The Candidate

Whether we like it or not, how a presidential candidate conducts his or her campaign is often times just as, or even more, important as the policies said candidate develops or the stances they take.

By any conceivable measure, Mr. Trump has been a miserable candidate.

The most alarming aspect of his campaign and what prompted me to take my #NeverTrump position since late 2015 is his complete inability to remain consistent on a policy. Take a policy, any policy, and chances are Mr. Trump has been both to the left and right of Mrs. Clinton throughout the campaign cycle. A popular saying around here is, “Don’t like the weather in Wisconsin? Wait five minutes”. The same can be said about Mr. Trump’s policy stances.

Here’s a quick list of issues where Mr. Trump has dramatically altered his position during his quest for the Oval Office:

Accepting the outcome of the election

The voting process is a rigged system

Immigration

Banning Muslims

President Obama’s birthplace

Combating ISIS

Minimum Wage

Taxes

Support for the Iraq War

The national debt

Abortion

Work visas for workers

The Iran nuclear deal

Healthcare

This is a fairly comprehensive list, with several of these being major issues. And when you couple this with his fundamental misunderstanding of issues like the Syrian crisis, Mosul attack strategy or our nuclear weapon capabilities, it’s clear you have a candidate that is in way over his head.

Now I’m fully aware that during the campaign season, a candidate may have to massage their stances or tweak their policies as they transform from primary to general election candidate. I don’t necessarily have an issue with that, as with most candidates we have their voting record to give us an understanding of their true ideological beliefs.

With Mr. Trump, we don’t have that, which is why his frequent contradictions are so troublesome. We have no idea where he stands on anything. I don’t think anyone can honestly say they have a clue about how he will govern. President of the United States is the most difficult and important job in the world-we simply cannot put someone in this position who not only doesn’t have a firm grasp of the issues, but doesn’t even have a coherent set of beliefs.

This also explains why the release of Mr. Trump’s tax returns is such an important issue in this campaign. Since Mr. Trump’s sole qualification revolves around his business career, I contend that his tax returns, while an imperfect measure of his success, are at least a reasonable facsimile to a voting record.

The failure to develop a consistent set of policies screams of utter laziness and contempt for the gravity the office of president holds. It’s a slap in the face to the country as a whole, as its clear Mr. Trump doesn’t respect us enough to develop sound positions on essentially any issue. 

But, alas, this critical deficiency doesn’t seem to matter to Mr. Trump’s group of fervent disciples. These devoted followers subscribe to the notion that Washington is broken (whatever that means) and only an outsider can fix it. But not just any outsider; no, no-Mr. Trump is the only one that is up to the task.

For all the ridicule those of us on the Right cast on President Obama’s hysterical supporters, besides the opposing ideological bents, I see little difference between them and Mr. Trump’s fanatics. The same cult of personality persists in both groups.

And while Mr. Trump remains wildly popular with roughly 30% of the electorate, he has effectively turned off the other 70%. As I stated in my last piece, there are a good number of republicans that are only voting for him because of their blind hatred for Mrs. Clinton, and if the democrats ran a different candidate, so many republicans wouldn’t be betraying their supposed conservative values merely to beat her.

This unpopularity is poison for the Republican Party and may spell doom for down-ballot candidates running for the House of Representatives and the Senate (which now appears to be lost to the democrats).

A presidential nominee is supposed to lift their fellow party members, not hold them back. But that is all Mr. Trump has done with boorish behavior and his idiotic and despicable comments about immigrants, women, John McCain, a disabled reporter, women, fellow republicans, Muslims and many others. And if the Republican Party doesn’t get over its momentary lapse in judgment and completely disavow itself of this man once the election is over, Mr. Trump’s fallout is destined to hold the party back for the foreseeable future. 

How Did We Get Here?

Before I address the myriad reasons why I find Donald Trump utterly ill-equipped to be Commander-in-Chief, I think it’s important to analyze his political rise and understand the environment that incubated it and the motivating factors behind it.

Over the past 15 months or so, I’m not the first to remark, “we have never had a presidential candidate like Donald Trump”, nor will I be the last. But what’s more interesting to me than figuring out how he’s different (I think that’s fairly apparent), is how he’s come to occupy the role of presidential nominee for the Republican Party.

