Posted on 10/23/2016 5:32:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last time a Clinton was on the ballot, I voted for Ross Perot. My vote didn’t deny Bob Dole the White House, but I confess I felt a smug sense of satisfaction in “refusing to settle.” I sure showed them, didn’t I?
I haven’t been as vocal as other “Never Trump” writers, but neither have I hidden my dislike or tempered my criticism. In a field of 17 Republican candidates, Donald Trump wouldn’t have been my 18th choice. I’m still not a fan. But they didn’t just ask me; they asked everyone. And more of everyone chose Donald Trump.
I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. For countless reasons I’ve covered over the last year, I dug in my heels and proudly basked in my self-satisfaction. I still defended Trump in this column and on social media when he was wrongly attacked by the left and the media, but I was steadfast in my opposition to the man.
So what changed?
Not Trump. He still gives rambling speeches with little focus and spends far too much time defending himself against insignificant slights when he should be focusing on policy (though his ethics reform proposal is excellent and will irritate all the people in Washington who need to be irritated)
Hillary hasn’t changed either. At least not in who she is – a corrupt, self-serving liar willing to do or say anything to win and/or sell out to the highest bidder. There isn’t enough Saudi Arabian money in the Clinton Foundation to get me to vote for someone who got rich off “public service” and a “commitment to helping the poor.”
No, what’s changed is me. Not through introspection and reflection, but through watching the sickening display of activism perpetrated by a covert army with press credentials.
Bias has always been a factor in journalism. It’s nearly impossible to remove. Humans have their thoughts, and keeping them out of your work is difficult. But 2016 saw the remaining veneer of credibility, thin as it was, stripped away and set on fire.
More than anything, I can’t sit idly by and allow these perpetrators of fraud to celebrate and leak tears of joy like they did when they helped elect Barack Obama in 2008. I have to know I weighed in not only in writing but in the voting booth.
The media needs to be destroyed. And although voting for Trump won’t do it, it’s something. Essentially, I am voting for Trump because of the people who don’t want me to, and I believe I must register my disgust with Hillary Clinton.
I am not of the mindset that any vote not for Trump is a vote for Hillary, but a vote for Trump is a vote against Hillary. And I need to vote against Hillary. I need to vote against the media.
After the last debate, when no outlet “fact checked” Hillary’s lie that her opposition to the Heller decision had anything to do with children, or her lie that the State Department didn’t lose $6 billion under her leadership, I couldn’t hold out any longer.
A Trump administration at least will include people I trust in positions that matter. I don’t know if they will be able to hold him completely in check, but I know a Clinton administration will include people who have been her co-conspirators in corruption, and there won’t even be a media to hold her accountable.
The Wikileaks emails have exposed an arrogant cabal of misery profiteers who hold everyone, even their fellow travelers deemed not pure enough, in contempt. These bigots who’ve made their fortune from government service should be kept as far away from the levers of power as the car keys should be kept from anyone named Kennedy on a Friday night. My one vote against it will not be enough, but it’s all I can do and I have to do all I can do.
I won’t stop being critical of Trump when he deserves it; I won’t pretend someone is handing out flowers when they’re shoveling BS. But I’d rather have BS shoveled out of a president than our tax dollars shoveled to a president’s friends and political allies.
The Project Vertias videos exposed a corrupt political machine journalists would have been proud to expose in the past. The Wikileaks emails pulled back the curtain on why that didn’t happen – journalists are in on it. I can’t pretend otherwise, and I have no choice but to oppose it.
This isn’t a call to arms for “Never Trumpers” to follow suit; this is a choice I had to make for myself after much reflection. I wouldn’t presume to tell others how to act any more than I would accept the same from someone else. I would encourage them to consider what awaits the country should Hillary win. If they can’t vote against her by voting for him, at least spend these last two weeks of the election directing their ire toward Clinton.
Although most are principled, far too many “Never Trump” conservatives spend more of their time attacking him than pointing out her corruption. I get it – in him, you see the fight you’ve been a part of being betrayed, and that leaves a mark.
I’m not saying you should support him, but you shouldn’t lose sight of the importance of opposing her. If, or when, Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office, she needs to have as little support as possible. Frankly, she needs to be damaged. The mainstream media won’t do it; they’re in on it.
This is my choice, what I must do. Each person has to come to this decision on their own terms. And the fact remains there simply aren’t enough “Never Trump” Republicans to make up Trump’s current deficit, and that’s on him. But I know what I’ve been wrestling with these past few weeks is not unique to me. And I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot sit around knowing there was something else I could have done to oppose Hillary Clinton and I didn’t do it.
A simple protest vote for a third party or a write-in of my favorite comic book character might feel good for a moment. It might even give me a sense of moral superiority that lasts until her first executive order damaging something I hold dear – or her first Supreme Court nominee. But the sting that will follow will far outlive that temporary satisfaction.
I oppose much of what Donald Trump has said, but I oppose everything Hillary Clinton has done and wants to do. And what someone says, no matter how objectionable, is less important than what someone does, especially when it’s so objectionable. A personal moral victory won’t suffice when the stakes are so high. As such, I am compelled to vote against Hillary by voting for the only candidate with any chance whatsoever of beating her – Donald Trump.
“I oppose much of what Donald Trump has said”
Like what?
I’m more or less in the same camp. I’ll vote for him.
I can’t stand Donald Trump. I don’t trust him to push his very good supply-side tax reform package, his good supreme court nominees, or anything else good he is proposing.
I consider him a liberal with a very bad temperament.
But he might do some things right. Hillary is 100% guaranteed to do everything horribly, horribly wrong, in a way that will be very hard to reverse.
I’ve read enough of him over this past campaign to know I don’t care how he votes. His words now are just to save his relevancy now that he (and collective media now realize) was wrong.
