By John F. Di Leo -
I cannot speak for everyone who uses a hashtag. I didn’t invent it; I didn’t start it… but I agree with it, and I see so many people in social media and the press either intentionally mischaracterizing it or honestly misunderstanding it, I believe it might be helpful if I laid out a simple list of points to clarify what #NeverTrump means to the Republicans who identify with the term, at least to those I know and share it with.
This, therefore, must obviously be a personal statement. There is no manifesto anywhere about it, so this is just my position on the matter, as a lone Midwestern blogger; take it for what it’s worth…
1: #NeverTrump means #NeverHillary too.
Many Trump supporters accuse us of trying to undermine Donald Trump so that we can help Hillary Clinton win. They couldn’t be further from the truth. If we didn’t mind Hillary Clinton winning, we wouldn’t be bothering to complain; we’d just let Trump get the GOP nomination, and then Hillary Clinton would win, and that would be that. We’re certain that Donald Trump is the one person who can’t beat her.
In fact, we oppose Hillary Clinton – we know that her presidency could be even worse in some ways than the disastrous Obama presidency has been – so we must do everything we can to make sure the GOP nominates someone who can and will beat her. And that requires #AnyoneButTrump.
2: #NeverTrump means we care about the downballot.
Donald Trump doesn’t talk like normal candidates at the head of a ticket do. He bashes “the Republicans” as much as he bashes “the Democrats”… sometimes even more.
But we know that the job of the guy at the top of a ticket is to do the best he can to lead a united front for his party, so that we can win on election day at ALL levels, not just his. An election isn’t just about the presidency, after all.
The Republican party is currently in the best position it’s been in for a century. At present, Republicans control half our states completely (both the governor and both halves of the legislatures), and Democrats only enjoy such control in a smattering of places. This dominance at the state level is critical, both in determining boundaries for the next decade’s remaps and for resisting federal overreach.
The #NeverTrump movement knows that with Donald Trump at the top of our ticket in November, that dominance at the state level isn’t just threatened, it’s almost certain to evaporate. Donald Trump is not toxic to all voters, but he is so toxic to a portion of the GOP base, it’s likely that many will simply stay home on election day… not just skip the presidential line, but stay home in disgust. This loss of critical base votes would arguably cost us most, if not all, of our swing seats – at every level – in November.
We want someone on the top of the ticket who can not only have a chance at winning, but will be a supportive team player, a respectable party champion, someone to secure the votes downballot. Even if we won the White House with Trump, that would be no victory if we lost our dozens of state houses, state senates, and governorships. The Republican party needs someone at the head of the ticket who will preserve this crucial record-setting position.
3: #NeverTrump understands compromise.
The #NeverTrump faction is routinely accused of being sore losers, upset that Senator Cruz didn’t win, so we’re taking our ball and going home. That too could hardly be farther from the truth!
In fact, Conservatives have learned to handle disappointment. We've only had two conservative nominees since Coolidge, after all. We can HANDLE nominating mushy moderates. We put up with Nixon, Ford, Bush I, Dole, Bush II, McCain, Romney…. we weren't HAPPY about it, but we voted for them. We even walked precincts for them, donated to them, tried to elect them, hoping for the best, again and again.
After eight years of Barack Hussein Obama in the White House, we could have gotten behind any of the legitimate candidates in the primaries, from the right to the middle. We could have united behind a governor or a senator, had one of them been the winner.
But this is different. If Donald Trump heads up our ticket across the country, his presence on the ticket will so repel a good part of the Republican base, we will lose seats we should never lose, up and down the ballot. Sure, we’ll lose the US Senate too, and possibly even the US House, but in addition, we are certain that with Donald Trump as the GOP nominee, swing seats will go Democrat, and normally safe seats will become swing. We'll lose almost every state house we have now. We'll lose state senates. We'll lose governorships.
Donald Trump is a millstone around the neck of the party. We oppose him because we have the common sense to SEE it.
We insist on overthrowing Donald Trump, not out of some frustration that it wasn’t “our guy” – whether that guy was Senator Cruz or Senator Rubio or Governor Kasich or Governor Perry. We insist on overthrowing Donald Trump because we can and will compromise on any real Republican dark horse the convention chooses in his place, it just needs to be a real, legitimate Republican.
4: #NeverTrump respects the voters’ wishes.
Primary election seasons are very different from the General election. The Primary season is an intra-party decision-making process, in which the party members announce the issues that are most important to them, and select delegates to help pick the best possible candidate to serve as the party’s champion for the fall contest. The goal is for this top delegate winner to be a unifier, the best possible compromise of the candidates running.
The primary system failed this year, that’s all there is to it. Rather than selecting the best from a great field of experienced and principled candidates, the primary delegate winner was, by almost any measure, the worst. We had governors who had saved their states, senators who could eloquently enunciate the principles of our noble party and our honorable philosophical movement. But the frontrunner is a reality show carnival barker and “crony capitalist” who is in many ways the embodiment of all the unfair Democratic Party caricatures of Republicans for a century.
A nominee must represent the majority of the Republican base, both those who voted in the primary and those who didn’t. Donald Trump cannot, and has no interest in this. He has said point blank that he’ll win without conservatives. Even if that’s possible – and sure, anything’s possible – what does it say about the downballot? What does it say about his policies if he wins?