Is it because the situation was set up perfectly for Mr. Trump and he is merely the benefactor of a unique political landscape rather than a real agent of change?

Or…

Is it because he’s tapped into some underlying sentiment that’s been bubbling just below the surface of the American citizenry?

While there’s some truth in each of these statements, I ultimately feel the former is much closer to reality than the latter.

There were three critical factors that created this perfect storm for Mr. Trump to gain the Republican Party nomination.

1.    Quality > Quantity

Simply put, too many republicans ran for president in 2016. There were 17 of them for God’s sake, and save for maybe two or three of them, they were all substandard candidates. The Republican National Committee, led by Wisconsin’s very own Reince Priebus, completely botched the primary process.

While most of the candidates were equally poor in quality, each had their own little niche-Rubio for foreign policy voters, Cruz for budget and spending voters, Kasich for moderate voters and so on. This deeply fractured the republican base, opening the door for an outsider, someone that was totally different. And thanks to the RNC not taking Mr. Trump seriously, they failed to usher hopeless candidates out of the race in a timely manner, thereby deepening the fracture and preventing republican voters the ability to rally behind a more qualified candidate.

Typically, the debates would help whittle down the number of nominees, but since the RNC decided it was a good idea to have 10, (10!) people on stage for the first six debates, they ended up being a chaotic circus of nonsense. And with so much bickering and so little policy discussion, the loudest, most bombastic voice rose above the din, positioning its owner, Mr. Trump, to lead out of the gates and never look back. 

2.    The Perfect Opponent

I don’t think there’s a member of the American Left that engenders as much visceral hatred than Hillary Clinton. People flat out despise her and are afraid that if she occupies the Oval Office, our country is doomed.

This is a critical point to make, as I believe many of Mr. Trump’s supporters have become so blinded by their rage and fear of Mrs. Clinton, that they will support, literally, anyone to stop her.  And since Mr. Trump had an early lead amongst his group of mediocre republican cohorts, many got on board with him because they felt he was the only one who could possibly defeat Mrs. Clinton in a general election.   

I feel that if a John Kerry-type or Joe Biden-type of candidate was the democratic nominee for president, I seriously doubt so many who claim to stand for conservative ideals and high morals would turn their backs on said beliefs simply to stop the democrats.

3.    A Complicit Media

The man clearly knows how to promote himself.  Combining his larger-than-life personality, strong name recognition from “The Apprentice” and penchant for saying outlandish things, Mr. Trump makes people take notice of him. In fact, there are few better self-promoters on the planet than him.

However, during the primary season, the media was more than happy to give Mr. Trump unprecedented access, seemingly, anytime he wanted. From treating his campaign stops like rock concerts to going to him whenever they needed an interesting quote, the media force fed Mr. Trump to us in a remarkable manner.

This New York Times article from March shows that Mr. Trump accrued just under $2 billion in free publicity at that point during the primaries. That was six times more than Ted Cruz and nine times more than Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio at that time.

You just don’t see this type of discrepancy in a typical election cycle; where one candidate, literally, dominates the news cycle on a seemingly nightly basis for months at a time.

So while some of Mr. Trump’s messaging resonated with large groups of voters (particularly his comments regarding immigration, political correctness and a disillusionment with Washington), I feel his ascension to the top of the Republican Party was largely the product of good fortune.

Why I remain #NeverTrump

Much to the relief and much to the chagrin of many of you, I have been a proud and consistent member of the #NeverTrump camp since the inception of his campaign in mid-2015. Since that time, I’ve had conversations with most, if not all, of you, in some form or another, regarding my feelings of Mr. Trump, his policies and what his presence in American politics and the Republican Party means for the current and future political landscape of our country.

Since I believe Mr. Trump to be a dangerous figure, one that will ultimately set the country and conservative movement back for years and years to come, I will be constructing an extensive polemic against the man and his brand of populism  over the next few weeks leading up to election day on November 8.

Feel free to read as many or as few of the subsequent posts in the coming weeks.