It’s Clear That Conservatism, Inc. Wants Trump To Lose

Jonathan V. Last—one of the only conservatives still worth reading—took after me on Twitter the other day. Since I can’t stand Twitter, I’m replying here.

353556247_ec67aad64a_zLast’s point, which is not new, is that Trump is doing terribly, so I must be terribly depressed right about now. Well, I’m not feeling tip-top, J. V.! You?

I remain amazed at this persistent misinterpretation of a simple point. The argument of my initial essay was “If X happens, Y follows, and Y will be very bad.” Since X now seems more likely than ever, of course I’m upset. Can’t anyone read?

To the rest of you, I ask: have you noticed that the sorrow-not-anger tone of most #NeverTrumpers has now been abandoned almost completely?

The pose all along had been: “I’ve always found a way to support every Republican nominee and mostly have been proud to do so, even when some of them had not been my ideal candidate and I found serious reasons for disagreement. Trump is the first one I consider beyond the pale, because of” — the reasoning varies a little. “As such, I simply cannot vote for him, and I find that to be the saddest thing ever to happen in my political life.”

Then, if the person is not an indiscriminate neoconservative warmonger who was really a liberal Democrat all along, he would continue: “I cannot stomach voting for Hillary either. I have always disagreed with her about everything, and find intolerable her record of lawlessness, corruption, and contempt for American norms.”

Rise of the Giddy-Cons

That was the pose anyway. The pose has been dropped. It’s now abundantly clear that most of Conservatism, Inc. wants Trump to lose and is giddy at the prospect. They’re dancing not just on his political grave (prematurely, and perhaps mistakenly) but on the supposed despondency of the rest of us over Trump’s presumed impending loss.

Let’s be clear what this really boils down to, in a functional sense. It means: “We’re thrilled that Trump is going to lose. And if that necessarily means a Hillary win, well, we’re fine with that, with the certainty that the country will keep moving left. We have no problem with another four or eight years of strip-mining the heartland with ‘free trade’ and giveaways to high-tech and high finance. We have no substantive objection to granting de facto or de jure amnesty to 12 million or more illegal aliens. We will present no serious opposition to allowing 1-2 million young Muslim men into the country. And when Hillary goes pedal-to-the-floor on the entire Prog-left agenda—socially, culturally, and economically—that’s OK too. We’re happy about this because it will be just desserts for all you deplorable trogs who didn’t listen to us but instead supported Trump against our orders. We’re content to hand the country to a woman and an agenda we’ve outwardly spent our whole careers opposing just so you can eat crow.”

I left out foreign policy because that’s the one escape-hatch for “conservatives”—especially neo-cons—to support Hillary for some reason other than spite. She’ll still start wars and bomb other countries because bombing people is “conservative”!

Last and all the other giddy-cons would of course deny that they harbor any such thoughts. But this is unquestionably the practical, effectual truth of their giddiness. If they genuinely oppose Hillary and her policies as they claim, then they can’t truly be excited or even complacent about her ascendency. Their joy can only be explained by some other factor. The reason I’ve offered is admittedly speculative—I’m not a mind reader—but it fits the facts and it’s one of only three I can think of.

How Bad Could It Be?

What do they expect from the outcome—the regime—they are manifestly rooting for? The second possible explanation is they must think a Hillary Clinton administration won’t be so bad—for them. Does this mean they admit, if only implicitly, that it might be bad for the rest of us?

Outwardly, of course, the pose remains: “No. It won’t be that bad. How could anyone think it will be that bad?

“Yes, we’ve been fulminating for a generation against this specific person, her specific policies, and those of her party. Did we mean it? Of course we did! So why are we acting to help her win now? What a question! We’re not doing that! We’re merely denouncing her opponent as uniquely unfit in the history of the republic. So we don’t think her policies will be that bad after all? Oh, they will be bad. But survivable. The same way that Obama and the past 100 years of Progressive liberalism have been survivable? Well, when you put it that way—yes.

“Do we think that mass amnesty and massive refugee inflows won’t tip the electorate permanently into Democratic Party’s camp? No, of course not. That’s racist! All we have to do is Refine Our Message. Bring out the “natural conservatism” of Family Values Hispanics and Religious Muslims.

“Have we noticed that, so far, this has not worked anywhere? What do you mean? Cleveland Park and the Upper East Side are working fine! These are the best places to live in the whole country! Also, in the last six months, we’ve been on panels in San Francisco, Newport Beach and that new building next to the Big Dig. Those areas all look great! So what if they are all in bright blue states. That just shows that our ideas can thrive anywhere!

“That said, it’s clear that immigration is reaching the point of diminishing returns and perhaps some curtailment is in order, if it can be done in a non-racist way, but—what? A reason to support Trump, or at least oppose Hillary? Are you crazy?”

I will spare you more of this insipid banter. I toss it out only so that you may better understand the mind of the modern “conservative.”

Conservative Inc.’s Salad Days Are Done

Personally, I think what’s coming for them will not be as rosy as they assume. At first, little will change. At first. The think-tank, think-mag archipelago will go on as before. Subscriptions may be down a bit, but the checks will still roll in. For a while.

But I suspect that over time two things will happen. First, Conservatism, Inc.’s donors will wake to the enterprise’s utter uselessness and stop, or at least begin to slow, the money flow. In the beginning, this will feel like uncomfortable belt-tightening, but survivable. No conference in Palm Beach this year, but we still have the cruise! Then as the economy continues to drag and rates, returns, and yields remain rock-bottom low, the donors will pull the plug, calculating (correctly) that they’ve wasted quite enough for zero effect.  Last may be personally insulated from this, since The Weekly Standard is owned by a very deep-pocketed billionaire. But the rest of Conservatism, Inc. isn’t and I expect it to dwindle into irrelevance—not in terms of influence (that already happened) but in funding, personnel, and size.

That is, if it doesn’t simply go out of business altogether.

If I may, as an aside, respond to an anticipated objection: How can this idiot Decius say that we have no influence while at the same time accusing us of electing Hillary? To which I reply: You have as much influence as the Megaphone—the mass media and cultural elites—allow you to have. When you are committing fratricide against “your” party’s nominee, of course the Left is happy to use the Megaphone to let you amplify its message.

But the time is coming when you will no longer be so useful, which points to my second expectation. I believe the Left, as it increasingly feels its oats, will openly discard the pretense that it need face any opposition. It’s already started. This will rise to a crescendo during the 2020 election, which the Left will of course win, after which it will be open-season on remaining “conservative” dissent. Audits. Investigations. Prosecutions. Regulatory dictates. Media leaks. Denunciations from the bully pulpit. SJW witch-hunts. The whole panoply of persecution tools now at their disposal, plus some they’ve yet to deploy or invent.

The only ways out from under that will be to shut up, slink off, and find other things to do—not so easy when one’s entire career has been “senior fellow” and “contributing editor.” Or else keep modifying the message in the hope that the beast will eat you last. That shouldn’t be so hard—Conservatism, Inc.’s been doing it for a couple of decades at least. But it does bring us back to the first problem. The more feckless the “opposition,” the less interest from the donors.

It’s a pickle, isn’t it?

Maybe They See What’s Coming, After All

So yes, much of this does indeed make me sad. Not the demise of Conservatism, Inc. I don’t care about that—though I would be upset if The Weekly Standard went down, so hang on to your billionaire! I’m mostly sad about what I expect will happen to the country. Last and the rest of the giddy-cons seem to be happy or at least unconcerned about what’s coming.

Which brings me to my third speculative reason as to why. Maybe it’s cover, or projection, or a coping mechanism or some-such. Maybe they do see what’s coming, at least in part, and just can’t bear to admit it because they sense how bad it will be. And so resort to public denial and ridicule of those who speak up.

Let me close with another prediction. As what I and others (Angelo Codevilla, Jared Peterson, etc.) have predicted begins to come to pass, the attacks on us from the “Right”—the ridicule, vitriol, and straw-manning—will intensify. Conservatism, Inc. is dug in too deep—having called us insane and fools and much else—to ever admit that we were right, even a little bit.  It will be desperate to spin every leftocalypse calamity as no big deal, and every micro “conservative” success as clear proof that the tide has turned and victory is around the corner.  Which is to say, the gulf between their rhetoric and observable reality, now merely oceanic in scale, will become galactic.

Whereas if conservatism manages to turn the ship around, win consequential elections and do things with them—enact conservative policies that make real differences in real people’s lives—I will be the first to say, “You told me so, and I was wrong.” I would be delighted to do so. But then again, I don’t want what I fear is coming.

About Publius Decius Mus

Publius Decius Mus, or “Decius,” is the pen name of Michael Anton. He was a senior contributing editor of American Greatness from July 2016 until January 2017. He currently serves as deputy assistant to the president for strategic communications on the National Security Council.

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429 responses to “It’s Clear That Conservatism, Inc. Wants Trump To Lose”

  1. “The pose has been dropped. It’s now abundantly clear that most of Conservatism, Inc. wants Trump to lose and is giddy at the prospect.”
    Quite a few have wanted Hillary to win ever since Jeb! dropped out. I would say the vast majority moved to Hillary after Rubio fell by the wayside.
    If Trump wins, True Conservatives will be his worst enemy. If Trump loses, they will engage in kabuki but give Clinton anything she wants as long as she supplies endless wars, unchecked trade agreements, and mass migration. This madness would be the prescription for revolution. I just learned today the military is having NCOs lecture enlisted men this week on the glories of staying in service and the horrors of civilian life. There are big plans afoot, and none are good. If soldiers, airmen and sailors continue to peel off, I fully expect a draft to be imposed. So much for Hillary’s touted “public service.” It’s a gateway for a draft.
    Welcome to St. Petersburg, October 1917. Let’s hope and pray the left-wing and Conservatism, Inc., have an inkling of what they could set off and that Trump prevails.

  2. Want to have some fun with #NeverTrump acolytes? Tell them you’re not going to vote on November 8 for anybody but Trump. Even better, tell them you’ll vote for Trump and then select Democrats for everything else!

    • Haga Akane
      You might be joking but this is exactly the strategy that the Trump movement that wants its way should act. Conservative and nationalist voters of whatever stripe are under the thumb of Republicans and the Conservatism Inc. Voters always show up because they hate the left and get nothing out of it.

      As Gary North has pointed out many times, any movement that is serious should not give its support freely but act like a swing vote instead. It should be particularly ruthless towards a politician who betrays them. Not only do you withdraw support but you actively vote for the other guy just to prove your point. You do this 1-2 election cycles and you own them. Think of the NRA.

      The function of conservative intellectuals/pundits and media is to make sure people are ginned up each cycle to stay loyal to the system. If Trump is serious this is what he should do. As David Stockman has pointed out the media has assassinated Trump at this point. He can’t win when they have turned up the intensity to 212 °F. They are simply ignoring anything negative story on Clinton and they can still do this in the age of the internet. This testifies to enormous power of the media still. But this is about the last election or two where they still have this power. The Republican party could maintain its power through this so they should be the target. A fissure has to be forced within the party and the conservative elites.

      • I should preface this by saying that I think there’s still a very good chance that Trump is going to pull this out. Even after the Bush tape, the latest polls still have the race essentially tied.

        If, however, the GOPe manages to throw the race to Clinton, I’m seriously considering a switch in registration to the Democrats. Ignore the GOP entirely. Not only might it have the helpful benefit of warding off the IRS for a time, but we might as well actively participate in the only nominating contests that will actually matter anymore. It couldn’t hurt too much to actively try and engender less terrible outcomes. I’m thinking this year for instance as bad as someone like Joe Biden might be in relative terms, he’s not a vengeful, power hungry corruptocrat to the same degree as the Clintons. Were the GOP throwing the race to him instead this year, the aftermath of the election would not be quite as uniquely terrible. A thin reed I admit, but it might serve as a good way to bide time and lay low.

      • Every Trump supporter should vote against Ryan and McCain.

        Sometimes the worse candidate is the better one. The good thing about Hillary is that she is so hated that the only way she will get things done is if the Democrats wins in 2018. Obama avoided gridlock for 2 years. At the moment we are reaching revolutionary sentiment among Trump supporters so one can hope impeachment will be on the tip of the Republican’s tongues. In either event Hillary is automatic one term no matter. The next president whether Trump or Hillary is finished. They will be Hoover II. The only difference is that Trump might do some good in the meantime with Congress like immigration or on foreign policy. So I’m not quite so skeptical as Decius unless Republicans cave on amnesty then things are truly bleak.

        Republicans have had the worst luck with recessions but if/when she wins:
        http://www.garynorth.com/public/15666.cfm
        How Trump wins it easily if…:
        http://www.garynorth.com/public/15380.cfm

      • Unfortunately that will be the first thing they go for and the first thing the Republicans cave on. The leadership can be bought off with a promise of non-competitive opposition, especially Ryan who is always just barely winning his district. He’ll call it something other than amnesty, but that is what it will be and we can’t let them get away with it.

      • They WILL cave on amnesty. Had it not been for the availability of a conservative court they would have. The whole dynamic changed with the death of Scalia. There is no more time!

      • I know the leadership wants to cave because they agree with the opposition. But as Ann Coulter has said, the three times that amnesty has been attempted it has been the populist grassroots that have reacted and stopped. It happened twice under Bush in 2001 and 2006 and under Obama in 2012. Recall that immigration wasn’t even on the conservative media radar at the time. This in itself is a huge indictment because it tells you how unguarded conservatives are on their single greatest weakness(a declining white electorate). Yet, the grassroots won and now consciousness has been raised among conservatives and populists so much that amnesty was abandoned by Republicans during the primary season. Next time around will be harder than ever to pass. Even if they tried the conservative media couldn’t suppress or resell amnesty.
        If they somehow manage to pass, which I think they won’t, then it will be a 2018 revolt or maybe even party break up.

        The real fear is not passing amnesty in my opinion. The real fear is the executive order and a congress that won’t threaten impeachment for it. In any event it looks likely that are we headed for a constitutional crisis of one sort or another. I’m just not sure if it will be a good thing or a bad thing yet. The last crisis of this kind gave us Nixon, the one before gave us FDR.

      • sIt WILL be through the court! That’s why Scalia’s death hangs over this election. McConnell ( is holding the door open for whoever the next president is. It represents the proverbial honeymoon bone. He’ll waste no time tossing it either. That single court appointment will tilt the court, at which time the author of this articles future will start to take shape…immediately!

      • If Hillary wins – still not a foregone conclusion – Ryan will push through Amnesty, TPP and another Omnibus almost immediately as some sort of ‘move forward’ gesture.

        I actually hate Ryan more than Hillary. Hillary is at least, in the manner of a Snake-Oil Salesman, an authentic liar, given that what she’s selling and the people she’s selling it to don’t really merit the truth.

        Ryan is a true wolf in sheep’s clothing. Decent Americans deserve a better choice than Paul Ryan – his constant sanctimony on ‘conservative principles’ disgusts me.

        Ryan is a piece of garbage, I loathe his cucked-out neolib ‘right to rise’ rhetoric.

      • Gene – what is the old saw that the liberals will eventually take over any institution that is not self-consciously conservative? Case in point. Jeb, Boehner, Mitt .. all claim the mantleship of conservatism; all decry the Trump as a stealth-conservative (still a Donk, they say).

        Yet Trump has come out publicly embracing principles that mean something to me )the Wall, first and foremost) while the so-called ‘conservatives’ are actually much more liberal in their thinking (e.g., “act of love”). The Republican party cannot be and should not be saved. We need to black list any RINO and not give them a dime or a vote.

      • Paul – I hate him (Ryan) not because he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but because he cowers in fear of the liberal media and desperately loves his position in the DC hierarchy. Ryan came to DC full of budget ideas and his brand of conservatism; ok. So he’s the speaker and he came through a VP run virtually unscathed. So where are his achievements? Where is he driving the policy debates? Where is the bleepin’ budget?

        He isn’t accomplishing. It’s because he is terrified. I agree with the rest of your thoughts on his sanctimoniousness – he gives the liberals all the talking points they need and Decius is correct that the megaphone is a liberal gift – which he likes to use as long as they deign to let him use it (a la McCain). But Ryan is not evil per se – he is just a moral coward who is the pawn of evil people. I don’t absolve him from his guilt, and I hate his guts . I just want to disagree about his motives.

      • The Ryan hate seems pretty out of place. Sure he’s disappointed, but all politicians will do that. First off–he’s been Speaker less than a year, and an election year at that. What accomplishments are you expecting?

      • Plus you won’t get persecuted by the victorious left. Don’t worry about the polls, they’re so cooked. Look at the latest fox poll. Sample includes only 20% independents and they’re 40% of the electorate. Because they want you to believe he blew a twelve point lead among independents in one week. Besides, look at the internals again and ask yourself, do I really believe that 21-29% of registered republicans are voting for Shrillary? Among likely voters? Really? We’re being gaslighted man. Stay strong and vote Trump.

      • Why would the pollsters lie? They are in the business of being correct.

      • “the latest polls still have the race essentially tied.”

        All the polls I’ve seen has Clinton way ahead. Trump is on course for fewer than 200 electoral votes.

      • Only two polls have released TABS since the 1st debate, well at least I can’t find them, The Florida Gravis Poll has 56% women and 43% men, they have 44% under 40 (this is 7% too high even if the young turn out at a normal rate NOT GOING TO HAPPEN) and they have only 60% white people in Florida. I think the IPSOS poll releases the number of DEMs vs REPubs and each week more DEMS show up in the last two week the DEMS have grown 8% over the starting Republicans DEM deficit of 2%. Since they showed that they’re completely rigged in one part hard to tell what they’re doing under the covers.