The man doesn’t care about the team – the principled, hardworking members of the party base, from precinct committeeman to state rep, from envelope-stuffer to donor, the people who have carried water for the elephant all our lives.
Donald Trump’s formula may have won him the necessary minorities to win delegates in a relatively low-turnout primary season, but it’s no way to march toward a November victory.
The #NeverTrump faction understands this, and calls for a compromise candidate at the convention who will unify the party again. No other Republican leader has ever been as divisive as Donald Trump in the 172 years of the party’s history. We need a candidate who represents the Cruz voters and the Bush voters and the Kasich voters and the Rubio voters… and all the also-rans as well, the supporters of Huckabee and Perry and Santorum and Graham too.
This is a diverse party, with clear and principled philosophical positions on foreign policy, domestic policy, economics and culture. We must at least try to nominate someone who speaks to the party’s beliefs with respect and support.
The Trump faction declares that if he is overthrown at the convention, they will bolt and vote for Hillary Clinton in November, to spite us… or not vote at all.
Well, we believe that many of them were going to do so anyway.
Many of the Trump voters this spring were genuine Republicans, and many of them have admitted regretting their choice. Many others of the Trump voters are Democrats who came over to our side to meddle, hoping we would nominate our weakest candidate, so that their weak candidate would still have a chance of beating us. And many others among the Trump voters are the uninformed voters who don’t know the issues, and frankly don’t necessarily belong in a primary at all, but who vote out of some sense of civic duty alone. While honorable, that’s not particularly helpful, when our party is trying to choose its best nominee for November.
The percentage of the Republican base that has been dissed by Donald Trump and his supporters is therefore far greater than the percentage that actually cast votes for him in the primaries. If we respect the party’s base, yes, we must throw over Mr. Trump, and start from scratch, with an open convention dedicated to picking a legitimate, capable, winnable Republican for the head of our ticket.
5: #NeverTrump pays attention.
Finally, we must stress that Donald Trump was given a chance he should never have been given. Despite never having so much as run for alderman before, this man’s ego allowed him to run for his first political office at the absolute top, the most important political office on earth. We allowed him in our debates, we allowed him to run in our primaries and caucuses, and gave him the chance to prove his merit.
He has failed.
Throughout the primaries, Donald Trump won votes by promising to be self-funding. Since clinching the delegate count, we’ve seen that the campaign spends a lot of its money on Donald Trump properties. He’s not behaving like the self-financed candidate he promised to be.
Throughout the primaries, he won votes based on the largely solid Republican proposals published on his website. Since clinching the delegate count, we’ve seen him dismiss his own tax plans, his own issue promises, as “just an idea” or “just a starting point for negotiations.” He’s not wedded to the ideas he won votes with.
Throughout the primaries, he made speech after speech – exciting rallies in stadiums and convention halls – stressing his commitment to stop the unassimilatable levels of immigration, to evict the hordes of illegal aliens dragging down our nation and endangering our culture. But since clinching the delegate count, we have seen him backtrack on such commitments, clarifying his position to favoring a touchback amnesty, clearly being willing to compromise on the matter far more than his voters dreamed at the time.
People inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt have been frustrated to see him make the same mistakes, day after day, clearly refusing to be educated on issues that he needs to understand in order to do the job he’s seeking. The man is not ready, and every day that goes by, more voters realize it.
In conclusion…
The #NeverTrump faction knows that the GOP must win in November. We have watched past campaigns and seen what missteps lose November elections. We watched John McCain admit that he didn't understand economics, taking the entire economic argument for voting Republican off the table in 2008, and losing. We watched the party nominate Mitt Romney, a good man whose nomination, as creator of Romneycare, took Obamacare off the table in 2012, and therefore losing. Donald Trump, as a lifelong financier of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, takes dozens of issues off the table. His lifelong support of Democratic Party policies, candidates, and worldview denies him the moral high ground a candidate must have to define his party and make the case in a November election.
The decision to serve as a convention delegate – and to agree to be bound to the winner of a district or state’s vote – is not a suicide pact. It must not run contrary to conscience; it must not result in the late-July rubber-stamp of errant early-spring voting. We have these conventions specifically to pick the right candidates; if the primaries are found to have made a mistake, this is the chance to correct that mistake.
The #NeverTrump movement knows that this nation is in crisis. Eight years of an Obama residency in the White House, frankly, on top of a century-long slide away from the Limited Government principles of the Constitution, have left us in our most severe jeopardy. We must win back the White House this November. And we must retain as much of our current gains at the local, county and state levels as we possibly can.
We in the #NeverTrump faction believe that, no matter how hard we may work, we cannot possibly hope for such a result if Donald Trump is on the top of our ticket this November. We believe that our only hope to salvage this awful year is if our Republican convention delegates have the courage and wisdom to unbind themselves and return to the open conventions of old, in which they select a fresh, exciting compromise candidate who can appeal to both Republicans and independents as we push on to November.
It is the only hope for America. And that means, by extension, it’s the only hope for the free world.
#FreeTheDelegates
#NeverTrump
#NeverHillary
Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based international trade lecturer, writer, and actor. A former county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has now been a recovering politician for nineteen years.
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