WarSclerotic

Don’t Be like the Man Who Married His Mother-in-Law, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, August 21, 2016

There’s a strange story out of India in the Daily Mail about a man who divorced his wife to marry his mother-in-law and now regrets his decision and is trying to undo it.

In a way this reminds me of conservatives whose preferred candidates lost the nomination and now as NeverTrumpers are making the election of Hillary more possible. It’s a variation of the song “You Can’t Always get What You Want”, but instead of the next line being “but you can sometimes get what you need”, it reads, “but you can get what you don’t want or need”. In this case, Hillary Clinton, the most corrupt politician in U.S. history, a decision impossible of reversal or even to hold in check once done.

If you are torn about the Republican voters’ choice of nominee, but still unhappy about the notion of Hillary, America’s nightmare mother-in-law, winning (and certain that the independent candidates are no better and, in any event, without a chance) here are some writers whose views may help you overcome your reluctance to cast the vote for Trump.

1. The Claim That Trump’s Just Not Presidential

(A) He’s More Presidential than Obama or his designated successor Hillary

While Hillary and Obama vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, there’s been a disastrous flood in Louisiana and a large humanitarian crisis as people’s homes and possessions are destroyed and aid difficult to get to those who need it,

When people chided Obama’s non-response, he issued “a 16-page guidance “in which he “warned Louisiana recipients of federal disaster assistance against engaging in “unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin (including limited English proficiency).”

Trump flew down there in his own plane, talked to local leaders, toured the devastation and donated an 18-wheeler truckload of supplies. A resident of the area, Courtney Falker Peters, posted a description on Facebook of what Trump’s visit was like and what it meant to the stricken residents:

Ok since the media will not tell anyone about this I will at least tell my friends and make this public so y’all can share and tell yours as well because I think it needs to be said.

[snip]

Donald Trump visited Louisiana today. He brought with him a truck loaded with food, supplies, and toys that he personally passed out. He also donated money to a flood relief charity. He went and walked flooded houses in a community. He didn’t ask for state police or military security, I imagine he may have had his personal security with him but hey he pays them so not my business. He didn’t ask for any road to be closed to bring him in or an escort to his destination, matter of fact he didn’t inform the government of his visit at all. He didn’t care if the government knew he was coming, he just came and brought needing people needed supplies. And the news covered it about 15 seconds and then used it as a hit piece to plug Obama’s visit that will happen. It was just wrong on many levels. No matter [i]f you agree with Trump political are not what he done today was honorable and good, and he did it without making a big deal of himself. I hope more people of his statu[r]e will do the same in the same way, without all the hype of announcing their visit with intent of a public photo op.

Of course, now that we have a Democratic president who tardily agreed to show up there this Tuesday (after he attends Bill Clinton’s boffo birthday bash on Martha’s Vineyard), the same people, including Hillary and Obama, who criticized Bush for waiting to land his plane in New Orleans when it was struck by Hurricane Katrina because he did not want to overwhelm local authorities with a presidential tour, now criticize Trump for going in and helping without requiring local police and responders to pave the way for his visit.

(B) Attention to Detail

On one hand, we have Hillary (and Obama), “big thinkers” who can’t be bothered with details and have made a hash of everything they touch. On the other hand, we have someone who keeps his eye on things.

Here’s an account in Forbes by a man with first-hand knowledge of this, having engaged in a significant negotiation with him:

The first thing I noticed about Mr. Trump was that he was a stickler for detail. As a politician, he may affect a breezy platform style, but in the office, he was all business. Right off the bat, he corrected my team’s estimates of future financing requirements. He must have phoned an expert minutes before the meeting, because he said that by the latest market information he had, our current interest rates were off by 0.1% [snip] In the end, I can say that Mr. Trump drove a hard bargain. But he was honest, and he was a square dealer. When we were through — in less time than we had expected — we had reached an agreement that was ethical, profitable and fair to all parties concerned. It was also an agreement that meant good jobs for working people and healthy tax revenues for the local government.

If we didn’t come away from the table liking Mr. Trump, there’s no question that we came away with a lot of respect for him. He was a tough, shrewd, no-nonsense executive who knew how to get things done, and done quickly. He was also an adversary whom no one would want to mess with.

Isn’t that what really matters in a president?

2.The Claim that He’s a “Racist”

The term has become so overused that it now just means he says things the left disagrees with. Nevertheless, people — including those who know better — are flinging it about with no evidence to support it but their own bilious dislike of him. On the other hand, no less than Thomas Sowell, the brilliant black economist from Stanford, and David Horowitz, champion of civil liberties and a real conservative, both found his speeches on the Democratic Party’s destruction of blacks compelling. (Here are transcripts of his Dimondale and West Allis speeches for those who didn’t see it and whose news sources didn’t bother to publish them.)

