Let me say up front that I am a lifelong Republican and
conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have
voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have
never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am
pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’
reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement.
I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am
not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump.
Let me explain why.
First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in
Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another
who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks
about how thankful we are for the Citizens United decision but seems to
have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the co-author of the law
that the decision overturned.
In 2012, we were told to vote for Mitt Romney,
a Massachusetts liberal who proudly signed an individual insurance
mandate into law and refused to repudiate the decision. Before that,
there was George W. Bush,
the man who decided it was America’s duty to bring democracy to the
Middle East. And before that, there was Bob Dole, the man who gave us
the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I, of course, voted for those candidates and do not regret doing so.
I, however, am self-aware enough to realize I voted for them because I
will vote for virtually anyone to keep the left out of power and not
because I thought them to be the best or even really a conservative
choice.
Given this history, the conservative media’s claims that the
Republican Party must reject Donald Trump because he is not a
“conservative” are pathetic and ridiculous to those of us who are old
enough to remember the last 25 years.
Looking out for America
Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people
to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a
“conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people
attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of
underlying principles about government and society it once was. Modal TriggerA Donald Trump supporter in Wichita, KansasPhoto: Getty Images
Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian
internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New
Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and
religiously driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems
to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or
reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the left.
Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I
grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of
conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not
fetishize them the way so many libertarians do.
This strain understood that a situation where every country in the
world but the US acts in its own interests on matters of international
trade and engages in all kinds of skulduggery in support of their
interests is not free trade by any rational definition. This strain
understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the
national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our
culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.
All of this seems to have been lost. Conservatives have become some
sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate
potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the
world. The same people who daily fret over the effects of leaving our
society to the mercy of Hollywood and the mass culture have somehow
decided leaving it to the mercies of the international markets is
required.
I spent the last 20 years watching
the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for
one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative
principles and values.
Third, there is the issue of the war on Islamic extremism. Let me say
upfront that I am a veteran of two foreign deployments in this war. As a
member of the 1% who have served in these wars which movement
conservatives consider so vital, my question for you and every other
conservative is just when the hell did being conservative mean thinking
the US has some kind of a duty to save foreign nations from themselves
or bring our form of democratic republicanism to them by force? I fully
understand the sad necessity to fight wars and I do not believe in “blow
back” or any of the other nonsense that says the world will leave us
alone if only we will do the same. At the same time, I cannot for the
life of me understand how conservatives of all people convinced
themselves that the solution to the 9/11 attacks was to forcibly create
democracy in the Islamic world. I have even less explanations for how —
15 years and 10,000-plus lives later — conservatives refuse to examine
their actions and expect the country to send more of its young to bleed
and die over there to save the Iraqis who will not save themselves. Modal TriggerGeorge W. BushPhoto: Reuters
The lowest moment of the election was when Trump said what everyone
in the country knows: that invading Iraq was a mistake. Rather than
engaging the question with honest self-reflection, all of the so-called
“conservatives” responded with the usual “How dare he?”
Worse, they let Jeb Bush claim that George W. Bush “kept us safe.” I
can assure you that President Bush didn’t keep me safe. Do I and the
other people in the military not count? Sure, we signed up to give our
lives for our country, and I will never regret doing so. But doesn’t our
commitment require a corresponding responsibility on the part of the
president to only expect us to do so when it is both necessary and in
the national interest?
And since when is bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan so much
in the national interest that it is worth killing or maiming 50,000
Americans to try to achieve? I don’t see that, but I am not a Wilsonian
and used to, at least, be a conservative. I have these strange ideas
that my government ought to act in America’s interests instead of the
rest of the world’s interests. I wish conservatives could understand how
galling it was to have a career politician lecture us about how George
W. Bush kept us safe.
Time for civility is past
Donald Trump is the only Republican candidate who seems to have any
inclination to act strictly in America’s interest. More importantly, he
is the only Republican candidate who is willing to even address the
problem. Trump may not have been right to say that we need to stop
letting more Muslims into the country or, at least, examine the issue,
but he wasn’t crazy to suggest it either. And like when he said the
obvious about Iraq, the first people to condemn him and deny the obvious
were conservatives. Somehow, being conservative now means denying the
obvious and saying idiotic fantasies like “Islam is always peaceful” or
“Our war is not with a radical strain of Islam.” Uh, sorry, but no it is
not, and yes it is. And if getting a president who at least understands
that means voting for Trump, then I guess I am not a conservative.
