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.
I Thought This Deserved a Post of Its Own
In the thread for our recent Harvard Lunch Club Podcast — the Rigged Podcast — we reverted again, with the inevitability of Groundhog Day, to the eternal Trump versus #NeverTrump argument. I thought it worthwhile to recapitulate the discussion. Apologies to those who have reached the stage of nausea in this issue. In the podcast my partner Todd Feinburg and I discuss the recent Victor Davis Hanson article advocating a vote for Trump for conservatives. We both think that it is a no-brainer and we both think that, even had we not been for Trump since long ago (say we had supported Rubio) we would have recognized that bruised egos aside there was really only one choice … which is essentially what VDH had to say (though he said it very well indeed).
In response, member rebark makes the following observation:
I always find it remarkable how foreign and mystifying the ideas of Never Trump people are to the HLC hosts. The utter bafflement with which they confront the fact that people looked at the same facts that they did and reached a different conclusion.
My first inclination is to blame my own side for failing to explain itself well, but there has been so much ink spilled on the subject that I can’t help but wonder whether there is a certain willful blindness to their approach. For the tired old argument of “just admit you’re for Hillary” to be trotted out requires an astonishing level of misunderstanding.
To put it simply: I do not see a lesser evil. I doubt that there is an iota of difference between us in terms of how negatively we perceive Hillary – she will be terrible for the country and terrible for conservatism. Trump might implement the occasional conservative policy, but he will destroy what little reputation conservatism has. I believe he would do at best a mediocre job as President that would be spun into such a disaster by the media that his election would pave the way for even worse Leftist ideologues down the road. I can’t tell you which is worse, and so I can only tell you that I don’t want to have supported either.
I hope they have some good conversations at tomorrow’s Ricochet debate watching event.
Member Eugene Kriegsmann weighs in with:
Michael, in response to your question to Rebark [what did he think of the VDH article?] I went over to NR and read Dr. Hanson’s post. There is little new in it. He had held this position since the majority of NR editors and writers put together their anti-Trump screed. Hanson’s argument really comes down to what I have read over and over on this site, that Trump is bad, but Hillary is worse. Hillary will do terrible damage to the country.
That well may be true. There is, however, another possibility, that Hillary will be essentially spayed politically by a Republican dominated congress, and that, given her apparently fragile health and the incredible demands of the office, that she will likely not even make it through one term, much less two.
On the other hand, we have Trump whose commitment to our country is so minimal that he would destroy not just his own chances of achieving office, but those of every other Republican running this year. How do we trust such a person with the most powerful office in the world and with the future of this country?
The problem for me is, I don’t see any difference between them. I could never vote for Hillary, nor could I give Trump a vote that would confirm all he wants to believe about himself, that he actually should be President of the United States. It is a choice that I simply refuse to make. I think I will write in Pence for President.
And, forgive me for taking the last word, I said this:
Rebark and Eugene, I have only this to say. Make a choice! Whatever you can say about how difficult it is to evaluate whether Hillary’s Presidency or Trump’s Presidency will be worse, it is blatantly obvious that they will be different. Very different! So forget the past. Forget the agony of what could have been. Think through the problem as it confronts you today. What are the odds from your perspective of different possible futures with Trump and with Hillary? Evaluate the distributions, apply risk analysis, do the algebra and reach a conclusion and vote. Don’t whine about how it’s hard to decide. Don’t withhold your vote because you are angry at what happened in February. The future lies ahead. You have only two options (eh?). Pick one.
Is this not, my Ricochetti friends, the bottom line?
See you in NYC tonight!
Published in General
There have been many victories for the right over this span of time. I specifically mention the party’s ability to stop the left because just as Xennady did, it is always presented as if they are unable to stop the left from accomplishing anything, when in reality they stop them provided the voters give them enough seats to do so.
Q, Cato and Frank, Trump is not something any group of citizens has done. He is entirely an energetic response to the last few decades of GOP inaction, of their refusal to exercise their constitution prerogatives to maintain a law-abiding government. Despite having complete control of spending, Obama’s wish list and lawless actions have been actively supported by the GOP Congress. Nobody has been conned except those who listen to the unstoppable narrative of the elite Uniparty.
I find this arrogance appalling.
