Posted on 02/28/2016 10:38:01 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
To my friends supporting Donald Trump:
The Trump coalition is broad and complicated, but I believe many Trump fans are well-meaning. I have spoken at length with many of you, both inside and outside Nebraska. You are rightly worried about our national direction. You ache about a crony-capitalist leadership class that is not urgent about tackling our crises. You are right to be angry.
I'm as frustrated and saddened as you are about what's happening to our country. But I cannot support Donald Trump.
Please understand: I'm not an establishment Republican, and I will never support Hillary Clinton. I'm a movement conservative who was elected over the objections of the GOP establishment. My current answer for who I would support in a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton is: Neither of them. I sincerely hope we select one of the other GOP candidates, but if Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option.
Mr. Trump's relentless focus is on dividing Americans, and on tearing down rather than building back up this glorious nation. Much like President Obama, he displays essentially no understanding of the fact that, in the American system, we have a constitutional system of checks and balances, with three separate but co-equal branches of government. And the task of public officials is to be public "servants." The law is king, and the people are boss. But have you noticed how Mr. Trump uses the word "Reign" - like he thinks he's running for King? It's creepy, actually. Nebraskans are not looking for a king. We yearn instead for the recovery of a Constitutional Republic.
At this point in Nebraska discussions, many of you have immediately gotten practical: "Okay, fine, you think there are better choices than Trump. But you would certainly still vote for Trump over Clinton in a general election, right?"
Before I explain why my answer is "Neither of them," let me correct some nonsense you might have heard on the internet of late.
WHY I RAN FOR SENATE
***No, I'm not a career politician. (I had never run for anything until being elected to the U.S. Senate fifteen months ago, and I ran precisely because I actually want to make America great again.)
***No, I'm not a lawyer who has never created a job. (I was a business guy before becoming a college president in my hometown.)
***No, I'm not part of the Establishment. (Sheesh, I had attack ads by the lobbyist class run against me while I was on a bus tour doing 16 months of townhalls across Nebraska. Why? Precisely because I was not the preferred candidate of Washington.)
***No, I'm not concerned about political job security. (The very first thing I did upon being sworn in in January 2015 was to introduce a constitutional amendment for term limits - this didn’t exactly endear me to my new colleagues.)
***No, I'm not for open borders. (The very first official trip I took in the Senate was to observe and condemn how laughably porous the Texas/Mexican border is. See 70 tweets from @bensasse in February 2015.)
***No, I'm not a "squishy," feel-good, grow-government moderate. (I have the 4th most-conservative voting record in the Senate: Conservative Review Member Profile: Ben Sasse
Heritage Action Scorecare - 95%)
In my very first speech to the Senate, I told my colleagues that "The people despise us all." This institution needs to get to work, not on the lobbyists' priorities, but on the people's: Source
Now, to the question at hand: Will I pledge to vote for just any "Republican" nominee over Hillary Clinton?
Let's begin by rejecting naive purists: Politics has no angels. Politics is not about creating heaven on earth. Politics is simply about preserving a framework for ordered liberty - so that free people can find meaning and happiness not in politics but in their families, their neighborhoods, their work.
POLITICAL PARTIES
Now, let's talk about political parties: parties are just tools to enact the things that we believe. Political parties are not families; they are not religions; they are not nations - they are often not even on the level of sports loyalties. They are just tools. I was not born Republican. I chose this party, for as long as it is useful.
If our Party is no longer working for the things we believe in - like defending the sanctity of life, stopping ObamaCare, protecting the Second Amendment, etc. - then people of good conscience should stop supporting that party until it is reformed.
VOTING
Now, let's talk about voting: Voting is usually just about choosing the lesser evil of the most viable candidates.
"Usually.." But not always. Certain moments are larger. They cause us to explicitly ask: Who are we as a people? What does the way we vote here say about our shared identity? What is actually the president’s job?
THE PRESIDENT'S CORE CALLING
The president's job is not about just mindlessly shouting the word "strong" - as if Vladimir Putin, who has been strongly bombing civilian populations in Syria the last month, is somehow a model for the American presidency. No, the president's core calling is to "Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution."