I agree
He has provided a reasoned list of why a true principled nevertrumper should be able to hold his nose and vote for trump- or vote against Hillary Clinton.
He did not touch on Hilary Clinton’s obvious health issues which are one of the SCM’s ( Statist Cororporate Media) biggest institutional cover ups of all time - and what a horrible threat to the security to our country to throw us into another probable leadership and constitutional crisis that will eclipse Obama’s uninvestigated ineligibility
So the question to those RINOs like Paul Ryan and the Bush family that say they’re voting for her -
WHO WILL HOLD HER ACCOUNTABLE for ANY ACTION SHE TAKES?
Not the GOP. Eight years of Obama and what did they do to hold him accountable. How many executive orders. How many new laws. How many ignored laws. How much debt- $21 trillion? Spent how and for what?
The USSC? Nothing to see here. Move on.
Look at our looming $21 trillion in debt? Ask the 94 million Americans not in the labor force? Ask the families paying 5 figures for health insurance they can’t afford to use. Ask the libyan and Syrian and Yemeni people. We cannot aske the American dead for the Obama Doctrine in Afghanistan and the Americans dead in terrorist attacks around the world. And dead from radicals unleashed right here in our workplaces, our malls, our clubs , our military facilities, soon our schools...
Not WE the PEOPLE if voting is a mere simulation rigged to provide the illusion of legitimacy to a preselected figure and the Congress’s focused on their own tenure ignores our plight
Not the SCM because they are purchased and delivered
Maybe foreign leaders wil hold her accountable. Because that is what wars try to do - hold someone accountable . But only history judges that
This is why it is important that we keep both houses of Congress and if possible increase the majority especially in the senate. My reasons are the following: When Donald Trump is elected President his plans have a better chance to succeed, and if Hillary Rotten Clinton is elected our majority in Congress is helpful against her plans. If we lose the majority and she is elected. We lose big time.
Better late than never but anyone who doesn’t/hasn’t felt compelled to vote Trump is singing with the scarecrow...”If I only had a brain...”
Nothing in there about the two candidates’ positions on the issues. That’s my basis for voting for Trump.
That was what worried me a bit during parts of the last debate. In parts I knew exactly what Trump was referring to, but I wasn’t sure that the majority of people who do not obsess over politics would understand.
Sean Hannity talks about having to ‘get together’ after the election which is code for all of us being fools again for the ‘scam and sham wow’ issues that talk radio and the beltway conservatives, along with the pretend conservatives of the GOP in Congress (who supported Ryan for Speaker) bring up.
Here in PA they hustle us with the need to bring back sanctions on Iran after they enabled the lifting of Iran sanctions with Republican Senator Bob Corker’s bill in the first place.
They’re as bad as John Kerry saying he was ‘for it before he was against it’ when he was a Senator voting on war in Iraq.
Good to see Derek come around. While I personally am not offended or worried about Trump. His personality defects as some see them are no worse than any number of other Presidents and he will be by far one of the most transparent Presidents if elected. He speaks his mind and even if you don’t always agree with what he says or how he says it there is little doubt that he is mostly being straight up. We don’t have to worry that he is giving entirely different speeches behind the scenes to donors. We don’t have to worry that someone is promising him money to alter his positions. The Trump we’ve seen minus the media filter is the Trump we get and I find that refreshing. Politicians are often known as being two faced scum and while Trump the showman is not exactly the same as Trump in private they are absolutely inseparable and they are not the product of some focus group designed to trick the public. Trump is his own man and no matter what the media does will never change that.
As for the media filter if we look back honestly at history JFK was absolutely horrible to women and he committed offenses while President that are at least as great as those of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton and I’m not a Nixon fan. LBJ was even worse. The primary difference of course is the media filter. While with JFK his misdeeds were largely cleansed with his tragic assassination but does anyone think the media would’ve come around to lionize Nixon if he had befallen the same fate as JFK during Watergate? The difference of course between now and then is that then the Press could get away with their white washing and water carrying. Today they are proudly strutting like glam prostitutes their biases. The press is no longer running an escort service but instead down on its knees in times square doing its dirty business and that as Derek expresses should disgust any normal person more than the worst of Trump’s perceived personality defects.
Actually, I’ve sworn off ALL radio and TV pundit crap. I don’t care who they are and what former reputations they have. I research for myself and decide.
I’ve come to the conclusion that none of these celebrities, Rush-Hannity-whoever, can do any better than I can given untainted facts.
All good points.
The congress will be vital whoever wins.
Its good to pull back from cable news, talk radio and think for one’s self or just take a breather from the noise machine they create with false drama dripping all over the place.
To take this long to get it, says a lot about Townhall and most of their contributors.
What we are seeing in these last weeks campaigns for Hillary are ALL designed to suppress Trump voters. I KNOW what is going to happen November 8 and this stuff coming out now is unforgivable in my opinion. They can all rot in hell for all I care.
So Derek Hunter was for Hillary before he was against her. Sound like anyone you know?
Anyone “undecided” when they walk into th voting booth is going to vote Trump 3 or 4 to 1 easily.
I don't know who pays him, but he should consider giving the money back. His mind and writing reflect nothing more than conventional GOPee 'wisdom.'
“If you don’t always agree with what he says....”
This is what I don’t understand. Who doesn’t agree with what he says? What, specifically, does he say that you disagree with? Why?
I agree with him on almost everything but I can see how some can disagree. Some GOP are dedicated globalists, others are self haters who buy into pc dogma, and others are hereditary GOP with no real principles driving them. Some disagree on tone which always puzzles me. How is one supposed to act when we have Washington DC so seriously failing whether it is the 21 trillion debt, the endless string of lost military engagements, the failed trade deals, the failed education system, the lost jobs, the immigration invasion.
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