In the ongoing debate about whether “NeverTrump” conservatives should be willing to vote for Democrats such as Bernie Sanders to defeat Trump and Trumpism, perhaps it’s time to move past the rhetorical mudslinging and lay down a few cold, hard realities.
This article is from The Editor’s Corner, with insights, short-posts, links, and general ramblings from Editor/Owner Justin Stapley.
This morning, Richard in Japan offered his latest volley in an ongoing debate we’ve been having here at The Liberty Hawk: the debate about Bernie Sanders, Social Democrats, and to what extent Trump-averse conservatives should be willing to go to remove Trump from office and combat the impact Trumpism has had on the GOP and the conservative movement. I’ll be frank in offering my assessment that this discussion has gone into the weeds a little bit (or a lot of bit).
Instead of addressing anything specifically from Richard’s article, my main goal today is to move past the back and forth and lay down a harsh reality I think needs to be voiced about all of this:
All elections have consequences; most of them are unforeseen.
There’s no guarantee that Bernie couldn’t enact his goals. There’s no surefire way to know how the conservative movement or the Republican Party would react to a Bernie Sanders victory. And, there’s no underestimating just how dedicated to Bernie Sanders, or any other president, the Democratic Party could become if they beat Donald Trump.
What I can be sure of is that voting for socialists, and especially putting one in the White House, is the surest way of assuring absolutely zero credibility when it comes to conservative values for the foreseeable future, if not permanently.
If a remnant of conservatives who call themselves “principled” lends a hand to electing a socialist, the last thing that’s likely to happen is for the Republican Party and movement conservatives to turn to the principles we claim to believe in when we helped to elect someone so clearly and completely against our principles.
I just don’t see the path to this 2024 kumbaya where we all coalesce around a principled conservative candidate as if none of this has happened, especially if we end up becoming what the #MAGA trolls have said we were from the beginning: self-righteous RINOs who preen about principles while voting for progressives and socialists.
As I said when I first opened this whole conversation: there’s just no way to square being #NeverTrump in 2016 without being #NeverBernie, without being #NeverSocialist, in 2020. I do not possess the rhetorical prowess to make the argument that a crass, unserious attention seeker who stumbled into untapped populist rage was a bridge too far, but a soviet apologist and dyed-in-the-wool socialist revolutionary isn’t. At least, I couldn’t make such an argument without dripping in hypocrisy.
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