Why this half-century-long Reaganite can’t vote for Trump

Because so many Trump fans repeat the asinine line that Never Trump conservatives are merely verklempt about “mean Tweets,” a brief explainer is necessary. Not all Reaganite anti-Trumpers will cite the same reasons with the same emphases, but after probably thousands of conversations on this topic for the past nine years, the summary below seems representative.

To begin, three threshold considerations make it impossible to support Trump even if all other assessments come out in his favor (which they don’t). The first is that many of us have concluded Trump is an egregious bigot in multiple ways. This column is not the place to convince readers of that assessment, but only to say that if that is someone’s assessment, and if someone feels ethically compelled to never vote for an egregious bigot, well, that means Trump is out.

The second and third threshold disqualifiers are two versions of the same imperative. Some of us believe the Senate should have responded to both Trump impeachments by finding him guilty, removing him from office, and disqualifying him for life from any federal office.

If Barack Obama had withheld legally obligated arms shipments to a foreign government while pressuring that government to gin up a criminal case against, say, a member of the Bush family, even after Obama’s own Justice Department said there were no grounds for a case — or if President Joe Biden had done the same to, say, Ivanka Trump — almost every conservative in the nation would have been demanding a Senate conviction. Likewise, if any Democrat had tried to overturn a valid election and inspired a mob to invade the Capitol to block the election’s certification: There’s no way that most conservatives in the land wouldn’t want permanent disqualification.

Either way, there is a basic and almost irrefutable logic and ethics here: If someone believes a public official should have been found guilty of impeachable offenses requiring a lifetime ban from office, then of course one shouldn’t support the official for office. And if that logic holds once, it certainly holds doubly for two separate occasions of a disqualifying offense. “Disqualifying” means, yes, “disqualifying.”

The next consideration is nearly as much of a bright-line decider as the first three. If one believes, as many voters do, that the fate of Ukraine is of massive importance for geopolitical peace and stability, then the Trump-Vance ticket is abhorrent. Donald Trump is at best skeptical of Ukraine’s cause, while vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) is overwhelmingly hostile to it. Indeed, among strong supporters of Ukraine, Vance has become almost irretrievably repugnant.

Beyond these four overwhelming reasons to oppose Donald Trump, some of us also think badly of most of his policies, both past and future, and of his competence — not to mention, of course, his entirely discreditable personal comfort which includes, but is hardly defined by, “mean tweets.”

As this is an online publication, and to avoid redundancy and extreme long-windedness, I’ll take advantage of web linkability to provide a plethora of (my own, earlier) explanations for those assessments of policy and competence.

As in: His future economic stewardship could be calamitouswith an especially reckless attitude about the national debt and against entitlement reform. And his promises, or threats, regarding civil liberties in his second term are well-nigh frightening.

Meanwhile, although there is disagreement about this among Reaganite conservatives, some of us think his first term was atrocious on almost every level. Even on his signature issues of border enforcement overall, trade deficits, the border wall, and manufacturing output, Donald Trump was a failure as president. He also oversaw greater spending and debt than any non-wartime president in US history. And on foreign policy, he fumbled embarrassingly, to this nation’s great detriment, in Syria and Venezuelawhile setting up his successor for a fiasco (which Biden exacerbated) in Afghanistan by committing to a definite, full withdrawal while freeing 5,000 vicious Taliban members from prison for nothing remotely substantial in return.

Combine that with his weak support for NATO, his sucking up to dictators, and his excruciatingly pathetic declaration that he “fell in love” with murderous North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — to no good effect, as North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were not slowed down at all — and Donald Trump’s success reveals itself as a debacle.

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Finally, some of us think Donald Trump’s degradation of political moresabout which, entire volumes will be written for decades, will have lasting negative effects on the American public square.

All of which, together, makes Donald Trump insufferable and unsupportable. Now, and forever.