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.
A Trump Compromise
The republic is dead. Long live the empire.
No matter who wins in November, the next President of the United States will be a self-absorbed multi-millionaire who doesn’t see the Constitution as binding on his or her power, who doesn’t believe in the rule of law, and who is willing to use racial and class grievances to get elected. As such, I had been planning to leave the presidential line of my ballot blank, as I could not fathom voting for either of the two realistic candidates. I’ve felt like Claudius stammering, “B- b- but I want a republic!” as others debate which candidate will make the better emperor.
But — and you knew there was a “but” coming — I was honored to have my friend and fellow Ricochet member Sabrdance over for dinner on Wednesday. He’s a non-tenured professor at a state college in flyover country, specifically, in a state where the Democratic Party barely exists. Despite this, he and his colleagues are scared to teach fundamentals of Western Civilization like Augustine’s theory of natural law. If a student complains that a philosopher dead for 1,500 years is “triggering” by modern PC standards, then the professors will likely find themselves out of a job; from experience, they know that the university president cannot be relied on to defend academic integrity in the face of political correctness. Only the fact that their governor is a mini-Trump — willing to defy the orders of the enormous executive agencies that really run the country — prevents them from being overrun by even more ridiculous imperial dictats.
This isn’t isolated to academia, of course. Ask member Skipsul, as a business owner, how heavy the imperial burden is on his business. Ask member Bryan Stephens about trying to help the less fortunate with the imperial minions constantly in his way. Even in my own business of real estate appraising, the burden on the appraiser to comply with every crazy rule (such as answering any possible concern a computer program can muster) is driving good appraisers out of the business. In a country like this, stomping my foot and saying “But I want a republic!” is going to be just as effective as when Claudius did it.
So here’s the deal: If the race in my state is competitive (as defined by the candidates being within five percent of each other, as of the last poll before Election Day), I will do my part to ensure our next ruler is the emperor wearing the red ribbon instead of the empress wearing the blue one. In exchange, I ask two things:
- Please stop telling me that less-than-wholehearted support for Trump is tantamount to voting for Clinton. I know she’s terrible. I know she’s a chronic liar, corrupt to her core, who has wasted American lives for nothing and who ought to be in jail. That she remains not only at liberty, but within reach of such power is yet further proof that we no longer live in a country where all citizens are equal before the law. Conceded.
- Please stop telling me that Donald Trump is somehow a conservative. He belongs with me in the Republican party to the same extent Caitlyn Jenner belongs with me in the women’s restroom. Whether it’s a wall with Mexico that will violate water treaties, or a trade war that will violate trade treaties, or a ban on Muslims that violates the Equal Protection Clause, or his unsubstantiated attacks on the judiciary, or his praise of the Chinese massacres in Tienanmen Square, the man clearly has no sense of what the Constitution says, nor any respect for the rule of law. My possible vote for him has nothing to do with his (dubious) merits or (lack of) character. Rather it’s that, as a red-ribbon emperor, he will probably bring more red-ribbon cronies into the executive branch than the blue-ribbon empress will, and that I will likely find his dictats to be less distasteful than hers.
I am called by God to honor the emperor, and I will. If my vote is likely to make any difference, I will vote for the marginally better emperor. But if my vote won’t make any difference, please let me keep voting for either of these two off my conscience, and leave me to mourn the passing of the republic in peace.
Published in General
Can we take out Charles if James just passes wind?
I don’t know… Us taking out Charles might be an incentive to some.
Uh…okay.
That’s pretty close. It took me nearly 50 years to learn that the problem isn’t just that the GOPe are stupid and lazy. (I’m thinking back to the first Nixon term.) This year they showed us that they are unrelentingly evil. I’m embarrassed to say that I used to think they could be reformed.
Maybe all government workers should be put on a watch list, and not be allowed to purchase or handle guns.
So true that polls can lie, especially if the pro socialist/progressive media know that by overstating for Hillary they may get possible Trump voters to stay home or vote Libertarian.
The following is my order of preference:
But why can’t we just have those four choices added to the ballot?
I am observing the same 5% rule, but will be voting Hillary if my state is that close.
CatoRand- Good to see you back!
Amy, I understand your post, but I must quibble with your limitation on who belongs in the Republican party.
I have been a Republican with John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and more.
The GOP used to run and win in 50 states.
Your viewpoint membership is limit and self defeating.
That GOP was a loser even when it was “winning.”
I usually prefer Amity over Hannity …
And? If you have a point, please make it.
Umm, no. Identity conservatism is a staple around here.
No, it means that we have abandoned the business as usual GOP as an effective way to achieve ideological goals.
For far too long, the GOP has functioned as a rear guard for the progressive movement. Continuing to support the GOP is an abandonment of ideology in anything other than a debate club sense.
I do not care what ideology fills Trump’s head any more than I care what the hammer thinks of the nail.
But with nothing viable to fill the void. Correct?
“Republican” (capital R) is not in itself a valid political objective for me. My preference for the republican party is mostly opposition to the Democrats. Lindsey, Rockefeller, Nixon, even Eisenhower to some extent, did not do the constitutionalist cause any favors. In retrospect, Nixon (whom I voted for twice) might have caused more harm than Humphrey could have, although I shudder a bit when I type that. Winning in 50 states by being the socialist-enabler party is not a win, in my book.
