The Boston Globe is begging its readership to ignore the siren song of Donald Trump, and told its readers in an editorial this week that it is “imperative” that the GOP front-runner be stopped.
“Each vote counts — moreso here than in some other states,” the paper’s editorial board pleaded. “One feature of the Massachusetts Republican primary is that it’s not a ‘winner-take-all’ race. The Commonwealth’s 42 GOP convention delegates will be allocated in proportion to each candidate’s statewide total, even if they don’t win. So voters needn’t fear that their ballot against Trump will go to waste: No matter who actually tops the field — and a new poll suggests it could be Trump — the more people vote for one of Trump’s opponents, the fewer delegates he’ll receive from Massachusetts.”
The reason that it’s so important that Massachusetts voters come together to deny Trump a victory is that, for the Globe, he represents a revival of ugly past traditions.
“Trump’s campaign has revived some of the ugliest traditions in American politics, including the scapegoating of religious minorities and immigrants,” the board argued.
“He has yet to put forth a serious platform of ideas about how he would govern or what a Trump administration would seek to accomplish. Just his nomination by one of the nation’s major parties would be an international embarrassment,” they added.
For the 2016 GOP primary, the Globe has endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The paper also urged un-enrolled voters to cast a GOP ballot for the Ohio executive instead of participating in the Democratic primary that same day (the paper has endorsed Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in that race).
The paper posited that Kasich is the best qualified in the GOP field, and argued that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is too inexperienced, while Dr. Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are far too “right-wing.”
Further, the paper argued, though there’s an argument to be made for casting a vote for Trump in the hope that he will run, and fail, against Clinton, that plan is just too dangerous.
“That’s playing with fire. Just remember how few pundits believed Trump would ever make it this far,” the board argued.
“The best way to stop Trump is to stop Trump now. Thanks to his landslide victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina against divided fields, that’s already an uphill battle. But as the race turns to Massachusetts, the answer to John F. Kennedy’s question — ‘ask what you can do for your country’ — has rarely been clearer: unenrolled voters should pull a Republican ballot and vote for John Kasich because it’s a vote against Donald Trump,” the added.
In 2012, the Globe endorsed President Obama over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
“[Obama] stopped a potential depression and a war, and deeply damaged Al Qaeda,” the paper’s board said at the time. “His reelection would produce a budget deal that would create a sustainable economy based on human capital rather than financial transactions, investing in education and infrastructure.”