Before we ever get into any technical policy fights - about pipelines, or marginal tax rates, or term limits, or Medicare reimbursement codes - America is first and fundamentally about a shared Constitutional creed. America is exceptional, because she is at her heart a big, bold truth claim about human dignity, natural rights, and self-control - and therefore necessarily about limited rather than limitless government.
THE MEANING OF AMERICA
America is the most exceptional nation in the history of the world because our Constitution is the best political document that's ever been written. It said something different than almost any other government had said before: Most governments before said that might makes right, that government decides what our rights are and that the people are just dependent subjects. Our Founders said that God gives us rights by nature, and that government is not the author or source of our rights. Government is just our shared project to secure those rights.
Government exists only because the world is fallen, and some people want to take your property, your liberty, and your life. Government is tasked with securing a framework for ordered liberty where "we the people" can in our communities voluntarily build something great together for our kids and grandkids. That's America. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of speech - the First Amendment is the heartbeat of the American Constitution, of the American idea itself.
WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO MR. TRUMP?
So let me ask you: Do you believe the beating heart of Mr. Trump's candidacy has been a defense of the Constitution? Do you believe it's been an impassioned defense of the First Amendment - or an attack on it?
Which of the following quotes give you great comfort that he's in love with the First Amendment, that he is committed to defending the Constitution, that he believes in executive restraint, that he understands servant leadership?
Statements from Trump:
***"We’re going to open up libel laws and we're going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before."
***"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak..."
***Putin, who has killed journalists and is pillaging Ukraine, is a great leader.
***The editor of National Review "should not be allowed on TV and the FCC should fine him."
***On whether he will use executive orders to end-run Congress, as President Obama has illegally done: "I won't refuse it. I'm going to do a lot of things." "I mean, he's led the way, to be honest with you."
***"Sixty-eight percent would not leave under any circumstance. I think that means murder. It think it means anything."
***On the internet: "I would certainly be open to closing areas" of it.
***His lawyers to people selling anti-Trump t-shirts: "Mr. Trump considers this to be a very serious matter and has authorized our legal team to take all necessary and appropriate actions to bring an immediate halt..."
***Similar threatening legal letters to competing campaigns running ads about his record.
And on it goes…
IF MR. TRUMP BECOMES THE NOMINEE...
Given what we know about him today, here's where I'm at: If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, my expectation is that I will look for some third candidate - a conservative option, a Constitutionalist.
I do not claim to speak for a movement, but I suspect I am far from alone. After listening to Nebraskans in recent weeks, and talking to a great many people who take oaths seriously, I think many are in the same place. I believe a sizable share of Christians - who regard threats against religious liberty as arguably the greatest crisis of our time - are unwilling to support any candidate who does not make a full-throated defense of the First Amendment a first commitment of their candidacy.
Conservatives understand that all men are created equal and made in the image of God, but also that government must be limited so that fallen men do not wield too much power. A presidential candidate who boasts about what he'll do during his "reign" and refuses to condemn the KKK cannot lead a conservative movement in America.
TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT
Thank you for listening. While I recognize that we disagree about how to make America great again, we agree that this should be our goal. We need more people engaged in the civic life of our country—not fewer. I genuinely appreciate how much many of you care about this country, and that you are demanding something different from Washington. I’m going to keep doing the same thing.
But I can’t support Donald Trump.
Humbly,
Ben Sasse
Nebraska
What’s left of our Free Republic is about to collapse, and we are about to fall into a thousand years of darkness.
If this guy is sincere, then he is extremely gullible and extremely ignorant. He CLEARLY DOES NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Did he not learn anything from the last 2 years???? John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have given Obama everything he wanted and more. Obamacare never went away, but this BOZO wants us to the SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
How clairvoyant. How utterly out of left field can you get?
“....That $100,000 gift from Trump to the Boehner-allied super PAC was twice as big as his next-biggest contributions. [Trump’s] given $50,000 .. to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads (2010) [and $50,000 to] the pro-Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Kentuckians for Strong Leadership (2013)...
And then Trump gave McConnell’s PAC another $10,000 in Nov 2014.
