David Michael Miller
In March, I wrote a column that would have made no sense to me, a longtime Republican, just a year earlier. I had decided that if Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president, I would vote for the Democrat.
Well, Trump has pulled it off. And, despite an amazing campaign, Bernie Sanders will certainly concede before the Democratic convention.
So I write something now that feels even weirder: I will vote for Hillary Clinton this November.
I believe that a Donald Trump presidency could threaten the very foundations of our republic. Trump’s flamboyantly unstable temperament would put us in constant risk of disaster — disaster of a magnitude we’re used to seeing only in Third World countries. My sole objective this election season is to see Trump defeated so decisively that he will go away for good. I would prefer his humiliation be complete, so that other aspiring dictators might think twice before engaging the American electorate.
I had dearly hoped that, once it became clear we were stuck with Trump as nominee, prominent Republicans would finally get serious, and pledge to do whatever it takes to keep his unsteady hands away from the executive order pen...and the nuclear button. But aside from P.J. O’Rourke, who called Clinton “the second worst thing that could happen to this country,” and a handful of GOP insiders you’ve never heard of, no one has publicly made the same uncomfortable choice that I have.
As a matter of fact, a disturbing number of prominent Republicans are “coming around” to supporting Trump’s candidacy. Former rivals for the nomination seem especially eager to do so, despite having demonstrated that they understand just how awful Trump is. Rick Perry, who not so long ago called Trump’s candidacy “a cancer on conservatism,” is just one among a cavalcade of turncoats who have recently endorsed the nominee. I fear that much of the erstwhile #NeverTrump crowd is headed in the same direction.
I cannot see into the hearts of these party leaders. But I’m sure they are giving in only reluctantly. Though self-preservation is every politician’s lodestar, there is, paradoxically, some spirit of martyrdom behind their conversions. They are concerned about the fate of the Republican Party, hoping it doesn’t split apart. They think they’re “taking one for the team.”
They are, in fact, doing just the opposite. Their appeasement of Donald Trump is hurtling the GOP toward its ruin.
Victorious presidential candidates dominate their party. They set its tenor and agenda. While America might emerge from four years of Trump-induced havoc largely intact, the GOP would emerge as an unrecognizable mutant. Trump is, to put it mildly, not a bottom-up consensus builder. By the end of his presidency, the party apparatus would be purged of anyone who failed to get with the Trump program, whatever that turns out to be.
But top Republicans, it seems, are determined to keep whistling past the graveyard. Paul Ryan is still holding back his endorsement, but only in hopes of extracting concessions from Trump. “I want to make sure we do the things not to fake unity, but to actually have unity,” said Ryan this past Saturday. Boy, is he about to get rolled. Of course, Trump will continue to deliver Republican-friendly concessions, like his recent conservative-heavy list of prospective Supreme Court nominees. And, of course, the concessions will continue to be 100% insincere. With this master manipulator, any apparent GOP unity will be fake. The only true unity will come if Trump wins, and then it will be completely on his terms.
What about not-so-new voters like me? Over the last decade, I have held several Republican Party offices at the local level. I have lent my share of grudging support to politicians who applied the party’s small-government principles in a frustratingly selective manner. But I could not work within a party that is under Donald Trump’s control.
I do get that Republican leaders are under severe electoral pressure, especially when it comes to keeping their grip on federal and state legislatures. But a party based on conservatism could never fully recover from four years under Trump, a man who went out of his way to remind us that “this is called the ‘Republican Party’.... [I]t’s not called the ‘Conservative Party.’” On the other hand, the GOP might thrive electorally during a Hillary Clinton presidency, as it has under the lackluster reign of Barack Obama.
Republicans started this election season with high hopes. But it’s time for party leaders to acknowledge that things have gone terribly, terribly wrong. It’s best that we just take a dive on this one, so that we might live to fight another day.
Michael Cummins is a Madison-based business analyst.
