Trump Nomination Victory Take-aways

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

I’ve given a lot of thought to how I would write this last “take-aways” column.  Ever since the beginning of the primary season, I’ve followed every state contest with my admittedly not unbiased analysis of the results.   My hope throughout the process was that sanity would prevail and that a respectable, credible, mainstream conservative Republican would win the nomination.  Even in the darkest hours, I remained hopeful and even optimistic that reason would prevail over insanity.

Yesterday those hopes were dashed.  Donald Trump – yes that Donald Trump – is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party for the presidency of the United States of America.

Let that sit in your head for a minute.  The guy who is famous primarily for being famous, kind of like a Kardashian in the business sector, is the guy that the Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan has chosen to bear its banner in the race for the most powerful office in the entire world.

After 160 years of standing for conservative principles, fighting for liberty and freedom, opposing tyranny at home and abroad, and championing the basic values of honor and decency, the new leader of the Republican Party is a man who is not and never has been a conservative, who promotes a xenophobic nationalist agenda that would smother the civil rights of millions of Americans, who wants to withdraw from the world and build a Fortress Americana, and whose campaign has been the most dishonest, uncivil, violent, offensive, and downright sleazy in the history of our once-great party.

Nevertheless, earlier in the day yesterday, before the results were in (but the writing was on the wall), in my strong desire to avoid seeing Hillary Clinton elected president, I had a fleeting thought that maybe I should be open to allowing Trump to convince me to support him if he wins the nomination.  Then I saw the reports that he had accused his opponent’s father of being an accomplice in the assassination of President Kennedy.  He was serious, and he doubled down on this insane claim today.  So any thought that I could ever consider supporting him was eliminated.

But, but, but – he says he’s going to be presidential once he’s locked up the nomination. Really. The man has been running for president for 11 months and has yet to act in any way consistent with the dignity and honor of the high office to which he aspires, but since he says that in the next year he’ll start to do so, we should embrace him?  Well, as I said above, he certainly didn’t start yesterday, so when exactly does he plan to start?  And how long are decent serious good Republicans expected to wait for it to happen?

“But the threat of Hillary Clinton becoming president is so dire that we must embrace Trump,” say some of my friends.  Why?  What has he ever said or done that makes you think he would be any less dangerous to this country and its Constitution than Hillary Clinton?  He has already praised Barack Obama for his bold and unconstitutional use of executive orders to circumvent our elected representatives in Congress and has pledged to do even more of that if elected (but, of course, he’s “going to use them much better.”)  He has said that he intends to create a national registry of Muslims and force all Muslims to register and carry a special identification card.  (Where have we seen those policies imposed on all members of a particular minority religion before?)

“But Hillary would put the Supreme Court in the control of leftist jurists who would shred the Constitution.”  What makes you think Trump wouldn’t do the same?  He’s already said that his sister, leftist Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, is “a brilliant judge.”  And we’ve seen through his rhetoric and policies that he himself will shred the Constitution without waiting for the Supreme Court to do it.

And let’s not forget his plan to kill the innocent children of terrorists despite the illegality and moral repugnance of even considering doing so.

I’ve written extensively about the many reasons that Donald Trump is unworthy of the public trust.  For the bill of particulars, see this column.

Hillary Clinton is also utterly unacceptable for the presidency for all of the obvious reasons: her congenital dishonesty and rampant corruption, her overwhelming incompetence, her leftist ideology. Let me be clear:  I will never support or vote for Hillary Clinton.

But Donald Trump is equally dangerous as a bigot nationalist who has spent his entire life as a leftist himself and only found the light of conservatism when he switched parties to run for president as a Republican.  He is the antithesis of everything I’ve worked to build within the Republican Party and conservative movement for nearly 30 years.  And so I cannot and will not support or vote for him either.

I understand and accept that either Trump or Clinton is going to be the next President of the United States (unless Mr. Comey paves the way for Joe Biden).  I understand and respect the decision by many of my friends to support Trump as the Republican Party’s nominee, especially in the face of electing Hillary Clinton to an office for which she is wholly unworthy.  And I’m not going to leave the Republican Party (at least not yet), like some of my friends have understandably chosen to do.

But I have always had certain baseline standards for a candidate to get my support, and those minimal standards are non-negotiable – even with The Donald.  Among them is that he must be a person of good character with a service oriented-heart. He cannot be a bigot in any way and must respect all people as individuals on their individual merits.  And he must be a proponent of limited government, free market economics, and a strong foreign policy and national defense.  I am a Republican, but I am a father, a Jewish devotee of God, and an American first.  I cannot and will not ever support a hateful bigoted nationalist career leftist for any office no matter what party he claims as his own or what party claims him.

In short, either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president, but neither of them will get there with my support.

So what exactly does all of this mean?  It means that I will oppose both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump vigorously for the good of my country and my kids’ future.  But I’d like to be for something this year and not just against the evil that we now face.  So I will look at the third-party and independent candidates to see if any of them deserve my support, and if I find one who is worthy, I will support him or her.  If not, I will write in someone who is.  One thing I won’t ever do is stay home.

I will also dedicate my energies to supporting those Republican candidates for Congress and other offices who will badly need that help as donations to the Republican Party dry up, traditionally Republican voters dissociate themselves from us in droves, and the Democrats aggressively work to morph our good mainstream conservative Republican candidates into Trump.  If the Republican Party is to be preserved as America’s party of conservative principles and of honor and integrity, it will have to happen with the candidates for lower offices who will be challenged to survive being on a ticket led by Donald Trump.  Those candidates here in Virginia who refuse to follow and align themselves with Trump will have my vigorous support.

The two major party candidates this year reflect a total and complete failure of our political party system.  I pray that both parties reflect on what happened and have the wisdom build a better system that brings the best and the brightest of both parties before the voters going forward.