But doesn’t the ideology make a difference in which nail gets hit?
I think a lot of people are uneasy with the fact that Trump’s political positions have been rather labile over the years. If Trump sticks to his position now, many would feel better about him, but his inconsistency makes people wary that he isn’t going to drop the hammer on the progressives as he has said he will- he’ll come down on those that have backed him in the election.
Does he look like a man who can be persuaded? He may be less leftist than Hillary, though she has shown herself unprincipled if it helps her polls. That does not mean he is not more dangerous. He presents himself a man untethered by any principle, and dangerously ignorant of how the government and international politics works.
On a practical level, he is even less popular than Hillary, and stands next to no chance of winning. He will be an albatross around the GOP’s neck for years, and will cost us the White House, Senate, Supreme Court, and maybe even the House.
Yes, and to do that again the GOP needs to expand its appeal to women, Hispanics, younger voters, the very people Trump is insulting and alienating at every opportunity. A party that appeals only to angry blue-collar white men is never going to win a 50-state landslide.
Since we’re talking about me here, no. Instead a tactic to break the business-as-usual’s deathgrip on the only viable /supposed/ opposition party. If the GOP changes, great. If it does not, it dies and is replaced, great.
And I don’t think I’ll listen to a bunch of “That will never happen” on this. The conventional wisdom has been dead wrong this year ( and previous) because the powers-that-be are completely mis-reading an angry conservative electorate.
A balanced budget is dead. ObamaCare is alive and well.
The GOP has refused to fight the enemy and has refused to allow us to do so. So priority one is to fix or kill the GOP. That’s where we are.
Fixed
I think you are misreading the size of the conservative electorate. It is not large enough to do anything but ensure Hillary gets elected.
You are using the Progressive viewpoint that all women, Hispanics and blacks have one point of view.
Trump can only win if he takes his message of Make America Great again on Jobs, Controlled immigration, no more PC and More America First trade deals and win a third of Hispanics, Blacks and working women.
If he cannot do that, he loses.
I am betting he is the only white guy the GOP could run who could pull it off.
Blacks will be confronted with an old white woman and an old white guy with sizzle and flash. No Obama on the ticket.
So far, the punditry has written him off about seven times. Let us see.
If that is so, it only makes my point. If, as you say, the conservative electorate is of insufficient size to contest domination by progressives, than who are these crooks, liars and, thieves purporting to be an opposition party? Every single elected official is welcome to join the Democrat Party if they cannot hang with conservatism.
If, as you say, conservatism is too weak, of insufficient numbers or influence to do anything but carry progressivism’s jacket, then who are all of you #NeverTrump people supporting? Which of the futile choices which you consider realistic am I supposed to follow you toward?
If, as you seem to say, conservatives must ally with non-conservatives in order to forge a party, then who has departed the ideological arena? Me for using a non-conservative to force a change in the non-conservative party, or you for using conservative candidates to force a change in the conservative electorate?
Did you mis-speak in your quote at the top of this comment?
This is the folly that has gotten us where we are. The Alinskyite progressives divide people up by identity groups, convince them that they are unhappy, convince them that white men/Republicans/Free Markets/America all works against them, and agitate until there’s an angry mob.
Attempting to single-buttock that with an Alinsky-lite pandering approach is exactly the wrong approach. Of Reagan’s three-legged stool — limited government, social conservative, and defense hawks — which ones are black? Gay? Muslim? Mexican? White? Protestant? Women?
Exactly — none and all. Pandering to racial/sexual/kook grievance groups is the hot ticket to nowhere. Conservatism has an appeal of its own, and need not be marketed as hispanic conservatism, gay conservatism, protestant conservatism, unless of course the conservatism part isn’t what’s on offer.
This is what Rush Limbaugh means when he talks about the Wizards of Smart(tm) who are such experts on the problem that they cannot see the answer. Conservatism and the will to fight for it.
You’ll hardly credit it, but this is indeed one of questions asked on visa forms. “Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities?” There are several questions on that theme. Some forms also ask:
1. Are you a member of or otherwise affiliated with the Communist or other totalitarian parties? [One wonders how long that one will last.]
2. Are you coming to the United States to practice polygamy?
3. Have you ever committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide?
Standard visa forms ask 30 or so security and background questions his type. Even the ESTA asks about criminal and terrorist activities.
While the questions are of course silly to use as a defense, that is not their purpose. The purpose is to make simple evasion an explicit falsification. What if it turns out that I am a terrorist, and seek to do terror in Amrika, and have engaged in the doing of terror elsewhere (even, say, training camp stuff — the Tora Bora back nine, for example)? Then these rumors and so-so definitions may be held against me, but so what. With falsifying an official document, however, I have now committed a crime on the way in.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around this:
Never? Never ever? Not in the history of ever?
I eschew “lol” because we already have “ha-ha”, and because usually, it is not in fact relaying actual laughing out loud. It seemed childishly overwrought to say LOL! all the time just to indicate something was funny.
Silly me.
LOL
You answered your own question.
Perhaps he can be persuaded too easily to bad or good.
Still better than Hillary.