As I have already noted, the GOP has compiled a record of failure going back decades. You have stopped the left barely at all, ever, and you have turned Congress into a gold-plated rubber stamp for Obama. You have done nothing to stop illegal immigration, including the immigration of individuals who have brought drug-resistant TB into the country, along with other diseases long eradicated from the United States. You have failed to prevent terrorist attacks inside the country, leaving the border essentially open and unsecured, because you will not compromise on the insane open border globalist ideology that the leadership of both parties plainly shares.
You should sit back and reflect what you have done, because you have been responsible for the ruin of a great nation. You are the authors of our present trouble, not Trump, and not the people who have lost patience with you.
But you won’t reflect, because the problems of the Republican party always and forever are the fault of people who won’t shut up hard enough to suit the leadership.
Never the leadership itself.
Pitiful, utterly pitiful.
Yes. Mitt Romney was not very conservative, and I think most conservatives understood that there was a cost to conservatism in supporting such a weak conservative as the GOP nominee. I think the vast majority of conservatives were willing to accept that cost if it allowed us to make Obama a one term president. With Trump the cost is much higher, because he has so many more negatives than Romney did. I’m about 40% convinced that Trump would do more good then harm, so not enough to vote for him. I would guess that Frank Soto is about 5-10% convinced that Trump would do more good than harm, so he’s definitely not voting for Trump.
I think electing Trump would probably mean major losses in 2018 and 2020, so I’m willing to concede the White House in 2016 to avoid that. This isn’t about being too pure to vote for Trump. From what I see, the GOP will be dragged down as long as it is tied to Trump.
Perhaps hyperbole is not all that useful in these conversations.
I’m going to ignore the Trump, blah, blah, blah from Xennady and Trinity, but I am curious about this.
Other than “stopping something” what are the major conservative accomplishments (on the domestic front) of the last 80 years? I readily concede that we’ve held back the tide some. And I recognize conservative/US accomplishments on the international stage.
But domestically it seems to me that the left has been on the march culturally, fiscally and economically — always pushing forward, sometimes halted, sometimes making progress, but never retreating. What are you thinking about that I’m missing?
Well said, and hence Trump.
And I am mystified how anyone could possible say the left had no accomplishments over the last 30 years. Over that time span the country moved ever leftward, with only halting and temporary resistance from the right.
This is not success, GOP.
No, he’s right. I wrecked it all. We have basically gone from global hegemon, bestriding the earth, to sniveling ruin. And it’s all in my 50ish year lifetime. Coincidence? I think not.
It isn’t hyperbole.
There’s a lot of ruin in a nation, but only so much.
Ponder the ruins of Detroit, the American youth who are apparently unwilling to work or learn, the collapse of marriage, the offshoring of the US economy, the collapse of the Rule of the Law, the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Americans from large parts of California, the failure of the US to win multiple wars in the ME- is that enough?
I have more.
The Democrats have an easier job than the Republicans. The Democrat message is “We will take care of things for everyone,” and they have access to public money to back up their claims without any cost to themselves. The Republican message is “Get a job and take care of your family.” They don’t get a salary bonus when they cut spending. It’s a miracle they do as well as they do.
On the other hand, I don’t know that it’s necessary to abolish progressive gains to roll them back. If the growth of government can be limited, it’s possible for the private sector to outgrow the government. For example, you don’t need to repeal the minimum wage. If it is kept low enough, it becomes irrelevant and no longer blocks low skilled workers from jobs.
It’s a never ending battle, but it doesn’t have to be a losing one.
Gun rights and school choice are obvious social examples. Welfare reform is a good fiscal example. We tend to forget how many states had desperate budget issues that have been largely straightened out, because we focus heavily on the handful of very liberal states that are staring bankruptcy in the face.
I saw a speech by Jonah Goldberg recently in which he addressed exactly that, the “and therefore Trump” notion. He didn’t follow it, and I don’t either. We maybe agree on a diagnosis of the problem. But when you propose Trump as a cure you sound to me like a doctor who’s correctly diagnosed my heart disease and decided to prescribe bleeding with leeches. There’s got to be some chain of reasoning between “the problem is X” and “therefore Trump” and it’s not even remotely obvious to me what that reasoning is.
You live in the most prosperous country at it’s most prosperous time. Calling it “ruins” will lead most people to stop taking you seriously.
