New York Times (Opinion)
By Peter Wehner
January 14, 2016
Beginning
with Ronald Reagan, I have voted Republican in every presidential
election since I first became eligible to vote in 1980. I worked in the
Reagan and George H.
W. Bush administrations and in the White House for George W. Bush as a
speechwriter and adviser. I have also worked for Republican presidential
campaigns, although not this time around.
Despite
this history, and in important ways because of it, I will not vote for
Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination.
I
should add that neither could I vote in good conscience for Hillary
Clinton or any of the other Democrats running for president, since they
oppose many of the things
I have stood for in my career as a conservative — and, in the case of
Mrs. Clinton, because I consider her an ethical wreck. If Mr. Trump and
Mrs. Clinton were the Republican and Democratic nominees, I would prefer
to vote for a responsible third-party alternative;
absent that option, I would simply not cast a ballot for president. A
lot of Republicans, I suspect, would do the same.
There
are many reasons to abstain from voting for Mr. Trump if he is
nominated, starting with the fact that he would be the most unqualified
president in American history.
Every one of our 44 presidents has had either government or military
experience before being sworn in. Mr. Trump, a real estate mogul and
former reality-television star, hasn’t served a day in public office or
the armed forces.
During
the course of this campaign he has repeatedly revealed his ignorance on
basic matters of national interest — the three ways the United States
is capable of firing
nuclear weapons (by land, sea and air), the difference between the Quds
Force in Iran and the Kurds to their west, North Korea’s nuclear tests,
the causes of autism, the effects of his tax plan on the deficit and
much besides.
Mr.
Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone
master them. He has admitted that he doesn’t prepare for debates or
study briefing books; he believes
such things get in the way of a good performance. No major presidential
candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as
indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness.
It
is little surprise, then, that many of Mr. Trump’s most celebrated
pronouncements and promises — to quickly and “humanely” expel 11 million
illegal immigrants, to force
Mexico to pay for the wall he will build on our southern border, to
defeat the Islamic State “very quickly” while as a bonus taking its oil,
to bar Muslims from immigrating to the United States — are nativistic
pipe dreams and public relations stunts.
Even
more disqualifying is Mr. Trump’s temperament. He is erratic,
inconsistent and unprincipled. He possesses a streak of crudity and
cruelty that manifested itself in
how he physically mocked a Times journalist with a disability,
ridiculed Senator John McCain for being a P.O.W., made a reference to
“blood” intended to degrade a female journalist and compared one of his
opponents to a child molester.
Mr.
Trump’s legendary narcissism would be comical were it not dangerous in
someone seeking the nation’s highest office — as he demonstrated when he
showered praise on
the brutal, anti-American president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin,
responding to Mr. Putin’s expression of admiration for Mr. Trump.
“It
is always a great honor,” Mr. Trump said last month, “to be so nicely
complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and
beyond.”
Mr.
Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability,
demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a
failed presidency; it could
very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as
commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every
American.
For
Republicans, there is an additional reason not to vote for Mr. Trump.
His nomination would pose a profound threat to the Republican Party and
conservatism, in ways
that Hillary Clinton never could. For while Mrs. Clinton could inflict a
defeat on the Republican Party, she could not redefine it. But Mr.
Trump, if he were the Republican nominee, would.
Mr.
Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects,
but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the
Republican standard-bearer.
The nominee, after all, is the leader of the party; he gives it shape
and definition. If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no
longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist
one. Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break
with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.
The
Republican Party’s best traditions, of course, have not always been
evident. (The same is true of the Democratic Party, by the way.) Over
the years we have seen antecedents
of today’s Trumpism both on issues and in style — for example, in Pat
Buchanan’s presidential campaigns in the 1990s, in Sarah Palin’s rise in
the party, in the reckless rhetoric of some on the right like Ann
Coulter.
The
sentiments animating these individuals have had influence in the party,
and in recent years growing influence. But they have not been dominant
and they have certainly
never been in control. Mr. Trump’s securing the Republican nomination
would change all that. Whatever problems one might be tempted to lay at
the feet of the Republican Party, Donald Trump is in a different and
more destructive category.
In
these pages in July 1980, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democratic
senator from New York, declared, “Of a sudden, the G.O.P. has become a
party of ideas.” If Mr. Trump
wins the nomination, the G.O.P. will become the party of anti-reason.
Every
weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The
Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
I
will go further: Mr. Trump is precisely the kind of man our system of
government was designed to avoid, the type of leader our founders feared
— a demagogic figure who
does not view himself as part of our constitutional system but rather
as an alternative to it.
I
understand that it often happens that those of us in politics don’t get
the nominee we want, yet we nevertheless unify behind the candidate who
wins our party’s nomination.
If those who don’t get their way pick up their marbles and go home,
party politics doesn’t work. That has always been my view, until now.
Donald Trump has altered the political equation because he has altered
the moral equation. For this lifelong Republican,
at least, he is beyond the pale. Party loyalty has limits.
No
votes have yet been cast, primary elections are fluid, and sobriety
often prevails, so Mr. Trump is hardly the inevitable Republican
nominee. But, stunningly, that
is now something that is quite conceivable. If this scenario comes to
pass, many Republicans will find themselves in a situation they once
thought unimaginable: refusing to support the nominee of their party
because it is the best thing that they can do for
their party and their country.
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