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From NeverTrump to Humbled Supporter: A Journey of Faith
For a few weeks, I’ve had an article brewing in my brain. It’s a follow-up to a previous article that I wrote, and I was pleased to read the new article last night. I didn’t write it, so I owe Western Chauvinist a debt of gratitude for not only writing what I was thinking, but doing it better than I would have. The article — “Reluctant Trump Christians, Where Is Your Confounding Love?” — is pretty much the defense I was planning on making as a follow-up to the Christian perspective for supporting our President.
I have a new wrinkle to add to the argument. I was a NeverTrumper. In fact, I was such an angry NeverTrumper that I left the GOP in July 2016, and started a new political party. Things were going extremely well as we surpassed 30,000 members very quickly, but I was blindsided by dissension from within that evicted me from the party I established. It hurt. I withdrew from politics and public society for several months.
The small, empty spot I left open in the world of politics would have stayed empty for a long time had it not been for two things. First, I had given everything to the party prior to being usurped. I sold my half of a company that I’d worked hard to build because I believed my calling was in politics, not advertising. Most of the money I received from the sale went into two things: The party and my newborn son’s healthcare. He was born with a bum ticker, putting me and my wife in hotels in Hollywood for three months through his three open-heart surgeries. It was expensive, much more than expected. The party was expensive as well; getting to the point that fundraising could support it required money upfront. Just as we were a month or two away from making the party self-sufficient and able to start paying me back, I was hit with the bad news that they were moving on without me.
At least I thought it was bad news at the time. As it turned out, the second thing that brought me back into the world of politics was a direct result of what took me out of it. Depressed, I turned to faith. The Bible is far more capable of curing all ills than most people realize. Human expression falls short in describing how amazing the Bible truly is because Λόγος, the Logos, the Word itself has power beyond what our feeble minds can grasp.
I can’t recall exactly what it was that made me realize the “bad” things that had happened were really blessings in disguise. It would be nice to tell a story at this point about how this verse or that passage made me re-examine politics and my place in it, but I was too stubborn to let it all happen at once. It was gradual. I started writing again. I even did a couple of interviews, something I did every other day when the party was going strong but had stopped doing mostly out of shame. Through it all, I gradually realized my complaints about the President weren’t nearly as prevalent as the good things I saw happening in America.
For the last year or so, my transition from NeverTrump to unabashed Trump supporter was completed. It doesn’t seem like a long time, but I actually have no lingering reservations about the President. Do I still get annoyed by some of his Tweets? Absolutely. But I’ve been wrong about him enough to realize the fight over his bombast is insignificant compared to the fight against the once-creeping Marxism that is now in full sprint towards America. I was sure he’d buckle on the wall. He hasn’t. I was sure he’d cave to gun control. He didn’t (bump-stock ban notwithstanding). I was sure Chinese tariffs would cripple our economy. It hasn’t.
At heart, I’m still a conservative who opposes the populist, big-government agenda. But I’m also aware that the long-term goal of less government and more constitutional conservatives in control in DC can only be achieved by walking the populist path for now. In fact, I’m confident that my dream of inserting fiscal and social conservatism into the DNA of our lawmakers is only possible after the growing allure of Marxism is beaten back into its dark cave. The right person to do that is President Trump and the right party to see it through is the GOP.
Someday, I’ll be back to fighting for a resurgent Tea Party-esque entity that’s putting in limited-government, federalism-minded conservatives to replace RINOs and neocons. But the bigger fight right now is against Mike Bloomberg, Antifa, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Extinction Rebellion, Bernie Sanders, Justice Democrats, Everytown for Gun Safety, George Soros, Planned Parenthood, mainstream media, and the Democratic Party.
We need to limit government. We need to fight Cultural Marxism. We need a whole bunch of people fighting the good fight. For the next five years, the person to lead those fights is President Donald J. Trump.
Published in Elections
You live in a really black and white world, that frankly does not exist in our politics. I am not NT, I think we can agree that I am more supportive of the President than you are.
It was not a “perfect” call, nor was it impeachable (Particularly on the 2nd article of impeachment) There is a world of room between perfect and impeachable. Things like silly, dumb, plain wrong all exist in this space.
You know who else doesn’t mention the Ukraine impeachment, virtually everyone. Democrats swarmed around Iowa and New Hampshire and the Democratic voters weren’t asking about impeachment. That does not mean that all these Democrats felt the call was “perfect”
These “how dare you” non responses are getting tiresome. The OP has been on the site for like 2 weeks, made another post trashing the Ukraine whistleblower, and has made zero responses to any of my points. Sorry, this “I was a confused NT” story just doesn’t sound credible so far.
I’m sorry if it’s growing tiresome. If you want them to stop, you might want to stop accusing other members of posting bad faith with zero evidence, which, last I checked, is also against the CoC.
But who could blame them when your points all start with the premise everyone else is wrong. It’s like talking with Mike Bloomberg. Why bother?
I don’t know this author and I am not here to be anyone’s cheerleader.
That said through the magic of google I found that the poster has been “published “ on a number of conservative and Christian sites. He has said somethings more recently that were supportive of Trump and some things in the past fairly critical. He did start a new party based on small government.
he seems to have been pretty straight forward in his biography and thinking.
Changing ones opinion or disagreeing with people who will never vote for Trump does not make someone a liar.
I called him a flip flopper (true) and not a liar (although being new and not offering any responses reduced his credibility) . Sounds like you’ve done lots of research on his past views, but I still maintain its an outlier since there is almost no reason to change, and despite the early dismissal of NT’s, we’re definitely still here and I don’t see anyone wavering. I’m happy to hear otherwise though (although I will be very skeptical)
Btw, kudos to your substantive posts in this thread.
Gosh, I have, and you just cannot take the answers. :(
Other than all the NT’s who have come on over to our side.