      • The polls showed him diving after that video was released, and diving after the first debate. They show him losing the popular vote, they show him losing when organised by state. Polls on his popularity show him way under Hillary too (even with her unpopularity). If you think all these polls are rigged or wrong then you’re welcome to that opinion.

      • Well, it is known as an absolute certainty that polls are used to shape and drive public opinion, not reflect it, and to depress and demoralize. There is no doubt in my mind that that is the objective here. Of course Trump would nosedive after such a “deplorable” tape surfaces! The question is if the gaslighting is accurate or not, if we will see the biggest Wilder effect in our lifetimes.

      • Why do you put ‘deplorable’ in scare quotes? You see nothing deplorable in boasting about sexually assaulting women? If not then perhaps that’s the root of you not believing the polls. You don’t get how it comes across to the majority of the country. I suspect also that many Trump supporters and in a social media bubble where they only talk to other Trump supporters.

        “Well, it is known as an absolute certainty that polls are used to shape and drive public opinion”

        That’s not an absolute certainty, that’s your opinion. Pollsters that do a shoddy job of reflecting genuine opinion go out of business.

        I think there’s going to be a lot of baffled Trump supporters after the election, who won’t understand how they didn’t see his loss coming.

      • First of all, if you read between Trump’s lines, he’s marveling at how permissive these women are around money every bit as much as his own exploits. They might as well be for sale. But that’s not in accordance with the state religion, so that interpretation isn’t heard anywhere. Besides which, in the ’90s, we were told that “it’s all about sex” by all these people who currently have the vapors, so it doesn’t matter.

        Second, whether or not such talk was “deplorable” doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the emergency that this country faces. Given that and the nature and history of Trump’s opponent, serious people should be embarrassed that we’re using up so much oxygen on such trivialities, and that the media are getting away with it.

        Third, polls are used to shape public opinion and to demoralize. Examples are everywhere, and if I had the time and inclination, I would cite them and illustrate using their language. Pollsters that do a lousy job when it matters might go out of business. There’s a time for that, when the day of reckoning comes. But months out before the election, they can get away with damn near anything they wish.

        We will indeed see — if you’re right, and Trump was always a national embarrassment (though compared to Hillary, it’s absurd) or whether or not all these pollsters are going to be skunked and people emerge from the wallpaper (as opposed to the grave) to vote for Trump.

      • You call bragging about sexually assaulting women a triviality? Good grief. What does it tell you about a guy that he’s too immoral even for other Republicans?

      • Read up on quotation marks – those show unbelievability or sarcasm. Example: Obama’s “Racism” Handbook.

      • Read up on ‘scare quotes’ – it means exactly what you just said.

      • The IRS has been all over me, every time I contribute to a Republican, I get the IRS letter, like clockwork. Sorry I mean Tea Party Republican, if I donated to a traditional Republican they would have my back.

      • “…the latest polls still have the race essentially tied…”

        No. They don’t.

      • Rumors of Trump’s political death are being greatly exaggerated. Over the past year, he has faced many seemingly unyielding obstacles and insurmountable roadblocks, and he has triumphed over all of them. It seems the lower he is driven, he higher he rises. The challenges bring out his great, but mostly unappreciated talent for leadership. Mark my words, he will triumph over this low point as well, proving himself worthy of the great task to which he has been appointed.
        The peanut gallery of advisors saying that he should do this or that, should STHU. He’s operating at whole ‘nother level.

      • Ruth
        I hope I’m wrong but I think it is over unless something unforeseen happens. Trump’s great run up until the first debate was predicated on him mildly staying out of the limelight and Hillary imploding(and collapsing). The media was desperate for Trump to give them a reason to break the negative(for Hillary) news cycle. I would call this a 80%-20% media hedge on Trump. He can work with that but at the moment it is something like a 95%-5% anti Trump cycle. They have salvaged their credibility but much as we would like to pretend that people in the middle see through this, I don’t think so. It works even on a subliminal level. Trump does not have the Megaphone to use. He can only preach to the choir. I see no reason for the media to relent.

        It might not be a blowout but Trump needed to continue the good run from before the debate. This seems impossible at the moment. The only way I can think of him shaping the news cycle is to hold big televised press conferences again but will the media even allow that with the danger inherent in that?

      • As his son Don said about him, “Impossible is his starting point.” I have thought it was “over” for him at several points along the way, each time the circumstances seeming as dark as the present moment. And it has always proven to be wrong. So I’ve finally stopped doing that, and instead to trust his exceptional leadership.

      • Absolutely we should never an Establishment neo-conservative Republican again.
        They must be wiped out completely. The Democrat Party would doomed without the aid of the Republican Establishment and neo-conservatives.

    • I am all for Trump but what you say and the comments by Sam and RDittmar make no sense. This is no Third World dictatorship and therefore Congress matters. By design by our Founders, a president without congressional support can’t do very little. Let’s try to change the party from within after the victory.

      • Where have you been. This Congress is all in for Clinton. Obama agreed to let them lift the sequester on military spending and gave them some knee pads to take the full Obama budget as is including funding all the global warming crap, the Iran deal, and Planned Parenthood. With any pretense of budget control gone the Republicans will never come back to it.

        They are so taken with Obama that they passed legislation to reverse there 2/3 requirement to pass a treaty to a 1/3 veto so he could get his Iran deal and they could vote against it.

        The Republicans have controlled the house for 16-22 years, the senate for 14-22 years, and the Presidency for 8 and have not cut a single program or even cut funding for a single program, not made any entitlement fixes, passed medicare Part D, funded Obamacare, and been as complicit as the dems in the 20 trillion dollar debt that they just blew up significantly with the budget deal.

        Bush got carbon regulation going. Every SC court nominee of Clinton and Obama has been approved and Roberts proved the fox in the henhouse. Congress can matter but not this one..lol

      • I don’t dispute your criticism, but you haven’t answered the question. How is Trump going to govern without support from Congress?

        Hello?

      • This is no Third World dictatorship

        Of course not. It’s a First World oligarchy.

        therefore Congress matters

        The “Republican” Congress rubberstamps the “Democratic” Presidents actions. The country is run by a single Uniparty which controls both parties.

      • The Dems are Neoliberal Establishment Party A, a nominally ‘left wing’ party that conceals their corporatism beneath egalitarian rhetoric.

        The GOP is Neoliberal Establishment Party B, a nominally ‘right wing’ party that conceals their corporatism beneath social mobility rhetoric.

        Both are operationally in thrall to the same big money interests.

      • Ted Cruz is the only one who has stood against it – he was rejected in favor of a Lib huckster who represents everything the whiners claim to reject.

      • Are you sure about that? It’s getting damn close to one. As for Congress, there are too many Congressmen and Senators whose only purpose is feathering their own nest and looking powerful. As for “changing the party from within,” the party has already been changed, it changed when it was taken over by the right wing progressives.

      • Conservatives don’t matter, because they can be counted on to sell out their principlies, as the author has quite brilliantly illustrated.

      • The media news TV and Newspaper outlets tell us what is news and where our attention should be during this Presidential campaign. It’s their duty and job. It’s what good journalism is and was for 50 years. What are the relevant facts we need to know so the voters can easily swallow and digest to pick our true and deserving leader to serve their boss, We the People? Sex sells, especially this year. Some rapes are rapes. Some sexual assaults are sexual assaults. Some are not, but we just need to trust CNN and MSNBC and all talking heads to make it easy for us. There’s free speech and free journalism but they will decide what are the facts we need and what we can forget. Trust them it will be so easy.
        This year all the talking heads are telling us all is lost in Trump-land. Clinton donators are ecstatic they will be pardoned as well as every criminal and foreign government actor who donated to the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Global Innovative, as well as all the DOJ, FBI, State Department players and Obama WH associates who concluded Intent is needed in 18 USC 798 even when they know it is not required and the investigation of HRC was a parody of justice. Remember the new CIC can use the Presidential pardon to free any and all. Nothing to fear. We need to just keep things going as the elite want. Isn’t that what democracy and our US Constitution tell us? When you control the message you win and as Saul Alinsky’s rule three says
        RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
        What e-mail leaks? How terrible sexual assault from 37 years ago is relevant and demands immediate response, even with no witnesses. What slander? What libel? You may want closed migration and Syrian refugees being questioned if the US Constitution trumps Sha’ria law or not? Manufacturing and jobs in America? The elites and establishment lose money and rust belt states rebound. Unacceptable.
        What Bimbo irruption is a Bimbo irruption? What is newsworthy? What rape charge or sexual assault charge is correct and what is not? What Wikipedia leaks? Not news. This year is doubly special. Is it because we clearly see that Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, and Rachel Maddow are biased to homosexual rights and not to Roman Catholic or any Christian religion dogma who for years believe Leviticus 20-13 means what it says. It has for three thousand years, but this year is special. The leaked HRC and Podesta e-mails show you can pressure these religious nuts easily. The WH and Title nine and executive order can mandate football players and cheer leaders must shower together, and use the power of the purse or the Johnson amendment to threaten churches. Any day you feel like marrying a sheep or member of your same gender to be a marriage it’s fine. The WH said so!
        Democrats from 2004 can campaign on Defense of Marriage act, and be elected, but have the ability to try to get enough Catholic priests try to say “Let’s just assume that Obama and HRC, and Bill C broke a lot of laws in the last eight years. Isn’t it true that they can pardon each other so that all murders, disappearances and common fraud, bribery, and graft did not occur”. CNN has a poll with 27% GOP respondents, the poll is correct. Talking heads say so. Trump touching a woman 37 years ago is the worst thing possible. As is Trump walking through a Miss Beauty contest is an offence so heinous Trump is banned from being CIC and the elites can tell us when Title nine law also applies and when it’s no big deal.
        I come back to the basic fact the media always lies, but why is this year so special? I believe all the talking heads, career established politicians, are bought and paid for. I think the silent majority and small business Latino and Asian and religious church going members know why, and will vote like the Brits did in Brexit, no matter what Obama told them to do. I trust in the intelligence of the modern voter. Do you?

      • Do I really have to vote for the Prog Tranny that is opposing my senator? I WAS actually thinking of it, on the “toss the eGOP machine out” basis. But I can’t get past the complete and utter delusional Prog policies this former dude espouses…

      • You’re Clinton’s dream come true, you’re supporting a loser and you’re trying to take out Republicans at the same time.

      • That was exactly the Dems plan all along. It’s working like a charm and the dupes still haven’t caught on that they’re being played!!

    • That would only prove that you don’t even care about the only reason to vote for Trump, the Supreme Court.

      • LOL! As if Republican Congresscritters would actually stop Herself from doing anything.

        You’re stupid.

      • Whats the point of pretending to be an Asian woman?

      • You sir (or ma’am) are a scholar and a gentleman for seeing through my mask! You’d be shocked how many people think I really am a Japanese female.

        Bravo!

      • I’m glad I’m not as angry and jaded by life as you are.

      • He’s not going to appoint Conservatives to the Supreme Court, obviously, Clinton is far more conservative in nature than Trump, you can see that with every interaction. He’s used the SC to manipulate folks, when he gets elected he’ll revert to form and punish Conservatives for not supporting him enough during the race.

    • If I lived in Wisconsin or Arizona, I think I’d do just that. I voted straight Democratic tickets here in Texas twice because of all of the “conservative” BS, the first time in 2004 and the second in 2006. I did it in 2004 because I knew if Bush was reelected, we’d be longing forward to Hillary eventually. I thought it would be 2008 but the Democrats decided to go for skin color rather than sex. I did it in 2006 because, well I guess it was just because.

    • That’s OK, I’m voting for @smod2016. I haven’t voted for a Democrat since 1976 and I’m not going to this year, but voting for Donny? I’ve said many times what it would take for me to consider voting for him: He has to do a Sister Souljiah on the alt.right – pick some prominent Jew-hating, racist alt. righter and attack him with the same ferocity he turns on ordinary Republicans. I’m still waiting.

      • I guess that means you have no interest in telling Donny what he has to do if he wants my vote. OK, that’s your choice.

    • That b me, Rubio either comes out full throated for Trump or he ain’t getting my vote.

    • Seriously, Haga, as a never Trumper myself, I can’t really see why your “threat” is supposed to matter to me. Voters do all sorts of things. All power to them – and you. Why should I care a bit what YOU are going to do. Is that what this is – all about YOU?

      • If you didn’t care you wouldn’t have spent the time to throw down a 3+ line Disqus post telling everyone you don’t care.

    • When we get betrayed by these republicockroaches we can never forget. It is as bad as september 2001

    • It would be fun since the #NeverTrump hypocrites have often demanded that we should do the exact opposite.

    • So then basically you are voting a straight democrat ticket. Thanks for the moment of honesty.

      • I gave two options. Why do you assume I am taking option 2?

      • Option 1 – Trump and no one else
        Option 2 – Trump and all democrats down ballot

        Both options are straight ticket democrat, The first is just not complete

      • Oh, you’re one of THOSE kinds! Too bad the 17 challengers were either RINOs or weak sauce.

  3. I agree with the sentiment of the argument, but i believe there is one element you haven’t considered. What will Trump do if he loses? The man has a v loyal “army” of supporters who i believe will follow him even if he loses (unlike Romney / McCain). Having followed the man since the outset of his campaign, i don’t think he will just go back to his real-estate work with his tail between his legs. I think he will build an alternative media empire to keep hitting the elites in the exact manner he has been doing.

    There needs to be more balance in our media, the mainstream will lose influence, and Fox will attempt to keep hold of the right, but just as the gop is fracturong, so too will the media. Trump and Bannon are well positioned to take advantage of this. Given their capacity to dominate news cycles, i doubt the mothballs at NR and some at Fox will be able to keep up.

    How will this affect politics? I think the “Deplorables” will gain influence, and Trump will open the path (although i dont think he’ll run again).

    More broadly – half the country has opened its eyes to flagrant nepotism and elitism. Trust in public institutions is pretty much at an all time low. I tend to think the best response to that is to reduce the power & influence of those institutions, and i think many people will agree. Perhaps there will be a role for Conservatism after all…

      • Yes, this is not widely appreciated, but the IRS will go full out against Trump. And the whole alphabet soup of government agencies that regulate his business will be taking the long knives out. If he loses, and my guess is he will, he will be hounded for the rest of this days.

  4. “Which is to say, the gulf between their rhetoric and observable reality, now merely oceanic in scale, will become galactic.” Great observation. This is how the left functions almost continuously. Apparently, this point of intersection between the left and the #NeverTrumpers could explain in part why from a de facto perspective they have allied with Hillary. In fact one could argue they have been more effective than Hillary in undercutting our chances of winning the White House.

    • I’d argue that the gulf is already galactic. They caved on the Omnibus Bill handing a blank check to Obama for what should have been his lame duck years. And they actually tried to spin it as a great conservative victory – because they won oil exports!

  5. They’re giddy at the prospect of the demise of all the populist demagogues. Of whom Trump is the least scrupulous and the most self-absorbed. then they fulfill their destiny of whiggishness.

    • “They” are the least whiggish people imaginable. The only “whiggish” candidate in the race – the only “whiggish” candidate to emerge in a very long time – is Donald Trump.

      Once upon a time conservatives were people who knew history and the meanings of words.

      These days “conservatives” are people who imbibe the Koch brothers open borders kool-aid from National Review, a publican which stopped being conservative in the min-1990s.

  6. Do you Trump voters even get it at all? If you supported any other candidate other than Trump, Hillary would have lost.

    • Hillary might have lost (and may well still), but what about her agenda? What this race has shown is that, in fact, there is not nearly as much difference between the “Conservative” elite and their Liberal counterparts.

      Would Jeb Bush have cracked down on immigration? Would John Kasich have made a passionate defense of political incorrectness? Would Marco Rubio had taken a knife to these poor trade arrangements that have hollowed out steel country and auto country and so on?

      Trump may win or lose, but I think – optimistically, perhaps – that he has let something out of the box that can never be placed back in. That alone constitutes a massive public service.

      • How am I whoring for Hillary? You’re the one supporting a guy who used to give money to Hillary. I vote for conservative Republicans. You’re the one voting for a guy who’s been a liberal his ENTIRE life, apperently until a week before he decided to run for President.

    • Perhaps your right, but “at this point what difference does it make?”. The media would have turned any one of them into the devil. Just as they did to Romney and McCain. Bush was beat from the word go, due to the job they did on his brother and dad, and they would have had an absolute field day with Cruz. All republican/conservative candidates, makes no difference their last name or qualifications, will be portrayed as greedy, sexist, racist, homophobes who want to kill the planet, whether true or false. It’s sad to me that the nevertrumpers get to be so high minded and clean in their perfect world, meanwhile screwing the rest of us here in the real world. Have fun getting the supreme court back.
      Oh, and there’s the little fact that no republican candidate was able to defeat Trump.
      Don’t blame the voters blame the politicians.

      • No, they wouldn’t have. They could have tried, but Tyne most effectice attacks were always going to be against Trump. Do you really think that this would be happening to Rubio or Kasich or Cruz or even Bush?

      • Do you really think that this would be happening to Rubio or Kasich or Cruz or even Bush?

        Dear God, you;’re stupid.

        No, the Uniparty would not be going all out to destroy Kasich or Rubio or Bush – because they’re all Uniparty themselves and want the exact same things Clinton wants.

        Is that your Big Idea? Out path to victory is to lie in simply adapting all the lefts ideas?

      • Every single poll showed that Rubio, Kasich, Cruz, Bush, Paul, even Christie would have easily beaten Hillary. You’re the one backing the loser that is down by 10 points! Even the wikileaks showed that Trump is the one candidate that Hillary wanted to face! She knew she’d lose to ANYBODY else.

