Trump’s win vs. Reagan’s blowout: Why 2016 is NOT 1980 (Endorsed by Mark Levin)

Total fact that #Never Trumpers are desperate to shout down.

Seantors Rubio, Portman Issacson etc won with significantly larger vote totals then Trump. Why? Because a large numbers of GOP voters showed up to vote for those GOP Senators but did not vote for Trump in the Presidential races.

Never Trump managed to hold back GOP votes that would of gone to Trump. Screaming “no no no no no” because the facts challenge your dogmas will not change the facts

Total fact that #Never Trumpers are desperate to shout down.

Seantors Rubio, Portman Issacson etc won with significantly larger vote totals then Trump. Why? Because a large numbers of GOP voters showed up to vote for those GOP Senators but did not vote for Trump in the Presidential races.

Never Trump managed to hold back GOP votes that would of gone to Trump. Screaming “no no no no no” because the facts challenge your dogmas will not change the facts

I suggest you do some research. You could not be more wrong.

Last week Levin was claiming that his kind of conservatives deserved credit for the Trump victory and that Trump must now be faithful to them. Levin was wrong in so many ways.

On this issue of how Trump's victory compairs to 1980, the demographic shift in the intervening 36 years can't be ignored. Trump did bring in a lot of "Reagan Democrats" from the rust belt, but the NE and West Coast have gone extremely hard left since 1980.

The article is well-reasoned and grounded on fact. Kengor though misses two key points in Trump's favor.

First, since the Reagan era, massive immigration by the poor and unskilled from Latin America and the Caribbean has tilted the political demographics of the country in favor of the Left and the Democratic Party. This accounts for most if not all of the popular vote advantage by Clinton.

It is wrong and obtuse to treat that advantage as due to Trump's defects and limitations as a candidate. The large pool of immigrants is hostile to the GOP because their view of politics is deeply shaped by their experience in their native countries of politics as split between a corrupt ruling class party and a popular party that offers favors and benefits to the impoverished and oppressed masses.

Idiotically, most GOP advocates for mass immigration seem to think that speaking basic Spanish on the campaign trail and supporting mass immigration will enable GOP candidates to make major inroads among the Latin American immigrant community. That misses the real problem. With the qualified exception of the Cuban diaspora, most Latin American immigrants are not fully acculturated to America and its founding suspicion of government power. For most Latin American immigrants, conservative arguments and ideas fall flat or are seen as ruling class propaganda against helping the masses.

Second, Donald Trump may well have been the only GOP candidate who could have won in 2016. For all of Trump's faults, he was a fighter determined to win and had the advantages of name ID and personal charisma. Against a well-funded general election opponent with major institutional advantages, Trump zeroed in on the issues, demographic groups, and states that he needed in order to win. Saying that Trump won the electoral vote while losing the popular vote means that he played the hand he was dealt exceptionally well.

If Trump builds the wall and enforces the immigration laws, produces an economic recovery that delivers widespread prosperity, curbs terrorism, and strengthens the US position in the world, he ought to be a solid favorite for reelection. With the Democratic party at its lowest ebb in decades and bereft of attractive ideas and candidates, Trump could win reelection in a landslide.

If so, the 2016 election may come to be seen as a realignment reelection that led to a generation or more of conservative GOP rule.

OK, I do have to give Levin credit where it is due to him - he actually did all of those things you mentioned, all in the interest of having a country governed by the founding principles. Thanks for your reminder of this.

My disagreement with him is that he - like virtually all of the other principled Never Trumpers (and I exclude the likes of the Bushes, Romney, McStain and most pols from this category) - failed (and still fails) to understand that sometimes you have to break out of purity mode. NO ONE ever gets everything that they want in politics, and sometimes settling for 70% of what you want is better than fighting for 100% and actually getting nothing. In fact, Reagan himself used that figure to make that same point.

Trump was for and against all of the right things in this campaign, but Levin just didn’t see it (or, maybe, he just didn’t believe it). For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc.; against unlimited immigration from ANYWHERE; against immigration of any criminals; against immigration from Moslem countries when we cannot successfully determine that the people in question would make good Americans some day, against abortion on demand, against a weak military, against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury, against undercutting our allies, against interpreting the Constitution as a “living document,” against disorder in the streets for every petty grievance, etc., etc. If those positions are not conservative, then I don’t know what IS conservative - and I simply don’t understand how all of the ideological Never Trumpers (as opposed to the political/self-interested ones) could have missed that...and how he STILL seems to be missing it, with the alternative being Hillary Clinton, Wicked Witch of the NWO Alinskyites.

So, yes, Levin gets kudos from me for what he has done in a positive way for this country - but that does not immunize him for opposing Trump when the ONLY alternative was the next worst thing to literally Lucifer.

You are my new hero.

Trump was for and against all of the right things in this campaign, but Levin just didn’t see it (or, maybe, he just didn’t believe it). For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc.; against unlimited immigration from ANYWHERE; against immigration of any criminals; against immigration from Moslem countries when we cannot successfully determine that the people in question would make good Americans some day, against abortion on demand, against a weak military, against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury, against undercutting our allies, against interpreting the Constitution as a “living document,” against disorder in the streets for every petty grievance, etc., etc. If those positions are not conservative, then I don’t know what IS conservative - and I simply don’t understand how all of the ideological Never Trumpers (as opposed to the political/self-interested ones) could have missed that...and how he STILL seems to be missing it, with the alternative being Hillary Clinton, Wicked Witch of the NWO Alinskyites.

As far as I know, Bush, McCain, and Romney were all acceptable candidates to Levin and other NeverTrumpers. He may have criticized them, but he was willing to endorse them against Gore, Kerry, and Obama. Where was his ideological purity when it came to Bush, McCain, and Romney's countless liberal positions?

