Posted on 08/10/2016 8:12:35 AM PDT by bimboeruption
Trump fans have spent the last few months assuring conservatives that even if they don’t like Trump, they must vote for him: after all, they say, the West even sided with Stalin to stop Hitler. Why then can’t conservatives consolidate around Trump to stop Hillary?
This historic analogy doesn’t work. It doesn’t work not only because Hillary isn’t Hitler. It doesn’t work because the Allies didn’t make Stalin president and grant him leadership of the West. They formed a temporary alliance, which ended the moment that Hitler had been defeated. Donald Trump will not become the object of some sort of Republican Cold War after becoming president.
There’s another historic analogy that may work better: Dunkirk. (For the historically ignorant who want to wait until the new Christopher Nolan film comes out to find out what happened at Dunkirk, here’s your spoiler alert.) After the Nazis ran roughshod through France, pushing the British Army all the way back to the English Channel, the British had two choices: they could fight to the last man and be annihilated, or they could evacuate across the Channel back to Britain. The British mobilized, down to the smallest fisherman, to smuggle the soldiers back across to Britain, preserving the Army.
But didn’t they understand the cost of leaving France to the Nazis? Didn’t they have an obligation to fight to the last man?
Of course not. They had an obligation to preserve the British military - the only actual hope of winning the greater war. Churchill spoke in the House of Commons, where he called “what has happened in France and Belgium…a colossal military disaster.” He then added:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…
In the end, the British Army’s flight from France preserved Britain itself, and perhaps the entirety of Europe.
That’s the choice Republicans face now: annihilation or strategic withdrawal.
Of course a Hillary presidency will be an utter disaster. Like the loss of France, it will be an unprecedented defeat that will cost us dearly. But at least we will live to fight another day. If we chose this moment for our last stand, we will truly lose the greater war.
That’s for two reasons.
First, there is no victory for conservatives here. Trump is not going to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices outside of a pipe dream; he’s not going to govern in a small government fashion; he’s not going to restore constitutional boundaries to government itself. Trump is a typical union Democrat, and he will govern that way.
If you believe that conservatism is the only philosophy that can save the country, the army must be preserved, not perverted or marginalized. Right now, polls show that young Americans prefer not only Hillary, but Gary Johnson and Jill Stein to Trump, who earns approximately 9 percent of those under age 30. He’s running at 1 percent among black voters. His numbers are negligible among Latino voters. He’s not even running on par with Mitt Romney among white voters. Not even close. If conservatives convert to Trumpism, they lose a generation of voters. Better to disassociate and live to fight another day, conservatism still intact.
Second, Trump is not going to win. That’s not because of disaffected conservatives. That’s because he’s a joke of candidate. Right now, he’s down more than seven percent in the latest RealClearPolitics poll average. He’s losing in Georgia. He’s running even in Arizona. He’s putting South Carolina and Utah in play. If polls hold even close to where they are now (a big if, but a plausible one), he’s not just going to lose, he’ll be destroyed on a historic level. And Republicans in the Senate – people like Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin -- will pay the price for having to answer questions about him day after day. So will Republicans in the House. All to defend a guy who has no loyalty to conservative principles or legislators, and who says he doesn’t care if the Republicans lose the Senate.
And even if Hillary does somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and Trump somehow becomes president, many of his own policies – to the extent he has articulated any – are themselves far to the left of any modern Republican president.
In other words, the battle is already lost.
This is Dunkirk.
Save your army.
You’ll need it later.
Or you could simply look at how bad Hillary will be and decide that it’s worthwhile to burn all your ammo and destroy your men on the cannon shells of the enemy, all the while bragging that you're doing the right thing because hey, somebody has to stop the bad guys right now. That, after, all, would be the dedicated play, wouldn’t it?
Trump will never appoint Conservative Supreme Court justices.
Trump is not a small government kind of guy.
He's not a Constitutionalist.
"Trump is a typical union Democrat, and he will govern that way."
"Trump is not going to win."
These NeverTrumpers are either:
Working for Hillary
Have a visceral hate for Trump
High on something
Unbelievably stupid
Or all of the above
I think Trump is our Churchill !
Or paid off and stand to lose their rice bowl and power.
Why isn’t that scumbag Shapiro banned from FR?
Ben Shapiro...still butt hurt because Breitbart accepted his resignation
These pissants need to crawl back under the rock
This Shapiro hogwash, blather is not worth a comment!!! End of story!!! Go Donald J. Trump!!!
Trump is the GOPe’s Waterloo.
Right....Hillary isn’t Hitler. She is worse and makes him look like an amateur next to a pro!
This isn’t Dunkirk because working Americans have no place to retreat to. Shapiro thinks that our only choice is slavery to the government handout or slavery to the ever-dwindling paycheck (with constant increases in the work demanded).
Sun Tzu says “when in Death Ground, fight.”
We stand on Death Ground today. Our freedom is what’s at stake, not the stock market or the future of the MNC or the security of banks. If we have freedom, we can rebuild the rest. If we surrender freedom to “save the army” then we have saved nothing.
This from one of the same guys who said we had to hold our nose and vote for McCain and Mittens?
Trump Is Conservatism's Second Chance.
Hillary is Obama's Second Reich.
It’s OK when they force us to settle for their candidate, but it’s the end of the world when we do it to them.
Absolutely, without a doubt!
All the anti-Trump republicans have NEVER been nor will they ever be conservative.
No, no, no. . .Trump is the GOPe’s Waterloo ;)
Instead of Dunkirk it’s going to be Waterloo. The republican party will be the opposition party but a party without any teeth. Eventually the republican party will lose it’s majorities in the house and senate. Hillary will win and there will be a democrap speaker of the house and a democrap leader in the senate.
Hillary will appoint homosexual judges to the supreme court and there will be abortion on demand. Polygamy and bestiality and pedophilia will become legal. There will be presidential decrees that will weaken the second amendment to the point that it will be almost nonexistent. And if anybody complains to the supreme court the vast majority of the judges will be liberal and will always vote against the second amendment.
More muslims and illegals will be brought in and they will be given lots of free stuff so they will vote democrat. Eventually there will be more people on welfare than there are workers. The country will keep printing paper money and eventually it will go bankrupt. This will cause a global recession and then depression.
When the people are rounded up and put in forced labor camps in order to support the elites and non workers people will wonder what ever happened to that grand old republic where people could speak their mind and they were free to do as they wished. Well it was voted out of existence.
Good. Maybe we can replace vague and confused “conservatism” with lovers of constitutional freedom and limited government.
What planet do these writers dwell on? Where there's been "no victory for conservatives" is with Republicans since the ascendancy of George 1. Since then, we the voting fodder have been told to vote for "the lesser of two evils". All the while, Constitutional Conservative values have been lies told during campaign season to keep un in line. If by some chance the Backstabber Party had to pass something we favored in order to get re-elected, they get their buddies in the judiciary to overturn it.
Trump has to win. What I mean, of course, is that if he doesn't, we all better plan our individual doomsday scenerios for survival as the nation implodes.
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