      • Absolutely. Without Trump in the picture their relatively tame transgressions would have been blown way out of proportion to Trumpian sizes just like they did to Romney on any number of things. If theres an R by your name your just about out by default. Look at where republicans start out in the electoral college for example. Not to mention what the press is going to do to you and combating the other sides outright lies about you. Read the article again. What the author is saying is truly terrifying. He’s saying republicans have already lost the game and the winners(the left) are about to drop all pretense that theres even a game left.
        The choice is simple, vote for Trump if you want any resemblance of the bill of rights and capitalism, Vote Hillary if you don’t. It’s not about the person at this point. It’s about left and right movements. The time for what if’s and spilt milk is over.

      • No, they wouldn’t have. Trump was by far the worst with the worst past.

    • Do you Hillary supporters get it at all? You don’t get to fanatically support Hillary and then claim that it’s not your fault if she wins.

      • I’m not a Hillary supporter. I’m a lifelong Republican. You know, one of the 65% That voted AGAINST Trump in the primaries.

  7. The basic problem is if Trump wins, GOP will probably lose the House within the next 4 years. Hillary means job security for the sitting GOP people on the Hill.

    And you’d be shocked at the somersaults a junior representative will do to keep from losing and getting sent back to Pigsknuckle, Arkansas or wherever their district is.

    Figuratively “back-stab” the GOP candidate for President? Not a problem. Where do you want the blade to go?

  8. This article highly exaggerates. People naturally have different opinions and interests. But you can still form coalitions based on common interests you share. Trump has done a lot of good things, e.g. getting rid of the terrible Jeb Bush. But he simply has failed to reach out to anybody at all. Cruz would have been a natural ally for example. What does Trump do? Personally offends the man and his family. Why is a presidential contender getting into fights with Khan and Ms Universe “small” private citizens. There is no Conservative Inc. Trump is probably the most liberal GOP candidate in the last 50 years, he is against free trade and wants to ally with Russia! The main reason why Trump is not doing better is Trump. His path to victory is very clear. Be aggressive against Clinton, but behave like a normal human being. He has done the former in one debate, the second, but not the first. He is not doing the latter. And that is 70% of the reason why he is so far behind. 20% is MSM. 10% is discord and disunity on the right.

    • Cruz would have been a natural ally…perhaps, but primary elections are always messy. It was Cruz, not Trump, who failed to unify (within a reasonable time) after the primary. As for why attack “small” private citizens…how do you define small? The Khans became darlings of the left and the MSM the moment they stood on that stage.

      • I live in Texas and I can tell you straight off that Cruz ain’t what he cracks himself up to be. He’s an egomaniac who lied about his father by insinuating he fled Castro when he was actually a Castro supporter, not to mention that he does not meet the Constitutional test of being a natural born citizen. He’s another right wing progressive who talks a lot.

      • This is spot on. Most pro-Trump people started out liking Cruz and Cruz and Trump went out of their way to pat each other on the back. Cruz definitely thought for the first half of the campaign (“If I can stay close enough to Trump’s people and Trump, when he finally gets tired or gives up or flames out, I will pick them up *and* I have a firewall among the evangelical Southerners on Super Tuesday # 1). He was dead wrong – wrong as wrong can be about both elements of his strategy. He went all-in on it, lost big, and was faced with a choice.

        Choice # 1 for Ted was bow to the inevitable; admit that he miscalculated; go ahead and cast in behind Trump (a likely 1 termer no matter what) and seek to be his VP, or at least some other position with Trump. While I like Mr. Pence a lot, Trump-Cruz would have been a devastating 1-2. While Cruz has some high negative intangibles (his tendency to get preachy on the stump; his love of his stump speech; his odd-looking face; his inability to be authentically warm), the brain is there. The two outsiders would be formidable and the party would have had to have coalesced around them; the terrible “Never Trump” movement would be largely stillborn or confined to the ultra-RINO class. Trump would never have foolishly blasted Heidi Cruz and alienated so many conservative women. What a shame. Now alas, the Cruz conservatives make common cause with the ulta-RINOs in a crap-tastic shotgun wedding of the Never Trumpers. The liberals have exploited that divide. It never needed to happen.

        Choice # 2 for Ted was decide to blow it all up, in a two-minute, Hail Mary type drill that depended on painting Trump in the worst possible light, and giving every two-bit Anti-DJT clown a hope that the convention could be brokered; or a the delegates could stage a coup; or that Trump could be driven from the race and replaced by a RINO. It was a desperation ploy. The Cruz camp, through his father (a campaign-approved surrogate, not some wild man off the leash), tried to stir up the evangelical vote saying no one was a real Christian who was voting for Trump. Cruz adopted liberal talking points – Trump was fomenting violence the worst of them. His pet super PAC openly mocked Mrs. Trump in a kind of hit we expect from liberals. None of this can be honesty debated. It was Cruz who chose this path – Cruz who couldn’t bear Trump to call him Lyin’ Ted – Cruz whose father deserved to be trolled for New Orleans ’63.

      • It was the Dems and their media lap dogs who saw to it that Trump would be the nominee. They were deathly afraid of the genuine Americanist Cruz and wanted Hillary’s NY Lib pal as a sure loser.

    • Trump is probably the most liberal GOP candidate in the last 50 years, he is against free trade and wants to ally with Russia!

      There’s an entire generation of “conservatives” out there just like you – people whose knowledge of “conservatism” is completely upside down. They’ve been brainwashed by the liberals at National Review to love their natural enemies and hate their natural friends.

      Trump is the most conservative candidate in the last 50 years. Conservatives and Republicans have always been against ‘”free trade”. Lincoln was against it, Coolidge was against it, and Reagan was against it.

      https://mises.org/library/ronald-reagan-protectionist

      “If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it must be blind because he has been way off the mark. In fact, he has been the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover.”

      Conservatives are not supposed to be “against Russia”. Reagan was not “against Russia”. He was against Communism, which is something very different. The 21st century versions of communism are globalism and Islam – neither of which the worthless anti-Trump “conservatives” show the slightest interest in opposing.

    • I’m not in full agreement with a couple things but for the most part the author is right and you are out to lunch. Of course there is a washington Conservative Inc. Have you read National Review lately. Their largest beef with Trump is not really his character or lack thereof but rather that he does not share their discredited neocon views. To call Trump the most liberal candidate is absurd. The entire field sans Cruz and Paul, and maybe the other good doctor were liberal neocons, Christie is a big government guy, and Bush never met a government program he didn’t think shouldn’t be federalized, Rubio, Walker..you can go down the road. The Texas governor played the part of a state rights guy some I guess.

      Results are what you look at. Sans Paul and Cruz, the rest of the congressional field spent the last 8 years kneeling with mouth open in front of Obama. They might have claimed prolife, traditional marriage but they nominated the courts that held serve and radically expanded the 14th on these issues. They voted for the full Planned Parenthood budget request, they thought people wouldn’t notice when they voted for legislation so they could vote against the Iran deal publicly but not confront Obama with the Treaty Clause.

      The whole idea that you throw the word conservative and liberal out there makes me laugh. There is no definition of conservative that sticks. I thought my classical liberal views made it apply to me and boy did I learn how few adhere to the idealogy of the revolution these days.

      Im far from a Trumpkin, but even in defeat he’ll have done the Lord’s work inadvertantly in exposing these frauds and blowing it all up.

    • No, it doesn’t exaggerate at all. Every word in it Is true and to the point. As for Trump not doing better, who says he’s not? Until NBC (or the Bushes) dumped the tape last week, he was pulling ahead of Hillary. He’s still basically tied with her even with all of the attacks. This morning’s Dornsife poll had him slightly ahead and Rasmussen put him at 2 points ahead. Telephone polls show Clinton leading but telephone polling became obsolete with Caller ID. They show results among those who answer their phone every time it rings, meaning low income urban dwellers.

      • NBC and the Bushes, working in tandem. Billy was reported as openly discussing the tape among colleagues down in Rio. He didn’t tell Jeb! ? No way. NBC’s mistake was that they wanted to use the Access Hollywood tape without hurting their new pet Bush (who they were grooming as a possible Matt Lauer replacement). One of their own internal stooges beat the NBC brass to the punch and released the whole tape without them being able to air brush Billy out. Oops.

        Well Jeb! and his RINO crowd (Ryan, Lee, Ayotte, Kirk, McCain, Flake, Romney) got to try their coup and see it explode in their faces [the fools – when you shoot at the King you can’t miss or wound him; it shows you just how ineffectual these people are blast them].

        The liberals got to shoot a torpedo into Trump and he is now taking on a lot more water; and they get the bonus of using the RINO crowd’s sloppy coup attempt as “GOP civil war” fodder – do you think Kelly Ayotte would be smart enough to see the COP civil war meme coming? You would hope.

        An American Thinker writer wrote this week that had they truly been motivated by any sort of principle, the Anti-Trumpers would have gone to Trump and forced concessions from him to keep support. But they decided to do a ham-fisted take-down, which not only failed but has now weakened the rest of the party. Bravo.

    • Only One Man

      Only one man has had the courage to stand up, and call out the REAL Issues for the American People.

      These are the Real Issues which the Leftist Ruling Elites, and their Collaborators, have been ignoring for decades…..these are the Real Issues which the American People know will be the Death of America, if not addressed NOW.

      The Left….the democrats…..would just call this death the “Transformation” of America. But the American People…those who know their nation’s history, and what America has meant to the world, do know that our nation will die, if the Leftist Democrats win the presidency this final time. The American People will NEVER be able to defeat the Left for the presidency, again, IF the Left wins this election with Hillary Clinton.

      This is OUR LAST CHANCE to save America from being totally controlled by a Leftist Ruling Elite which has every intention to have a monopoly over all political power in this nation.

      The Left lies when they pretend that they have regard for the common man. In actuality, they despise us, and look down at us as lesser beings, only fit to be ruled over by an enlightened Elite….which would be them.

      They have NO intention to actually allow a democracy, a republic, or the rule of law, as our Founding Fathers won for us in the 1st American Revolution. Their intention is to Rule by Their Decree.

      If the Left wins this presidential election, they will make sure that they will NEVER have to worry about losing another presidential election again. Within a couple or few generations, what once was America will have been deliberately forgotten, and only a few stalwart American families will keep the memory of America alive within the confines of their family.

      Hillary Clinton may preside over a presidency as a figurehead, given her apparent ill health. However, that will not matter, as the Leftist apparatchiks will be in full, and dynamic control.

      The Left will use the full force of the government to cement themselves further in power.

      They will first, give amnesty and citizenship, to how many ever illegal aliens there are in this nation. That will bring an additional 10 to 20 million new voters to the democrat voting rolls.

      Next, they will continue, and formalize, an open door immigration policy, where they will encourage a likely two million third world poor to enter this country annually…..and possibly more if they decide to.

      Many of these new third world immigrants will be Muslims from the Middle East, the most alien culture to Western Civilization and American traditions, on the planet. They will be a terrorist threat, as that is obvious to all but Leftist Ideologues.

      95% of these third world migrants receive massive benefits. The costs will be immense. It costs $67,000 just to bring one, so called Syrian ‘refugee’ to the USA, and then they go on welfare.

      They will be allowed to bring their extended families here. Their aged parents will be given social security, and other benefits. And, all this will be paid for by our children and grandchildren, because all of these migrant benefits will be added to our nations gargantuan debt and unfunded liabilities.

      Where will the money for the American People’s social security benefits which they EARNED come from?

      As the result of just these two actions alone, amnesty and continued massive, third world migration, the traditional American People, those whose families have built America for generations, will never be able to elect another traditional American, such as Donald Trump, to the presidency, due to the overwhelming numbers of the swelled voting rolls of Leftist Democrat Party.

      Free speech will be shut down for all effective communication. Americans, possibly the only Free People who now have the freedom to say and write what they honestly feel, whether speaking publicly, or more importantly, in communications over the internet, will become subject to ‘Hate Speech’ laws. And, ‘Hate Speech’ will be defined by our Leftist Rulers as anything they do not want to allow to see the light of day.

      The Big Leftist Media companies, such as Google, are already creating computer programs to monitor the internet for speech they wish to quash. And, because the next president will have 3 to 5 Supreme Court justices to give lifetime appointments to, and Left Wing judges will go along with such quashings of our freedoms for decades.

      Left Wing judges have no regard for a constitution, which they are want to say was written by dead white men, 200 years ago, and has no meaning for today’s world….

      Nothing will be left…we will no longer be a Free People….

      Goodbye 1st and 2nd Amendments. Goodbye Freedom. The American People will succumb gradually to a modern day serfdom.

      The Leftist Ruling Elites we have now, Hillary Clinton and Obama, and all their minions, are running the biggest SMEAR CAMPAIGN In American History to prod you to vote for your and your children’s own serfdom.

      This is OUR LAST CHANCE to save America from what the Leftist Ruling Elites have planned to totally control us, and turn us from a Free People, into their meek peasants, fully under their thumb. We will live in a type of Leftist dictatorship where lip service is given to freedom, but no freedom will actually exist. It will be an American version of the old Soviet Union, the USSR. Maybe we should refer to this NEW TRANSFORMED America as the USSA (United States of Socialist America). You and your children will become strangers in a strange land.

      We, the American People are in our LAST Battle with the Leftist Ruling Elites. If we lose this presidential election, we will NEVER have the chance to win another one. We will NEVER have another traditional American president again in our lives, in our children’s lives, or in their children’s lives…..America as we knew it, will be gone.

      =============================

      Below are Many of the Major Issues where the American People and Donald Trump are in deadly battle with the Leftist Democrat Ruling Elites, including their allies in the Media, the Government Bureaucracy, Big Corporations, the Education System, Foreign Interests, even the Republican party Elites, and many more of the rich and powerful:

      Open Border Immigration

      Islamic Terrorism

      Unfair Trade with Aggressive, Rapacious Countries such as China, otherwise Known as Economic ‘Globalism’, where it is deemed plausible that we need to manufacture nothing in America, but simply be a ‘Service’ Economy, where everyone just performs services for each other.

      More Unfair Trade Deals with more low wage nations, such as TPP

      Big Corporations Bring in Cheap, Foreign Indentured Slaves, known as H1B visa Workers, to replace American Tech and other workers, who are forced to train the foreigners to do their jobs.

      The Continuation of the Failed Obamacare, and ‘Saving it’ by nationalizing all health care.

      Crumbling Cities which have become War Zones

      Cop Killing by Deliberately Leftist Radicalized Minority Youth who are told they are victims by the Left

      Ongoing Disasters of Obama’s ‘Lead from Behind’ Foreign Policy

      The Emasculation of America’s Military Might

      The Ongoing Deliberate Humiliation of America by the Left on the World Stage, as Evidenced by the Ludicrous ‘Iran Deal’, where we gained nothing but Iran’s disdain, but we forked over to Iran $150 Billion dollars, plus $1.7 in untraceable cash so they can further sow terrorism while leaving no paper trail.

      The Stripping of America’s Manufacturing Plants and Jobs being Sent Overseas. China industrialized in record time by hollowing out America’s industries, and we now have 94 million Americans OUT of the labor force.

      The Continued Global Warming Hoax, Designed to Allow the Left to Take Over the American Energy Industry, Coal, Oil, Gas, and Destroy these High Paying Industries, in Favor of Unreliable, Inadequate for Our Needs, and Extremely High Priced, so called ‘Green Energy’…which is nothing more than a fantasy at this time.

  9. This is pure Bunk.

    The writer assumes that a terrible hillery ‘proves’ a good trump – Simple thinking that only trump supporter would engage in.

    There is zero evidence that trump would be good for America. His history of failures, stiffing the little guys, scamming older people, bullying the weak, and sheer lying to benefit himself would carry thru to any ‘performance’ as a ‘president’. Not to mention his fundamental ignorance of issues and weakness of self discipline.

    Trump doesn’t even have the guts to release his tax returns… what is he afraid of?

    Hillery and democrats stink, but the trump supporters have brought us to this – trump… the ONLY republican candidate that would lose to hillery.

    Blame trump. Blame trump supporters. Then prepare for a bad hillery, impeachment if possible, and a energetic, principled, conservative race in 2020.
    HB

      • LOL !

        Hey trump supporter… here’s what your originally wrote:

        Haga Akane
        You should be shot.
        11:09 p.m., Thursday Oct. 13 | Other comments by Haga Akane

        That’s a THREAT. Are you trump supporters so pathetically scared… that you are now resorting to these kinds of threats?
        HB

      • Anyone knowing the definitions of “should” and “be” would not see that as a threat. Now leave me alone so I can pray for your demise.

      • Intimidation and bullying tactics.

        So, WHY did you change the comment… eh?
        HB

      • Sure. Trump is a cheater… and so are his supporters… like you.

        Next time, say what you mean, and keep it that way.
        HB

      • No, 항문.

        Yes, I edited that and I hope you die even more!

    • And what is a Conservative? Is Jeb Bush and his love for open borders and amnesty a Conservative? Is John Kasich, with his cultural squeamishness, a Conservative? Are the free trade cultists “Conservative”? Maybe in your definition, and maybe simply yes. But then we must move past Conservatism – we don’t have much left worth conserving, anyway.

      I grew up in a blue collar community. Almost literally in the shadow of an auto plant. Twenty years ago that neighborhood was populated by late-generation, English-speaking Americans. Generally, they were either retirees or married families. Streets were safe, property values were good, etc.