Here’s Thomas Sowell:

Who would have thought that Donald Trump, of all people, would be addressing the fact that the black community suffers the most from a breakdown of law and order? But sanity on racial issues is sufficiently rare that it must be welcomed, from whatever source it comes.

When establishment Republicans have addressed the problems of blacks at all, it has too often been in terms of what earmarked benefits can be offered in exchange for their votes. And there was very little that Republicans could offer to compete with the Democrats’ whole universe of welfare state earmarks.

Law and order, however, is not an earmarked benefit for any special group. It is a policy for all that is especially needed by law-abiding blacks who are the principal victims of those who are not law-abiding.

[snip]

Education is a slam dunk issue for Republicans trying to appeal to black parents with school-age children, as distinguished from trying to appeal to all black voters, as if all blacks are the same.

Education is an issue with little, if any, down side for the Republicans, because the teachers’ unions are the single biggest obstacle to black youngsters getting a decent education — and among the biggest donors to the Democrats.

[snip]

As long as blacks vote automatically for Democrats, while the teachers’ unions insist on getting their money’s worth, it is all but inevitable that the education of black children will be sacrificed in the public schools, wherever Democrats are in control.

[snip]

Blacks voters are not the property of the NAACP, and they need to be addressed directly as individuals, over the heads of special interest organizations that have led blacks into the blind alley of being a voting bloc that has been taken for granted far too long. [/quote]

And here’s David Horowitz:

Trump’s Dimondale speech was a pledge to African Americans trapped in the blighted zones and killing fields of inner cities exclusively ruled by Democrats for half a century and more, and exploited by their political leaders for votes, and also used as fodder for slanders directed at their Republican opponents.

[Snip]

But here is Trump articulating the very message we have been waiting for — support for America’s inner city poor – a message that should have been front and center of every Republican campaign for the last fifty years.

[Snip]

Tying the fight to liberate African Americans and other minorities from the violent urban wastelands in which Democrats have trapped them to his other proposals – secure borders, law and order to make urban environments safe, jobs for American workers, putting Americans first – these are a sure sign that Trump has an integrated vision of the future towards which he is working. Call it populism if you will. To me it seems like a clear-eyed conservative plan to restore American values and even to unify America’s deeply fractured electorate.

[Snip]

Not to forget the #NeverTrumpers on the Republican side. These defectors are among the loudest slanderers, smearing Trump as a racist and a bigot when he is obviously the very opposite of that. In fact, when you look at what Trump is actually saying and actually doing, Never Trumpism appears as the newest racism of low expectations.

3. He’s a Threat

He is a threat to the entrenched elites who’ve made such a hash of things, but not to the country for whom Hillary is a far more dangerous threat, Dennis Prager makes that clear:

With either a Republican or a Democratic Congress, a President Donald Trump could be held in check, if that proves to be necessary. And there is always the possibility that he could be a good president — appointing conservative Supreme Court and federal judges, cutting taxes, and slashing regulations. But no Congress could stop a President Hillary Clinton. She will finish the job her predecessor started: to fundamentally transform the United States of America. Perhaps forever.

4. Not voting for him is a “Protest Vote”

There’s no such thing as a “protest vote.”  Bookwormroom put me on to this wonderful blogger, Clay Shirky, who said it best:

In 2016, that system will offer 130 million or so voters just three options:

A. I prefer Donald Trump be President, rather than Hillary Clinton.
B. I prefer Hillary Clinton be President, rather than Donald Trump.
C. Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me.

That’s it. Those are the choices. All strategies other than a preference for Trump over Clinton or vice-versa reduce to Option C.

People who believe in protest votes do so because they confuse sending a message with receiving one. You can send any message you like: “I think Jill Stein should be President” or “I think David Duke should be President” or “I think Park Eunsol should be President.”

Similarly, you can send any message you like by not voting. You can say you are sitting out the election because both parties are neo-liberal or because an election without Lyndon LaRouche is a sham or because 9/11 was an inside job. The story you tell yourself about your political commitments are yours to construct.

But it doesn’t matter what message you think you are sending, because no one will receive it. No one is listening. The system is set up so that every choice other than ‘R’ or ‘D’ boils down to “I defer to the judgement of my fellow citizens.” It’s easy to argue that our system shouldn’t work like that. It’s impossible to argue it doesn’t work like that.

5. Putting “Principle Before Party”

That sort of “electoral sabotage” is the justification of sore losers, observes Michael Walsh. People, he notes, who claim they are putting country before party” when, in fact, they are doing the opposite.

Their preferred candidates lost the nomination and now they want to attack the man who won and prevent him from winning.

Dismount from your high horses and vote for Trump or marry an insufferable, dishonest, and authoritarian mother-in-law.