Donald Trump and his supporters contend that the GOP establishment is a bunch of gutless, cowardly weasels who won’t fight for what they believe in. And the establishment is on the verge of proving them right—by supporting Donald Trump.
Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican party and lifelong political insider, is as establishment as you can get. And he’s made his peace with the prospect of Trump as Republican nominee.
“Donald Trump’s not my cup of tea…but I’m gonna vote for whoever our party nominates, even if it’s somebody I don’t agree with on much,” Barbour told Ricochet.com
“I’ve been the chairman of this party. I’m not one who believes I can substitute my judgment for the judgment of millions of Republican voters.”
Gov. Barbour concluded: “If you don’t trust the people and recognize that they’re gonna be wrong sometimes. But in this case their bad decision is one I’d rather have than the Democrats’ candidate Hillary Clinton.”
In other words, in the battle between principle and party, Barbour’s a “Party Uber Alles” man, all the way.
Particularly telling is his construct: “I’m not one who believes I can substitute my judgment” for the judgment of the GOP. Really, Haley? Because I can.
Like most Americans—and most Republicans, for that matter—I have no problem saying to the GOP, “Sorry—you’re asking too much in the name of loyalty.”
I started 2016 full of hope for the presidential race. There were 17 candidates to choose from, and I made a deal with my fellow Republicans: You pick anyone except Jeb! or Trump, and I’m in, 100 percent. From Christie or Kasich to Huckabee or Cruz—hell, even Gilmore or Pataki—I was in full “Put me in, coach, I’m ready to play” mode.
But no. My fellow Republicans have chosen the poison pill of the first pyramid-scheme president, and they insist that, of Trump is the nominee, I owe him my vote.
No. No, I don’t.
Forget the politics. Forget that fact that 67 percent of Americans dislike Donald Trump. Forget the fact that he loses head-to-head polling match-ups with Hillary 43 out of 49 times. Forget the fact that a new poll shows him losing the most GOP state in the union, Utah(!), to a Democrat.
Set all that aside. I can’t vote for Donald Trump because I—as a human being—can’t give my support to a despicable, lying, big-government authoritarian, multi-level-marketing rip-off artist. I just can’t.
I’m not going to be in the position that George Wallace supporters were in a generation ago, people who cast a vote in 1968 that they were too humiliated to admit they cast a few years later. When my children ask me, “Dad, who did you vote for,” I’m not going to shame myself by answering, “I voted for Donald Trump.”
This is what the (as George Will calls them) “Vichy Republicans” don’t understand. Trump accommodationists like Barbour, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, etc. want to believe that spinning their vote as “anti-Hillary” washes away the sin of supporting a race-baiting, violence-promoting stooge with no respect for the Constitution. It doesn’t.
A vote for Trump is just that: A vote to give the office of Washington, Lincoln and Reagan to a reality-TV vulgarian who cheapens and coarsens everything he touches.
That is a vote that millions of Americans in the #NeverTrump movement cannot cast. Trump supporters can keep saying that party loyalty will pull us back in into the fold—just like they keep telling themselves Trump’s “highest-disapproval-numbers-in-history” don’t matter—but they’re just wrong.
Haley Barbour’s right that “life is a choice.” And the GOP picking Donald Trump is one of those choices, the consequence of which will be 6 million lifelong GOP voters abandoning their party.
Later in that same Ricochet podcast, sociologist Charles Murray—whose work is often cited to explain the Trump phenomenon—was asked if he could support The Donald for the White House.
“I think Donald Trump is a despicable human being…I agree with Jonah Goldberg. He’s always identified conservatism not just with policy but with the importance of character.
“I think for the Republican Party to have Donald Trump as its nominee is a betrayal of everything conservatives stand for.”