      Now the auto plants have closed. The neighborhood has experienced an influx of Hispanic immigrants who work more menial positions. Many of the properties have become rentals to those with low-incomes (in the case of the Hispanic immigrants, who often live multiple families to one house). Property values have deteriorated. Public safety has deteriorated. The municipal budget has deteriorated. The schools have deteriorated. If I went back to that neighborhood, I’d be challenged to find a fluent English-speaking clerk at any of the three closest supermarkets. I no longer live in that neighborhood – but then, what does it say that I could not make the rational decision to raise my own family in the place where I grew up?

      I don’t know whether Trump is a “good person” or a “bad person”, frankly, either label would be far too simplistic to describe any person, complex as they are, with Trump probably more complex than most. That isn’t why I’m voting for him; I’m voting for him because he has done vastly more to recognize and directly address the pressing problems I’ve observed with my own eyes.

      • There is no question that the country is in decline – but WHY do you think that a sleazy trump, who screwed his partners, cheated his vendors, bullied weak people… Is going to make things any better?

        YOU… are just helping to keep America on a steady downhill path.
        HB

      • Because he knows exactly how it is done, and he abhors the Clintons and Establishment elites for doing it. He does not believe in open borders and running the country into debt that will be then endowed upon his children and grandchildren.

      • He knows… what?

        Trump went to Mexico… and ran scared from the Mexican president. Trump does not understand government laws. Trump is a law-breaker himself, an adulterer, a wife-beater, and cheat in business.

        Your ‘faith’ is misplaced if you trust such a liar as trump.
        HB

      • Why do I think Trump is the answer? Because he is the one willing to challenge the norms of our society that put us in decline in the first place. And because, if nothing else, he offers an untried alternative.

      • You gave a straight answer. Unusual for a trump supporter. Thank you.

        I disagree. Mr. Trump’s decades-long record shows that he will increase the corruption and decline in America. Lying will become the new truth.
        HB

    • The usual laundry list of DOC-approved talking points from the phony “conservatives” in our midst.

    • “Then prepare for a bad hillery, impeachment if possible, and a energetic, principled, conservative race in 2020.”

      You are as delusional as the Progs…

  10. The Inc. people are indeed toast. But then, so — probably — is the republic, at least in its current form. When the GOP gets wiped out in the midterms, perhaps they will realize what they’ve done (?)

    Even then, I don’t suppose they’ll much care. These people are beyond reprehensible.

  11. Trump said he didn’t need Conservative’s votes or our money. You were conned by an amoral, lying Democrat. So don’t blame Conservatives for your shameful behavior and abundant idiocy.

    • You’re not any sort of conservative, idiot. You’re whoring for Hilary.

      • How do you know that? His post is exactly correct. Are you a Trumpsucker?

      • Exactly! Who are they calling, then, maligning, as Conservatives? I think this is just a hit-piece that attempts to conflate Conservatives with RINOs and Prog Repubs – the typical deception used all the time by the Lib-Leftists.

        Ted Cruz was the only tested and proven Conservative in the primaries and he was sabotaged.

  12. Most of Conservatism Inc., didn’t believe in conservatism, small-government or anything else. They accepted that their function was to be the brake on liberalism’s crazy driver as he raced towards the cliff, not to take the wheel from him and change direction. They accepted that people could never understand the benefits of small government and basically found being comfortable with their enemies better than fighting them. I don’t regard Trump highly, but I have nothing but total contempt for the men who claim to be conservatives but aren’t. They really should just give up and join the Democratic party.

  13. GWB “conservatives” (who calls Bill Clinton his brother from another mother) will have no problem with a Hillary Clinton presidency. They have more contempt than she does for the “deplorable” scum in fly over country.

    • What bunk.

      Your lord trump says…
      Hillary Clinton I think is a terrific woman,” he told Greta Van Susteren. “I am biased because I have known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. I really like her and her husband both a lot. I think she really works hard. And I think, again, she’s given an agenda, it is not all of her, but I think she really works hard and I think she does a good job. I like her.
      http://time.com/3962799/donald-trump-hillary-clinton/

      Trump and hillery and billy are great friends.
      HB

      • That would be short for William I imagine. Good strong name.

      • Exactly so, Trump is a Clinton plant to destroy the Republican party, and he’s doing a fantastic job!

      • I believe there is more than a little truth to this…

        Trump is not a Republican, trump is not a Conservative.
        HB

      • Nope, he’s just an American. He saw Romney, whom he endorsed, “choke”, left his cushy life, and ran for an office he’s known all along he thought he could do but preferred someone else do. God, I hate guys like that. He is too stupid to be president. He wasn’t satisfied being rich and famous. He desired to become infamous. And now he is. Fool.

      • Bunk.

        Trump is a pathological Liar.

        But set Trump’s rhetorical assaults aside if you want. He is also a pathological liar.“The man lies all the time,” according to Thomas Wells, Trump’s former lawyer. Tony Schwartz, the co-writer of “The Art of the Deal,” says that “lying is second nature to him.” The record supports that conclusion.
        http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/09/11/the_comprehensive_case_against_donald_trump_131748.html

        How much do you get paid for lying?
        HB

      • How much do you pay? Maybe I’ll start.

        If his lawyer and co-author are correct … which is a big if … then politics is the correct career choice for Trump. So far though, his lying, unlike Hillary’s hasn’t cost American’s lives nor taxpayer money.

      • The ONLY reason your sleazy trump has not cost lives… is because he has NEVER ran for office… and NEVER been in a position of responsibility to risk lives.

        Obviously, sleazy trump is a disaster looking for opportunity to happen.

        That is where YOU come in.
        HB

      • So … no longer a history buff … you now (pretend to) see the future! Any stock tips? Trump’s lawyer says he is smarter than Trump. His accountant says he is smarter than Trump. His coauthor says he’s smarter than Trump. The producer of The Apprentice doesn’t endorse Trump. Could be they are all right … or envious. Meanwhile, Trump’s opponent hides hoping the proclivities that she enabled for her husband will keep Trump occupied and keep her from having to discuss policy. Somehow, I don’t see you as a useful idiot, but you’re still with her. That’s where you go out.

      • You’re mumbling, stumbling, and bumbling words. Try to make some sense.
        HB

      • OK, what makes you believe you can predict the future? If you see a Trump victory in your crystal ball, great! I stand prepared to endure your criticism while Trump makes America great again … or not. However, if you see a Hillary victory, why don’t you STFU? You are with her. She’s your responsibility.

      • Listen up, Fool. I will remind you again.

        The RCP Poll of Polls showed your sleazy trump NEVER beating either clinton or sanders. NEVER. Sleazy trump is the ONLY republican candidate that did not defeat clinton. All the republican candidates beat hillery clinton except YOUR sleazy trump.

        Did YOU care? Of course NOT.

        You know this… but YOU keep on lying. YOU have much to be held accountable for. YOU will disappear in shame after Nov 8… but YOU and your fellow sleazeballs will be responsible for the clinton disaster that follows.
        HB

      • I will tell your sorry posterior again … I vote for Cruz … and he wasn’t my 1st choice but the moment Trump won the nomination, I yielded to reality, unlike you … I became a Trump supporter. You didn’t. You are busy fighting me. Hillary is busy fighting guys like me too.

      • You have been supporting a loser trump from the beginning. You know that.

        You have cost the Republicans the 2016 election. You need to figure out why. You should be ashamed.
        HB

      • I voted for Cruz in LA in the primaries. I will vote for Trump in OH. F U, and the horse you rode in on … actually not … but I love the way it sounds. God, I love cliches … and yore one. You are a history buff stuck in the past. You can’t deal with reality. I don’t pity you, but I pity our children.

      • ‘children’?

        Are you kidding? Your children would not be safe being alone with trump in the same room at the same time.

        And THIS is the guy you want to be president… above the law… un-constrained… hate filled… lying… hyper-egotistical…

        Do you have any idea what you wish to inflict on you kids?
        HB

      • In a choice between the Clintons or the Trumps, I would trust my kids with the Trumps.

      • Don’t love your kids, eh?

        Most people love their kids more than they love being a trump supporter.
        HB

      • Why do leftists always have such difficulty with analogies and hypotheticals?

      • I don’t know… look in a mirror and ask yourself.
        HB

      • Another Hillary supporters talks about lying. You take a couple of quotes and call it good. That must be what passes for intelligent conversation in your neck of the woods.
        The problem you Hillary supporters have is that any attack you make on Trump invites comparisons with the Clintons. Hillary is an admitted liar and her recent emails shows she routinely says one thing in public and one in private for her pay to play donors.
        I don’t recall Trump murdering an ally of ours and then laughing about it. I don’t recall Trump getting a child rapist off and laughing about that. I don’t recall Trump enabling a serial rapist and then attacking his victims. And I don’t recall Trump destroying the ME and NA, while licking Putin’s boots.

      • Sigh…

        The problem with you trump supporters is that you have such limited mental capacity.

        If someone doesn’t “obey you” in thinking, they are a ‘Hillery Supporter”. Come back when you can see the world outside the trump penthouse. You certainly don’t understand Freedom… and Free Men.
        HB

      • Trump’s more conservative than you. Why don’t you provide an example of an anti-Trumpster who is more conservative than Trump?

      • Bunk.

        Trump is a draft-dodging, wife-beating, cheat-business partners, liar.

        Conservatives don’t do that.
        HB

      • Your inability to answer his very simple queston is obvious (and telling). Pro-Trump = Jeff Sessions, the late Phyllis Schlafly, and similar conservatives.
        Anti-Trump = Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz, and similar neo”conservatives.”

      • Hehehe, why don’t you are your trump troll buddy tell us why YOU think trump is a Conservative to begin with?

        Face it – YOUR lord trump is a clinton admirer and contributor.
        HB

      • Being fed up with both parties, I’m voting for Gary Johnson. Which is really the way to stick the elite in the eyes, because Trump is just more of the same, but he upsets the patronage system in DC, which the elite don’t want.

        The problem with Trump, is his policies won’t make America great, it will make it worse. Ask yourself a simple question: What made America great? Hopefully you’ll answer (they haven’t taught this in government schools for decades, for what should be obvious reasons) OUR FREEDOMS MADE America Great. Unfortunately, we’ve lost a lot of those freedoms (especially our free markets which are now much more politically controlled) and Trump’s policies don’t defend our freedoms. A great America to Trump, is a nation where the government helps rich guys get richer, like the way his dad built the Trump fortune (a fortune which would be larger if Trump invested it in stock index funds instead of his many business interests). He’s just a mediocre businessman, who inherited his fortune. But he’s great at promoting himself.

      • I don’t blame you, it’s a fair protest vote. As you say, he’s just a rich kid that’s used to getting his own way, he’d run the country into the ground for his own gain, you only have to look at how he’s treated the Republican party for evidence of what he’d do to the country. I also agree that it’s in it’s defence of freedoms and autonomy that the country is at its best, something that few are fighting for today. Installing a dictator won’t help with that.

        I think this whole “Make America Great Again” is a marketing pitch to poor white folks with little education. In reality there have always been winners and losers in American society, it’s never been universally great, nor is it universally broken today. Someone that speaks in absolutes about a country so large, diverse and populous surely can’t hope to describe it.

      • It’s never been universally great, true. However, in the mid-twentieth century it was better than most because there was ample opportunity for workers to become middle class as workers as well as for many employers to get rich. All over the world capital owners can get rich, what is rare is for labor to achieve something like middle class standing (enough money for the necessities with a bit left over to save for college or a house). No political policies are stupider and more immoral than moving your country and from a place where there is such ample opportunity for workers time where cannot support yourself by full-time work without government transfers.

        And you simply cannot have high real wages for workers and a reasonable safety net with mass low-skilled immigration. We are already importing poverty now. How is this conundrum going to improve if HRC with her DAPA pander and the Congress send the message that all you have to do to get work permits and eventually be legalized is to come illegally and have a baby here?

      • Mass low-skilled immigrants (we used to call them slaves) is exactly what the middle classes have benefitted from. They do the jobs nobody else wants to do, I’ve got no idea what Trump would do if he really did deport all the Mexicans, it’d be the end of the American economy! Hillary knows this, that’s why she’s so against it – I don’t think it’s right, but cheap labor has been a factor in the American economy since its inception, the country is literally built on it.

      • Sorry but the middle class didn’t come into it’s own until the postwar years when immigration was held to an absolute minimum. That, in tandem with organized labor, produced the middle class. Labor has since moved on from the protection and safety of the worker as it’s primary mission to wage increasing (dues increase with them) and political activism. Both of which have led more corporate money to DC for advantageous trade deals and the like with which to escape.

      • “I think this whole “Make America Great Again” is a marketing pitch to poor white folks with little education.”

        And I think you’ve been reading too much of your Obama Racism Handbook and NYT (-:

      • So tell us what years America was universally great?

        My thesis is it’s never been that way and “Make America Great Again” is a phoney concept. If you disagree, how about telling us why and when you think it was instead of attempting to insult?

      • And Hillary’s not a dictator? Love your dichotomy though: “the country’s at it’s best in it’s defense of freedoms and autonomy” only to turn immediately about and trash those exercising it.

      • I’m afraid reality is far from perfect and dichotomies are to be expected from such multidimensional complexity.

      • The best non response I’ve ever heard!!! Fifth floor bureaucrateese at least.

        Lol!!! Straight from the school of “if you can’t dazzle em with brilliance then baffle em with bull chit.

      • Thanks! I’d read this thread from the top and then evaluate your own contribution to it first before proceeding. :)
        (Pot -> Kettle -> Black)

      • Not as easy as yo’ Momma! Lol!!!

        Grow some hair down there, talk like a man and we can resume.

      • I am supporting Johnson / Weld, as well. They are two successful Republican governors of Blue / Purple states. One is east coast. One is west coast. Neither is tainted with significant scandal and in any sane world, they would be perfectly plausible candidates. But we live in the era of Tabloid Trash, and barrons at Fox, CNN, etc. are far more interested in ratings with non-stop vulgarity, than serving this nation in any form or fashion.

      • As a Perot voter, I can understand. It felt good until the day after Election Day.

      • I’d have more sympathy if I thought there would be a single Libertarian elector come Nov 9. There won’t be, though, so I hope you’re deep in a Blue state.

      • Yeah, he could have put all daddy’s money in a trust and invested in index funds and enjoyed his wealth or pursued a career of public service like the Kennedy clan … but he didn’t. You see that as a negative. I don’t. Then, in comparison, you’ve got the Clintons who were dead broke when they left the White House … but look at them now, huh!

      • Nothing wrong with Trump’s attempts to expand his wealth, he just never showed he was very good at it, or anything else other than attracting attention (which I believe was MF’s point). Obviously he’s tapped into a powerful political force among people sick of the status quo. The problem is, he’s never shown that he’s any kind of decent solution to any problem. Quite the opposite.

      • And so, best to leave it in Clinton’s hands? She is successful in never losing any of her money … so she’s got that going for her.

      • Said she was broke when they left the whitehouse, so she must have lost the 100K they gave her for trading cattle futures (wish I could make 100 grand in a month!) but selling govt access to K street & Wall street has been, Berry Berry good to her!

      • How much are you worth? Trump is 4.5 billion. It seems he was pretty good. You’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s just baseless drivel.

      • That is not the crux of the issue however….the crux is hillary or Trump. Perhaps you are not in a swing state and your vote will not matter in the electoral college, THEN one can afford a protest vote. Otherwise , it is merely an abdication. At present, Johnson is a vote for hillary.

      • Thanks for ensuring a Clinton presidency.
        Don’t. Dare. Complain. During the next four years. Your choice; your fault. Enjoy that.

      • Mischaracterizing Trump’s agenda doesn’t make you right and pretending you’re going to vote for Johnson is meaningless.
        Putting America first is a simple enough concept to understand. Opposing globalism should be clear too. Opposing the administrative state, open borders, cheap labor, bad trade deals, and disastrous foreign policies are all conservative ideas.
        You’re another anti-Trumpster that doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. When Trump’s Dad died, he was worth between 250-300 million. That was split four ways among the surviving children. Trump was worth 1.5 billion at that time.
        It’s laughable when total losers who have never accomplished anything in their lives pass judgement on others. Trump is better than you will ever be in every respect.

      • Name for us the index fund. Other than that yours is nothing but a hit and run.

        FYI Gary Johnson is a loser!

      • I’m guessing he started off for the novelty of it, got further than he thought possible, and now may actually be burned enough by Clinton that he wants to crush her. I don’t think he likes to lose and that might accidently save the republic.

      • The problem is, he is no good at it. He is still in it slightly, ever so slightly, because she is really bad too.

      • She’s absolutely horrible. But enough people are on the government candy that they’ll vote whoever promises more free stuff.

      • The republican party doesn’t need help to be self destructive, they have done a good job already by outsourcing jobs and insourcing cheap labor, being silent or deliberately inept in combating the Obama corrupting our government agencies.

      • Yes. I’ve been saying so since before the primary. Trump is acting, and he’s doing it for his buddies the Clintons.

        If he were really as kooky and self-destructive as he appears, he would not have been able to become a billionaire superstar. He’d have flamed out on the way up, probably by committing a spectacular crime and ending up in prison like Mike Tyson. He’s an actor, like Howard Stern or David Letterman who became a superstar by pretending to be a stupid hick.

        Besides throwing the election to Hillary, he’s doing his best to inflict LONG-TERM damage on the GOP–alienating the fastest-growing voting blocs: immigrants and secular voters. He’s elevating and empowering the self-destructive elements within the GOP, the Tea-Party folks who attack and cannibalize every successful, government-capable Republican politician. He’s increasing the visibility of the most repulsive Republicans: the haters and the losers.

