Most conservative commentators opposed Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries. Many also refused to support him over Hillary Clinton in the general election. Some have continued their opposition now, and the president gives them ammunition with his shortcomings, ethics, decorum, and some policies.
Among those who still wear the label “Never Trump” there remain some self-identified conservatives who want Democrats to win the midterm elections, arguing in at least one case that the Republican Party must be destroyed in order to be rebuilt from the ground up.
This is wrong. If you are genuinely conservative, you cannot pine for a Democratic Congress, because it would mean more culture-war victories for the illiberal Left in their crusade against the Bill of Rights.
There are everyday reasons for a conservative to dread a Democratic Congress. Without congressional majorities, Republicans can’t cut taxes, trim destructive regulations, confirm agency heads and judges, and so on. With Congress in their grip, Democrats can launch superfluous investigations and pass even more bloated spending bills, worse than the bad ones that Republicans passed.
For the pro-Democrat “Never Trumpers,” the above costs are outweighed by the benefits of a Congress that would check the Trump administration’s ethical lapses, investigate abuses of power, and try to halt executive power grabs. We disagree with this calculus.
The Left is primarily interested not in expanding the welfare state or containing Trump. The central crusade of progressivism today is to shackle and silence its cultural and political foes by attacking the fundamental freedoms of speech, due process, religious exercise, association, and more.
The New York Times showed this with a news article lamenting that Supreme Court was regularly leaning on the First Amendment to protect “conservative speech.” This was revealing in two ways, first because the paper’s editors and reporters, in what purported to be a news story, opined that they saw this as “weaponization” of the Bill of Rights because the rights were invoked for activities the Times doesn’t favor.
More importantly, the Times led the astute reader to the obvious conclusion that if conservatives are increasingly appearing in court asking for free-speech protection, it’s a clear sign that the Left is increasingly using government to try to squash or compel conservatives’ speech.
You could go through the Bill of Rights and find a left-wing attack on fundamental freedoms at every point. When they demand a constitutional amendment to negate Citizens United, they’re asking to curtail the freedom to criticize politicians. When they sue bakers, they want to compel speech. When they assail Hobby Lobby, they’re demanding free exercise of religion be quarantined to the private sphere. When they say folks on the no-fly list should lose gun rights, they’re showing their hatred for due process. When they sue to force Catholic hospitals to abort their patients, they show their wide streak of totalitarian intolerance.
This totalitarian, illiberal streak is not everyday progressivism. It’s an attempt to repeal fundamental American freedoms and eradicate even the small sphere of liberty that shields conscience.
A Democratic Senate would block any judicial nominee who might curb the state’s power to impose politicians’ morality on individuals.
Then consider that a Democratic takeover of the House and Senate would put Democrats one step away from unified control of the federal government in 2020. From the Left’s own words, we know their intention is to pack the Supreme Court, as President Franklin Roosevelt considered, by expanding it to 11 members and simply placing two new Democrats on the bench.
Much of the Bill of Rights would be dead letter. Heller, Hobby Lobby, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Janus, and every other case protecting individuals from state overreach would be overturned. The state would be unshackled. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of central government against conscience, speech, property, and religious exercise. They’d all be savaged.
We understand conservatives who are angry, frustrated, and embarrassed by Trump. We have repeatedly called on Congress in the past two years to pass laws curbing executive powers.
But as long as the Left wishes, nay reveals a determination, to destroy fundamental freedoms, nobody who values liberty should wish for a Democratic takeover of the federal government.