>> The Trump coalition is broad and complicated,
The dude can’t handle complicated broads...
What the hell does Trump stand for?
***********************************
“....That $100,000 gift from Trump to the Boehner-allied super PAC was twice as big as his next-biggest contributions. [Trump’s] given $50,000 .. to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads (2010) [and $50,000 to] the pro-Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Kentuckians for Strong Leadership (2013)...
And then Trump gave McConnell’s PAC another $10,000 in Nov 2014.
What the hell does Trump stand for?
***********************************
That’s simple: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
After Donald Trump finishes doing all the “liberal” things he has promised: build the wall, deport illegals and Syrian invaders, cancel Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders, roll back twenty years of intrusive government regulations, prosecute Hillary and her crew, release the secret 28 pages from the 9/11 report, negotiate prescription drug purchases, repeal and replace Obamacare, simplify the Tax code, repatriate $2.5 trillion in off-shore profits, stop the IRS from abridging the free speech of Christian Churches, reform the libel laws to remove the “public figure” distinctions, defund Planned Parenthood until the stop doing abortions, cleaning up the mess that is the VA, cutting waste, fraud and abuse where ever it is found, canceling Common Core and returning control of education to the States, end the assault on the Second Amendment, audit the Federal Reserve System, investigate the harmful additives in Vaccines and the coverup of studies at the CDC, and destroy the culture of Political Correctness, then we can talk about all those “conservative” issues you want to address.
Haven’t you noticed that no weapon formed against Donald Trump has prospered? Why would that be?
Isaiah 54
17 No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
And their righteousness is from Me,” Says the LORD.
Nelson, Thomas (2009-02-18). Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) (p. 717). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
I don’t think you’re going to have a fun week. You have been through losing hard before, so you know how to deal with it and survive.
Consider buying some ice-cream to have on hand when the votes come in. This way you’ll be ready for an ice-cream wake when the numbers for Cruz crash.
Now, I am clearly not on your side, but you do deserve credit for being very diligent in getting out your side of the argument, even though you’re wrong—it’s still a lot of work.
Anyway, just try to make a party out of both the up days, only one is likely, and do the same with the rest—all loser days.
Don’t worry, everything is gonna be alright.
~~Go Trump Go~~~~Go Trump Go~~~~Go Trump Go~~
Sasse will probably have to stay off twitter like Megyn Kelly for a while.
Ben Sasser comes out in support of a Clinton victory. How sad. Now we know why these geldings always refused to fight.
TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
The eGOP had 2 decades of being lying crap-weasels nearly as bad as the democraps.
Trump is pissing off the uniparty and that is why I am for him.
Why yes, anyone can see how united Free Republic has become since Trump entered the race. It’s a perfect example of how he can unite us all.
Well he makes good points. In a sane world people would see. But we are too far gone now.
So much for the “support the party nominee” crap. The global corporatists would rather have Hillary than an American nationalist. We’ll remember.
This backstabbing traitor received a lot of money and support from the Conservative Senators group (don't recall their exact name). That group is batting about 0% at keeping US Senators they got in office in line.
Senator Sasse, be very glad you live in the US. Throughout history, nations have not been kind to traitors to their cause.
All that is assumptions not based on the evidence. A different flavor of big government isn’t going to really fix anything. You are filling the principles vacuum with your hope. Hope and change 2.0.
I hope you are right - but I don’t think you are. I don’t believe in hope as a plan. I also think Trump is going to get unloaded on in the general. There’s a whole lot there to expose and there’s no point in doing so until he wins the nomination.
Thanks CW... shared on FB to my friends.
He’s not GOPe. If you read the article, you’d know that. He’s a smart, conservative, Tea Party outsider trying to keep a big-government-loving, would-be totalitarian bully out of the White House. We’ve begun to send many Tea Party conservatives into D.C. in recent years like Ted Cruz to finally control spending, shrink government and stop cutting deals with Democrats. We now have a chance to put one in the White House and bring this revolution to its full fruition. And instead of doing that, we’re about to nominate a big-government, New York values, lying, flip-flopping bully who the polls show performs worse against Hillary Clinton than any other candidate. Biggest mistake ever.
bttt!
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