      • Do you really believe that a man like Trump, lashing back at the slightest negative remark, has an ego that would allow him to be seen as a loser?
        He foolishly sued Timothy O’Brien, who questioned his wealth. This opened him up to financial discovery and also exposed his silly ideas of the value of his wealth.
        http://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-division-published/2011/a6141-08-opn.html
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/trump-lies/

        I thought he was playing rope-a-dope until he gave an interview, early in the GOP primaries. (don’t remember the interview) …. but he came off as ill informed.

      • Trump is an actor, a tv personality. No way to tell what he’s really like. Probably he will not see himself as a loser, rather as a hero who delivered the election to his pal Bill Clinton.

      • He’s falling. The question is, on purpose or not? I think on purpose is much more likely.

      • Utterly insane. Trump was a private citizen without a dynastic family in politics for what seems like forever. For the Bush Family to regard a rapist and destroyer of women their ‘brother’ is beyond the Pale and totally, to use your hero’s words, deplorable and irredeemable.

      • Wow!

        Billy clinton isn’t running… No Bushes’s are running… and that is ALL you can consider in this election?

        Trump’s obsessive hate is strong. And not very healthy for America.
        HB

      • Wow! What a rebuttal! Hilary has stated that Bill will be in charge of the economy! A rapist back in power! Your daughter will surely be safe as an intern, just ask Monica Lewinsky! Who is that, you ask? Why just a young girl Bill got BJ’s from in the Oval Office. But, I guess, you are too naïve too know that! Ha!

      • Listen to what DJT says in his speeches and policies papers NOW, not what he said casually when he was just another player using the system and playing the game.

        He’s trying to stop this corrupt criminal incompetent woman from wrecking the country he sincerely loves. He’s knows how dirty she is and how the entire uniparty establishment works. No one else can bring it down.

        If you don’t help him then YOU are the enemy as much as her.

      • Bunk.

        Tired of you trump trolls… screaming all the time… “‘ya gotta support trump even if is sleaze & slime… because he might LOSE if you don’t!”

        You trump idiots jammed him thru the primaries, YOU sleazeball trump supporters ignored ALL the reasons why trump couldn’t win…

        YOU made this disaster, YOU are responsible, and YOU will be held accountable.
        HB

      • That’s a lot of name calling and yelling – a sign of a scared snowflake. To your safe-space snowflake! Mr. Trump is coming to MAGA.

      • Hehehe, nonsense.

        You must be new around here – your fellow trump trolls are well known for their histrionics… and their lies.
        HB

      • He’s not scared, just a bitter, delusional neocon, avoiding reality…..

      • What’s bunk is your comment. Something the business man said years ago is supposedly carved in stone. I find it ludicrous that anti-Trumpsters think some words are more powerful than actions. In 2008 Trump endorsed his friend Rudi Giuliani and when he dropped out, he endorsed John McCain. In 2012, Trump endorsed Romney and received fulsome praise in return. Trump has championed the causes of the repub base, all in opposition to Hillary’s globalism.

        The anti-Trumpsters would rather see a lying, murdering criminal and her serial rapist husband win than allow Trump into the White House. They’re willing to destroy our Country and party for the chance to say Trump was a dem, after all. Really pathetic.

      • Historybuff, you’ve nailed it. The rantings here on American Greatness have become increasingly tedious though still amusing. By now Trump could tell his supporters here the sky is green and the sun evolves around the earth and they’d believe it.

        The outcome of this election is a foregone conclusion and has been a foregone conclusion once Trump announced his candidacy. It is well documented that Trump has been a financial supporters of the Clintons for 25 years, repeatedly praised the Clintons publicly and that he, Donald J. Trump, and William Jefferson Clinton consulted each other in May 2015, a month before he announced his candidacy. All fully documented.

        Even if one believes takes the “that was then and this is now” explanation for Trump’s disposition toward the Clintons, absurd as that would be, it still cannot be denied that Trump has done everything possible to guarantee his own defeat in November. Despite “his many, many billions”, he’s never self-funded (instead the campaign pay him), he never invested in a ground game in battleground states and, of course, he has consistently and unnecessarily alienated voters — women and minorities in particular — that could have actually secured his victory. Instead, he has consistently adhered to a strategy of ad hominem attacks against anyone who disagrees with or challenges him. Apart from the unfortunate Access Hollywood video, every single one of his setbacks in this campaign was self-inflicted.

        There are only two possible explanations for his serial self-infliction of wounds in this campaign: the man either really is the infantile moron the America media, except Sean Hannity, characterize him as or that he has manipulated an important segment of the Republican Party to guaranteeing the election of Hillary Rodman Clinton. There is no other possible explanation. I have never met Donald Trump but I do not see in him an ignorant moron; I see a man who knows exactly what he’s doing, a man who understood that when he went into the first debate with Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago actually was within striking distance of Hillary but nevertheless did not prepare for that debate and performed abysmally during it and subsequently began to create in the polls. He put the handbrake on a campaign that might have been actually to eek out victory. Instead, he’s left for dead in most battleground states and he’s resorted to a campaign of stoking resentment in his base — to prime his base for Trump News Network — rather than reaching out to swing voters.

        Investing one’s political eggs in one man to “save the republic” is antithetical everything the founders and Lincoln believed. The founders created a republic that was never reliant on man to save us, nor a republic that one man — or woman — could “destroy”. As it is, Trump has inflicted catastrophic damage to the Republican Party.

        Like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, Donald and Decius will prosper under a Hillary regime — TV appearances, books and tours promoting their books, paid lectures and the like — while the people are strangled with higher taxes, more regulation, a lower standard living and bleaker hopes for the prospects of our children. Well done, Donald and Decius. Take a bow.

      • Well stated set of observations, ‘Party of Lincoln’!

        You write about trump…

        “There are only two possible explanations for his serial self-infliction of wounds in this campaign: the man either really is the infantile moron the America media, except Sean Hannity, characterize him as or that he has manipulated an important segment of the Republican Party to guaranteeing the election of Hillary Rodman Clinton.”

        It is highly likely that trump is running true to his trend line… of creating a ‘win’ for his good friend, hillery clinton.

        Responsible people, of higher expectations & standards, now will be looking ahead at a clinton administration… and all that means. She must be stopped.
        HB

      • If we lose the Senate and, it appears possible now, the House, we can thank Trump and his idiot supporters for throwing the entire federal government to progressive Democrats.

        I won’t go as far as Decius does in describing Democrat rule as “the end of the republic” but it might as well be the end of the republic if Hillary is elected potus, Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader and Pelosi is House Speaker. We conservatives will still have a filibuster over ordinary legislation but Hillary will put her foot on the pedal of the administrative state on regulatory policy that will further choke business and drive it out of the United States. Education reform forget it. Job opportunities for our children, forget it.

        But it was too much to ask of those of a certain disposition to support a Cruz or a Rubio or even a Kasich, any one of whom would have destroyed Hillary limb by limb. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, neither Cruz nor Rubio nor Kasich has anywhere near the kinds of, shall we say, “issues” that made Trump’s a toxic candidacy from the start. Nor are their views wildly out of the mainstream of American politics. Cruz may have pushed the envelope for some but conservatives would have rallied behind him. Or even Rubio or Kasich. But no, we had to nominate a man who, after decades of being a Democrat and bankrolling the Clintons, attacked the Republican Party from the beginning and has consistently attacked conservatism.

        One reap what one sows. What Trump will reap is Hillary as president and you can be sure that he will cash in on it. After all, he’s a “business genius”, right?

      • Trump supporters are a bizarre group… they hate anyone that will not agree with them… their man was not ever in a position to win…

        And yet they pushed trump… to the detriment of all America.

        That is why I still think there was some kind of a ‘backroom’ agreement between the clintons… and trump… for trump to run and sabotage the Republican 2016 election.
        HB

      • These clowns on “American Greatness” are hopeless. They worship a crony capitalist whose nomination by the Republicans guaranteed the election of Hillary Clinton, a woman they profess to despise but whose election will in turn ensure their putative relevance on AM talk radio and guest appearances on Sean Hannity to bitch and moan about everything she will do. They will be on firm ground to bitch and moan about Hillary, but when the moment of truth came they stood with the man who guaranteed her election and we conservatives — true conservatives — will have to clean up their mess. Or if the dig in and go third party, the mess they helped create never gets cleaned up and Dems rule for decades. How convenient.

        Given all the free time Decius and his followers here have, I would suggest two other pro-Trump websites they might want to follow: Storm Front and American Renaissance.

        https://www.stormfront.org
        http://www.amren.com

        Both are devoted to Trumpian “greatness”.

        Hillary Rodham Clinton, 45th President of the United States. Thank you, Donald and Decius. Job done.

      • Trump’s core group… will never acknowledge the harm to America they have done – indeed, some may truly not be able to see it, they are so limited in scope.

        You wrote about trump supporters:
        “They will be on firm ground to bitch and moan about Hillary, but when the moment of truth came they stood with the man who guaranteed her election and we conservatives — true conservatives — will have to clean up their mess.”

        Well stated, Party of Lincoln! You have a good way with words…
        HB

      • Yes, trump is a business ‘genius’ – just ask him he will tell you! Over… and over… and over again.

        But he won’t release his tax returns.
        HB

      • Except now she is that “Nasty Woman.” He hates her.

      • Are you really sure? Sometimes… I think this is all just a big show… like reality tv… scripted & calculated to produce a desired result – a hillery clinton victory on Nov 8.
        HB

    • The GWB conservatives are probably rich too. I thought Democrats hated rich people? I ask Dem voters that and they swear most rich people are Republicans. They deny the truth when you list the Dem billionaires and Tech and Banking CEOs who are mostly Dems.

    • Like Palin, Trump has created a problem for conservatives because of his inability to ground pragmatic populism with a principled foundation and then do the hard work of outwitting the enemy. They get the easy limelight when criticizing other Republicans and acting buffoonish, because the media loves the story of internecine party politics and/or the uneducated troglodyte that votes Republican. But then they abjectly fail to turn that limelight into something positive. It is not hard to out hustle the liberal media. They are stupid and predictable, but also cheaply clever.

    • Country Club Conservatives, I call them.
      The guy who walks off the baseball team if he can’t pitch all nine innings, because ‘no fair’. The people who claim staunch conservatism until Election Day, then **magically** turn into RINOs again (lookin’ atcha, McConnell, Ryan & McCain). The ones who told us we had to be ‘loyal’ and support Dole, MCCain and Romney, but who got all butthurt when Jeb! was hammered out of existence by EVERY one—but worst of all, by Trump, who couldn’t possibly care less about the Republican careerist clique.
      Then suddenly, they all found a bag of principles in the back of the closet like a forgotten pair of gym shoes.
      Thieves and liars. It’s the Vichy Republican Way.

  14. Conservatives are giddy that our stamp of approval will not appear on the 21st Century’s Fuhrer and America may yet survive.

  15. I do not see the problem. Soon we will import millions of Muslims and legalize 30 million illegals. Diversity makes us stronger.This will naturally create division and strife which will require a stronger central government to keep the peace and a lessening of personal liberties that have been a bother. Then once we install hate speech laws like all other western countries have done and get rid of talk radio and internet commentary things should quiet down nicely. After that we can have a completely digital currency controlled by the government and then we can get rid of the guns and we should be all set for peace and happiness through out the land.
    You just need to get your mind right.

    • Just like Germany under Merkyl…..make life easy for yourself. Move there while they are trying to fix it. Because by then we will have their existing chaos in our own backyard.

      • And they won’t even blink an eye when thousands of women are being raped in the street or at the next desert rock concert. She will just cover it up just like Merkel does.

    • What do you mean soon? 1984….we’re a little behind schedule!

  16. I think that conservatives in office expect Trump to lose rather than want him to lose. They can hardly be blamed for such an expectation either, according to rcp she’s up in the polls, and can already rely pretty comfortably on 260 electoral college votes, and she only needs 10 more to clinch the election.

    • I think that conservatives in office expect Trump to lose rather than want him to lose.

      You have to be pretty stupid to think that, considering the way “conservatives in office” (by which I assume you mean “Republicans in office”) have spent the last year attacking their own party’s nominee far more viciously and far more energetically than they have ever gone after Obama. or Clinton.

      • Sure, Trump is the true conservative, and everyone else in elected office are all RHINOs. Reince Piebus too considering that he halted the mailing for Trump.

      • And Trump has spent the year bashing Republicans more than he has Hillary !!

  17. We are all counting the minutes until that vile low-class ape is destroyed at the polls. Maybe if it’s bad enough he and you will shut the hell up.

      • That’s quite ironic. The reason Trump is about to be destroyed is that he and his supporters always without fail act like a bunch of pigs, and not only that, he and his supporters are all too stupid to realize that’s their problem.

      • We await the moment when the US Marshalls lug The Empress Dowager’s felonious ass off to Supermax, where Her richly belongs for Her next several lifetimes.

      • Which means you’re incapable of understanding that sounding like pigs day in and day out is exactly what’s done you people in. Really incomparable display of utter stupidity as well as piggishness = bunch of total losers.

      • … which, in typical regressive fashion, hurls invective and invents straw men, none of which has anything to do with the point we brought to the discussion.

        Rhetorical FAIL, pinhead. Buh bye.

      • Not my fault you;’re twice as dumb as dirt. How can you or anybody think that my comments are not relevant to a thread that I, you know, started? That’s a new low even for a Trumptard halfwit.

      • Never giving up asshole. Have your ilk’s number. Will never vote for your people. You’re the stupid one. You think it will all go back to normal. It won’t. It’s over and you and your porcine buddies won’t be allowed back to trough. I despise cowards like you 100x more than simple kleptocrat socialists like the Donkeys.

    • Good luck with that! There’s a lot of us….I KNOW that I, personally, never give up.

  18. The reason for the conservatives’ acquiescence is straightforward- they live very well off the scraps from the Democrats’ table, just like the Republican Party did in the 70’s. They’ve been in Washington too long, they know that’s where their money comes from and they will never have a job as good as the one they have now, and they will keep it for as long as they like as long as they play ball.

    Same for the conservative mags- they did very well for themselves despite (or perhaps because of) Obama and they will do just as well under Clinton as long as they remain no threat to her. They will never do as well anywhere else, and I’m sure they all dream of being the next George Will, a token representative of the Republicans in the Left media.

    Whether Trump wins or loses, what we need to do in 2018 is primary them out. A trained monkey will be able to win as a Republican in the midterms if Hillary is President, we need to make sure it’s our monkey and not hers. If Trump wins it will be harder for Republicans, but it won’t hurt to target the ones who are of no use to the nation.

    Also please heed Decius about the danger lying ahead if Hillary is elected. We can expect to see unprecedented, spiteful, hateful things from Obama on his way out the door starting the day after the election, win or lose. That’s the way these people do business- they are less gracious in victory than in defeat and a final salvo against the American public would be just the thing to gratify his ego and show the world, in his mind, who has the big swinging one. If she is elected she will only build on that. Arm yourselves, secure your assets, secure your privacy.

  19. Just wait until after the election. Trump will pout for a few days and then launch his own political party. He will reopen Trump University to offer political science courses for his new party members. Trump supporters will line up to give him money. I don’t think they will learn.

  20. The fact that these idiotic “conservatives” are gleeful about the prospect of giving us at least four years worth of Clinton Presidency (on top of the eight years of Obama which they already inflicted on the country) makes it blindingly obvious that whatever else they are, they are not “conservative” in any way, shape, or form.

    I don’t see much “I can’t vote for Trump” attitude from these people. The majority of them have been very openly and very aggressively campaigning on Clinton’s behalf after since Trump won the nomination six months ago. NRO, Fox News, the Washington Examiner, the Weekly Standard, and a slew of other nominally “conservative” sources have been working feverishly for a Hillary victory all along. They’re not conservative, or even neutral – they’re with her!

    • You’re so salty that people see that Trump will inevitably lose this election. I must admit to a bit of schadenfreude.

    • Aside from what I just said please explain to me what makes Trump conservative in your opinion.

  21. Trump is a leftist. The conservatives lose either way. If the goal is to defeat Hillary, you would have voted for Rubio in the primaries.

    • Any blind man should have known the only one who could beat her was the youngest looking, most articulate and smartest of the bunch who had already brought down a major opponent. The old hag would have looked like his grandmother. ( that is how obama won) Had Jeb spent his 150 million trust on killing Trump instead of Marco we would be celebrating today.

  22. Except not wanting option A does not necessitate wanting option B as long as there is an option C. I would hope what constitutes option C is obvious: let Hillary have the White House and then obstruct until the mid-terms, when the out-of-power party tends to pick up seats in the congress. Of course, if option C was not obvious, I am not sure you would believe nor accept that idea even though it avoids the risks of Trump and the worst of Hillary.

  23. I just finished reading the late Jim McDougal’s ARKANSAS MISCHIEF (as in just now!) McDougal makes on thing clear – the Clintons are pathological liars and all they care about is power and, in Hillary’s case, money. If she wins, Hillary is going to destroy the country. It won’t surprise me a bit if there really is a secession movement in the South and parts of the Southwest and Midwest. The right wing progressives are going to discover that the influence they thought they had is no more.

  24. Well, this is all very short-sighted.

    Obviously, what we have here is a pair of anti-American despots making a show of competing in order to see which will have the benefit of being able to plunder the country while holding the reins on the vast bureaucracy of strap hangers that we call the US Government. We don’t have to buy into the farce.

    Vote to signal resistance. Don’t vote to reinforce your own worthlessness.

    In other words, vote third party of your choice all the way down the line. Then, when whatever despot wins, undermine them at every turn. Fight an insurgency.

    Do it now or prepare to fight a real insurgency later.