The fact that he opposed Trump for his lack of ideological purity while supporting Bush, McCain and Romney in spite of their far greater lack of ideological purity tells me that his opposition and that of the other NeverTrumpers was never about ideology. At best, it was about personalities. At worst, it was because even the "principled" ones were party hacks who resented an outsider not vetted by the RNC barging in on their party.

For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc

Levin is criticized for not supporting Trump while, you say, he supported Bush, McCain and Romney who were actually less true to conservative values. But let's look at Levin's support of George Bush. No one has been more critical of George HW Bush and his betrayal of the Reagan revolution than Mark Levin. His principled criticism of all of these men was parallel to is criticism of Donald Trump, he criticize mistakes but distinguished that criticism from support of their candidacies.

Let's consider a few of the list of positives, and there are many legitimate ones, cited to fortify Trump's conservatism. You'll forgive if the observer is skeptical of Trump's commitment to "fiscal responsibility." Putting his biography of bankruptcy aside, and putting aside his "love of debt," it is very difficult to believe that Trump is committed to fiscal responsibility when he advocates massive tax cuts, $1 trillion infrastructure building program, rebuilding the military, a brand-new entitlement, no cuts anywhere in other entitlements like Social Security, and upgrading of the veteran administration. Clearly, this is a recipe at least in the near-term and medium-term for increased debt and fiscal irresponsibility. In order to justify this spending spree coupled with massive tax cuts, Trump has to argue that stimulation package will energize the economy. Maybe so, but not in the short or medium term enough to compensate for federal budget shortfalls.

Let us consider, "trade agreements that help our workers" and whether they are, as opposed for example to tax cuts, orthodox conservative values. Fair and free trade have been staples of the conservative catechism since Ronald Reagan and before. Trump has departed from that view, he might have won the argument but that does not make opposition to him somehow a contradiction of conservatism. Certainly, citing the danger of massive depression if Trump were to make good on his threat to unilaterally slap 35% tariffs on imports is not a betrayal of conservatism and it is arguably a departure of conservative doctrine by Trump.

Let us consider the argument that Trump was " against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury". I recall when I turned against the war in Iraq it generated considerable criticism in this forum. It was not then and it is hardly now conservative catechism to be against that war. Just because I turned against it doesn't make it so and just because Donald Trump turned against it does not make support of the war anti-conservative. Much of the criticism of Trump's position on the war in Iraq, for example, have to do with the dispute about whether or not he was lying about his initial opposition to the war. Again, hardly a touchstone of failing to be conservative to criticize Trump for such a lie.

Those of us who have been falsely accused of being "never Trumper's" frankly do not understand how to define the phrase. I am certainly not a person who opposed Trump after his nomination, and to my knowledge neither was Levin although Levin withheld support which I promised to deliver and in fact did deliver upon his nomination. But I'm not aware that I, Levin, or any thinking conservative in supporting Trump necessarily must surrender his power of discernment or his self-respect. When Trump was wrong and God knows there were many occasions when he spoke or tweeted so irresponsibly that it was unreasonable to condition conservative bona fides on defending Trump. Many of us criticized the gaffe without withdrawing support for the candidacy.

What is a never Trumper? Is it anybody with whom Trump-bots disagree? What is a globalist, is it anybody with whom Trump supporters disagree? We conservatives deplore the left's practice of stealing our language, I deplore the same practice when done by conservatives.

The point is that since the nomination we should all have supported Donald Trump, which I did, which Mark Levin ultimately did and even Ted Cruz, despite outrageous provocation, also ultimately did. Now that he is President-elect Trump, we continue to owe him our support but that does not mean, and never did mean, that we surrender our power of discernment or our self-respect. If they are to be deployed against George HW Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, they are equally be applied to Donald Trump.

Exactly. Just look at how the demographics of the country have changed since 1980—in part because Reagan didn’t address and get rolled back Kennedy’s immigration bill.

Whatever Trump accomplishes, the Article V Convention must happen. I fear that complacency will set in now that the heavy breathing socialists have been kicked to the curb and the pressure will abate. We have to keep up the pressure for the Convention.

I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I don't think that it addressed my main point.

A lot of prominent Republican politicians and talking heads may have indeed said a word or two gently criticizing the liberal leanings of Bush, Dole, Bush II, McCain, and Romney, but they never failed to endorse them once they had secured the nomination, and certainly they never refused to vote for them. Trump was a different story - you had prominent Republicans and media figures saying they would refuse to vote for him or saying they may vote for him but won't endorse him (Levin falls into the later category, correct me if I'm wrong since I don't follow him closely). Those who said they wouldn't vote for Trump generally either voted for zero-shot third party candidates like McMullin (after years of self-righteously accusing third party voters in the past of "helping Democrats" or "wasting their vote") or didn't vote at all. Some neoconservatives went so far as to overtly support Hillary.

This brings me back to my original point. It's certainly true that on any number of issues Trump is not a conservative ideological purist. He has reversed his positions on many issues, and it's quite likely that in some cases he's just paying lip-service to some conservative talking points on social issues that he really doesn't care much about (that doesn't bother me as much, since social issues don't animate me in the same way as the national question). However, every other GOP nominee from 1988 on has deviated just as far from movement conservatism's ideological checklist.

My question is why their lack of ideological purity didn't inspire the same hysterical reaction and vocal opposition as Trump. The fact that it did while Bush's "compassionate conservatism" (aka watered down liberalism) or Romney's liberal track record in Massachusetts did not tells me that this was never about ideology at all, it was about personalities and resentment of the fact that a non-party machine vetted candidate won the nomination.