debisimons

We’ll get to the blast from the past later today, but I couldn’t resist starting out the workweek with this article from Susan Wright over at RedState.com.What a clearheaded analysis of the misuse of Scripture that is taking place, sadly, in this election cycle. (I have posted from Susan Wright before, notably her article about Jerry Falwell Jr.’s laughable comparison of Trump and Winston Churchill. And she’s a Liberty University grad!)

Respectfully, Trump Policy Pushers: STOP IT

 Then you weren’t paying attention when it mattered.

Doesn’t anyone remember how vile and vulgar Donald Trump was in the primary debates? Doesn’t anyone remember how parents were wondering if it was okay to let their children watch them? Doesn’t anyone remember the t-shirts with the f-word plastered all over them being sold right outside Trump rallies?

And yet people went along with it, even good conservative Christian folks.  I remember having a conversation with two friends whom I like and respect very much and being told by them that Trump was “refreshing.” I was so taken aback that I managed only to sputter out, “I don’t find bigotry to be refreshing.”

Short answer: A shortage of grownups.

I have said, and Jennifer Rubin has said, and who knows how many others have said, that there was simply no reason and no excuse for allowing the situation to develop that led to Trump’s being the Republican nominee. What a piece of great political theater it would have been for Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan to lure the 16 Not Trumps into an undisclosed location, lock the doors, and say that the group wouldn’t be released until they pulled up their socks, acted like grownups, and got behind one candidate who could defeat Trump. Wouldn’t that have been great? But probably not too legal. Okay. How about a few phone calls? “Hey Ben, this is Reince. Right, that Reince. How many Reinces do you know? Anyway, I was just calling to ask if you could see your way clear to dropping out of the primaries. Just asking. We sort of need to not have that Donald guy as the nominee. You’d be a hero. We’d let you give a speech at the RNC. You will? You’ll make the announcement tomorrow? Great! Listen, gotta go. I have fifteen more calls to make.  See ya!”

But I’ll let National Review make the case:

“How the Overstuffed Primary Field Led to Trump’s Victory”

And a little bonus article, from some internet browsing I did this afternoon, originally written back when it was very unpopular among conservatives to say that Clinton was better than Trump:

“Don’t Love Hillary? Fine, but vote for her anyway.”

Ben Shapiro, who was at one time the editor-at-large over at Breitbart.com but who resigned in protest earlier this year and now serves as editor-in-chief at the Daily Wire, has written the definitive article about what’s going on with Trump supporters. That is, the ones who really believe, or who have persuaded themselves that they really believe, that Trump Is the Answer. There are puh-lenty of pro-Trumpers who know perfectly well that he’s a liar and a fraud but are supporting him anyway in the hopes that they’ll ride his coattails into fame and fortune. That ain’t gonna happen, but my concern is not with the Water Carriers for Trump. I would mention in passing here that a good test for evaluating the opinions of conservative writers on Trump is to ask if those writers have paid a price for their condemnation of him. Shapiro certainly has.

My title could refer to Mike Pence’s surprisingly strong performance in Tuesday’s VP debate. Instead, I’m sticking to my theme for the week, arguments against respectable conservatives who support Trump. On Monday I wrote about theologian Wayne Grudem. Today I’m taking a look at the the Trump justification from Dennis Prager, a conservative talk-show host, writer, and founder of Prager University (an online video archive). National Review published his take on the first presidential debate if you want to read that piece. (While NR as a publication has refused to endorse either candidate, they do print articles from some in the pro-Trump camp as well as those who make the case for Clinton as the lesser of two evils.)

But here I want to zero in on something Prager said back in May when he first threw his weight behind Trump. Let me assure you that I am not making his statement up.  He really said this:

The choice this November is tragic. As it often happens in life, this choice is between bad and worse, not bad and good.

But America has made that choice before. When forced to choose between bad and worse, we supported Joseph Stalin against Adolf Hitler, and we supported right-wing authoritarians against Communist totalitarians.

Oh man! It’s hard to ignore the distractions out there, especially Trump’s 3:00 AM tweets and his leaked tax returns. To even hint that this mean-spirited, nasty-minded charlatan in any way resembles Ronald Reagan . . . well, mind-boggling is too weak of a term.

But I’m going to forge ahead what what I had planned to post for the first part of this week, which is an examination of the moral cave-in by respectable conservative writers as they try to excuse their support for the Republican nominee.

It’s great when you run across something from an author you admire and say, “Yes! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying!” That happened to me yesterday when I read Friday’s “The Goldberg File,” by the peerless and fearless Jonah Goldberg of National Review. (Trump has called him “really pathetic” in one of his famous insulting tweets, so that must mean Goldberg’s pretty good.) Anyway, I’ve been saying that there’s a part of me, a small part, that almost wishes Trump would win, because then all of the predictions of the NeverTrumpers would come true. We’d all be vindicated, big time.

Here’s what Goldberg has to say:

Okay, so why in my selfish heart of hearts do I want Trump to win? Because that’s the only surefire way my opposition to Trump can be vindicated. If he loses, every time Hillary Clinton does something awful — which will be a lot — people will say, “If Trump were president this wouldn’t be happening,” or, “This is all the fault of the ‘Jonah Goldberg class,’” or, “If we had Mr. Trump’s broad-shouldered leadership, the grain harvests would be historic.”

You can read the entire article by clicking below.  Warning: Don’t expect complete gentility here.

“If Candidate Trump Can’t Be Managed, What Makes You Think President Trump Could Be?”