  25. What is truly sickening is conservatives eating their own, and giving the loony left its way with the country.
    Sorry, I’m sick of Trump attacking Ryan and Kristol attacking Trump.
    Enough.

    Trump was about 15 or 16 in my list of 17 candidates in the primaries.
    I went out of my way to vote against him. I did not like his personal nasty attacks–and lies about essentially all his primary opponents.

    I think he might be a disaster as a President and do some serious bone-headed things.
    He’s another narcissist with a thin skin and quick vindictive temper, but few principles other than Trump.

    All this said, I will vote for him to protest the more dangerous Hi-liar-y, a corrupt pathological liar who will keep the country in its downward spiral. If Trump is Russian roulette, Clinton is stryanine.
    I was never a NeverTrumper. I’ll spin the wheel because there’s no other way.

    But the Trump supporters attacking the Republican “establishment” is sheer lunacy. As Decius asks whether NeverTrumpers really are ok with Hil-liar-y we can also ask: Are Trumpsters really ok with the Democratic Socialists also taking Congress? Have you forgotten 2009-10?

    Complain all you want about the Republican Party, but destroying it from within guarantees the Left’s destruction of America. Are you really ok with helping them?

    • You have to take into account the fact that the people you’re addressing supported Trump, which means they’re dumber than dirt and unable to follow your argument.

  26. The least bad solution is for Hillary to win a narrow plurality victory with the GOP retaining control of the House and Senate. That would guarantee gridlock for the next four years, which is the best we can hope for. This result would be very bad for the GOP, though, since it would allow Trump and his supporters to wage a “we were stabbed in the back” campaign against conservatives. That’s OK, though, I still think this would be the least bad outcome for the US. A Trump victory would be the end of conservatism in the US for the foreseeable future, would transform the GOP into a white nationalist party, and would have wholly unpredictable outcomes for the US – he could be possibly far worse than Hillary, possibly better.

  27. The Never Trumpers are fighting to save their party. A Democratic President is inevitable at some point during the next 12 years, but the Republican Party’s survival has never been a possibility before. Whether Trump wins or loses, he will gut the GOP, take half its base, undermine its legitimacy, call its leaders socialist traitors and poison the well for the Right for a generation. Which is all good from my perspective, so I am not complaining.

    • I think your analysis is pretty good. Trump is going to do his best to kill small government, freedom loving conservatism, and he might succeed.

  28. Conservatism doesn’t need billionaires to fund it. Borrow a page from the Religious Right and fleece the Sheeple through lots of small donations.

    Rules of Acquisition (Revised) #156: Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit.

    And now you know why $10,000 invested in the S&P under Republican presidents would have yielded just under a staggering $1,800 in returns. While $10,000 invested in the S&P under Democratic presidents would have around a measly $300,000 in returns (and that’s not including most of Obama’s S&P gains.)

  29. ” Those of us who believe, who know, that Trump is dangerous can’t just settle for him being beaten in November. We need to ensure that he is on the business end of a decisive, humiliating defeat — so that the terribly divisive forces he has unleashed are delivered a death blow.”

    “Trump needs to fall HARD in November, so that the Party of Lincoln gets a complete, top-to-bottom reset — one that completely purges the Trumpkins who believe racial animus is a governing philosophy and that their ignorant and angry primal screams can ever build a Republican majority.”

    GOP consultant Rick Wilson

    http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/08/for_gop_to_reset_trump_must_lose_big_in_november_o.html

    • A Trump loss will have nothing to do with race. He will perform just as good as, if not better than, Romney among Hispanics. And has shown that an Americanist, trade-skeptic platform can rake in millions of blue collar whites.

      The irony here is thst if Trump loses, it will be at the hands of women, who will have conspired to defeat the Republican nominee with the least ideological comittment to ending abortion in modern times.

      Win or lose, Trump has proven the right need not kowtow to La Raza.

      • “He will perform just as good as, if not better than, Romney among Hispanics.”

        Possibly.
        And he will ensure that Hillary gets even more votes from Hispanics than she otherwise would have.
        Hispanic voter registration has surged in several states.

  30. I have spent the last five years surviving off a diet of rat meat and oak roots.

    My feet are kept warm only by the newspapers I tie around them. The rags that cover my hunched shoulders are thinning, but somehow I bear on…trembling…

    I live in a cave. The only way I get wi-fi is by hacking into that of the Supreme Islamic Council Headquarters, who sat up shop in what used to be my local church.

    The right wing bloggers—I should have listened to them! They warned me this would happen!
    They said over and over that if Obama was elected—and then re-elected—that the economy would crash, and then the Islamists would take over…

    WHY OH WHY DID I NOT HEED THEIR WARNING!

  31. Not sure it’s the “conservatives” that are the problem, but the progressive RINOs, which are in step with blue democrats. Or is there such a thing as blue democrats anymore? Maybe not.

    I don’t particularly like Trump, he wasn’t my pick, but I was out voted. The Supreme Court means more.

  32. Something I learned in the Army; you will be forgiven for being wrong, but you will never be forgiven for being right.

  33. “Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy” – founding father of neoconservatism Irving Kristol.

    Mission accomplished.

    The Movement That Dare Not Speak It’s Name. Today we call them ‘Establishment’ Republicanss. (Neos and friend of Neos).

    The Grand Bargain struck with the New Left Radicals was a winning one. The globalists would pay the freight on a MASSIVE Welfare State (including new demographic – Boomer retirement) in return for an alien replacement workforce, both legal and illegal. A . . . win-win. Of course, this required Wall Street and the tran-national corporations to also fund the installation of the best government money could buy.

    And meet the new Ministry of Truth. A misinformation agency berthed between the DOJ and the IRS. A place where not only the end justifies the means, but an apparatus capable of manufacturing flip wag-the-dog crises never once let go to waste.

    Couched within a Beltway Iron Curtain patrolled by a massive internal security colossus with a cute bumper sticker – Homeland Security, and an NSA to fuel the Thought Police.

    What in God’s name have we created?

    Elysium.

  34. This rant bears absolutely NO relationship at all to my refusal to vote for Trump. I never intended to, to start with, I am amazed at anyone who thinks Trump will be anything other than EVERYTHNG bad Hillary is along with a contempt for the rule of law ten times worse than hers or Obama’s. I want Hillary to win, yes. The choice is between two thoroughly devious, authoritarian bullies, but one is already so mired in corruption she cannot mobilize a proto-fascist mindset in the masses in support of her, while the other shows every intention and ability to do so.

    • Ha. She won’t need the masses’ support. She has the propaganda wing of the dems (media), she will have the entire range of alphabet agencies (already owns DOJ/FBI), and she will have SCOTUS. The republicans have been feckless vs. Obama. The republicans may even lose congress for its malfeasance against the base and its nominee. Frankly that last may be the of the best, though painful, things to occur – let Hillary and the dems own 100% the chaos their liberal/statist utopia has to offer.

      • First, this notion assumed throughout here, that Republicans have been “feckless vs. Obama,” is nuts. Republicans have in fact thwarted Obama at several points. Your sense of powerlessness is absolutely NOT what liberals see when they look at how things have unfolded. What you cannot seem to understand is that to GOVERN you must win first. Your boy is not coming close to winning. Yet somehow his failure to do so is the fault of those who never thought he should or could? Excuses, excuses, excuses. This is what mirrors were made for.

      • My boy was Cruz. I’m just a better observer than you. “You must win first” – then why actively agitate to lose? Weird. They said we need the House, the Senate, then the White House, nexcept now, not the White House. Look at CharlieLima post above. Unfortunately, he is not unique, not by a long shot. Our intelligentsia wanted a purge. They have no idea what is coming. And yes the republicans were feckless and have shown themselves to be craven in the face of adversity. We can disagree on that, but many of them will not remain in office, some this year, and more to come (remember House goes every two years), and people remember the contempt these guys/gals had for the Tea Party and now for their nominee.

      • “Winning” with Trump would be losing. You may think you see clearer, but if you can’t see that, your eyes are closed.

      • Bah, it is apparent you are part of the problem. I bet you like the Bushes, Kasich, Boehner, McConnell, Bret Stephens, Kristol, et al. If you have a problem with where we are blame on those guys (and seemingly yourself). Winning is definitely not in your lexicon.

  35. What a profoundly stupid premise. Conservatism INC? What, you telling me Rush, Hannity, most of Fox News, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, WND, etc hasn’t been in the tank for Trump?

    Even Rush has finally had to admit that Trump is no conservative. WELL HELL…of course conservatives are against him them. DUH. No, BTW, I’m not Never Trump. But I’m certainly going to call out the idiocy of conservatives jumping in the tank for him.

    • Conservatives and conservatism are, and always have been, frauds. They make inspiring promises and accomplish nothing. They are curled lip snob elitists with ‘leaders’ in Washington desperate to protect their power, privilege and profiteering. I’ll never, ever vote for an Establishment republican again. Never.

      • I don’t think you understand why conservatives in academia exist. They are not politicians implementing policy, they are a heterogeneous lot dedicated to creating an intellectual foundation that is in opposition to the far left and as justification for certain policy prescriptions. You can disagree with them on policy but not voting establishment, which means nothing, is a futile effort on your part.

      • How did we arrive at academia? But, hey. Academia and conservatives?? Hahahhaaa… ‘conservative’ and ‘conservatism’ is slippery I’ll give you that. It needs to be in order to keep up (as your post clearly illustrates) some sense of legitimacy. That’s why whenever the truth about the fraud that is conservatism arises one of their crowd mumbles about, “…well, that’s ‘neo-conservatives’ or traditional conservatism or evangelical conservatism and so on. So, in that spirit, I’ll tell you that conservatives, or former Bush-crowd appointees, or Establishment republicans, or #NeverTrumpers, or any of the anti-base intellectuals you speak about (2 or maybe 3 of whom live on some campus somewhere) rise above the sewer to denounce or denigrate republican-voters, I commit once again to live to see that day that each and every one is defeated and their fraudulent movement never, ever successful.

    • Embrace your true Never Trumpism, C. Edmund, don’t let the March of the Viaducts mindlessness here delay you. You are absolutely right about all those you name who are in the tank for Trump. But see, what the Trumpkins mean by “Conservatism, Inc.” are all those who do not have to gin up road rage every day on their radio shows so as to keep sponsors of security systems, gold selling, month-supply-of-food hawkers, and other “conservative” entrepreneurs of doom in the money. Every wonder by the way, why anyone who thinks paper money is about to crash would be in the business of selling gold to OTHERS in exchange for their paper money? Conservatism Inc as Decius defines them perhaps are those who can see this con for what it is.

  36. I think brave Decius misses the critique. The think tank/think mag crowd care more about Trump as a vessel than any potential policies he represents. Trump of course makes it easier to dismiss any policy positions due to his unfamiliarity with policy and his regular waffling. Rereading the infamous never trump diatribe from NR, a major concern is Trump’s poor general election qualities. I admit I am not completely ‘plugged in’ this cycle, but the overwhelming angst from conservative towards Trump has little to do with his populist policies and everything to do with his likely failure in November.

  37. What conservatives are you talking about? Bush? Lindsay Graham? Mittens? McCain? George Will? Charles Krautheimer? Weekly Standard? National Review? Fox News? Actually the conservatives are pretty much the biggest fraud. I think that it comes from when they go to these elite democratic colleges and because they are rich they get demeaned but what to show they are cool they submit to the brainwashing.

  38. I wonder if the “never trump” people think there will be no back lash from the pro Trump people? If Trump loses due to lack of support from traditional conservatives, I for one will not support the next main stream candidate. If you can sit home for Trump, I can sit home for the next Democrat-lite.

    • I suppose they’re not worried about losing you because they know you have nowhere else to go.
      There’s no viable third party and never will be.

  39. Here’s what they really think: Something they’re not thinking.

    I really wish Trump supporters would stop doing this. My wife does this. “I am going to tell you what you’re thinking.” Then she proceeds to tell me something I wasn’t thinking at all.

    Why can’t you just do me the decency of taking me at my word. I oppose Trump and Clinton both. Quite sincere about it. Won’t vote for either. I think Trump is dangerous and I am indeed mad at all the fools out there who promoted this buffoon over fine conservative candidates. I dread four years or more of Clinton liberal policies. And I blame the Trumpanzees for making it happen. That’s it.

    And the piece that we Never Trumper can’t seem to hammer into your thick skulls? Trump is a menace – a dangerous narcissistic child minded fool who’s own policy prescriptions are dangerous and maybe even worse than Clinton’s policies. His friendly relationship with Putin, his signals that his administration wouldn’t support our NATO allies, the fact that Paul Manifort was paid millions by a pro-Russian faction of the Ukrainian government, the killing of free trade and potential trade wars, hostility to the constitution and a personality that is better suited to a battery of psychological evaluations than the presidency. The guys is both a moron and a maniac.

    You guys picked the absolute worst person in the world as the GOP nominee. And now you’re scrambling to get inside the heads of people who are calling you out on it? You’re as bad at understanding Never Trump conservatives as you are understanding Trump himself. You have some kind of judgement learning disability. Not sure how to diagnose you – but I am sure Trump could do a good imitation of it.

    • You’re not fooling anyone. How much were you paid by the Clinton Campaign to post this? One can examine your post history where you claim up and down to be Anti-Clinton and Anti-Trump but ALL of your attacks are focused on Trump. All your “info dumps” are just anti-Trump diatribe. You’re too obvious. Back to the drawing board. I was beginning to legitimately respond to you until I realized what you were and deleted it.

  40. everyone wants trump to lose except for a select group of craven pols who want to exploit the anxiety of working class white males

    • In a fashion roughly comparable to the way the Democrats have exploited the anxieties of working class black men and women. But what else? The American working class is incapable of directing its own fate, and even now, even in the time of the most serious populist-nativist working class movement since the 1930s, it must import a member of the elite to do its leading for it. So naturally, without the ability to direct itself, it will be exploited.

    • If exploitation is your game, you would be better served spooking Black Women and College Educated White Women. Those herds are very easy to stampede. The rest of the country generally has a real grasp of reality.

  41. Conservatism? with 77% of republicans supporting Trump. Now that party is a populist nationalist party. and the Neo Conservatives? they have run off to join the Clinton Campaign. The November 8th debacle has long been coming and has many fathers. but hey if you see the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse on November 9th please post it.

  42. I’m able cheerfully and willingly to endorse everything in the eighth paragraph – and especially the bit about eating crow – except for the estimate of 1-2 million Muslim youths, which is wildly exaggerated.

  43. At some point we are going to run out of other peoples money. We are living a “Zero Interest Rate Bubble”. With 20 Trillion in debt this year, soon to be 25 or 30 Trillion, Return of historically normal 5% interest rates would equate to 1 Trillion to 1.5 Trillion in interest per year. Fully 1/3 to 1/2 of taxes would be required to pay interest. The country is like a subprime mortgage borrower, soon to be leveraged to 50% of income. As more money is required to pay debt, more borrowing will be required to maintain spending levels, and debt accumulation will accelerate. Deficits in the End Do Matter.. And we aren’t buying “Durable Goods” with 50 year life spans like bridges, freeways, submarines, and hydro electric dams, we are buying “Consumer Goods” like FoodStamps, Welfare Payments, Obamacare, Disability Payments, SSI, and Federal Pension Benefits..

    The status quo tax and borrow and spend paradigm that has been the historical norm for our entire lives is about to collapse.

    Hillary’s advertised plan is that she can raise taxes by 1 Trillion dollars over 10 years to pay for Fairness 400 B, Free College for All 375 B and Infrastructure 275 B. This is plan is ridiculous because she raises taxes and then completely spends them, (Like any Democrat) she is oblivious to the crushing debt that will still accumulate, and interest rates that will choke any new spending.

    The American people have a tough truth to face. Like the sacrifices that were necessary for our forefathers. There will be a generation of Americans that will have to fight the “Debt War”. The lying politicians, (Trump included) are insuring that the worst case scenario comes to fruition.

  44. A Conservative Movement that ceases moving becomes a Constipation.

  45. My take is that the conservative #NeverTrump types have an overriding desire to be able to pat themselves on the back and say, “I never lost my conservative purity.” The coming hell and its consequences be damned.

  46. I resemble these accusations. I agree that Hillary Clinton will be a horrible president and her administration will wreck havoc with the country’s economy and foreign policy. I also feel that she is singularly the most corrupt presidential candidate, in every application of the term, in the past century. Finally, I find her and her smarmy posse repulsive. But, Trump represents the vilest sentiments in the human psyche and should never ever be elevated to any position of power. His devotees’ cult-like worship of the man is even more disturbing than the prospect of his winning. I am looking forward to the days after the election when they all decide to abandon the party of Lincoln and start one of their own. They will be shocked and dismayed, however, when Trump declines to participate or contribute a dime.

  47. Question for the author of this piece: Do you believe that only Northern European minds can grasp the benefit of concepts like small government, freedom and entrepreneurship?Why should it not be possible for Latinos and Muslims to become conservative voters?

    • Become? Sure, but across, usually, rather than within generations. Pass amnesty and youve got several million additional leftists until they’re dead.

  48. Ummm…. not Conservatism, Inc. but…. Elitist, Inc.

    And many of those elitists are liberal republicans.

  49. Decius,
    Contrary to what you assert here, it is possible to affirm conservative political values, strongly and consistently, and to oppose Hillary Clinton on the merits, while still concluding that the people who thought even for a minute that nominating a non-conservative, smashmouth buffoon of doubtful character and was anything close to a smart idea. Because, look, it turns out that it was suicidal.
    Hope this helps.

    • So says the ‘conservative’ hanging off the bridge suspended over the deep, deep gorge of conservative extinction. Bye, bye!

