Unless you've has been living in an alternative universe, you’re well aware of the avalanche of criticism directed at Donald Trump from all quarters, liberal and conservative, including the latest hypocritical screed by Mitt Romney. Yet despite that criticism, virtually everyone engaged in it ignores the essential reality that attends every election: context is everything. In other words, whatever one feels about Donald Trump, or any other candidate for that matter, the ultimate question and the answer to it cannot be postponed indefinitely, as in Donald Trump—running against whom?
Like many conservatives who live amongst those who believe they own the franchise on enlightened thinking, I have often been asked how in the world I could have voted for a (fill in the progressive blank) like George W. Bush for president. Remarkably, the answer to that question is one that seems to have eluded most of these deep thinkers. “You mean how could I have voted for George W. Bush—as opposed to a hypocritical scold like Al Gore, or a self-aggrandizing blowhard like John Kerry?” I invariably respond.
Let’s be clear here. This is neither a ringing endorsement for what Bush accomplished, nor a knock on what I perceived as his major failings, the foremost of which was allowing Democrats to co-opt the Iraq war narrative without any substantive pushback. When American men and women are in harm’s way, allowing a slanderous hack like Harry Reid to declare the war “lost” even before the ultimately successful surge was completed, was an unconscionable and unnecessary surrender.
Unfortunately like his father, George W. believed maintaining comity with his Democrat detractors was apparently more important that defending the most momentous decision any Commander-in-Chief must make. Reneging on his no new taxes pledge to accommodate Democrats—who savaged him in return—probably cost George H.W. Bush the 1992 election. George W.’s flaccid response to Reid and company gave us a Democratically-controlled Congress in 2006—and paved the way for the rise of Barack Obama in 2008.
That being said, there is little doubt in my mind that a Commander-in-Chief Al Gore or John Kerry would have been worse leaders by several orders of magnitude. Gore had the decency to take his global warming hustle into the private sector, where he made millions selling Christian-like dispensations known as “carbon credits" to the terminally gullible.
Unfortunately, John Kerry remained true to his appetite for power, and thus the American public remains afflicted with a Secretary of State who needs “additional evaluation” undertaken before he can decide if the wholesale and systematic slaughter of Christians in the Middle East constitutes “genocide." A man who, when informed that a former Gitmo detainee had returned to terrorism, epitomized the utter clueless of the entire Obama administration’s foreign policy. “He’s not supposed to be doing that,” Kerry stated.
It is pretty clear that eight years of the Obama administration’s effort to "fundamentally transform the United States of America” into a socialist utopian paradise, with a Third World underpinning that millions of illegals represent, has enraged millions of Americans. Maybe even to the point, as so many of Trump’s critics point out, where anger and frustration has completely supplanted anything resembling rational thinking.
Anger and frustration about what? How about a GOP Establishment that has made an utter mockery of their base’s support and is now in the process of going after that base’s preferred candidate with the kind of vigor and viciousness they have never directed at at Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?
Moreover, what in the world do they think would happen if they purposely orchestrate a brokered convention where none of the current presidential candidates get the nomination? They have to know that the number of conservatives who stayed home when Milquetoast Mitt “polited” his way to defeat would be dwarfed by the number who would stay home if an Establishment GOP candidate were force-fed to the base. Thus an inescapable conclusion arises:
The Establishment GOP would tolerate a President Hillary Clinton to maintain their control of the party--even if they run the party into the dustbin of history as a result.
That would be the same Hillary Clinton, who believes the rule of law applies to everyone else but her and her husband. The same Hillary Clinton who left four Americans to die in Benghazi and then lied about a video being the cause of their demise when her own communications with her daughter, Egyptian prime minister Hisham Kandil and the Libyan president on the night of the attack indicated she knew otherwise. A women who still can’t explain at the very least how highly-classified emails “migrated” from wholly secure and self-contained government servers to her personal one. A woman with no discernible accomplishments as a Senator, and a track record of colossal failure as Secretary of State.
A woman who successfully used the sexist card to bash every Republican, until Trump came along and threw it right back in her predator-enabling face.
Make no mistake: this is not an endorsement of Donald Trump. I’m not a big fan of the Palookaville style of politics, or the mud-wrestling into which the Republican primary season has devolved. But if Trump does make it to the finish line, and Hillary is his opponent, then what? If it comes down to these two, who do you want picking the next Supreme Court Justice--or three? Who do you want formulating immigration policy? Who has a better vision for our terminally-underperforming economy? Who do you want defending America against Islamist terror, Iranian nuclear ambitions and Russian and Chinese military expansionism? Who do you want restoring American exceptionalism, someone who might believe in it, or someone who clearly doesn’t?
The electorate has long been forced to choose between the “lesser of two evils,” and there is little doubt this may very well prove to be the most pernicious choice in modern history. But it remains a choice nonetheless, maybe the most important one in a very long time. Thus it behooves every would-be voter to keep context in mind, no matter how down and dirty the 2016 presidential campaign becomes. In fact, context is all that ultimately matters.
