Daxton Brown is right. Those of us who didn't agree with Trump need to remember what happens if Trump loses this November. If we think eight years of Bill Clinton were bad, we can barely begin to imagine how much worse eight or even four years of Hillary Clinton will be.
There are not many people who can say they worked harder than I did to oppose Trump's nomination. I stayed quiet on Free Republic — around here, it was obvious that the anti-establishment sentiments were unified, and the debate was which of several anti-establishment candidates were better — but I spent a lot of political capital and goodwill in my own county arguing that we can do better as Republicans than Trump. I wasn't sold on Cruz, but I eventually decided he was the best anti-establishment candidate, and spent a lot of time arguing that the people who were backing Trump needed to be backing a candidate, whether Cruz or some other conservative, who had a better shot at winning in November.
But I said — ALWAYS — that I can think of at least two good reasons to vote for Trump. One of them is named Hillary and the other is named Bernie.
The “Never Trump” movement is, put bluntly, crazy. They have no viable path to success. The only way they can have even the remotest possibility of gaining traction would be if Mitt Romney spends tens of millions of dollars to win Utah, plus maybe Idaho and a few other deep red states, for himself or some other third-party candidate with the goal of sending the election into the House of Representatives.
Does anyone on Free Republic who doesn't like Trump **REALLY** think Romney is better?
That dog don't hunt.
Look, I'm not happy with the nominee. But he's a WHOLE lot better than the alternatives. I've been unhappy with several prior Republican nominees as well, but the alternatives were worse.
A final point for the “NeverTrumpers” who are reasonable and serious and capable of being reasoned with — the number one legitimate concern has been what kind of Supreme Court justices Trump would appoint.
Trump has addressed that with his list of Supreme Court candidates.
Seems to me that the one area where Trump could do real damage beyond his presidency — nominating numerous “sleepers” like Justice Kennedy — has now been addressed.
So for all the people out there who, like me, supported some other candidate: Go read some Hillary speeches. Go read some Bernie biographies.
Then come back and explain to me why you want to get one of those two people in the White House by backing some third-party candidate rather than Trump.
I'll give Trump credit where credit is due. He understands that the way to beat bullies is to face them down, refuse to give in, and smash “political correctness.” Too many Republicans want genteel dinner-party debates, not realizing the radical extremists who have captured the modern Democratic Party want to crush dissent. Look at Mizzou and Prof. Click — the Red Guard wannabees are waiting for a President Hillary, though they'd prefer a President Bernie.
That simply **MUST** be stopped.
Maybe Trump's blunt in-your-face abrasiveness is the way to do it. Maybe not. But as the Republican nominee, he is the only one who has any possibility of getting the job done. Any other alternative is dreamland induced by a California (or Colorado) high, and the “Never Trump” people are fools to even think their way can work.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3372955/posts?page=109#109
Key quotes:
“I'm willing to vote for a non-evangelical. The biblical standards for civil rulers are not the same as those for church office. King David was not deposed for his actions in the sphere of the civil magistrate, but would have had to be deposed for his actions in the sphere of the church.
Trump is better than a number of options on the Republican side, and far better than any of the Democratic options.
But if Trump becomes the conservative candidate of choice, we're going to have to have a long, hard discussion about how a man who grew up under the politically conservative and pro-business preaching of Norman Vincent Peale can interact with the Christian conservative base of the Republican Party.
Let's be fair. Trump grew up in what, by the standards of upper-class elite New York City society of the time, was a fairly conservative church. I know more than a bit about what it was like to be in elite upper-class Protestantism of the era when Trump was growing up. I know the Reformed Church in America quite well; even in its liberal East Coast regional synods, the RCA of that era was not really a traditional liberal Protestant denomination, though it has become so in more recent years. In the days before the demographic collapse of the mainline denominations and the rise of the modern evangelical movement, mainline churches were sometimes surprisingly biblical in what got taught by average members in Sunday School even if the preaching was problematic. And again, Marble Collegiate Church, by the standards of post-World War II New York City, was NOT a liberal church. It was not evangelical, but Trump's family could have found far worse places to worship.”
None of this is new. I said basically the same thing four years earlier that Newt Gingrich, if he became the only remaining alternative to Mitt Romney, should be supported by social conservatives.
Four years ago many of the same arguments I made for backing Gingrich once Santorum dropped out apply now to backing Trump once Cruz dropped out. But they're even more important now that the alternative is not Gingrich vs Romney, but rather Trump versus Hillary or Bernie.