      • I very much doubt that conservativism is becoming extinct. I do fear that it is a minority viewpoint. The idea that someone like Donald Trump could overcome that problem by putting together a winning coalition was always dubious and is now shown to be completely wrongheaded. Bye bye.

    • “Oppose Hillary on the merits”? And what practical effect will that have? Is that like opposing Obama’s lawless policies and actions…on the merits? Or presenting a singular bill to defund ACA to President Obama that everyone knows he will veto and can’t be over-ridden?
      Obama has show how executive power can be wielded through the federal bureaucracy without the interference of Congress. Congress replies with toothless investigations or white papers from some House sub-committee. Hillary, surrounded by a whirlwind of testimony from others, promises to be even more vindictive and calculated in the things she promises. The FDA or EPA will utter some preposterous regulation regarding guns based on some flimsy reasoning such as we have seen used by…for instance…the FBI.
      I fear that, in the future, voicing said “conservative political values” will become increasingly risky and unprofitable. The “Fairness Doctrine” revitalized, the freedom of the internet reigned in, certain speech regulated.
      I find the self-fulfilling prophecy of “voices of conservatism” regarding the presumed “failure” of Trump to be evidence of little more than capitulation to an apparatus that no one wants to confront and everyone hopes will not affect their corner of paradise.

      • Your question is a good one. It would be easier to oppose liberalism on the merits if the Republicans occupied the White House. I agree with you about the federal bureaucracy. Maybe you should read what I wrote again.

    • They are the Washington Generals. Why would they appose on the merits?

      She is the status quo.

      • See, this is the problem. You say things like “they are the Washington Generals,” as though some silly metaphor substitutes for a thoughtful analysis. It doesn’t. And I didn’t say anything about “they.” I don’t know who “they” are and, honestly, you don’t either. You’ve just bought into a goofy idea about some monolithic “establisnment,” pretending that just by using the term you are expressing something insightful. You’re not. Instead, your exactl mode of thinking has given us the present disaster. Thanks for nothing.
        I didn’t say anything about any “they.” Read what I actually said. It was perfectly accurate and if you disagree, you’re just wrong.

      • “it is possible to affirm conservative political values, strongly and consistently, and to oppose Hillary Clinton on the merits”

        those guys.

      • I see. Part of the problem here lies in your grasp of a grammatical concept known as sentences. Try restating your response using one or more sentences. Maybe we can get somewhere!

      • Don’t be obtuse. You identified and described the cohort. I merely noted the historical record.

        “They” lose every time “they” assert or “affirm conservative political values, strongly and consistently, and to oppose Hillary Clinton on the merits”.

        Really?

        Of course, “we” have gone through three wave elections to put “those” clowns in office.

        However, “they” did not do what they promised to do in order to get elected by landslide after landslide hence – Mr. Trump.

        So cry me a river.

        What’s wrong smartasse? All tangled up in your underwear? (Ha!)

      • This is so odd. The “cohort” you say I identified is those who ” affirm conservative political values, strongly and consistently, and [who] oppose Hillary Clinton on the merits.” That’s the cohort you don’ like, is that right? I mean, you accuse me of being obtuse, but the reality is you’re just being incoherent. It is not the case that conservatives “lose every time.” Conservatives prevailed in the last three mid term elections. It is true that conservatives lost the presidency in 2008, having held it for the eight previous years, and failed to retake it, narrowly, in 2012, even though holding a majority in the House and more recently the Senate as well. This is not “losing every time.”

        But even though you can’t bring yourself even to a minimal level of coherence, I think that I know, from context, what you mean. What you mean is that despite holding House and Senate majorities, the Republicans were unable given a Democrat president and a filibuster-enabled Senate minority, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, take on entitlement reform, or secure significant reductions in federal spending. That’s what you mean by “lose every time,”‘ right? But, gee, there are these things called presidential vetos, executive orders, Senate filibusters, and popular opinions that can limit the freedom of action even of Congressional majorities. That’s what made it key, finally, after eight years of Barack Obama, to retake the White House and to begin to set our country right.

        But that’s not going to happen now, is it? No. And why isn’t it going to happen, friend? It’s not going to happen because a bunch of … well, a substantial plurality of Republicans somehow, unaccountably thought it would be a good idea to nominate a non-conservative, smashmouth buffoon of doubtful character. That’s why. And smarter people than they tried to warn them of what would happen, but did they listen? No, they did not. Instead, they started shouting a bunch of lowbrow slogans like “amnesty, amnesty, we can’t have amnesty,” and “the establishment” this and “the establishment that,” pretending all the while that they knew anything about anything. Which, you know, they didn’t. And so the rest of us had to watch the soon-to-be trainwreck keep rolling down the tracks, and our beloved United States of America go glug glug glug down the drain by the guaran-darn-tee of a (gosh, I don’t even want to type it) Hillary Clinton Administration, all because of nominating a know-nothing boob like Donald Trump (Donald Freaking Trump for heaven’s sake!) for president. He was even a birther, for heaven’s sake. What were you people even thinking?

        So thanks for nothing, guys. When they take you off to the gulags, I hope you remember it’s your own damn fault.

      • You are blocking the bridge. Jump into the river or we will shoot your horses and shove you over the side but this column is on the move.

        We are in a fight for our lives.

      • I agree with that. I’m just annoyed that you hired General Wrong-Way Numb-Nuts to lead the charge. Seriously, the only guy in the field with negatives higher – higher – than HRC herself. Doesn’t that seem stupid, even to you?

      • This election is not about the candidates. It is a plebiscite. It is where we are as a society. And the central issue, the only issue is – have we crossed the river?

        McCain and Romney couldn’t win. Both solid guys. Trump brings independents and democrats. He also brings those who have expressed an concern over what is about to kill us – the direction of the country (economy, jobs, immigration).

        But the Left and the Establishment has this:

        “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

        When a society bases its political power on a majority vote, it is inevitable that those wishing to have power will seek to satisfy the needs of those who will provide it (vote) by transferring wealth. This leads to ever increasing public spending fueled by the self-interest of producers. With each increment in the common realm, more people are brought into the class of those receiving benefits . . . these people will take their benefits into account, desire to maintain or increase their level of benefits, vote for those who will support them, and thus, the level of spending will ever increase. The needs of the voters will eventually exceed the treasury’s ability, so fiscally unsound policies will be undertaken. – written in 1756

        it appears the Left has harnessed this voter block and they have reached critical mass.

      • Thanks for the lecture. There is certainly truth to what you say. But elections ARE about candidates as well as about policies and interest groups. The reason that we have Donald Trump is that you guys conflated smashmouth offensiveness (“Lying Ted,””Little Marco”), mindless, overdrawn, and misprioritized issues assessments (rapists from Mexico, Chinese bilateral trade characteristics, Muslim refugees), and a genuinely suicidal emphasis on internecine warfare (“the establishment” fails, doesn’t care, needs to be defeated, yadda yadda yadda) with general-election electability. The consequences of this egregious misanalysis are horrendous. I would like to think that you guys would take responsibility for that mistake but my interaction with you here leads me to think that you’ll continue to blame “the establishment” rather than your own demonstrable foolishness.

      • I’m a Cruz guy. However Trump beat seventeen candidates with crossovers and open primaries. In this environment, Cruz would have been Palin’d worse than Trump. If he can’t get it done, then we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way.

        And smirkers like you you who did not get on board are the real losers.

        What did you do in the Great war, Daddy? “I walked around yammering I told you so”

      • Nobody is getting on board when the ship has been hulled below the water line. Hillary had higher negatives than any major-party candidate in modern history, until you chose the one who holds the record. Way to go, fella. You guys got this all wrong, and it is all the harder to take when we realize that smart people were trying very hard to warn you and you Just Wouldn’t Listen. You call Mitt Romney a loser, but it will turn out that he did better by literally millions of votes than this know-nothing, narcissistic, smash mouth buffoon that you clowns shoved down our throats. So when you are asked, what did you do in the war, you are going to have all these great stories about your heroism and wisdom and how you were sold out by the rear echelons, when the truth is you had no freakin’ idea what you were doing from day one, and are just too dimwittted to see it.

      • Hey idiot.

        I

        voted

        Cruz.

        You fight with the army you have, not the one you wish you had.

        Go wash yer face, sonny boy.

      • Right. I meant to acknowledge that, sorry. Cruz voters were making the exact same mistake, although I grant you he would not have been quite the disaster we have now. My point is that even though you go to war with the army you have, if the army you have is horribly unequipped because planners have misunderstood strategy and misprioritized objectives. And you can keep your condescension to yourself. This cycle has been a bloody disaster because you – and I mean you and too many others like you, including people like Rush Limbaugh whom I used to respect – completely misunderstood the political demographics and what it would take to win.

  50. Who the H*** are you talking about? No names named. Talk about straw men. I read NR and WS and Powerline where so many prominent NeverTrumpers reside, and they aren’t remotely reacting this way. They see a catastrophe in the making for conservatism and our country. With either one of them winning.

    • “Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy” – founding father of neoconservatism Irving Kristol.

      Mission accomplished.

      The Movement That Dare Not Speak It’s Name Lives!. Today we call them ‘Establishment’ Republicans. (Neos and friends of Neos).

  51. CONSERVATIVES—-if you don’t turn out N8, and let that witch get in there–YOU ARE NOT CONSERVATIVE
    HELL-ary ?! MY GOD

    • So vote for her supporter who is pretending to be a republican then?

  52. I’m absolutely a giddy-con and will drink your deplorable tears in just 25 short days. I’ll drink them up! This is what you get for trying to mainstream bigotry, paranoia, misogyny and anti-intellectualism into the party.

  53. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? The reason Trump will lose to Hillary is his own repugnant behavior. That’s it.

    Don’t blame conservatives. Blame Trump.

  54. This is depressingly brilliant! I like the phrase, Conservative Inc. The problem with that, though, as many of these comments indicate, is the special kind of stupid (a phrase Rush has seemed to coin in the last couple weeks) that leads way too many conservatives to think that voting for Gary Johnson or sitting it out is not a de facto vote for Hillary. IT IS! They can feel morally superior to Trump supporters, but they are as much of the problem as Conservative Inc. If Trump looses, the Republican Party will have left me. It already has.

  55. Manhattan Privilege has a ‘kind of conservative wing’. Unfortunately, this wing, as Decius stated, will be bulldozed by the real Players. Never expect nancy boys from West Manhattan to have your back. They just don’t have it in them. Life is all about them, nothing bigger or deeper. They will not despair, but will readily become re-educated and find profitable employment in masquerading a conservative wing. Decius is wrong, the Left always requires the illusion of a Right. Without it, they would be lost at sea. Their entire religious compass is determined by doing the opposite of those they hate. This describes Obama’s entire presidency. Subversives have to subvert. It’s basic Darwinian theory.

  56. The assertion is WAY off the mark. The party “leadership” wants Trump to fail. They represent perhaps one hundred grumpy folks who imagine themselves in power while serving their last term. Conservatives left the party during the primaries and they took Trump with them. I don’t know why so many in the media that ought to know better keep tripping over this. The GOP is a party on paper. But in terms of a base, the building is empty. There is a whole big bunch of electorate out there that has broken loose, joined with independents and Democrats and who are (by the way) supporting Trump. None of them cares a whit about anything called the Republican party.

    • I call them GOPe or Bush Inc. They comprise, at best, 20% of the GOP. If you paid attention during the primaries, this became obvious. Yes, they don’t like sharing and they do believe all streets should be one-way. It didn’t matter if Trump was the nominee or Cruz, the result would have been the same. GOPe just like DEMe were both running to become Emperor of the Western Hemisphere. Good for them, not so good for Americans.

      • “…both running to become the Emperor of the Western Hemisphere.”

        Western Hemisphere? Hah! They want the whole enchalada all to themselves with just enough Useful Idiots around to make their lives even better.

      • Compare Jeb’s opening reason for running to Hillary’s promise to Goldman Sachs – open borders and free trade within the Western Hemisphere. Believe me, that gets the Too Big To Fail crowd all hot and bothered. Our elites have run out of national bubbles to inflate and dump and now need new horizons. Manhattan Privilege never sleeps.

      • Put simply: The electorate should support individuals of their choice. Parties are poison wherever found because they are virtually owned by globalist donors.

  57. The sad truth is the Country may simply never recover from Bush JR and the terrible damage he wrought. America will soon be just another south America country, corrupt, divided and ruled by criminals of both left and right.
    The Conservative Establishment destroyed America because it never gave us an alternative until it was to late. The ultimate legacy of the Bush years was to make the Republicans as corrupt and unresponsive as the Dems.
    250 years and it is over. Sad.

    • Bush may have been a poor president, but his administration pales in comparison to the destruction now being perpetrated on the American people.

  58. Great observations. The distinctions between the Major Two Parties have become so blurred, one might as well call them The Same Party. All these elites who are running things behind the scenes & out in the open want one thing: One World Gov’t with their lovely asses in charge. To hell with the “little people,” many of whom are their own worst enemies in helping the Clintons make their slimy way back into the WH. I don’t want to hear a peep out of these people as they (the Clintons) finish our country off for good !

  59. Total agreement from a 65 year old who never voted for any Dem in his life. I’m sickened by the WS and the other losers who want Hillary to win. I do hope 100% of their funding dries up.

  60. I’ve never hidden my desire for Trump to lose.

    #NeverTrump

  61. What irony. A Conservative warning about impending Liberal investigations after the Republican Congress conducted no less that 7 Benghazi investigations that apparently found nothing of note. Of course it is common to project your own urges onto your enemies.

    • “Benghazi investigations that apparently found nothing of note…”
      By did find something of note they learned from Team Clinton: Stonewalling works.

    • Right and stonewalling and corruption are just projections too. It’s amazing how people like you have such contempt for the truth and the American people.

  62. Yep. I’m a conservative and I am proud that Trump will probably lose thanks, in part, to the rejection of Trump by other conservatives.The issue is that two enemies have popped up in this election, and it really boils down to which enemy is easier to handle and has consequences we can predict and counteract. Free trade? I’m all on board. Free market capitalism is a fundamental part of Reagan conservatism, and I love it. Immigration? Yeah, we need to have sensible immigration policies. No, a plan that has no more specifics than “build a wall” and “they all need to go” is not a sensible immigration policy. Maybe once conservatives can break free from the xenophobic white nationalists that Trump has attracted, we will be able to court conservative Hispanics. Refugees? As long as we vet them, which we already do. Yes, radical Islamist terrorism is a problem. Yes, we need to fight ISIS. No, Muslims are not overwhelmingly terrorists any more than right-wingers are terrorists (since 9/11, right-wing extremist attacks have killed 48 which is less than the jihadist attacks that have killed 94, but still substantial). As for other policies that Hillary Clinton will advance? Each of those can be fought and held off for a while. But the cure to Clinton (Trump) is worse than the disease.

    • Free trade? I’m all on board. Free market capitalism is a fundamental part of Reagan conservatism.

      You’re a complete and utter imbecile. You’re so dumb you’re a left-winger and don’t even realize it.

      “If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it must be blind because he has been way off the mark. In fact, he has been the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover.”

      https://mises.org/library/ronald-reagan-protectionist

      the cure to Clinton (Trump) is worse than the disease.

      Based on all the political views you’ve just expressed, there is no reason why you should think any “cure” to Clinton is necessary. You agree with her on trade, immigration, terrorism, and the urgency of opposing “white supremacists”! You’re about as “conservative” as Leon Trotsky.

      • Right, these are the only important issues. Forget social issues, labor regulations, minimum wage, defense spending, judicial appointments, taxes, etc.

        And as far as trade goes, both candidates are terrible. Increased trade will have a huge net benefit, but neither candidate will support it because ignorant dolts on both the left and the right don’t understand it.

  63. How can people not see that the left wants to destroy the right ? Do you recall Bill Clinton and other Democrats running as moderate and pro-business -doesn’t mean they actually were. How about Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton being anti-immigration ? Look at things now.Even with a record number of Republican reps THEY ARE IRRELEVANT when it comes to stopping Obama or any other Republican.Just because you win a rhetorical battle here and there, doesn’t mean that you are not LOSING THE WAR. Trump is the nominee because he has FOUGHT. It’s time to stop this “wiining by losing” that seems to be rampant with most Republicans

  64. If this election is really as important as you say then why did you not demand that this man withdraw from the race to be replaced by someone who might have won it. This debacle is entirely the fault of the Cult of the Great Pumpkin. Quit making excuses. Proudly own this catastrophe and quit projecting your failure onto those of us who have warned you over and over again that we will not support this fraud under any circumstances. You guys said you’d get him elected without us. Don’t cry to us about your failed candidate.

  65. Looks like many Republicans can’t bring themselves to do what Democrats ALWAYS do. Remain united going into the election. I hate when the Democrats use our moral standards against us. I hate it MORE when “Republicans” take the bait

  66. Ask yourself whether you want a place ( not a country anymore) with no boarder so everyone in the world can come and stay. Can you handle fifteen billions on this land next year?

    If you do you can vote for the Clintons with their open boarder plan.

  67. Lol, these Dump supporter temper tantrums are just getting more and more delicious. And they’re completely self-inflicted, which makes it even better. I mean, you chose a reality TV sideshow clown instead of an actual presidential candidate, and now you want to complain once the result that was inevitable all along draws closer? Mmmmkay! If this was such a crucial election, why did you not bother to nominate an actual candidate? The dems would have been seriously screwed if you had!

