Of course I am voting for Donald Trump. You should be, too, if you are a conservative. Let me break this down into three arguments, the first of which is Mr. Trump’s trump card on the #NeverTrumpers.
If Hillary Clinton wins, the Left gavels in a solid, lasting, almost certainly permanent majority on the Supreme Court. Every political issue has a theoretical path to SCOTUS. Only self-imposed judicial restraint has checked the Court’s appetite and reach for two centuries.
That restraint will be gone when HRC’s first appointee is sworn in. Finished.
This is not hyperbole. I have the advantage of having taught Con Law for 20 years, of having argued before very liberal appellate judges such as Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the very liberal Ninth Circuit, of practicing with the best litigators in the land. I know what a very liberal SCOTUS means: conservatism is done. It cannot survive a strong-willed liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Every issue will end up there. The legislatures’ judgments will matter not a bit.
So vote for Hillary Clinton (or sit it out) and then prepare for the deluge of court-ordered solutions to every social problem, bench-drawn congressional districts and extraordinary deference to every agency of the federal government combined with a sweeping away of federalism.
Second, but much harder to see or understand, Hillary Clinton is thoroughly compromised by the Russians (or the Chinese, or the Iranians, or all of them). Deny the testimony of expert witnesses like former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell or Rudy Guiliani if you want, or the implications of the distribution of DNC emails via the WikiLeaks front.
Just know everything she sent and received on her security-free “private” server is in the hands of the bad guys.
The influence they will have over her and all of her cyber associates as a result will be complete even if unknown to the folks being worked and watched.
That’s espionage. The Russians are very good at it. They are a GEICO ad of spying: That’s what they do. They use what they steal to advance their national interest, sometimes crudely, sometimes with breathtaking sophistication. The consequences of her complete compromise haven’t sunk in yet, but it is real, not reversible, and dangerous beyond description to the national security of the U.S. Trump critics worry that he’s oblivious to Vladimir Putin’s risks. Hillary is already a Putin pawn.
On the Other Side
The first two arguments are negatives. But there is a positive case for Donald Trump, a third prong in the case for working for Mr. Trump’s election: He brings 3,000 political appointees with him, and the first two — Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as VP and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as chief of the transition — telegraph that the vast majority of his team in the executive branch (and his appointees on the courts) will be conservatives.
Yes, Mr. Trump is transplanting economic populism into the GOP. Parts of the conservative movement are struggling to reject the transplant (just as parts of the Democratic Party are denying that the principle of transference works when applied to their passion for/love of Bernie Sanders/President Obama and HRC.)
But Donald Trump, like it or not — like him or not— is the imperfect messenger of the perfect storm in American politics. He is the shuddering, convulsive conclusion to decades of perceived indifference to the American middle class combined with a conviction that the GOP is spineless, and if he is not to your tastes, too bad.
If the charges of elitism and weakness are unfair, too bad. He won fair and square. No one stopped him because he could not be stopped. And he picked a genuine, deeply principled conservative to partner with on the ticket.
Read or listen to the long interview I conducted with Gov. Pence on Friday morning, then put down your #NeverTrump pride and start working to save the Supreme Court and national security. Help Mr. Christie staff the new government. Explain to family and friends what Mrs. Clinton’s compromised status means. Argue for the future and make peace with the present.
I would not have picked Donald Trump as my party’s nominee. But he is that nominee. And he backed away from the cliff of indifference to race of such massive proportions — the Judge Curiel episode which had me launching whatever rhetorical broadside I could muster against him — that it would have obliged me to surrender the election and the courts.
That demonstrated to me, as did the Pence selection, that Mr. Trump is learning that there are indeed third rails in politics and governing. In this process he is being assisted by his remarkable children and a growing team of conservatives.
Radio commentator Mr. Hewitt may be heard daily, overnight, on KRLA,870-AM. His essay originally appeared at WashingtonExaminer.com.
