-By Warner Todd Huston
Many #NeverTrumpers are claiming they won’t vote for Donald Trump because he supposedly said he didn’t want the vote of conservatives. But what #NeverTrumpers are really doing is acting like liberals by putting their feeeeelings above the best interests of the country. In this equation, it is the #NeverTrumpers who are the problem, not Trump.
This isn’t a new problem, of course. Both John McCain and Jeb Bush said they didn’t want the support of conservatives when they were running for president. In fact, I refused to support Jeb in the primaries in part because of his nose thumbing and I refused to vote for John McCain in the 2008 primaries for the same reason.
McCain isn’t the last GOP candidate to do this. Into the 2016 campaign for president, Jeb Bush did the same thing. In 2014 he said he could win the nomination (like McCain did) without the support of conservatives. Most ideologically conservative voters–i.e. conservative first and Republican second–obliged Jeb by refusing to support his primary campaign.
Many also carried it past the primaries. After McCain said it back during his runs for the White House, many conservatives returned the favor by vowing never to vote for him even in the general election. I was one of them. I refused to vote for McCain against Barack Obama and now I feel I was wrong (explanation below) and I reversed course for 2012 and voted Romney despite how much I hated him.
Now, the primaries are one thing. Of course the primaries are the time when you should refuse to vote for someone who said he doesn’t want your vote. This goes without saying.
But regardless of what a candidate said during the primary on this topic, the general election is a different game.
Anyway, #NeverTrumpers are now using Trump’s words against him to give themselves another excuse not to vote for him in his general election race against Hillary Clinton. And they are wrong to do it.
In May Trump told the media he didn’t think the GOP needed to be unified for him to win the primaries.
Saying he was a “different” kind of candidate, Trump said he hoped the party would be unified but that he thought he could win without that unified front. “I have to stay true to my principles also. And I’m a conservative, but don’t forget: This is called the ‘Republican Party,’ not the ‘conservative party,'” Trump said.
Many conservatives decided this meant Trump was telling conservatives he didn’t need (some say “didn’t want”) their votes.
I should point out that at least as far as the primary campaign is concerned, Trump was right. He won and handily despite the vocal opposition of the #NeverTrumpers.
But whatever Trump meant, #NeverTrumpers have decided Trump told them to get lost just like Jeb and McCain did. So, acting in a fit of pique, they are obliging him for what they think he said to them.
As I noted above I did the same thing in 2008 when McLame was running against Obama. And guess who won? Obama. And what has Obama done in office? Only some of the worst things any president has ever done. McCain would have made for a crappy president, but he would have been a far sight better than the virulently anti-American Obama.
So, I was wrong not to vote for John McCain, despite how mad I was at him. And today, #NeverTrumpers are just as wrong to oppose Trump since the only other alternative is Hillary Clinton–a woman who will be even worse than Obama.
After all, think of what they are doing. They are voting for Clinton because they are torked off that Trump said he doesn’t want their vote. They are letting their feelings outweigh what is best for the country. They are placing feeeelings above logic just like liberals do.
I mean, seriously. What sensible person would support Hillary to help her destroy the country because they are annoyed at her opposition. I am ashamed of myself for having done this eight years ago.
What we are seeing with these #NeverTrumpers stampeding to support Hillary is no less than a revelation, by the way. It is proof that they don’t care anything at all about conservatism. They only care about the establishment gravy train. In their minds Trump threatens the status quo and is threatening to cut off the scraps they get from the table of Big Government Inc. So, they have decided to join Hillary in order to keep the gravy train chugging along.
I think once this election is over and the #NeverTrumpers have succeeded in helping Hilary win I will have no place to go in American politics. The so-called conservatives will have proven that they aren’t conservative and never were, and the GOP will have proven that it won’t even follow its own rules and support its own nominee.
Finally, I feel compelled to add this before too many uninformed assumptions are made: I did not support Trump during the primaries and did not want him for our nominee.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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