  68. The only thing missing from the DNC platform is “The Final Solution” to the deplorable conservative problem. But guess what, it’s there, just read the Affordable Care Act. I think Palin referred to it as death panels. PDM is correct a Hillary victory unleashes the totalitarian impulse of the progressives and life as we once understood it will become just what Orwell predicted, perhaps worse. But the elites will be well cared for and they will have what they always wanted a submissive and compliant serf class who will trod the roads they are allowed to travel and we will all get to know our place. It will not be a place that offers what was once known as the American Dream that’s just so last century thinking.

  69. If this election has done anything it has freed us from the moral tyranny of ‘Conservatives’ who could embrace Dubya and McLame but who are enraged at the very idea of Trump and his ungroovy trailer-trash followers. They can happily go join the Clintons and the Demos and act out their pretend ‘opposition’ clown-party role in a one-party socialist People’s Democracy. Maybe we won’t win this struggle. Even if Trump does win he’ll take office with the entire federal bureaucracy determined to stop him from ever doing anything meaningful. But it doesn’t matter. We will have stood up for the last remains of freedom in an age where Progressive tyranny is spreading like a cancer.

  70. The GOP is a circular firing squad. Still more refreshing than the goose stepping dems who can stab their own primary candidates in the back and be rewarded for it.

  71. good article…well argued….accurate. The only real enduring Achille’s Heel for the permanently prevailing institutional Left is their economic mysticism. The national debt, doubled under Barry, will likely double again under shrillary as her club-footed mastery of the economic dance will have her and the country concussed by what amounts to exponentially increasing debt over a new looming recession, health care losses, new foreign wars, open ended social programs and support for permanently unemployable and ineducable citizens and immigrants, and a decaying infrastructure and inner city fiasco in spite of massive but massively ineffective/inefficient/corrupt government make-work projects and stimuli. When the debt reaches $100 trillion dollars we are Venezuela writ large. The Left ALWAYS collapses in the end as their policies and actions are contrary to human nature and subvert whatever nobler human impulses that may present.

  72. I find this attack on conservatives disingenuous. Trump supporters openly and triumphantly stated that it was their intention to take a wrecking ball to the party with their choice of Trump. They ignored threats by both Establishment and conservatives that Trump would not be supported, for either temperamental or ideological reasons. Many Trump supporters said they would rather lose with Trump than win with a Cruz, Rubio, or Kasich. And now they wonder why the other factions want them to lose.

    • Trump has been railing against weak foreign policy and bad trade deals since at least 1980. In 1988, at the GOP
      convention, invited by HW Bush, Trump again talked about bad trade deals. He has been consistently conservative conservatives on several key issues for 36 years even though he went back and forth between the 2 major parties.

      Moreover, as Rush notes, it is apparent he does not really think in terms of political party and what is best for the party, but instead thinks of terms what best for America as a whole.

      In reality, political parties are about advancing party ideology that may or may not help America.

      • “He has been consistently conservative conservatives on several key issues for 36 years even though he went back and forth between the 2 major parties.”

        He has not. You don’t get to count his position on trade as a conservative position because protectionism finds a home on both sides of the aisle. Protection is also stupid, so I wouldn’t exactly brag that he has been consistently WRONG on trade for the last 36 years.

        Other than that, most of the opinions he has expressed, except perhaps with respect to the EPA, have been consistently liberal/progressive: support for abortion, support for higher taxes, support for single payer health care, support for the Clintons and other liberal democrats, support for eminent domain, etc.

      • The GOP has been a protectionist party from the day it was created. Ronald Reagan was described by the libertarians as “the most protectionist President since Herbert Hoover..”

        https://mises.org/library/ronald-reagan-protectionist

        THIS is conservatism, and the idiotic globalism being supported by the anti-Trump “conservatives” is a sick joke.

        “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism. Thenation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America
        down, and will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs.” Donald Trump

      • Your protectionism will only impoverish the very low income Americans you are trying to supposedly help. Go read Adam Smith, moron.

    • Although I agree with most of what you say, don’t lump Cruz in with Rubio or Kasich. The latter two are establishment favorites. Cruz has the most conservative record in the Senate and for that is hated by both the establishment and the Trumpswabs.

    • They ignored threats by both Establishment and conservatives that Trump would not be supported

      The people within the GOP opposing Trump are not “conservative” in any way.

      now they wonder why the other factions want them to lose.

      I’m not sure there is any “wondering” involved. You people are obviously leftists. Perhaps leftists with a fanatical attachment to “free trade”, but leftists all the same. The GOP has been opposed to “free trade” from its inception under Lincoln.

      • “You people are obviously leftists.”

        You people are obviously retarded.

    • That’s because Rubio and Kasich are open borders whores. And Cruz imploded himself.

      • You mean the mainstream media followed Trump’s narrative during the primaries, focusing on “unlikable” Cruz’s moderate negatives while ignoring Trump’s? We can guess who they wanted to face the weakest Dem candidate in living history.

  73. A lot of what passes for conservatism is nothing of the sort historically or even not that long ago.

    • Exactly. Conservatism has been hijacked by the GOPe, the Neo-Cons and the Trumpswabs.

  74. Article partly right, as conservatism is as dead as a door nail.The elites support Hillary because they or their donors benefit from the policies like property where the illegals are housed, cheap labor, trade agreements etc. or trade deals like the banks getting breaks. The republicans don’t have a base anymore, look at how badly the 16 candidates did against Trump. HIs popularity arises from crossover democrats or disaffected religious people who feel the rest of their liberties are taken away., Basically many have lost faith in government and will have a civil war if no war with Russia. And if these dweebs think they can appeal to patriotism , think again.

  75. Was any word better coined than “cuckservative”? It describes them all, from Kristol to Krauthammer, from Goldberg to Erickson.

    I never thought I’d see that ancient word “cuckold” brought back to life but it has resurrected with vigor and utility.

  76. Eight more years of junk mail:

    “Won’t you please donate $5,$25,$50 or more to help (your Republican) fight against President Hillary’s radical left-wing agenda?”

    That’s a nice little political party you got there. It’d be a shame if nothing happened to it.

  77. When all is said and done, Trump’s plan was never to destroy the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or really any ideology. He simply wanted to Make America Great Again. That’s a pleasant and robust thought.

  78. The same old yadda,yadda,yadda, rhetoric about how Trump isn’t as bad as Hillary without addressing the real reasons he doesn’t have Conservatives support. Which would be his being impulsive, vindictive, unprincipled, uninformed, crude, petty, and A LIBERAL. Besides that he has a habit of constantly stomping on his own nuts with his comments. Yet you’ll attempt to blame the establishment or Conservatives for his impending loss. You Trumpanzees make it sound like he had 100% character approval rating BEFORE the tapes ,came out. You bought into him you own him !

    • Yikes!

      You make it sound like Trump is more unwelcome in the GOP than the TEA party was.

      …didn’t think that was even possible…

      • The Tea Party revolution was based on the limited government under the Constitution. It was co-opted however by politicians and media personalities attempting to cash in with phony rallies, books, and most of all PAC’s using the Tea Party banner. Conservatism was co-opted and bastardized by the supposed embracing of the right wing media to the Trump campaign. This pimping of Trump by these synthetic conservatives have not only damaged the conservative brand but also damaged a major source which Conservatism was projected to America.

        The ORIGINAL intent of the Trump supporters was to “Burn the party down.”
        Well he’s accomplishing this BUT he’s going down also !

        “SCHADENFREUDE”

      • I agree. Unfortunately it was the conservatives who got played and destroyed. Whereas the establishment and the neoconservatives will simply pick up the pieces and carry on.

      • Yes I read it. So we can focus on state and local elections – that’s our strength.

  79. I am not sure Publius thinks of the other side of the coin. That a Trump loss is actually good for conservatism. For too long many have made the convincing case Trump is not a conservative. And should Trump win, conservatism would be forever associated with Trumpism. It seems Publius does not think of that particular aspect of the discussion.

    • Conservatism is dead regardless of a Trump win or loss. The Establishment and the Neoconservatives with survive with or without Trump. Conservatives are but a minority.

      • Conservatism is only dead if it becomes something else. If Trumpism wins it will be decades before it can reassert itself.

      • “Conservatism is only dead if it becomes something else.”
        – True but then it wouldn’t be Conservatism.

        “if Trumpism wins it will be decades before it can reassert itself”
        – True but if Trump loses, the Establishment and the Trumpswabs will collude
        and snuff out the conservatives for decades as well.

      • Official conservatism has already been bought out by the left. Trumpian conservatism is a response to that reality.

    • For too long many have made the convincing case Trump is not a conservative.

      Nobody has ever made a convincing case for that. Trump is the most conservative candidate to run for the Presidency since Reagan, and probably since Taft.

  80. Trump, Clinton and the Establishment GOP are all one in the same.
    The only thing that died in this election is the prospect of a conservative
    winning a national election. Conservatism as of today is dead nationally.

    • I see. Conservatism is just too hard.

      Maybe you should take up yoga.

      • Conservatism is too hard for many – that’s why Americans choose as they do – and it ain’t yoga they’re taking up.

    • Trump, Clinton and the Establishment GOP are all one in the same.

      You’re an idiot. Trump presents the most sharp break with the Washington orthodoxy which we’ve seen ins at least half a century.

      “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the Hemisphere,” – Hillary Clinton

      “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism. The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down, and will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs.” Donald Trump

      if you can’t see the difference there then there’s something very wrong with you.

  81. Hmmmmm…………seeing that Trump ISN’T CONSERVATIVE any way you look at it BUT A LIBERAL why shouldn’t Conservatism Inc. want him to lose ?

    • For the same reason you can’t tax your way to prosperity.

    • What the hell are you conserving by electing Hillary Clinton?

      • Who said anything about electing Hillary ?

      • That is the end result of what Conservatism, Inc. is doing.

      • Only if you believe empty rhetoric and lies. How are they doing it in your view?

      • I would rather be led by a LIBERAL who still believes in the concept of the nation state, than a CONSERVATIVE who believes in idiotic notions of a borderless world and Wilsonian Internationalist utopias. There is no constitution without a nation, and therefore no liberty given room to grow and be safe from a world full of despots.

      • I can see I was right when I said empty rhetoric and lies. what you are assuming to be Conservative principles are Not in any way reflecting true Conservative values. You are basing your opinion on what you see in Washington from politicians who claim to be Conservative. The Tea Party was co-opted by false politicians and media personalities with books, rallies and super PAC’s who claimed to represent the Tea Party. Read more of what Conservatism stands for before making a decision and lumping us all together.

      • Conservatism now stands for:

        1. Free movement of labor across borders thus eroding national borders
        2. Free trade deals that erode American sovergnity
        3. Bizarre Wilsonian nation building schemes
        4. Whatever a Wall Street donor says must be correct

        Like it or not the Bush family has left its permanent imprint on what conservatism is or is not (live with that reality). But even so called Tea Party conservatives like Mike Lee (UT) openly support Nos. 1-2. There has never been a free trade deal he did not support, never mind if it means handing national power to regulate trade and movement of labor to a international body. Hell even Cruz’s own wife was down with a North American Union, and Cruz himself was for TPP until he realized many of his constituents were not down with it.

        The reason so many Principled Conservatives hate Trump is not the boorish language, but because he is seen as a protectionist and isolationist, or in other words a not a radical internationalist.

      • Well I can see I’m talking with a Trump supporter who would stand by him if he shot someone on 5th Avenue so it’s pretty futile to attempt to talk reason with you.

        However:

        Why do you think the Tea Party came in to being? Because of the Bush administration. Why do you think Geo. H.W. Bush lost in 1992 because the Conservatives saw he would not follow Reagan Conservative views. Why do you think Jeb bush lost in 2016? Because conservatives saw he was just another Bush and refused to support him. The Bush family is the perfect example of what I was talking about above. thy bastardized the Conservative name….just like Trump is doing.

        The reason Conservatives hate Trump started long before his tapes came out. He is unprincipled, uninformed, impulsive, vindictive, crude, petty and he has an ability to constantly stomp on his own nuts which we refuse to have to defend.

      • The Bush family is the perfect example of what I was talking about
        above. They bastardized the Conservative name….just like Trump is
        doing.

        The Bush family hates Trump, just like you do. You’re on their side – the liberal side.

      • We’ve had conversations in the past so I know you’re an idiot looking to yank someone’s chain. Look some where else junior !

      • National Review has openly endorsed Clinton’s election. So have the Washington Examiner, the Weekly Standard, and various other “conservative” outlets.

      • You’re a lying bag of sh*t. National Review and the others did no such thing. Why attempt to reason with someone Trump refers to as I love the “uneducated”. But you aren’t looking for a discussion you just want to yank someone’s chain. Find someone else Son and come back when you get enough brains to have a discussion with adults.

  82. If Hillary gets elected we need to be more worried about the death of the United States of America, then stupid pious debates over the nature of “Conservatism”. That is why I am proud to say I am not a conservative anymore, because what the hell is there to conserve? A nation run by radical internationalists and progressives? The better move is to be a revolutionary again, to agitate for a new rebirth of liberty and a real nation state. Not some geographical location on a map abused by internationalist oligarchs harping on about the need for a borderless world. Dark age Europe was also borderless…various Germanic barbarians and later Vikings had a great time grabbing gold and hot women.

  83. Trump will won and I’m looking forward to the vicious and merciless purge of the vermin cuckservatives.

  84. Yeah, we want him to lose! Damn straight we want him to lose. Because realized that the Republican party was going to lose the White House the day you lunatics made that asshole the nominee of our once proud party so maybe we’ve had longer to work through our 5 stages of grief than you have. Are we giddy now? Sure. I’m not proud of it. Being able to say “I told you so” feels good. Am I happy that HRC is going to be president? No, I am not. But I have accepted it. Am I going to vote for her? NO, I am not. But I honestly feel that we have a better chance of saving America after we put out the dumpster fire you people started, put this orange nightmare behind us, and reunite to oppose her. If Trump had won – well, if there’s one thing I agree with Trump about it’s that our Republican leadership is a bunch of spineless worms. A Republican Congress and a President Trump would have been a disaster. We saw this with W. I can’t even imagine what Trump would force them to do. Raise taxes? Sure, what the hell. They do that all the time. Nobody ever had any intentions of actually overturning Roe V Wade or building that stupid wall you keep ranting about, so that wouldn’t have been a surprise either. Repeal civil liberties? Anyone read the Patriot Act? What if Trump changed his mind (again) and wanted to “fix” Obamacare? Actually started a trade war with China? Deport Rosie O’Donnell? Invade Poland? Well, we have to support him! He’s OUR president! Trust me, we dodged a bullet here.

    • Am I happy that HRC is going to be president? No, I am not. But I have accepted it.

      Accepted it? You’re here on this site arguing for her election!

      A Republican Congress and a President Trump would have been a disaster. We saw this with W.

      So the people who voted for Bush, McCain and Romney are not supporting Clinton …. why, exactly? NRO was completely in the tank for Bush. They’re not anti-Trump because they’re worried about big government.

      What if Trump ..started a trade war with China?

      We’re already in a trade war with China and we’re losing, so that would b a good thing for him to do.. It would also be a conservative thing. Once upon a time conservatives had memories extending back more than a couple of years, and they’d have known that Ronald Reagan was one of our most protectionist Presidents …. ever.

      https://mises.org/library/ronald-reagan-protectionist

  85. What did the college dropout say when he was discharged from meth detox? “We nominated WHO???”

  86. I have been waiting for this my entire adult life. Hillary 2017-2025 and then democrats forever.

  87. I think this pose (during primaries, early campaign, plus recent hysterics) was always about clutching onto their meal ticket: namely, a dysfunctional concentrated imperial anarcho-tyranny state which grants the “Official Conservatives” license to carp & moan– the better to collect book royalties, radio show advertising, speaking fees, blah blah

    But Corporate Conservatism Still Sucks

  88. One correction. It’s 40+ million illegals. When Hillary enfranchises those illegals, the repubs will never win the South again or consequently the presidency. The repub elite will go the way of the Whig party, because they feel it is more profitable and convenient to collaborate with the dems rather than represent their constituencies.

    The repub establishment is bitter. Once they were the party of the bankers, lawyers, stock market speculators, lobbyists, and one percenters. obama railed against them in public but bought them off in private. Now the GOPe is stuck with the working and middle classes two demographics they despise and hold in contempt. Now the natives are restless and having repudiated the elites chose Trump to be our standard bearer. As Bret Stephens of the WSJ said, we must be taught a lesson. They elites think, once Trump is defeated, we’re going to come back with our tails between our legs, chastened and compliant. Ain’t gonna happen.

  89. “The second possible explanation is they must think a Hillary Clinton administration won’t be so bad — for them.”

    bingo. They’ve already made their peace with all social changes.

  90. There’s not much appeal in ANY type of conservatism for a talented, hard-working, ambitious woman. I got my start in life thanks to equal opportunity measures. I worked long, long hours and rose to the top in a field where women were usually belittled. Yes, affirmative action opened the doors. But my sacrifices and talent did the rest. If not for liberal progressive laws, I’d be a waitress today. Sometimes progressive laws create needed, radical cultural change for struggling groups who have talent and drive.

  91. I have just one thing to say. I worked for the Trump organization in 1991 when he went bankrupt and screwed thousands of workers. Trump just walked away from all the people he owed money to — his callous disregard of our suffering was breathtaking. This man is all about greed and ego, he doesn’t care one bit about American workers. He’s gone bankrupt over and over again… what a terrible businessman!
    You do NOT want him in charge of the U.S. economy. What kind of moron goes bankrupt six times?

  92. I’ll note Jonathan Last, full of smug anti-Trump invective throughout the election cycle, has not sent out a single political tweet in the last two weeks. He’s been reduced to promoting some worthless podcast where him and other 40-year-old men talk incessantly about comic book movies.