Oh I agree there are a lot of things to bemoan. The hyperbole was in blaming me for all of it.
I think some of us — me included — are going to feel that that’s just a holding action. I’m no Trumper, but I think it’s fair to ask at what point we get to start scraping off some of these necrotizing, suffocating barnacles of leftism.
I’ll give you gun rights. Largely an accomplishment of the courts, but conservatives have certainly made a concerted effort to improve the personnel of the courts making that accomplishment possible.
School choice hasn’t made that much progress. Yes, it’s an initiative. Yes, it’s in use in limited scope in limited jurisdictions. But at best I’d call it a promising opportunity, not a win.
I’m not sure I’m expert enough in welfare policy to really say for sure, but we haven’t even bent the cost curve on the social welfare hammock, have we? Sure, we’ve moved some pieces around, maybe even to some (modest) good effect. But I wouldn’t exactly call it a rollback, would you?
The GOP does much better at the local and state level. At the national level it is a failure.
Gun rights has a state-level struggle, and the national party has irrelevant. I won’t give them credit for not simply passing the democrats gun control agenda on their own, especially when they continually get caught scheming with them to do so. But the were famously unwilling to betray their supporters on gun control when they already planned to betray them on immigration.
Welfare reform has been all but undone by Obama, by fiat. If the GOP has anything to say about that I haven’t heard.
School choice- this leaves the teachers union still in charge of the public schools, and most of the money. Success would be the teachers union destroyed, and functioning public schools that actually teach.
And, lastly, I won’t call it success when the left is allowed to run states into bankruptcy, then stick the GOP with the political pain of solving the problems the democrats created.
Better: Run keep control of the state so that leftists can’t ruin, the reap political rewards.
For example, Texas.
Yea, Santa Clause will always be more popular than the guy who says “eat your broccoli.” That’s a reality we’re up against no doubt.
I don’t know that you could be sure of that. He has a 40+ year history of reneging on promises and contracts and backtracking on commitments that don’t augur well.
To quote Jonah Goldberg, “When given a choice between two crap sandwiches on different kinds of bread, my response is ‘I’ll skip lunch.’”
From my point of view:
They could have done more:
These are three areas where the GOP has not fought. They could not even muster bill after bill for Obama to veto. They let the Dems in the Senate cover for him. If the other side could use nukes, so could have our Senate.
The GOP did not do enough to stop Obama. They did not work to restore the power of Congress, even with control of both Houses.
So what we have here is not a truth matter, but one of satisfaction. Frank, the GOP appears to have done all that you wanted (or enough to make you happy). For me, they did not do enough. Thus, you are happy with Ryan and McConnell, and I am not.
That is not an option. In 2016, Lunch skips you!
This is a perfect forum to quote Jonah. He is now the Godfather of the “I’m simply too pure to soil my soul by participating” in this epochal battle.
There are no sidelines, according to St. Dennis Prager. The ballot box doesn’t really care about your motivations. Failure to vote for Trump, who by definition has an uphill road against those who perennially destroy any GOP candidate, and who needs every vote he can get to break the back of the Behemoth, is a vote for HRC.
So, thanks.
It occurred to me that we have a sort of ‘perfect storm’ situation. I just watched a Camille Paglia video where she noted that the extreme Marxist, man-hating feminists were discredited in the Nineties, but still managed to worm their way into professorships. So we have a millenial generation virtually brainwashed by academic leftists. In 2008 a massive economic crisis gave the left the reigns of power, and now self-interested gov’t bureaucrats are willing to go along with weaponized gov’t.
As for Trump, I will reluctantly vote for him. The best argument I’ve seen in that regard was made in a very good post by Mark Steyn. Typing on a tablet, I can’t offer a link, but I think the title was ‘Laws are for the little people.’ It is definitely worth a read. Here it is: http://ricochet.com/381975/mark-steyn-on-hillarys-lawlessness/
De nada.
So do you think anyone who chooses not to vote for any presidential candidate is “too pure to soil [their] soul by participating”?
I’ll see your equivocation and raise you one horrific abuse of power after another, compounded by the machine’s ability to make anything go away: documents, victories, Americans…
Note:
Personal attack.Yup.
Draft-dodgersin the war to save the Republic.Here you go:
http://www.steynonline.com/7564/laws-are-for-the-little-people