The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton

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The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton

Why support a candidate who rejects your preferences and offends your opinions? Don’t do it for her—do it for the republic, and the Constitution.

Brian Snyder / Reuters
DAVID FRUM

If the polls are correct, many disaffected Republicans are making their peace with Donald Trump in the final hours of the 2016 campaign. The usual term for this process is “returning home.” This time, we need a new phrase. The familiar Republican home has been bulldozed and replaced by a Trump-branded edifice. It will require long and hard work to restore and rebuild what has been lost.

Between now and then, however, there is a ballot to face. Last week, I advanced the best case I could for each of the available options. Now, however, comes the time for choosing—and for explicating the reasons for that choice.

Those attempting to rally reluctant Republicans to Trump seldom waste words on the affirmative case for the blowhard businessman. What is there to say in favor of a candidate who would lie even about his (non) support for a charity for children with AIDS?

Instead, the case for Trump swiftly shifts to a fervid case against Hillary Clinton. Here for example are some lines from an op-ed coauthored by Bill Bennett, a high conservative eminence and former secretary of education, and F.H. Buckley, a law professor, Trump supporter, and sometime speechwriter.

Consider, then, what would happen were the “Clinton Cash” machine to move into the White House. We’d have a government with the morals of a banana republic; and crony capitalism, the silent killer of the American economy, would increasingly burden entrepreneurs. Wasteful regulations, drafted to benefit the clients of K Street lobbyists, would transfer wealth from dispersed lower and middle-class Americans to the rich and well-connected. (snip)

The conclusion that follows from such sizzling philippics is that anybody, literally anybody, wearing an “R” by his name should be preferred to the demonic Clinton. (snip)

Yes, I fear Clinton’s grudge-holding. Should I fear it so much that I rally to a candidate who has already explicitly promised to deploy antitrust and libel law against his critics and opponents? Who incited violence at his rallies? Who ejects reporters from his events if he objects to their coverage? Who told a huge audience in Australia that his top life advice was: "Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it”? Who idealizes Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, and the butchers of Tiananmen as strong leaders to be admired and emulated?

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/dont-gamble-on-trump/506207/?utm_source=twb