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.