Intentional Conservative

​”Denying reality doesn’t help. Donald Trump is playing the sore loser, and he hasn’t even lost yet.”

I know that if I post too much at once I’m just shooting myself in the foot. But there’s so much good stuff out there that I feel torn. This was supposed to be, as I’ve said, a week when I re-posted articles from back in those halcyon days in the spring, back when there was a faint chance that the TrumpTrain could be derailed. But Trump is going all vast-conspiracy-global-bankers on us. (Folks, in case you didn’t get the memo: that means Jews. Jewish bankers. They’re the ones to fear. If you call yourself a friend of Israel and then vote for this despicable man you are being very, shall I say, inconsistent.)

Anyway, I think the worst thing Trump is doing right now is the whole “election will be rigged” thing-a-ma-doozy. So here’s the National Review’s take on the matter:

​“No, the Election Isn’t Rigged”

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

​”But a narrow win is not enough. I want Trump to be crushed mercilessly so that the Republican Party is forced into a healthy period of soul searching, so that opportunists like Gov. Chris Christie learn that bigotry and bombast does not sell in America any more, and so the world can see that we are better than this.”

Can there be a clearer statement of why I’m voting the way I am? The above is from the wonderful article that I’ve posted before from the New Jersey Star-Tribune, written back in July when this sort of conservative rhetoric was not very popular. Please read the entire article if you haven’t done so.

“Don’t Love Hillary? Fine–Vote for Her 

 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.