I note, you complain the OP has not responded to your points, but you are not responding to mine.
Excuse me? You know one of the things that moved me from NT to a reluctant Trump-voter to someone who will proudly vote for him this November? People like you. I got tired of defending both the President and his supporters from the crude dishonesty of those who hate him. I realized that so much of what they said were fabrications. They’d say “Trump said this terrible thing!” and I’d go and listen to the actual transcript and it turned out he’d said nothing of the sort. So either the Trump haters are as stupid as I think they are, or they’re just liars. No middle ground.
So you know what moved me to begin supporting him? You did. You and your Trump-hating pals. Good job!
Also, your continued fixation on “perfect” shows me exactly how empty your rhetoric is.
Then you’re free to go somewhere where they’ll pat you on the back for your hatred. I recommend The Bulwank.
I did. You asked me for ways that Trump has been basically the president an NT would’ve feared, and I gave you 4 bullet points. Then you starting posting strawman “how dare NT’s be this awful to us” distractions, and you lost me.
No, your points were wrong. And I pointed out how you are actually acting.
But hey, if being a real conservative means treating anyone who does not agree with me as morally inferior, you can have it, hoss.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/18/i-didnt-vote-for-trump-in-2016-heres-why-i-hope-he-gets-four-more-years/
Are you sure you want to go there?
http://ricochet.com/terms-conditions/code-conduct/
Please read the first sentence of the Code of Conduct. We don’t demand that you believe what people say, but keep the accusations to yourself. If everyone is questioning each other’s honesty, any attempt at civil discussion will break down.
This is also toward your own benefit. The good faith clause protects you from being accused of being a troll / Soros plant / other deceitful motive just like it protects the writer of this post.
This whole thing sounds like a No True NeverScotsman fallacy to me.
No need to do that. You’re doing a pretty good job of trashing the NT movement yourself. Just keep talking.
Faith seems to be a mixed bag. My mother says that every good person must vote for the Democrat, especially for Bernie, because “Jesus was the first and original socialist.”
Too bad you can’t point out to your mom that Jesus, being God, isn’t resource limited. Unlike the rest of the world.
Or, to put it another way. Jesus can afford to be socialist. No one else can.
Oops, posted to wrong article.
As far as I know, Jesus never took anything from anybody to give to someone else.
Sadly, mom cannot be reasoned with, or even explained to. She doesn’t believe that Obama had the greek columns at his inauguration and the talk about “this is when the oceans begin to recede,” etc. She doesn’t believe Obama said energy prices will “necessarily skyrocket” under his policies. She doesn’t think Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch or Fast And Furious ever happened… because only Trump has a “cult of personality,” no Democrat ever did…
He took the 7 loaves and 2 fishes from a boy to feed the 5000.
It is not reported whether they gave the 12 baskets of food left over back to the boy.
John 6:1-14
One of my lessons here is that somehow resources do not constrain the Son of Man.
I thought they were at the Democratic Convention.
This too, it is his nomination acceptance speech. He has a lovely voice, you could play it when she comes over to visit and then mention how it (the speech) was among those gifted to the Queen of England on an iPod, when Obama went over there on his first state visit.
She would likely believe that someone from Trump’s campaign created the “recording” using an Obama impersonator.
For all I know, she doesn’t believe the Queen of England is real, either.
But she still gets to vote. Sadly, the only thing worse than NOT having a sanity test for voting, might be HAVING a sanity test for voting. Because of who might end up getting to decide what “sanity” is.
What someone – probably not good manners to get it from her children – should ask her, sometime, is why she’s okay with socialism NOW, since she’s “safely” retired and probably not going to be around all that much longer…
This reminds me of something Bill Cosby used to say about his elderly parents. “These are not the people I grew up with! These are old people now, trying to get into heaven!”
Although why she’d think advocating a political system leading to misery for her own progeny and much of the rest of world, would help HER get into heaven, remains a mystery.
Reminds me of this line from that awesome animated movie, Megamind;
I think BastiatJunior meant Jesus never took anything by force.
Actually, you’re giving me too much credit. I didn’t know about the boy.
You’re right that Jesus never took any thing by force.
It’s been a long time, but didn’t the boy give them freely?
I greatly appreciate all of the defenses of my position. I don’t engage with trolls, not because I claim to some high ground or ideological purity but because it literally never, ever, ever changes anyone’s mind. I use Twitter with the #Christian hashtag at the beginning of my profile. Trust me, the ad hominem attacks to just about anything I say are much more insulting than being called stupid, or whatever was said about my position.
Perhaps the best way to address it is like this. There’s an episode of Spongebob where Squidward tells Spongebob he had never tried a Krabby Patty. When he was finally forced to do so, he continued to pretend like he didn’t like it, but secretly he adored it. He would sneak away to get his fix of Krabby Patties whenever he thought nobody was looking. It almost killed him.
I didn’t like Trumpy Patties at first. Heck, I even tried it and didn’t like it. But over time those Trumpy Patties turned out to be delicious and highly nutritious. Instead of pretending like I didn’t like them, I decided to let them become part of my political diet, and I haven’t felt better.
Apologies for the silly reference to a kid’s show to illustrate my point (quite poorly, I might add) but when faced with unhinged, ad hominem attacks, it’s best to reply with things that make me smile.
I became Catholic fairly late in life and am still somewhat ignorant. I have read a lot of the Old Testament and started reading the New Testament this past year.
I read the first three Gospels. That leaves – you guessed it – John.
Figures. :-)
The discussion between Jesus and his disciples immediately prior to the mention of the boy was centered on purchasing enough food. However, the gospel does not directly say one way or the other.
I believe they bought the loaves and fishes.
Good thing I wasn’t around back then, I hate all seafood.