-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.
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So, #NeverTrump, You Won’t Vote Trump Because He Said He Didn’t Want Your Vote? Here is Why YOU are the Problem in This Equation”
In June, Nevada’s Republican Sen. Dean Heller tried to get the Pentagon to change its practice of banning arms from our soldiers on bases and in recruiting centers here in America. Unfortunately for our soldiers, John McCain was the principle foe of the move and helped to defeat the arming of our soldiers, a decision that recently had deadly consequences in Tennessee.