusing on the wrong thing. The more a decision is a dilemma for you, the less important that decision is. The reason you can’t decide is because both options are bad.
What you need to do is to concentrate on elections that do matter. Since it is virtually guaranteed that the next President will be bad, and that it is really just a question of what flavour of bad, maintaining control of Congress is more important than ever.
This is what you should concentrate your energies on, particularly the Senate where the GOP is playing defence.
Forget about the Presidential race. Both candidates are awful so it doesn’t matter.
Brian & Aug,
Did someone say Phoenix?
Regards,
Jim
I’ve seen comments here stating that Trump would destroy the Democrats. I think the opposite: electing Trump will save the Democrats, and electing Clinton will destroy them.
As OP notes,
They’ve been disillusioned with Obama for a while now, and all the factions want different things. A Trump Presidency would unite them in their hatred of Trump. A Clinton Presidency, meanwhile, would see them winning the White House and getting limited victories that only appeal to radical individual faction members.
What do environmentalists care about trans in bathrooms? What do Hispanics care about environmental reform? What does BLM care about assault weapons bans? What do single women care about Wall Street reform? The one thing they’re united in is desire for handouts (free college, free healthcare, reparations, etc), but they have no appetite to taxing the middle class, and “taxing the 1%” won’t cover it. Their isolationism on foreign policy will only last until we’re attacked again.
If Clinton wins in 2016, there will be a liberal primary challenger in 2020, and massive lefty discontent until then. We could see a third-party run like Bush saw in 1992.
I agree. Not voting for either Trump or Hillary is simply an act of political hygiene. We can’t encourage them.
I will do that regardless of what I do for President. Your idea was my original plan but the more committed to it I became the more uncomfortable I got. I am not sure what I will do know both choices are so terrible it is hard to know what to do not voting for President and voting for President feel equally bad for me.
Wonderful!
In most cases, my guess is very loyal.
In politics, it’s almost always a crisis and crisis — as we’re seeing — leads people to make desperate choices. “Impeaching Trump,” so the rationalizations will go “will irrevocably split the party, make us look corrupt, and hand the Democrats victory in 2020/2024. Of course Trump deserves it and I’m not saying that good won’t come of it, but we also have to keep in mind [insert pressing political situation here].”
BTW, my disagreements aside, excellent post.
No, he hasn’t. He’s said a number of true things that offend SJWs while doubling down on a number of false ones that upset some people who support him.
People think that because Trump says some un-PC things that they’ll be able to say others; I see little reason to think it’ll trickle down in any meaningful way.
I really believe that a Trump election will wreak a lot more havoc on the party than a Clinton election. The arguments for why we can’t survive four years under Hillary never seem very persuasive to me. Yes, bad things will happen. Most obviously, SCOTUS. But the party will survive.
I’ve heard it argued that after Hillary, we’ll be too demoralized and/or collapse into recrimination. Sure… but that kind of thing doesn’t last forever. We can rally from post-election demoralization. On the other hand, if we’re stuck wrangling with a horrible, deeply embarrassing leader who spends years trying to reform your whole platform according to his whim, it’s much harder to bounce back from that.
Think of it this way. Which has been harder to recover from: the Bob Dole moment, or the George W Bush moment? And Bush was a dream compared to Trump.
My concern is that so little of the Republic will survive under Clinton that there will not be enough left for a conservative party to conserve.
No, I think you wrong here and you are right. The Democrat party is doomed to undergo intense factional fighting but a Hillary presidency will delay the fighting. Power is the real unifying creed of the Democrats and as long as they have power they can suppress their factional differences. If Trump beats Hillary the Democrats will believe that only Trump could only beat Hillary and no one else. Whoever gets a chance to take on Trump next time will win and that prize is worth fighting for. Hillary could accelerate the fight by being a complete failure as a President and considering the harvest of bad news that Obama is going to leave his successor she could well fail but even then the Democrat crap up is delayed four years. A Trump victory throws the Democrats into a four year battle on the day of his election and the chaos can’t end until the end of Trump first term.
So a Hillary presidency doesn’t save the Democrats but it does buy them a few more years as they are now. Trump unleashes the Dogs of War right now. Everyone will hate Trump but Trump hatred will not put them in control of their own party only in fighting will do that.
I think he’s very possibly made that issue worse. Political correctness isn’t defused with mere vulgarity. You have to untwist the bad-faith pieties that prop it up. Trump has persuaded a lot of in-the-middle people that political correctness is necessary, after all.
But if both parties are doomed, is it a good thing to continue on fumes a few more years while the other party is rebuilding? The consolation prize for losing this election is pretty big: more freedom to reform.
This I agree with as far as it goes. But you are looking at the Republican party alone. Recovering from Trump will be hard whether he wins or loses but a Trump victory damages the Democrats at the same time it damages the Republicans. If Hillary wins we are then at the mercy of events. If Hillary is a gigantic failure then we are good but if not…we are going to be in rough, rough shape. And it is possible that Hillary sees the Democratic crack up coming and does something to prepare for a successor that is capable of unifying they party in the future. A Trump victory gives the Democrats no breathing room.
Vulgarity was never a cure for PC culture. An ethos of Free speech and the moral case for Free Speech is the antidote for PC culture. I have had dozens of arguments with friends showing them the difference between being polite and being PC. Since many people just think PC means politeness. If anything Trump just muddies those waters more and makes the situation worse.
They’re already fighting now, and that fighting will continue if Clinton wins, as Clinton can’t deliver on her far-left promises. Even if the Dems capture the House (unlikely), they simply don’t have policies that appeal to broad swaths of their base.
Trump being elected over Clinton benefits the Sanders supporters. They are already destined to take over the party, but a Trump win would vindicate them and make it happen fast. In 2020 they’ll be united around a young, minority candidate who sounds like Sanders and has enough “anti-Trump” positions to unite the party.
Winning Presidents generally have coat-tails, the party’s general fortunes follow the vote for President. Yes, it would be a powerful message if millions of Republicans voted for the down ticket and left the presidency line blank. It just won’t happen. Too many people vote straight ticket or won’t vote at all. Leaving it blank or choosing a third party just isn’t acceptable to me, and I won’t promote that to others. Expecting down-ticket success while sitting out the presidential contest is pure wishful thinking.
So, I am voting for Trump. When the topic comes up in conversation, I’ll admit he was far from my first choice, but I’ll suck it up for the sake of the conservative values at stake in the down ticket. I really want Republicans to retain the senate, to provide a bit of insurance for the Supreme Court and other Judicial nominations. This will be a tough year in the senate due to how the term rotations work. We need a strong Republican win in November. A Hilary or Bernie win in November almost certainly means Dem control of the Senate, followed by a generation of anti-liberty Supreme Court rulings.
Well it is kind of my point that the Republicans have the ability to reform while the Democrats do not. So the sooner the Democrats are thrown into the chaos that is coming to them the better it is for us. I think that Trump’s hold on the party will be very limited unless he is very successful as a President. I think the chances of him being successful are close to zero. Hillary has a better shot of holding on to power than Trump and Hillary is the Democrats only hope they have no bench. The Republicans do. So in an election were we are doomed to elect a terrible president I am saying it is just possible that Trump will actually be worse for the Democrats than he is going to be for the Republicans not by his actions of policies but just by his very election.