The Illinois primary is Tuesday so I finally have to decide who to vote for in the GOP presidential primary.
Based on the statements of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on Friday night, the paid rioters sent to disrupt the Donald Trump event in Chicago that evening is why I shouldn’t vote for Trump. Evidently Trump’s words have incited riots and now the country stands at the edge of an abyss of violence.
I try to pay attention to the news, though maybe some readers can get me up to speed on all the other organized and paid-for rioting that has gone on the past few years: Occupy Wall Street, Baltimore, Ferguson, and protests organized by Black Lives Matter and Moveon.org.
Did The Donald cause those riots too? I sure hope not.
I’ll check the press releases coming out of the Cruz and Rubio camps to see if I can learn more, and of course, tune into Fox News and read the National Review. You can always count on conservative commentators to find a connection between Trump and evil.
Can I assume that a President Cruz or a President Rubio would create safer “safe spaces” for would-be paid rioters? Or, for that matter, Muslims in Bangladesh? (Click here to watch Rubio express his concern about the feelings of Muslims in Bangladesh.)
For purposes of full disclosure, my first choice for the Republican Party presidential ticket was Huckabee/Jindal. Yes, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal.
As with so many things in life, we don’t always get our first choice. Or sometimes, even our second or third or fourth choice.
Since Donald Trump entered the race last summer I’ve written very little about him, but I have linked to a lot of articles explaining the Trump phenomenon. I’ve never seen anything like it. Forget the lefties and what they have to say. What has been the most fascinating thing to watch has been the response to his candidacy by so many Republicans, conservatives, and Christians.
For those of you who think Trump is despicable, awful, terrible, disgusting, etc., etc., I have a simple a simple question that I’ve yet to get sufficiently answered: What, exactly, has been accomplished by all those wonderful, conservative, Christian politicians we’ve been electing for decades?
On what battlefield are conservative causes winning?
I can name only two — and neither cause has anything to do with the success of elected conservatives or conservative pundits.
The interest groups, not the politicians, deserve all the credit for the victories won protecting Second Amendment rights and the advance of the pro-life cause. These groups are the ones moving public opinion, not politicians who pretty much remain invisible, and not magazine writers, who only reach the conservative choir.
[POST SCRIPT: A good friend sent me a note telling me this: “I would include homeschooling as a third area of success where conservative politicians had little or nothing to do with it. Gutsy parents own it.” I agree 100%.]
It gets wearisome listing our failures.
With the help of the Republican Party and feckless conservatives, the radical political left has successfully wrecked the economy, grown the government to unaffordable levels, and created unsustainable entitlement programs. The Left has opened the borders in a way that subjects Americans to third world type conditions, expanded the role of government in health care — finding a way to make what was already bad much worse. They transformed most of the taxpayer-funded K-college schools into bloated and failing entities. This list could easily be made much longer.
So let’s get back to the question. Republicans and conservatives have elected thousands of good conservative, Christian men and women to public office for the past 25 years. What do we have to show for that?
Seems to me, little to nothing.
Am I suggesting that Donald Trump, then, is the answer?
He wasn’t my answer, but he is the answer for millions of Americans that are completely unimpressed with the record of all of those saintly men and women gracing the campaign trail and all those public offices.
Here’s another question: Of all those failures listed above, which are the fault of Donald Trump?
He hasn’t held public office. He hasn’t even worked in a conservative think tank or issue advocacy organization. He hasn’t written for the National Review or the Weekly Standard or any number of high profile conservative, web-based, commentary sites.
Seems to me he’s not to blame at all.
The collective failure of conservative elected officials and those who’ve possessed important bully pulpits is truly astounding. I should note, though, that this isn’t a blanket indictment. Many good people have done laudable work, sometimes with little resources.
One of the most important voices on the right, Rush Limbaugh, has been one of the few conservative commentators that has both understood and fought valiantly in the information war. Since Ronald Reagan retired, no one has done as much as Rush to educate millions of Americans about the dangers of the political left and the destructiveness of the Democratic Party.
Image credit: Fox Business.