Fourth, I really do not care that Donald Trump is vulgar, combative
and uncivil, and I would encourage you not to care as well. I would love
to have our political discourse be what it was even 30 years ago and
something better than what it is today. But the fact is the Democratic
Party is never going to return to that, and there isn’t anything anyone
can do about it. Modal TriggerTrump holds a copy of The Economist.Photo: AP
Over the last 15 years, I have watched the then-chairman of the DNC
say the idea that President Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen was a
“serious position held by many people,” watched the vice president tell
a black audience that Republicans would return them to slavery if they
could, watched Harry Reid say Mitt Romney was a tax cheat without any
reason to believe it was true, and seen an endless amount of appalling
behavior on the part of the Democrats which is too long to list here and
of which I am sure you are aware.
And now you tell me that I should reject Trump because he is uncivil
and mean to his opponents? Is that some kind of a joke? This is not the
time for civility or to worry about it in our candidates.
Fifth, I do not care that Donald Trump is in favor of big government.
That is certainly not a virtue but it is not a meaningful vice, since
the same can be said of every single Republican in the race. I am sorry,
but the “We are just one more Republican victory from small government”
card is maxed out. We are not getting small government no matter who
wins. So Trump being big government is a wash.
Sixth, Trump offers at least the chance that he might act in the
American interest instead of the world’s interest or in the blind
pursuit of some fantasy ideological goals. There is more to economic
policy than cutting taxes, sham free-trade agreements and hollow appeals
to “cutting government” and the free market. Trump may not be good, but
he at least understands that. In contrast, the rest of the GOP and
everyone in Washington or the media who calls themselves a conservative
has no understanding of this.
Insulting his supporters
Marco Rubio would be nothing but a repeat of the Bush 43
administration with more blood and treasure spent on the fantasy that
acting in other people’s interests indirectly helps ours.
Ted Cruz might be somewhat better, but it is unclear whether he could
resist the temptations of nation building and wouldn’t get bullied into
trying it again. And as much as I like Cruz on many areas, he, like all
of them except Trump, seems totally unwilling to admit that the
government has a responsibility to act in the nation’s interests on
trade policy and do something besides let every country in the world
take advantage of us in the name of “free trade.”
Consider the following. Our country is going broke, half its
working-age population isn’t even looking for work, faces the real
threat of massive Islamic terrorist attack and has a government
incapable of doing even basic functions. Meanwhile, conservatives act
like cutting Planned Parenthood funding or stopping gays from getting
marriage licenses are the great issues of the day and then have the
gumption to call Donald Trump a clown. It would be downright funny if it
wasn’t so sad and the situation so serious. Modal TriggerMarco RubioPhoto: AP
It is not that I think Donald Trump is some savior or an ideal
candidate. I don’t. It is that I cannot for the life of me — given the
sorry nature of our current political class — understand why
conservatives are losing their minds over him and are willing to destroy
the Republican Party and put Hillary Clinton into office to stop him.
All of your objections to him either apply to many other candidates you
have backed or are absurd.
I don’t expect you to agree with me or start backing Trump. I would,
however, encourage you to at least think about what I and others have
said and to understand that the people backing Trump are not nihilists
or uneducated hillbillies looking for a job. Some of us are pretty
serious people and once considered ourselves conservatives. Even if you
still hate Trump, you owe it to conservatism to ask yourself how exactly
conservatism managed to alienate so many of its supporters such that
they are now willing to vote for someone you loathe as much as Trump.
I am a Trump supporter. My father is a Trump supporter. We both went
to war for this country. My father spent 40 years in the private sector
maintaining this thing we like to call the phone system. I have spent
the last 20 years in the Army and toiling away doing national-security
and law-enforcement issues for the federal government. Just what exactly
have any of the people saying these things ever done for the country?
Where do they feel entitled to say these things? And more importantly,
why on Earth do they think it is helping their cause?
I don’t want to be associated with a movement that calls other
Americans bums and welfare queens because they support the wrong
candidate. If I wanted to do that, I would be a leftist.
Perhaps none of this means anything to you, and the movement has left
me behind. If it has, I think conservatives should understand that it
is leaving a lot of people like me behind. I can’t see how that is a
good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment