Last week, one of the biggest political earthquakes in a long time took place in Washington, DC: Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement after three decades on the bench.

This vacancy is the most consequential vacancy since at least 2005 when President Bush was able to appoint John Roberts to the post of Chief Justice, following William Rehnquist’s death, and appointed Samuel Alito to replace the Court’s swing vote, Sandra Day O’Connor. Alito’s appointment made Kennedy the new swing vote and shifted the balance of power on the Court further to the right.

Now, Kennedy’s retirement makes it almost certain that the Court’s conservative wing will have an absolute majority for the foreseeable future. Chief Justice Roberts will be the new swing vote, and despite a few defections (most notably, in Sebelius v. NIB), Roberts is a much more reliable conservative vote than Kennedy ever was.

The response to this news has been predictably apocalyptic from the left. Afraid that the new justice will overturn Roe v. Wade, and perhaps even Obergefell v. Hodges, the left has, thus far, utilized three main arguments to try to keep Trump from filling the seat.

Argument 1: “We will invoke the McConnell Precedent and assert that the American people should vote on the seat since it is an election year.”

This is, by far, the most common and the strongest argument in the Democratic arsenal.  It was, but two years ago, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he would leave Antonin Scalia’s seat unfilled until after the presidential election. As I argued then, McConnell’s argument was an easily-debunked, face-saving excuse that had no basis in precedent or Constitutional reasoning, but sounded better than “we don’t want Obama to replace Scalia with a moderate” (even though that was the real reason).

As such, I can understand the temptation Democrats have to throw this back in the face of Mitch McConnell (and to a lesser extent, Donald Trump) by legitimizing it and using it to keep the seat open. However, I think this is a foolish and short-sighted strategy for several reasons. First, the McConnell Rule probably referred to presidential elections, not midterms. It is absurd to think that presidents should only be able to make appointments in odd-numbered years.

Second, granting bipartisan legitimacy to the McConnell Rule ensures that it will be used again. The Democrats should make a statement by not legitimizing McConnell’s strategy. Again, McConnell completely invented this doctrine that presidents lose their ability to make Supreme Court appointments when they are lame-ducks. It is not constitutional, and the Democrats should not give in to that temptation. Relatedly, this only serves to make confirmation battles even more contentious, and we need to find a way to stop that.

Third, however wrong McConnell’s proclaimed reasons were for keeping the seat open, it is true that the Senate is an equal partner in the process of filling vacancies, and they were under no obligation to confirm Merrick Garland (hence, the “stolen seat” narrative is false).  This time, however, Republicans control the White House and Senate, so they have no one to stop them this time.

Finally, keeping this seat open for the midterm elections is the most surefire way to ensure that the Republicans not only continue to control the Senate, but possibly expand their majority. In 2016, Antonin Scalia’s open seat was probably the biggest reason why mainstream Republicans held their noses and voted for Trump (aside from maybe outright hatred for Hillary Clinton). In 2018, the Democrats have all the momentum and history on their side, as long as they do not do something stupid. Energizing the Republican base by obstructing a nominee (if they somehow gain the power to do so) and/or trying to make the election about an open Court seat is about the most stupid thing they could possibly do. It might play well for the Democratic base in California, but the Democrats are on defense in North Dakota, Florida, Montana, West Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, and to a lesser extent, a few other Trump-won states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan).  These seats are critical for the Democrats if they want a shot at taking back the Senate next year. They will lose one or more of these seats if they inadvertently give Republicans a reason to show up and vote in November. And if the Republicans pick up a few seats this year, it could be a while before the Democrats win back the Senate, again. Therefore, for both constitutional and strictly political reasons, I would advise Democrats to not use this line of reasoning.

Argument 2: “Trump is under investigation, and thus should not be allowed to name a replacement.”

This argument really grasps at straws that may not even be there. First, being under investigation (as Trump may or may not personally be) does not deprive a president of his rights or his constitutionally-granted powers. This argument might have more weight if Trump had actually been charged with something and was in the process of being impeached. But since that is not the case, it is a really bad idea that argue that merely being investigated somehow strips the president of enumerated powers.

Second, some have argued that it would be inappropriate for a president to put on the Court a justice who might have to judge him in the future. A mere glance at the Constitution, however, immediately debunks this- only the Chief Justice presides over impeachment proceedings, and so this appointment will have no effect on any trial that might happen for Trump. As for cases involving the president or those closest to him outside of impeachment, I would imagine that any justice put on the bench by Trump would recuse himself if the situation warranted it, out of deference to their personal honor (the nominees Trump is considering are not the least bit like the snakes in his cabinet and staff). 

Argument 3: “Kennedy’s son gave Trump a loan once, so the circumstances of Kennedy’s retirement ought to be investigated!”

Again, this is really grasping at straws. Like every Supreme Court Justice, Kennedy has postponed retirement until he could have a member of his preferred party name his replacement. It has been common knowledge for years that Kennedy wanted a Republican to name his replacement, and he has one in Donald Trump. Sure, the personal connection between his son and Trump may have increased Kennedy’s trust in Trump, but there is no grand conspiracy, here; just a Supreme Court Justice doing what every other justice in recent memory has done- wait until he believes that a like-minded justice can succeed him, based on presidential and Congressional politics. That is what Sandra Day O’Connor, John Paul Stevens, and David Souter all did. It is what Antonin Scalia tried to do, and what Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are doing, right now.

Those are the three main arguments about why Trump and McConnell should not fill the seat, at this time. The most absurd response to it, however, has come from certain law professors, who argue that the Democrats should “pack the Court” with six new justices the next time they control the Senate and White House. This is, without a doubt, the worst idea I have ever heard for reforming the Court.

Why is it a bad idea? The answer is that the “Norm of Nine” is the only norm left in these confirmation battles, and it is the nucleus holding everything together. First of all, Court battles are mercifully rare- with nine seats that carry lifetime appointments, most presidents only get to name one or two justices to the Court, who then stay put for 25, 30, 35 years or so. So when these vacancies do happen, they are among the most vicious battles in our legislature. Everything a nominee has ever said, written, or done is scrutinized, taken out of context, and used to blast them. Now imagine having these battles take place constantly, due to Court packing. Politics is vicious enough without pouring an ocean of gasoline on the fires.

Second, this would tie the judiciary completely to partisan politics and elevate its importance beyond anything the Founders remotely envisioned. As Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78, "in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them... [the judiciary has] no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment." In other words, the Court was always supposed to be the weakest among equal branches.

​As for appointments, the Founders made the Court (and the lower federal courts) independent of partisan whims and popular rule by having the executive nominate people to fill vacancies and having the Senate exercise advice and consent via the confirmation process. Neither the President, nor the members of the Senate at the time, were elected by popular decision.  The President, of course, is elected via the Electoral College (which can elect whoever it wants, regardless of popular vote) and the Senate was elected through the state legislatures. Therefore, federal judges would be insulated from the passions of the masses. This Court-packing precedent, however, would make federal elections entirely about justices. Each side would be competing for the right to appoint as many ideologues as possible and it would dominate all electoral considerations. Supreme Court justices were never supposed to affect elections like that. When the Court first came into being, turnover was high, being a Court justice was not seen as a position of prestige, and they did not even have a building specifically devoted to the Court for the first century and a half of its existence. If Court packing happens, the judiciary will completely usurp the other two branches as the center of our constitutional republic.

Third, once one side packs the Court, it will spark a chain reaction that will never, ever stop. If the Democrats put six new justices on the Court, the Republicans will respond with 6 or more of their own the next time they gain power. And then the Democrats will pack it even more, and so on. Eventually, the Court would become completely unrecognizable. The Court functions as a small, close-knit, deliberative body of the greatest constitutional minds this country has to offer. If a court-packing war happens, it will operate more like Congress than like the Court. Conference deliberations, coalition building, and opinion writing will all change drastically (just imagine how long opinions will run if there are 500 concurrences and 400 dissents on every issue).  These are, but a few, of the consequences that will inevitably happen if the Democrats decide to experiment with opening Pandora’s Box (again).

And who knows what else the violation of the Norm of Nine might encourage? My guess is that rampant impeachment of justices would be just around the corner. And why not? If the Senate can operate with bare majorities doing whatever they want to the Supreme Court, what would stop them from beginning to impeach justices they do not like, for no particular reason? Court packing would strip most vestiges of judicial independence away from the Court; arbitrary impeachments would destroy the rest.  

I do not exaggerate when I compare this court-packing plan to opening Pandora’s Box. The Norm of Nine is the final safeguard against a perpetual judicial war that neither side will ever be willing to end. Every branch of the government will be forever altered if the Democrats decide to try and pack the Court. The presidency will be reduced to nothing more than appointing judges (admittedly, this is already something of a problem, as President Trump’s victory is due in no small part to Antonin Scalia’s open seat).  The Senate will spend all of its time on nasty confirmation battles that never end, as each side tries to gain the upper hand on the Court. And the Court, itself, will both be elevated to a status it should never have gained, and yet also be twisted into something completely unrecognizable. 

The latest article to cause a buzz in conservative circles on Twitter is claiming that the end has finally come for Never Trump conservatives. It is a long article that deserves to be looked at, so I will go through it paragraph by paragraph to give my response to this notion (Emerald Robinson's words are italicized). 

With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named reliable replacement for the unreliable Anthony Kennedy, Donald Trump will have confirmed himself as the most consequential conservative president of the modern era (or a close second to Reagan if you’re nostalgic). This will be complete vindication for Trump supporters, which means it’s really the end for the so-called Never Trump conservatives. Of course, there have been so many humiliating defeats for that crowd that we are spoiled for choice. What was your favorite blunder, or blown prediction, which marked their ignominious end?

Okay, so the introductory paragraph sets out the thesis- which is that the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy (in addition to the recent confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch) is ironclad proof that Never Trumpers (NT) were wrong to distrust Trump. Moreover, it is just one of “so many humiliating defeats” for NT that have led to an “ignominious end.” And finally, this somehow means that Trump will be the “most consequential conservative president of the modern era” (or second-most behind Reagan). I will admit that Trump kept his word on Court picks, but other than tax reform, the Trumpian victories have been rather few and far between. The two Court appointments, plus tax reform, would have been achieved by any of the other 16 Republicans who ran for President in 2016. What most of them would not have brought to the table is the series of scandals, blunders, and national humiliations that President Trump has brought upon the country with his ethically-challenged and amateur-filled Cabinet, ad hoc foreign policies, counterproductive trade wars, and disgraceful behavior as President. Conservatives could have had those victories (and plenty more) behind President Rubio or Kasich or Cruz or even Bobby Jindal. Just because Trump figured out that Court appointments would buy the undying loyalty of the vast majority of Republicans does not make him the “most consequential conservative president ever.” George W. Bush’s Court appointments, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, arguably moved the Court just as much to the right as Trump will have, and ensured that the Chief Justice would be a conservative for decades to come.

For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. With the death last week of Charles Krauthammer, the revered neocon commentator and prominent Trump skeptic, the eclipse of the neocon intellectuals is complete.

I do not know what the purpose of this paragraph is, other than to celebrate the death of the greatest conservative columnist since William F. Buckler, Jr. RIP Charles Krauthammer.

One thing’s for sure: it wasn’t really a war so much as a rout. The Never Trump intellectual crowd has no momentum and no popular following these days. Consider the trajectory of their would-be leader Kristol, who appears to be indulging in a personal fantasy by putting himself forward as a candidate, as his rapport with GOP voters includes trying to run Evan McMullin in Utah to throw the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton. When that stunt failed, Kristol personally insulted the pro-Trump writer Michael Anton for his influential essay “The Flight 93 election.” Then Kristol’s commentator gig with Fox was not renewed, and he was soon accusing Tucker Carlson of “ethno-nationalism” and “racism.” Overshadowing all of these breaks was Kristol’s personal history of being the conservative’s answer to Bob Shrum, a political “pro” who was always very wrong about politics.

Okay, so you beat Bill Kristol. Whoopty-do. Also, Michael Anton deserved to be chastised for that awful article that was an insult to the memory of the brave passengers of Flight 93. 

Of course, Kristol was not alone in his contempt for Trump — he was only the most vocal and unhinged. Alongside him were other conservatives like Jennifer Rubin and George Will and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post; Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal; David Brooks and Ross Douthat at the New York Times; Jonah Goldberg and David French at National Review; Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg; and Erick Erickson at RedState. A number of others, people like David Frum and Ana Navarro, committed political seppuku early and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, the careers of most of these people have been curtailed dramatically.

Personally, I admire many of these people (except for Rubin) for putting principle above career aspirations. Other than Rubin, who has taken to switching all of her political positions so that they are the opposite of Trump, these figures have not changed their beliefs or kissed Trump’s rings in order to get back in good standing with the Conservative Media Establishment. They chose the harder path of staying true to their convictions, rather than the easy path of Anti-Anti-Trumpism or even being outright Trump sycophants.

What happened? If these intellectuals were so influential in the conservative movement, then why has their apostasy garnered so little attention? A Ramesh Ponnuru editorial in Bloomberg blurted out this truth: “In 2016 we found out that conservative elites didn’t speak for Republican voters.” This split between the party’s base and its donor class (as well as the donor-funded intellectuals) was years in the making, but it became obvious once Trump became the nominee. Then the truth became obvious and damning: the Never Trumpers represented no one but themselves.

Fair enough. It turned out that intellectual consistency and rigor matter little to the base. Instead of making the intellectual case for what was considered to be “conservatism” pre-2015, they would have been better served by appeasing the base instincts of the Republican base.

Looking back, it now seems self-evident that conservative pundits were preposterously out of touch. (Who isn’t amused by the poindexter pretentiousness of George Will’s bow-ties or the pseudo-scholarly piffle of Jonah Goldberg’s byline as “the inaugural holder of the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty?”). These intellectuals barely noticed the opioid crisis running through small town America; or the base’s anger regarding illegal immigration; and they were adamantly opposed to any restriction of free trade while working class frustrations mounted over NAFTA and its ilk. (This explains why J. D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy was Washington’s must-read book of 2017: it provided a portrait of rural America that the political class could digest without condescending to visit such places or talk to such voters.) It turns out that conservative intellectuals, living inside the “Acela Corridor” and funded exclusively by think tanks and foundations, are poor barometers of Republican voter concerns.

Same deal as the last paragraph. The Republican Party turned out to be far more anti-intellectual than was previously assumed. If you get angry over George Will’s bowties, then there is nothing that we could have done to win you over. And as regards free trade, it looks like the base will have to learn the hard way that tariffs and protectionism are bad for the economy, including the industries occupied by the so-called “Forgotten Men.”

This myopia has several causes. The first is a kind of cultural “capture” that occurs when conservatives live in blue districts and big cities too long. They become, in other words, clueless (RINOS). The second reason is more obvious: many of these people are paid to be openly hostile to Trump’s agenda. The free trade absolutists at AEI and Cato are on salary to oppose any protectionist trade policies. Likewise, hawkish interventionists such as Max Boot knew they had no professional future once Trump’s isolationist instincts became policy.

Now this author is just assuming that we all wine and dine at DC cocktail parties, which is simply not true. I live in Orange, VA, which is anything, but a blue district, and I grew up in fire-engine red Lancaster County, PA. As for the scholars at AEI and Cato, who are “free trade absolutists,” maybe they oppose Trump’s policies because their studies of economics have convinced them that free trade lowers prices, opens up foreign markets, and raises living standards for everyone. In other words, they oppose Trump’s trade wars because they know that the trade wars are terrible policies.

There is also a low-testosterone, dilettantish strain of conservatism that has overdeveloped in the “mainstream” media to create such sterile hybrids as Michael Gerson and George Will and David Brooks. Nothing sunk these so-called wise men lower in the estimation of their fellow conservatives than their blithe indifference to the Clintons’ gangsterism. While Trump threw wild verbal haymakers at Hillary at campaign rallies, these intellectuals were basically on TV announcing they would be accommodationists for the Clinton Machine’s inevitable victory. Trump’s base was fighting a war; these guys were sipping tea. The contrast in styles of conservatism was stark: it was the pugnacious billionaire against the stuffy wimps.

If it is wimpy to demand high standards of conduct from our side’s leaders, then I am guilty as charged. Our system is a republic, which demands virtue from our leaders for it to work. Sure, Clinton was a terrible candidate who would have been a terrible president. But, she would have been terrible within the normal boundaries of politics. She would not be throwing daily temper tantrums on Twitter. She would not have surrounded herself with amateurs in her Cabinet and on her staff. She would not promote Kim Jong-un, while ranting against Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau, and Angela Merkel. Trump’s behavior is everything the Founders tried to prevent with Madisonian checks and balances- an unhinged demagogue who does not understand why his power needs to be restrained. As an aside, note how the author uses "low-testosterone" as an adjective to describe opponents. That is pretty much one step removed from calling people "cucks" and fully embracing the lexicon of the Alt-Right. Disgusting. 

The greatest disconnect is religious and cultural: the Republican Party is overwhelmingly Caucasian and Christian and traditional on social issues, while its pundits skew Jewish and agnostic and libertarian. Krauthammer wanted to have it both ways, which is not unlike the hedging that Brooks and Goldberg have displayed. George Will went so far as to say: “I’m an atheist. An agnostic is someone who is not sure. I’m pretty sure. I see no evidence of God.” Meanwhile, Gerson is a liberal Episcopalian who took to the pages of the Atlantic to attack evangelicals for supporting Trump. In sum, the conservative intellectuals didn’t understand the base’s concerns about religious liberty because they hardly cared for religion — which should have disqualified them long ago.

This paragraph, right here, ought to insult any reader. Robinson is basically accusing NT of being a conspiracy of Jews and atheists against evangelicals. As an evangelical Christian, I am utterly ashamed of how prominent fellow evangelicals grovel at Trump’s feet. Like the Court appointments, Trump does not care about religious liberty. He merely sees it as an opportunity to win over a devout band of followers at little cost to himself. Trump, himself, surely knows that we could say “Merry Christmas” when Obama was President. But, he also knows that my fellow evangelicals crave to be “oppressed.” So he tells them what they want to hear and wins their devotion. By throwing a few meaningless culture war bones at the base, he easily acquires a devout following. Were he still a Democrat, however, figures like Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Tony Perkins, and Todd Starnes would excoriate him, every day, for his rampant infidelity, lying, idolatry of money, shady business dealings, and everything else. Any honest observer should be able to understand why this evangelical hypocrisy would confuse these “Jewish, agnostic, and libertarian” intellectuals.

The curious uniformity of the Never Trump crowd extends beyond them being heretics who claim to be spokesmen for the Christian base. On every important issue of the election, it was hard to find one of them who could even articulate Trump’s position, let alone support it. Tucker Carlson was one of the few to see this stupidity early and he registered his dissent well in a break-out essay:

Trump’s positions are hard to articulate because he often reverses them and makes stuff up on the spot.

Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.

Trump is not a conservative, and he is bad for conservatism. It will take years for conservatism and the Republican Party to bounce back once Trumpism finally collapses. This pseudo-populist nationalist monstrosity that has engulfed the Grand Old Party may have won in the short-term, but in the long-term, it will seriously derail any chance the GOP has of winning national elections. Trump built a coalition of old, angry white men and drove away young and diverse conservatives. This is not sustainable. As Trump’s coalition dies off, the Democrat coalition will only get more numerous and will associate the GOP not with Reagan, but with the insanity of the Trump years. Good luck winning over Hispanics while tearing apart families for no good reason. Anyway, so much of this paragraph is full of strawmen that are simply not worth my time to burn.

The sad truth was that the Never Trumpers were not safeguarding the ideas of conservatism so much as themselves. Carlson nailed the heart of the matter: “If Trump is leading a populist movement, many of his Republican critics have joined an elitist one. Deriding Trump is an act of class solidarity, visible evidence of refinement and proof that you live nowhere near a Wal-Mart.” That is why the continuing success of the Trump Presidency has been met with escalating anger and vituperation from the Never Trumpers — the news cycle is a daily reminder that they were wrong about everything. Can you be wrong about everything and still be part of the elite?

First of all, there are five Wal-Mart’s within a 25-mile radius of where I live. Second of all, what concrete successes have there been in this presidency? Tax reform and two Court appointments? That is a rather thin list of accomplishments a year and a half into this presidency, especially when juxtaposed with all of the administration’s failures and scandals. Once the economy tanks from Trump’s useless and counterproductive trade wars, there will be nowhere to hide. It will be indisputable that he wrecked the great economy he inherited.

That is a question being asked in front of many mirrors inside many Washington mansions today. Many people mistook their policy positions for principles, and Trump has made them look foolish. What do they stand for now? What does it mean to be conservative if you’re not clear about what you’re conserving? Credit David Brooks, of all people, with waving the white flag first this April, and with some humility when he admitted that “Part of the problem is that anti-Trumpism has a tendency to be insufferably condescending.” Brooks then basically summarized the great failure of the Never Trumpers as “an epic attempt to offend 40 percent of our fellow citizens by reducing them to psychological inferiors.”

I have no regrets for standing up for free trade, statesmanship, fiscal responsibility, and basic human decency. But I can see how standing up for principles might appear to be “insufferably condescending” in a party that only cares about triggering liberals. And how it might be offensive to tell people that they are being conned by a painfully-transparent con artist.

Meanwhile his former comrade, George Will, was not for surrender or appeasement. He had finally found an enemy to relish: his fellow conservatives. One measure of Will’s self-exile was the indifference his most recent column elicited, though it urged Republicans to vote against the GOP at the midterms “for their own good.” Was anyone still listening? It was Will who sagely warned the world mere days before the election: “Until the Republican Party gets right with minorities in this country, it’s never going to win another presidential election.” Not content with that spectacular blunder, Will had doubled down with attacks on Billy Graham and Vice President Mike Pence. The symbolism of such stunts, at least, was clear. As a model conservative, Will stands alone in his own estimation. And what could be more conservative than voting for liberal Democrats?

Maybe they should have interpreted Will’s article as a wake-up call for just how far-gone this party and movement have become? Throughout his career, Will’s only equal as a conservative columnist has been Charles Krauthammer. Perhaps the fact that Will is willing to vote for Democrats to defeat Trump should be viewed as a damning indictment of what Trump has done to this party- drive away actual conservatives and import those who have no understanding of conservatism, but are merely resentful of “elites” and people of color. Will understands that giving the Democrats power will hurt conservative policy goals, but that it is worth it if it awakens the Republican Party from this Trump-inspired stupor; if it returns our politics to a state of normalcy, rather than demagoguery. He is looking at the big picture, where Trump’s antics and demagoguery threaten the fundamentals of our constitutional republic and are enabled by a feckless Republican Party that is unwilling to hold him accountable for anything.

In that sense, Will’s latest column was merely the fitting coda to a long career of effete snobbery — one that had led him to “leave the party” before it won the White House and march off into the wilderness. (Someday, his columns from the Trump years will be collected and they should be titled: “An Apotheosis of Narcissism.”) He would take his tea and his bow-tie elsewhere. The headmaster of the stuffy wimps would not take part in the victory of the counter-punchers. At last, like so many of his fellow Never Trumpers, he was a pundit without a party and, ultimately, without an audience.

I get it. You guys won the day. But like Will, I truly believe that Trump’s victory will one day be viewed as the most Pyrrhic victory in conservative and Republican history. In the face of demographic shifts that show that whites will someday soon cease to be an outright majority in this country, the Republican decision to double-down on an all-white party will be viewed as absolutely foolish. And when the economy goes bust because of Trump’s economic illiteracy, the Republicans will pay. And then we will finally be writing about the Collapse of Trumpism as the GOP is in ruins. So, enjoy this scandal-ridden period of power, because in the long-run, NT will be completely vindicated. 

Today, Jesse Kelly of the Federalist offered his complete thoughts on an idea he has been pushing for months now: that the time has come for the United States to divorce. In his eyes, the cultural and political differences between conservative America and liberal America are too vast to overcome, and the American people would be better served by a dissolution of political bonds between disparate regions. In Kelly’s eyes, Americans seem to hate each other more than ever, and share no common ground in ways that he believes they once did. Therefore, his solution is to divide America into two new countries: one comprising most of the former Confederate states, and the other comprising the rest of the country.

If Kelly’s premises are true, then his conclusion of divorce is the logical end. The fact of the matter, however, is that the vast majority of Americans do not behave like panelists on a CNN show or Hannity.  As Converse found in his seminal paper in 1964, most Americans do not think in ideological terms, and most are barely able to imitate what they believe an ideology should look and sound like. Most Americans, if they are interested in politics at all, merely adopt the beliefs of their parents and vote every four years for president. Then they go back to their everyday lives, which are often too busy to spend getting angry about politics. The Americans who do get bent out of shape over politics are usually professionals who eat, drink, sleep, and breathe politics and usually have to invest everything into their political team. Their personal fortunes are tied to the fortunes of their party. But the vast majority of Americans can live their lives with politics being a marginal force (or less). Most Americans will not instantly hate someone who crosses their path who comes from another part of the country, as Kelly seems to imply that they actually do. Ideology, in other words, is just simply not a dominant force in the lives of most Americans, and certainly not a strong enough force to merit divorce.

In Kelly’s world, everyone living in the state of New York wants unlimited abortion, complete gun confiscation, welfare for everyone, communist tax rates and government regulations over every conceivable aspect of business. On the other hand, someone living in South Carolina wants to ban abortion, legalize machine guns, limit welfare to only white people, impose Randian tax rates, and abolish all, but only the most critical business regulations. In reality, most people in New York and South Carolina do not hold very many political positions as sacrosanct, and very few people follow their supposed “ideology” to the letter. For instance, farmers in Wyoming County, New York are very culturally conservative and have little in common, politically, with Manhattan liberals.  Similarly, African-Americans in Charleston vote differently than their ditto-head neighbors living in Greenville.  In short, Kelly’s geographical explanations for polarization fall flat. States as monolithic as California and Texas still have sizable political minorities within the state (Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas). No political division along ideological lines could perfectly separate the country, and this would leave those political minorities even more powerless in the new one-state country.

Having accepted that his premises are wrong, we can turn our attention to why the nation will be better off staying as one union of states. First, America’s large and diverse population protects the citizens from the excesses of both ideological wings. Madisonianism may have failed to foresee the rise of strong national parties, but the logic of a large republic is still valid. The roughly equal power of both political parties ensures that very little is accomplished in a hasty or irrational manner.  Despite nominally having unified control of the government, for example, Trump and the Republican Congress have very few legislative accomplishments to boast of, because there is rarely unanimity within the GOP Caucus, let alone in Congress. Figures like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have often spoken up to slow down or kill rash GOP legislation. In smaller, more homogenous republics, ideological supermajorities can ram legislation through without taking the time to consider the negative consequences of their actions. California and Kansas, for instance, are both under hard times with regard to their state budgets, because of the unchecked power of the ideologues running their states.  California spends money recklessly and Kansas severely reduced government revenue and forced austere budget cuts to education and other government operations. A large republic reduces the chances that we will be ruled by such reckless supermajorities.

Second, as Abraham Lincoln wisely pointed out a century and a half ago, the logic of secession mandates that secession never stop. Having split in a country in half, what is to prevent future secessions from taking place and so on? The people inhabiting the lands that constitute the United States will be better off if there is one central government that can protect them from foreign invaders than a confederacy of many sovereign states reluctant to cooperate with each other for mutual defense. That was one of the worst weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and it would be a huge problem for a future Confederacy of Former American States. And even domestically, the people would be at greater risk, as every government would be subject to the temporary whims of the people. If the people are not satisfied with their government, they can just secede and form another government, meaning that no governments are permanent and no one truly has authority. Kelly points to the map of Europe as an example of how boundaries change and countries rise and fall, but neglects to point out that many of those countries have separatist movements within their borders: the ETA in Basque Spain, the Catalans in Catalonia, the SNP in Scotland, the IRA in Ireland, and so on. If secession is allowed, it becomes a norm that undermines the permanence and stability of any state, until we return to the Hobbesian state of nature.

Third, the division of the country (even into just two states) would be a pragmatic and logistical nightmare. Things like trade, commerce, military bases, nuclear weapons, boundaries, water rights, and a whole slew of other issues would have to be negotiated.  If the country is so irreparably split, as Kelly claims it is, just imagine how difficult it would be to negotiate the division of our nuclear stockpile and defense technology. And if the South becomes a new nation, who would man the military of the other sovereign state? Also, how would states like Mississippi and Alabama fare under the new regime, where they no longer have states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to send them federal tax dollars? Kelly’s national division leaves most of the states that pay more than they receive in federal benefits in the liberal utopia, while the conservative utopia holds many of the states that get more than they give. The two new states would look vastly different: the Federalist States of America would have microscopic tax rates, an overfunded military, overfunded law enforcement, and underfunded public services (education, health care, etc.). Meanwhile, the “People’s Republic of Soyland” would have an understaffed military, high tax rates, and excessively high spending rates on everything, but defense and law enforcement.  In other words, the regional differences that are already evident between the states making up the two countries would blow up even more. Neither side would be fiscally responsible, with both sides racking up huge debts (for vastly different reasons). This would be a disaster for both sides, rather than merely a tough divorce.

Our country is deeply polarized, there is no denying that. The deep cultural divides are starting to become as evident as the ideological and political divides that political scientists have studied for decades. Personally, I think the major cultural divide is rural vs. urban, rather than region against region, as the tensions between country folk and city dwellers can be found all across the country; in the reddest of states, the bluest of states, and the most purple states. Certainly, there are some cultural differences between southerners and northerners, and between coastal states and heartland states, but farmers in Georgia and Western New York are more likely to see eye-to-eye than a Georgia farmer and a city-slicker from Atlanta.  Kelly’s “solution,” therefore, would not actually solve the polarization crisis; it would just recast it on smaller scales and introduce a whole hoard of other problems.

What, then, is the solution? To me, the best solution is the default American solution of the last few centuries: more federalism. This means reducing the extent to which we nationalize/federalize every political issue. Let California be as liberal as they want to be: if their utopia is as great as they say, people will move to it. Similarly, let Texas be as conservative as they want to be for the same reasons. Not every issue requires federal intervention, nor should Washington try to impose a homogeneous culture on the country. I say we should celebrate the fact that we have 50+ laboratories of democracy in the country. We can draw from the springs of wisdom that we see in various state policy experiments to make the country better. We do not need to resent and fear the differences Kelly spoke of; with federalism, we can all benefit from the wisdom of diverse views. We are a diverse people, and this is a major source of America’s strength. Kelly’s vision of small, homogeneous republics echoes the policies of the Articles of Confederation and the views of the Anti-Federalists.  These views are not without their merits, but they come with a host of problems that the Constitution corrected.
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One other thing: Kelly made it sound like Americans from different walks of life have absolutely nothing in common; no common ground. And this just simply is not true. With the exception of a few truly radical individuals, the vast majority of Americans love their country and want to make it a better place. We may disagree on what exactly a “better country” looks like, but I believe freedom, prosperity, and general well-being would fit into most people’s descriptions. We probably will disagree on the means to the general end of making America a better place to live, but in all likelihood, both sides of a debate argue their points in good faith and out of earnest belief that the adoption of their policies will make life better for the average American. The only way to make people see this is to get them to leave their ideological echo chamber for a little while and interact and engage with those of a different viewpoint in a friendly, respectful manner.  Trust that the other person’s intentions are pure and be willing to expose your own beliefs to honest intellectual challenges. If more Americans did that, then perhaps Kelly might reconsider his assertion that there is no common ground with people on the other side. And maybe it would be enough to dispel him of the notion that America needs to be divided. United we stand, divided we fall.  

Dennis Prager of National Review recently released a post arguing that President Trump is the conservative hero Republicans looked for during the Obama years.  To Prager, Donald Trump has saved America from certain destruction and his conservative initiatives are worth the cost of imperfection.  In his view, Never Trump holdouts are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. In actuality, he is wrong on all counts. 

The first charge he makes is that "They do not believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake. While they strongly differ with the Left, they do not regard the left–right battle as an existential battle for preserving our nation. On the other hand, I, and other conservative Trump supporters, do." Prager is not wrong that Never Trump conservatives differ from Trumpists in this regard.  However, this assertion that there is an existential battle for the fate of the nation is hyperbolic silliness. 

Yes, there are big policy differences between the Republican vision for the country and what Hillary Clinton ran on last year. That said, minute policy differences- especially domestic policy differences- pale in comparison to the larger existential questions that Trump raises, rather than Clinton. Clinton, as I have argued before, represented more or less a continuation of the politics of normalcy. She may have been shady at the core, but her scandals fell within the realm of normal politics. 

Trump, on the other hand, is the one who is destroying American political institutions and displays contempt for the underlying American political philosophy. It is Trump who wants to kill the filibuster in the Senate for everything, as he sees it as an example of institutional checks and balances that are "archaic" (meaning they stifle his ability to act).  It is Trump who routinely expresses admiration for Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong-un, and numerous other autocrats, while criticizing Angela Merkel, NATO, and other liberal allies. Trump, ever the CEO at heart, does not have the patience for, or understanding of, the American system of government. He does not understand why he cannot get everything he wants all of the time, nor does he understand the underlying purpose for such "archaic" measures as checks and balances. It is this commitment to limiting government and restraining the Leviathan that is the genius of the American system of government.  And it is this genius that Trump does not and cannot comprehend. 

If there is an existential battle for America's soul, then it is supporters of Trump who are on the wrong side.  Clinton, for all of her faults and liberalism, would not have undermined American political institutions or attempted to turn the presidency into something it is not: an elected monarchy. Clinton may have introduced a few things that conservatives do not like, but small policy differences matter far less than differences over the basic questions about our system of government. 

Prager's second point is that Trump has truly become the conservative president that the base has desired since 2009. 
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First of all, this list is an exceedingly optimistic and overly selective.  Regarding the Supreme Court, Justice Gorsuch's appointment is a Republican victory that belongs to Mitch McConnell.  It was McConnell who, for better or worse, kept that seat open for over a year in the face of a ceaseless barrage of fire.  Trump merely had the political sense to keep a key promise that won him the support of many reluctant Republicans. All that said, the Gorsuch appointment is the only victory the Republicans have had in this administration. 

Most everything else here is either overhyped or simple nonsense.  Obamacare is not going to be replaced, at least with the current version of the ACHA.  The CBO score will scare off at least 3 senators and even rank-and-file foot soldiers, like Tom Cotton, have expressed skepticism over it. The same is probably true of tax reform- depsite Paul Ryan's interest in advancing tax reform, it is being buried by everything else that is going on. The Republican government seems to be flawed beyond even what Conditional Party Government would predict. 

Anyone who thinks Clinton would not have bombed Syria is simply delusional; on foreign policy, she is as much of a neoconservative as anyone.  Nikki Haley's appointment as UN Ambassador was a great choice, but her loyalty is not to Trump.  As UN Ambassador, she is challenging Putin and asserting American leadership at a time when Trump is doing neither. Maybe she is challenging the "moral hypocrisy of the UN", but she is also challenging Russia while the administration she serves is taking steps on foreign policy that can only be described as pro-Kremlin. Trump is the one who has rhetorically blasted NATO allies for "failure to pay up" and has described the alliance using his buzzword of "archaic," as usual. And President Trump's inexperience has culminated in Chancellor Merkel solemnly concluding that America can no longer be trusted, as an ally. 

All in all, conservatives should be satisfied with the appointment of Gorsuch, and that is really about it. Trump has, thus far, been disastrous for our foreign policy and proven to be completely inept at governing, even with unified government.  The cabinet that Prager praises as "the most conservative ever" is also the most incompetent ever.  Tillerson, Carson, DeVos, and Ross all lacked any experience running a government department and/or the requisite policy experience in their field. Conservative beliefs are great, but a Cabinet official should have experience in government and be fluent in the policy knowledge of their field. 

Prager's last charge is that anti-Trump conservatives are holding out because they would be embarrassed at dinner parties.  Again, this is rank nonsense. While there is certainly a cultural divide between Trump supporters and opponents, the reasons for conservatives to continue opposing him are legion. Between the endless scandals, lack of message, and foreign policy disasters, there are ample reasons for smart conservatives to stay away from the mess. When the smoke clears from the Trump presidency, the only Republicans left with any clout will be those who did not give in to the siren song of Trumpism and presidential power. That is not a "cultural divide argument", it is a stark political reality. 

Today, Justice Neil Gorsuch officially began his tenure as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, ending the 14-month long war of attrition over the late Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. This war of attrition has brought to light many disturbing institutional trends in both the Senate and the Supreme Court.  For the Senate, this battle ended with the Republicans invoking the “nuclear option” on Supreme Court picks, cementing the move towards a strictly majoritarian Senate that seemed all, but inevitable, after Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats invoked it on presidential appointments in 2013.  This means that, roughly 100 years after the 17th Amendment made senators directly elected, the transformation of the Senate into a smaller version of the House is essentially complete.

As for the Supreme Court, the war over a seat that merely reaffirms the existing status quo indicates that Court seats are far too valuable, nowadays. The Founders envisioned the Court as being the weakest of the three branches, lacking the power of the purse or sword to enforce its will. The early years of the republic reflect this with the frequent turnover and voluntarily-short tenures of many judges (as well as the lack of an official building until 1931!).  Since 1954, however, the Court and larger judicial system have been increasingly-viewed as a substitute for the legislative process.  Instead of merely interpreting and determining the Constitutionality of laws, the courts are now often viewed as the most expedient vessel for social change.  The best example of this is the judiciary’s lead on the issue of same-sex marriage.  Many of the earliest states to allow for same-sex marriage, such as Iowa, made these changes through the courts, rather than through the normal channels of lawmaking.  This culminated in Obergefell vs. Hodges, where the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage a right for all Americans. Whether they were right or wrong to do so is immaterial; the point is that this particular issue reflects the increasing power of the judiciary and the monumental importance of every seat on the Supreme Court.

And so, every vacant Supreme Court seat now is a battle of wills. We have seen this develop over the last 30 years, beginning with Ted Kennedy’s hyperbolic rant on the Senate floor that sank the nomination of Robert Bork. The vicious battles over William Rehnquist (for Chief Justice), Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Merrick Garland, and now Neil Gorsuch further attest to this.  In my view, these confirmation gauntlets damage the institutional prestige of both the Supreme Court and the Senate.  To be clear, I am not against thoroughly vetting potential candidates to the Supreme Court.  I am, however, against smear campaigns and voting against eminently qualified justices merely out of partisanship.  The Supreme Court was never designed to be a partisan body, nor was the Senate designed to be the forum for gutter warfare of the sort we now see in confirmation hearings.

Ergo, I have a proposal for the supposed “Master Dealmaker” now living in the White House, should Anthony Kennedy retire this summer. It is inspired by the West Wing episode, “The Supremes,” but it might just be the kind of deal that could start to rebuild the trust of Americans in our institutions.  My proposal is this: convince both Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire at the same time.  Trump and the Republicans pick Kennedy’s replacement and the Senate Democrats pick Ginsburg’s replacement.  In return, both parties agree to swift, collegial, and fair confirmation hearings and floor votes that more closely resemble the 98-0 vote Scalia earned and the 96-3 vote Ginsburg earned than the 54-45 (mostly) party-line vote we witnessed with Neil Gorsuch.

This deal would, I believe, benefit both parties. For conservatives, this would solidify a 5-4 majority that pulls the Court slightly to the right, especially on volatile issues, such as Roe v. Wade.  Instead of Kennedy being the “swing vote”, Chief Justice Roberts would serve in that role, ensuring more conservative outcomes.  Of the two seats, Kennedy’s is, obviously, the more consequential seat and thus will be the more bitterly contested when it opens up.  Although Mitch McConnell has certainly proven his willingness to fight in the trenches as long as it takes in order to save a Court seat, the battle over Scalia’s seat will be nothing next to the battle over Kennedy’s seat.  It will be a winnable battle for the GOP, but why not make it easier? Why not spare the country from a fight that borders on gladiatorial levels over one seat? Why not find a way to make everyone happy, rather than perpetually angry? Americans are rabidly divided right now, why not try to unite them?

Since the Republicans have all the power right now, this deal would be extraordinarily generous to the Democratic minority.  In the West Wing, the deal reflected the Republican strength in the Senate. Now that the nuclear option has been invoked and a simple majority can confirm a judge without a problem, the ability to pick Ginsburg’s replacement should easily be worth the cost to the Democrats of holding back their attack dogs against any Republican pick.  For liberals, who currently have no power in the Senate, other than to shout and protest, they could ensure that their beloved Ginsburg would have a successor worthy of her legacy. Perhaps more importantly, it would ensure that the majority is only 5-4, rather than a more insurmountable supermajority (and Roberts has shown a willingness to side with the liberal bloc when he feels the need to preserve the Court’s prestige, as he did with Sebelius in 2012).  Given the unlikeliness that the GOP will lose the Senate before 2020, taking this deal would be much safer than betting on Ginsburg’s continued physical ability to serve on the Court.  The choice facing the Democrats would be this: accept the deal or quite possibly watch the Republicans replace Ginsburg with another Originalist.

In sum, I believe this deal would be beneficial to the American people.  All signs indicate that Kennedy is willing to retire, now that a Republican (with whom he has some personal connections) is in the Oval Office.  If that happens, the Court’s conservative majority will be solidified, no matter what the Democrats do. The question is whether or not this change can happen without a merciless war in the trenches against another eminently qualified jurist.  The partisan filibuster of Neil Gorsuch shows that we can expect that Kennedy’s replacement will have to endure Armageddon in order to sit on the bench.  This proposed deal could spare us from two rounds of such poisonous theatrics that reflect poorly on both the Senate and the Supreme Court.  Moreover, it could show the American public that the Senate is still capable of forging Grand Bargains and reducing the hyperpolarization of the current era.  In other words, it would show that compromise and mutually-beneficial solutions are not relics of bygone eras; we are still capable of reaching accords. And finally, it can lay a foundation for similar bargains in the future that help to keep the Court relatively balanced, as it should be.
 

It has been a long time since I have blogged on here. Admittedly, my inability to predict Trump's victory may have had something to do with that, but it is also probably due to the whirlwind of news, conspiracies, and outrage that make it more or less impossible to stay current in my blog. Nonetheless, I could not resist it when President Trump tweeted this out today: 
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Yes, Donald Trump has declared war on members of his own party. His choice of enemy is curious in some ways, and completely predictable in other ways. While the House Freedom Caucus provided the strongest bloc of opposition to the proposed American Health Care Act (AHCA), they were, by no means, the only opponents of the bill.  Polls unanimously showed that a majority of Americans opposed the bill, including a majority of Republicans. Democrats, of course, preferred Obamacare to the AHCA and few Republicans actually seemed to believe that the bill was any kind of improvement on Obamacare. Within the House, the Freedom Caucus, by and large, opposed the bill, but so did the centrist wing of the House, led by Pennsylvania Congressman, Charlie Dent (henceforth known as the Dentites) because they did not want to take away health care from their constituents who had benefited from Obamacare. 

In short, Ryan and Trump tried a massively unpopular bill that would have almost certainly died in the Senate (at least 3 Republicans in Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Tom Cotton were ready to vote no) and would have doomed the GOP in next year's midterms if it actually had passed. 

Since then, the blame game has been going on non-stop. Trump and the GOP rank-and-file have largely turned their cannons on to the Freedom Caucus, while the Freedom Caucus and their allies in conservative media have largely blamed Ryan and Trump for writing a bad bill and, to a lesser extent, the Dentites for contributing to the bill's demise. It is far from an exaggeration to state that the House GOP is in serious disarray right now, and Trump is destroying the party that he supposedly heads. 

Does the Freedom Caucus deserve the blame and Trump's wrath? Their tendency towards intransigence is hardly a secret; they have been a thorn in the GOP Leadership's backside for years now. They are living proof of Aldrich and Rohde's theory of Conditional Party Government (CPG), which posits that heterogeneous legislative majorities lead to weak speakers and party leaders. The logic of this is not difficult to see: a truly united party caucus will have fewer ideological caucuses and other such interests siphoning loyalty from their membership and competing for power. The current GOP is forcing Ryan to oftentimes choose between appeasing the HFC, the Dentites, and the mainstream of his party. Appeasing all three requires compromises and sacrifices that too few in the party seem willing to make anymore, especially among the HFC membership. So to answer the question, yes, the HFC does deserve a good portion of the blame. 

All that said, Trump's crusade against the Freedom Caucus (to the point of putting them on par with Democrats!) seems futile. I developed a spreadsheet of the HFC membership that includes their 2016 vote share, margin of victory, and measures of the Republican strength of their Congressional district (which is measured by their expected vote share relative to the national GOP average. The mean of 12 indicates that the HFC members' districts, on average, do nearly 13 points better than the national average for Republicans.)

The table indicates that nearly all of the districts held by Freedom Caucus members are extremely safe seats for the Republican Party. On average, these members won their races by margins of greater than 2:1! Even using the median score of 32.45% in place of the mean (due to a couple of uncontested races), shows that the Freedom Caucus members had almost unanimously easy races in 2016. 

Only one Republican in the Freedom Caucus represents a district that has a Democratic advantage; Rep. Rod Blum of Iowa represents Iowa's First District, a district which, until 2014 was represented by Bruce Braley (who vacated the seat in a failed attempt to win Tom Harkin's open Senate seat).  Donald Trump was able to squeak out a win in the district in 2016 (49-45), but failed to match Blum's 53-47 victory. This makes Blum the most (and only) Freedom Caucus member vulnerable next year in the general election, as the graphs below show. 

With such large margins of victory in such strong Republican districts, it appears that all of the Freedom Caucus members (with the exception of Blum) will be largely immune to what I believe to be a coming backlash against President Trump, next year. Gerrymandering is, of course, largely the cause of this- packed Republican districts ensure that the Republican is never defeated in a general election, but they also have a twin outcome, which is that closed district primaries should favor the ideologically extreme. As such, even if any of these figures would be defeated in a primary, it is likely that their challenger will be farther to the right than they are.  This, in turn, means that any attempt Trump makes to replace these figures with more mainstream Republicans will likely be in vain, as he will be trading one Freedom Caucus member for another. 

Here, again, is why Blum is the most vulnerable of the HFC members. Iowa, unlike most other states, does not gerrymander their congressional districts. They use an independent committee that is tasked with making the districts look as fair as can be (which means the state is divided into four sensible districts by geography and population density). Blum, therefore, is vulnerable to a moderate challenger in the Democrat-leaning district, as the lines were not drawn to benefit conservatives, and he is vulnerable in the general election for the same reasons. None of the other HFC members share this vulnerability.

Finally, we can make some predictions about the electoral vulnerability of these members. Using the shift in GOP fortunes from 2004 to 2006 as a baseline, in conjunction with district strength and 2016 totals, we can predict how the Freedom Caucus members will fare in their 2018 reelection bids.  

These predictions are contingent upon an assumption that next year will be as bad for the Republican Party as the 2006 midterms were.  Between 2004 and 2006, the Republicans lost 5.3% of the House vote, nationwide. Obviously, if the swing next year is even more dramatic than that, the outcomes will be lower and more Freedom Caucus individuals might be in the red or yellow zones, as shown above. However, a wave as bad as 2006 for the GOP will still only truly endanger Congressman Blum (he is the red point on the graph and the red bar). For those interested, the "yellow" Congressmen are Justin Amash (MI), Jim Jordan (OH), Scott Perry (PA), and Steve Pearce (NM). The lesson from all these graphs and data is simple: the Freedom Caucus members will not be leaving anytime soon, no matter how bad the national situation is for Republicans. 

As such, it is somewhat puzzling as to why Trump would put the Freedom Caucus in the crosshairs. Actually, it is rather puzzling that he would target "his party" at all, given that the only president to ever attempt a similar purge failed dramatically (FDR targeting conservative southern Democrats in 1938). Assuming Trump is still president in 2019, the House Republican Caucus will certainly be diminished, possibly to the point of losing the majority. And if they hold a slim majority, it will be the Freedom Caucus who will make the difference on every single vote (I expect that it will be the Dentites who suffer the most losses next year, just as it was the Blue Dog Dems who were the casualties of 2010).  And if the Freedom Caucus determines the success or failure of Trump's agenda, it would be wise not to upset them with shots like this: 

Recently, I announced my endorsement of Evan McMullin for the office of President of the United States.  I did this knowing full well that it is literally impossible for him to being elected using the normal channels of the Electoral College. He is only on the ballot in a handful of states and is a write-in candidate in a few more. As such, he has no path to victory through the Electoral College. 

But victory is not impossible. Unlikely, yes, but not impossible. The first step is to win Utah- a state where he is beloved for his Mormon faith and genuine decency compared to his competitors. Right now, he is close to achieving that first step. The polls in Utah have a close race between him and Trump. If he pulls it off, it would guarantee him a spot in any potential House of Representatives contest (seeing how unlikely it is that Gary Johnson wins New Mexico or any other state). 

Step Two is basically up to fate and ironically, depends greatly on Donald Trump (the man McMullin is trying to defeat). Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump must win less than 270 Electoral Votes next Tuesday. The map below is a somewhat plausible map that would throw the election to the House of Representatives. 

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In this map, neither Clinton nor Trump achieves a majority (nor is Trump robbed of one by McMullin).  As such, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives. 

The Constitutional procedures for having the House elect the president are somewhat odd. Instead of having each individual vote among the three candidates, the vote is tallied by state.  Ergo, the lone representative in states like Alaska and Montana has as much power as the entire California delegation.  Although somewhat undemocratic, it does make it easier to predict the eventual winner. The map below breaks down the Congressional delegation of each states. Dark red states are states that are safely Republican, light red states are states that are most likely going to be have a majority of Republican representatives in the next cycle (but the advantage is not strong enough to consider them "safe").  Grey states have an even number of Republicans and Democrats in their delegation.  And the blue states mirror the red states. 

Even if a disastrous scenario happens for the GOP where all the pink and grey states flip to Democratic control,  Hillary Clinton cannot win if the election is thrown to the House of Representatives. The Republicans safely control 27 states and weakly control 5.  As such, the worst case scenario for Republicans in a 2-way battle between Trump and Clinton would be a 27-23 victory, while the best-case scenario would be a 37-13 victory. There is simply no way that a Republican would not win if this scenario happens. 

Enter Evan McMullin.  To win, McMullin must get the support of Democrats in the House. Presumably, that would not be too difficult, as Republicans would hold all the cards. Since Clinton cannot win, they would be forced to choose between Trump and McMullin.  Given the Democrats' intense hatred for Trump, McMullin would likely seem like the better option to these Democratic delegations. 

However, McMullin would need more than just Utah and the blue states.  Victory will also require winning over the delegations of Republican states and split states.  I think McMullin's best chance of success, here, would come form Interior West and Tornado Alley states, where many are represented by a lone member of Congress (or very few members), lots of Mormons live, and a good portion of #NeverTrump Republicans dwell.  It would not be easy and require a lot of horse-trading on the part of McMullin.  Here, though, is where McMullin would have the advantage. Given his history in the House of Representatives as a policy wonk, McMullin would be in a position to make concrete deals with individual members.  The relationships he has with other Hill staffers and representatives would make his promises far more plausible and realistic than anything Trump might offer.  Trump is not a man of details and this time, it would hurt him.  Below is a map of a two-way contest between Trump and McMullin (with blue states still intact) that I think represents the easiest route to victory in such a case. 

So, to recap. If McMullin were to win the support of all the blue state delegations, plus the yellow delegations and two of the three grey delegations, he would win. 

The fun does not end there, however.  We would also have to watch as Congress elected the next Vice President.  Unfortunately for the McMullin-Finn ticket, Mindy Finn would not be an option for the senators (even in the event that her running mate won in the House).  Per the Twelfth Amendment, only the top two vice presidential candidates (in terms of Electoral Votes) are eligible for consideration by the Senate. Ergo, the next Vice President will be Tim Kaine or Mike Pence, regardless of whether or not McMullin could pull off the unthinkable upset in the House. Below is a map of what I predict the next distribution of senators by state will be (unlike the House, though, the Senators can vote individually).  Yellow states indicate a split distribution. 

This prediction would give the Democrats control at 51 seats (I am assuming losses by Pat Toomey, Kelly Ayotte, Ron Johnson, Mark Kirk, Todd Young, Joe Heck, and Richard Burr next week).  Even if one of these Republicans ends up winning, control will still rest with the Democrats as Joe Biden would be the tie-breaking vote.  Consequently, I predict Tim Kaine would emerge as Vice President-elect. 

Where would the country go from there? One VERY likely outcome is that Donald Trump would react much the same way as Andrew Jackson reacted in 1824; if not far worse.  To Trump, it would be the ultimate evidence that the "system is rigged" against him, and I have no doubt that he would spend the next four years running for president and rallying his base against President McMullin. His wrath would take on biblical proportions and he would rally the power of the Conservative Infotainment Establishment (figures like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon, Laura Ingraham, and Michelle Malkin) against the president and against any Republicans in the House who dared to vote against him. 

On the other hand, a McMullin-Kaine presidency might be just the kind of White House the country needs to roll back some of the extreme polarization gripping the country. Two members of different parties setting aside differences and working towards a unifying agenda could bridge some of the gaps between Americans, and not just on partisan lines.  Few Democrats would fit that role better than Senator Kaine, a man known for building bridges and friendships with Republicans.  Think of it this way, the White House could finally be seen as a place for republican (small "r") virtues as two public servants unite to lead a country that is bitterly divided by partisanship, class, education, race, gender, geography, religion, and other factors.  This case could end up being as idealistic as the most optimistic West Wing episodes. 

Also, most of the country really is not that enamored with either Trump or Clinton. The two major party candidates combined for about 30 million votes in the primaries, which is about half of what the losing candidate will amass on Tuesday.  Millions of other voters (including a majority of Republican primary voters) did not vote for either Clinton or Trump in the primary.  Opposition to Trump from Republicans is far stronger than opposition to any other recent nominee, and there are still a large number of Bernie Sanders supporters angry at Clinton. Instead of being stuck with one of the two most hated candidates of all time, this scenario would give Americans the best of all possible outcomes- a president and vice president who have the ability and desire to rise above partisanship and give the American people the government they truly deserve. 

Which response would happen? My guess is probably the former. Trump's supporters have undying devotion to their leader and would more than likely agree with him that the system was "rigged" against him. Moreover, it is possible that the Democrat delegations would decide to go with Trump over McMullin, simply because they would find Trump easier to beat in 2020 than McMullin. 

No matter what, the road to victory is difficult, at best, for McMullin.  I still think Clinton is going to easily break 270 and render all this moot.  But even if they both fail to reach 270, McMullin will have a tough time whipping up Democrat support and finding enough Republican delegations willing to break with Trump.  And even if McMullin somehow succeeded at that, he would then be tasked with governing a divided nation, especially with an angry demagogue barnstorming the country and undermining the legitimacy of the President.  Ultimately, Adams' so-called "Corrupt Bargain" with Henry Clay cast a shadow over his presidency that he could never escape and was compounded by Andrew Jackson's daily reminders to the country of how he was "robbed" by the House.  In the age of polarized social media, this would be a difficult thing to overcome.  On the other hand, a McMullin victory could be just what the country needs to get itself back on the right track.  Regardless of what happens, I think we all will be relieved when this endless election is finally over, be it Wednesday or be it sometime in January. 

We are 2 weeks out from the election, now. Thank God, it is almost over, but I expect a wild ride to the finish. After about 19 months of this election season (beginning with Ted Cruz’s announcement), I have finally made up my mind as to who I am voting for and endorsing. I do not expect my choice to win, but I do not care. I will be voting for Evan McMullin. Let us go through each of the five candidates. 

Donald Trump- I have written at length on this blog and in thousands of Tweets the reasons why I oppose Trump. If I had to pick one fundamental reason, it would be this: Trump’s approach to politics is the closest thing we have ever seen to the kind of demagoguery the Founders believed would destroy our republic.  Trump has adopted the language of tyrants and demagogues, inflamed the passions of the masses, and is coy, at best, about whether or not he will accept the results of the election.  Going all the way back to Plato, I see in Trump the kind of “people’s champion” who capitalizes on the devout worship of the mob to gain power and consolidate it under the guise of a “mandate from the masses.” Plato, Aristotle, and centuries of their students (including Madison and other Founders) feared the kind of tyrant who would emerge from such support. It is why the Founders created the Electoral College (so that enlightened individuals would resist the hot passions of the masses) and why they created a system of divided powers (so that it would be more difficult for a demagogue to consolidate his powers).

I do, of course, have plenty of other reasons to oppose Trump.  I believe that he is a sexual predator and uses his power and wealth to silence his victims, much like Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby.  The president need not be as perfect as Jesus Christ, but I believe they should be able to clear at least a minimal ethical bar, which Trump does not.  Moreover, I do not believe Trump possesses the patience or temperament to be Commander in Chief, nor does he possess any understanding of diplomacy or international relations and would humiliate us on the international scene.  A good example of this is his insistence that our troops commit war crimes to fight terrorism, such as murdering the innocent children of terrorists.  He believes that brutal, raw displays of power are worthy of respect, no matter how horrifying (one of his favorite stories is an apocryphal story involving Blackjack John Pershing in the Philippines systematically executing Muslim soldiers by shooting them one-by-one in the head with bullets dripped in pig’s blood, sparing one soldier so that he could tell his tale to his comrades).  At the end of the day, Trump is simply too in love with power and brutality to be the leader of the world’s strongest military power.

Next, Trump is truly poisoning our national politics and killing the Republican Party.  Although there has never been much love lost between the media and conservatives, Trump rallies have started to routinely feature “two minute hate” sessions towards journalists covering the rallies.  This will, I believe, lead to even greater polarization of media consumption in this country, divided by those who consume mainstream news (which, as Ladd shows, is objectively more accurate) and those who depend solely on talk radio, FOX News, and conspiracy theory websites like Breitbart and Infowars. In other words, Trump is amping up the rhetoric that further divides the country, rather than the rhetoric that unites it.  Perhaps the worst result of Trump’s campaign, however, is that the Republican Party is quickly becoming the Alt Right party- one that trumpets white nationalism, populism, and demagoguery, rather than freedom, small government, and statesmanship.  In other words, Trump is turning the Republican Party into the party of white racial resentment and anger.  If this does not start to change, beginning November 9th, the Republicans will quite possibly never win another presidential election. Nor should they.

I know many will vote for Trump solely to stop Hillary. It is a position I understand, but not one that I accept for myself.  To me, he represents the worst of politics; a man who is angry, unhinged, dishonest, vile, demagogic, and thoroughly unprepared for office.  He is someone who pits Americans against each other and has no problem vilifying women, Muslims, Hispanics, intellectuals, the media, and numerous other people.  I believe it is in America’s best interest that Trump loses and loses in a landslide.  Perhaps, then, we can begin to undo some of the damage that Trump has inflicted on America and on the Republican Party.

Hillary Clinton- If Trump is the worst politician in America, Hillary honestly is not too far behind. She is going to win this election, but with probably the shortest leash in history (and for good reason). Clinton is scandal-ridden, disliked, and not especially inspiring. If I had to describe her in one short phrase, it would be “the manifestation of the status quo.” Against a competent opponent (Marco Rubio or John Kasich), she would be in danger of losing blue states to her opponent and desperately trying to make up ground. 

If there was any reason to vote for her, it is that she is the primary alternative to Trump.  Like those who are voting for Trump to stop Hillary, I understand those who are voting for Clinton to stop Trump. But, again, that is not reason enough for me to vote for her. Being adamantly anti-Trump does not blind me to the serious concerns people have raised about her character and competence.  I think many of these concerns are perhaps overhyped (all the various scandals involving her emails, for instance), but it is hard to trust someone who has raised that many red flags throughout her career.  The only thing I really trust about her is that she will act in her own self-interest and that she has a greater grasp on world affairs and the way our government works than Donald Trump.

As for her policies, I am generally not on board with her.  Perhaps she is most centrist than she lets on, but I really have no policy rationale to support her.  I know she will send more justices in the mold of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court and appellate courts, and I know she will continue the Obama agenda.  Like I said, she is the manifestation of the status quo, a status quo that many do not like, and for good reason.

All in all, if I had the power to determine the election between Trump and Clinton, I would reluctantly pick Clinton, mostly because she merely makes me gloomy, rather than terrified.  She is far more level-headed and competent than Trump, but that is about the lowest possible bar to clear.  Since I do not have to make that choice, I will not. She has not earned my vote and I hope that she has to contend with a Republican Congress from Day One (she almost certainly will cause the Democrats to lose four or more Senate seats in 2018).

Gary Johnson- Ever since the day when Trump secured the GOP nomination, I have wanted to support Johnson.  Being a libertarian-leaning conservative, I wanted to like what Johnson had to offer, but alas, I cannot.  He and the Libertarian Party supporting him have shown me this year that they have no interest in actually governing and putting together a coalition that could possibly replace the Republicans as the main alternative to the Democrats.  Instead of embracing disaffected #NeverTrump Republicans who wanted to join the party, the Libertarians opted to move in a more leftist direction and reach out, instead, to disgruntled supporters of Bernie Sanders.  As such, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld have become pothead social justice warriors rather than right-of-center libertarians.

My main problem with Johnson, however, is that he has proven himself to be unserious and unfit to lead. A little bit of wackiness is somewhat endearing, but a lot of wackiness more or less disqualifies one from the White House.  And worst of all, Johnson is such a novice on foreign policy that he makes Trump look like Henry Kissinger.  Between not knowing anything about Aleppo (which is fine if you are a mechanic, but not okay if you want to be the President of the United States) and not being able to name foreign leaders, he demonstrates a lack of foreign policy knowledge that is completely unacceptable for a potential Commander in Chief.  The presidency is unique in that it controls the domain of international relations and foreign policy basically by itself.  A candidate less educated about foreign policy than Ben Carson and Donald Trump should not be president.

Jill Stein- She is a quack. And as much of a socialist as Bernie Sanders. No thanks.

Evan McMullin- Finally, we come to Evan McMullin, the man for whom I will be casting my vote in 2 weeks.  Like I said at the outset, I am not naïve or desperate enough to believe that he will win.  Clinton will easily reach 270 (I think quite possibly more than 350) Electoral votes, and McMullin’s “strategy,” such as it is, is probably devoted more to keeping Trump below 270 than actually pulling off a miracle victory.

Nonetheless, I believe it is important for me to cast my vote for McMullin.  McMullin’s platform and beliefs are consistently conservative and represent the future the GOP should pursue, rather than Trumpism.  McMullin’s platform is a softer form of conservatism that can resonate with young voters and minorities and grow the Republican Party.  More importantly, he fundamentally rejects the white nationalism underpinning Trumpism and the authoritarian statism Trump has introduced to the Republican Party. This is the kind of platform the Republicans should have had this year.

Perhaps most importantly, I will not regret voting for McMullin in the future.  I have been sympathetic to “lesser of two evils” arguments in the past, but I would rather vote for someone, rather than against someone.  McMullin is a man who already possesses a greater presidential resume than the Republican and Green Party nominees, without the scandals or incompetence of the other two.  Instead, McMullin has lead an admirable adult life- serving our nation as a CIA agent, working in the private sector at Goldman Sachs, serving as a missionary and humanitarian volunteer, and even working as a policy wonk for the House Republicans.  Hopefully, he will soon add Utah Governor or Senator to his impressive resume. Even so, he has the kind of resume that proves he would be qualified for the Oval Office.

The Republican Party is going to have to do a lot of soul-searching beginning November 9th.  They have a choice to make- follow Trump down the path of destruction or change course and rebuild for the future.  How severe the civil war will be is unclear, but it is clear that for the GOP to win in 2020, they will have to draw Trumpism from the party, like poison from a wound.  Voting McMullin is a good way to show the GOP exactly how much support they lost by nominating a despicable fraud like Donald Trump and why they must choose wisely when picking sides.  Moreover, it has the additional benefit of telling the parties, particularly the Republicans, that they must earn votes and cannot fall back on the logic of “lesser of two evils.” It is not enough to say that “because Candidate Y is worse, you must vote for Candidate X.” The Republican Party is depending on this logic for victory, but voting McMullin shows them why this is flawed reasoning.

I am not voting for McMullin because I think it will help him defeat Hillary Clinton on November 8th.  I am at peace with the fact that Hillary Clinton will be our next president and no one worthier of the office has a chance of beating her.  By voting for McMullin, however, I will not be sanctioning any mandate she might try to claim from this victory.  I will happily support her opposition for the next four years and look forward to the midterm elections when her party will finally be held accountable for supporting her. 

Overall, I am proud to endorse and vote for Evan McMullin in two weeks. He presents an option that I can be proud of and will never regret.  He is a man of honor, integrity, and experience who has risked his life, fortune, and sacred honor for this country.  Launching an independent bid is not easy and I have no doubt he and his family have suffered greatly from Trump’s legions of Alt Right goons and trolls because of his courageous stance.  Evan McMullin is not afraid to call out the Republican Party for their racist, sexist, and misogynistic stances, especially in the Age of Trump. McMullin understands, unlike so many in conservative media and in the GOP Congress, that the GOP cannot adequately oppose Clinton until its own house is in order.  Right now, the GOP is a mess and it deserves to lose the election.  McMullin, however, has earned my vote and I encourage anyone who is discouraged by the candidates of the four parties to consider him.  A vote is only wasted if you regret it later. McMullin has given me no reason to believe I will regret voting for him. 

Ever since Donald Trump became the nominee-apparent, many Republicans and conservatives have been agonizing over whether or not to ultimately vote for the NYC billionaire.  Those supporting Trump generally fall back on one of two arguments when trying to convince their conservative friends to support Trump (and they are really two sides of the same coin). Argument 1: we cannot allow Hillary Clinton to become president. Argument 1a): if Clinton is elected, she will get to make Supreme Court appointments.

It is true. If Clinton wins, she will get to make Supreme Court appointments as they become available. It is one of the duties of the president and it is a duty that does not expire until their successor takes the Oath of Office.  And it is quite likely that every pick Clinton makes will be to the left of Merrick Garland on the political spectrum. Such justices will almost certainly trumpet the “Living Constitution” doctrine of Constitutional interpretation, which allows justices to impute meaning into the Constitution that was not intended by the Founders or the creators of the various amendments since 1787. Usually, this means that the federal government is augmented at the expense of state governments and the people. I do not believe this is proper jurisprudence and I believe it given the judiciary a larger role than it was designed to have.  The Court hears about 100 cases every year and have the power to declare laws unconstitutional and interpret rights.  They do not make laws, nor do they have the power to enforce them. The judiciary was designed to be the weakest branch of government and I believe that is still their proper place.

That said, I have no faith that Donald Trump will do anything differently. Yes, he submitted his list of potential nominees, but then almost immediately announced that he would not necessarily stick to the list. As with everything else in Donald Trump’s record, “the list” is flexible and his words and promises are merely that: words.  Second, even if he did actually appoint someone from that list, it is likely that the Democrats will control the Senate and vote down anyone on that list.  And even if they do not control the Senate, the Republicans will not be able to invoke cloture as they will not be able to muster 60 votes. As such, any successful nomination Trump would make would have to be moderates, in the mold of Merrick Garland.

With Trump, there are even greater risks than that. By putting Don Willett on his list of potential nominees, he proved that he had no role in the process.  The Khizr Khan, Judge Curiel, and Megyn Kelly sagas (among other such feuds) prove that the ultimate sin in Trump’s world is criticizing him. Judge Willett (one of my favorite accounts on Twitter) criticized Trump repeatedly before the list was ever published.  Had Trump actually been part of that process and taken the time to familiarize himself with these names, Willett would have been as likely to appear on his list as Justice Curiel. Which brings me to another reason to distrust him; the saga of Justice Curiel shows that Trump will publicly criticize justices who rule against him in future cases.  He will not put another Scalia on the Court, because Scalia would rule against most of Trump’s harebrained and/or illegal schemes on the grounds of violating the Constitution.  As president, Trump’s hostility to the Court will almost certainly surpass that of Andrew Jackson and FDR.  If he wants his agenda to go unimpeded, he should probably appoint Living Constitutionalist judges. Finally, Trump is a political novice who has probably never read a single Scalia Dissent and has not shown that he actually understands what an “Originalist” is.  As such, he is almost certain to fall victim to “stealth nominees,” the way that Dwight Eisenhower (Earl Warren and William Brennan), Gerry Ford (John Paul Stevens), and George H.W. Bush (David Souter) all did. When considering all these various complications, any conservative voting for Trump for the Supreme Court is clearly grasping at straws and engaging in wishful thinking.

My issues with the politicization of the Court, however, go far deeper than not trusting Trump to successful nominate and confirm an Originalist justice.  Instead, I take issue with the Republicans’ approach on the Supreme Court in that I believe they are fundamentally re-writing the Constitutional procedures for filling Court vacancies and re-writing the Constitutional role and purpose of Supreme Court justices.  With regard to procedures, the Republicans’ refusal to even meet with Merrick Garland is allegedly due to the timing of Nino Scalia’s death as it relates to the election.  This, of course, has proven to be demonstrably false, as the lack of recent election year Supreme Court appointments has been due to chance more than design.  The only election year appointee to be shut down in the last 80 or so years, Abe Fortas, was not confirmed due to ethics problems, not to the impending election. And although a lame-duck appointment might not be advisable, there is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits a lame-duck president from filling a vacancy.  Scalia died in February; there was more than enough time on the agenda for the Senate to at least give him a hearing and a vote. 

Thus, this new doctrine based on the “election year” denies to the president a power that is expressly granted to the president in the Constitution.  But the alleged principles behind this change are even worse. According to Mitch McConnell, they are opposing Garland not because they do not believe him worthy to take Scalia’s seat, but because they want “the people to decide” on that seat. This could not be further from the Founders’ intentions.  They wanted the Court to remain independent and insulated from popular passions.  They gave the power of appointment to the president and the power of confirmation to the Senate precisely to avoid having the people vote on Court seats (and even if they were okay with democratizing the Court, the President is still a duly-elected official whom "the people" entrusted with the power to pick Court seats, anyway).  A great irony in this is that the Senate Republicans are essentially forfeiting their Constitutional role in the process, as they will not have the political capital to reject any of Clinton’s nominees if Trump loses in November.  How could they possibly deny Clinton any nominee if they have made the entire election about Scalia’s seat and lost? Clearly, the Republicans’ new doctrine re-writes the Constitutional procedures surrounding the Court and in doing so, in the greatest irony of all, dishonor Scalia by destroying the Founders’ intentions.
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Court appointments are important, there is no doubt about it.  And I do not have a problem with them factoring into a person’s decision on how to vote.  However, there is a difference between saying “I want Candidate X to make Court appointments” and saying “It is an election year, let’s have the people vote on this specific seat.”  It leads me to wonder what the future holds for Supreme Court appointments, and when it is that a president loses this fundamental right to nominate candidates for vacant seats.  Will every future vacancy constitute a political crisis? If not, why? Will every future justice look like Merrick Garland; a well-qualified, well-mannered moderate justice few people really like?  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, I am deeply disturbed by the precedent the Senate Republicans and National GOP have set by re-writing Constitutional procedures regarding the Supreme Court on the false premise that “the people must decide” and that presidents cannot make appointments during election years.  They could have made it about finding a worthy heir to Scalia’s legacy, instead, they have taken a path Scalia would have abhorred. 

John Nolte released today his analysis of why the #NeverTrump movement has failed. As he is someone who has been staunchly opposed to the movement, his words obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt. Thus, I will do a line-by-line analysis of his main points and arguments.

First, Nolte points out that #NeverTrump seriously underestimated the man. I could not agree more with Nolte; I did not think Trump would last long enough in the race to become the butt of Stephen Colbert jokes. I believed that Trump’s propensity to insult groups of people every single day would torpedo his campaign within weeks (along with his ideological inconsistencies, superficial understanding of policies, and many other red flags). Nolte is right that perhaps Trump was written off too easily because of his celebrity stature, but I and nearly everyone else in the political universe (Ann Coulter, aside) merely believed that his rise would be a passing fad. We put too much faith in the American people’s ability to divorce fame from ability and presidential material.

Second, Nolte contends that we underestimated the impetus for change. This is not an unfair charge, but I figured the American people were hungry for less vitriolic politics, not vitriolic partisanship on steroids. Nolte is correct, to a point, that the average American is not ideological, but as decades of political science has shown (see Campbell, et. al, 1960 and Converse, 1964), they generally know enough to mimic an ideology (which is exactly what Trump is doing, only as an entertainer, he is better at fooling people). My assumption was that the primary electorate would be more ideological and consistent in their views than the average general election voter or Trump voter. At the very least, I assumed that those claiming to be pro-life and pro-family would not support someone who still thinks Planned Parenthood is great and is on his third trophy wife. Nolte might be correct that the voters want “change,” but it defies belief that Trump is what they would want if their concerns are about government incompetence, lost wages, and lost wars, since Trump has no understanding of government processes, ships jobs overseas in his own business and has no understanding of military theory or even basic laws of war.

His last subpoint on this topic is that Trump is a breath of fresh air with regards to so-called “political correctness.” Look, I understand the frustration with decades of politicians and academics sugarcoating everything they say so as not to offend people. But Trump and his supporters conflate being “not politically correct” with being vulgar and nasty for its own sake. The President of the United States should be a statesman who unites his people and does not declare a war on every individual in the media who criticizes them. Even the most vulgar presidents, Richard Nixon and LBJ, vented their frustrations at others in private rather than launch rants lasting months at someone who asked them a tough question. As for Trump’s supporters, their vitriol and vulgarity in the social media is unmatched (for evidence, just see who the people are who call their political opponents “cucks” and other vile terms that do not belong in civilized society). To me, “political correctness” is where someone sugarcoats what they are saying to such an extent as to obscure or even change the intent of their sentence, just so that they do not “trigger” or somehow engage in “microaggresion” that insults someone.  Refusing to identify ISIS as being of Radical Islam would be an example of political correctness, but not using terms like “cuck” constitute basic decency that should be expected in our political discourse.

Third, Nolte notes how #NeverTrump “trashes Trump supporters” out of some sense of being elitist prats. I am not going to deny that this exists, but I will note how Nolte completely omits the vulgarity from Trump supporters that I have documented in previous paragraphs and how this originates from Trump, himself.  And yes, I am guilty of some of this. Even though I come from a working class family (my father is a truck driver and my mom a teacher’s aide, I spent 10 years in a white trash neighborhood), I study politics for a living and am working towards becoming an academic. However, politics is my area of expertise and I will not apologize for lamenting the type of people Trump has brought in to the Republican Party- xenophobic racists fueled by anger and resentment. The Republican Party needed to expand its base, to be sure, but not with these people. Not with people who would support Hitler if he built a wall to keep people out and simultaneously believe that immigrants both drain our welfare system and steal their jobs. Not people who demand a strongman who operates on crass demagoguery by promising that the government will harm other people, rather than harm them, instead of promising to reduce the role of government in their lives. And certainly not people who obsess over a man’s divorce and project their own vile fantasies onto him. I do believe that the rise of Trump is a result of a strong nihilistic current of anti-intellectualism and anger that has enveloped the masses.  Consequently, I will not return to the GOP until Trumpism is eradicated, since anger, fear, and anti-intellectualism should be scorned, not celebrated.

As an addendum, Nolte says that his one guiding principle is “defeating Democrats.” I find it incredibly cynical to believe that because one has a (D) next to their name that they are automatically unfit to hold office.  That attitude, I believe is un-American, but now more than ever, I have doubts about the fitness of many Republicans to hold office. I do not believe Trump is qualified in any way, shape, or form to be President of the United States, and I will not cynically vote for him just because he happens to be a part of my (former) team. That is lazy and intellectually dishonest. Neither party has all the answers, but each party has some answers.

Fourth, Nolte disparages the attempts to “disenfranchise voters.” Again, this is not an unfair allegation, but I believe this election shows why we should have a mixed system where the voters do not get the entire say in the nominating process.  Presidential nominations are party functions, not elections. Prior to the McGovern-Fraser reforms of the early 70’s, primaries were the exceptions, not the rule, and the parties generally picked solid candidates to run for our nation’s highest office (Adlai Stevenson and FDR’s GOP opponents, notwithstanding). No candidate that the old system produced, however, was anything like Trump. The party picked candidates who could win and who they could work with once in power. The old Republican Party would never have allowed someone like Trump to be the nominee.

Anyway, Nolte charges that the complex system of primaries, caucuses, and conventions is inherently discriminatory against “the people” because certain candidates can lose and yet gain more delegates to the convention. My answer to that is the system rewards candidates who take the process seriously and form the best campaign organization. And why should it not? General elections are often determined by the candidate with the strongest ground game and best organization. Another thing to consider is that the job Trump is seeking requires attention to detail. If he cannot get his own family to switch their party affiliation to vote for him in time, can we really expect him to be a competent manager of the economy or military? Ted Cruz, for all of his faults, ran a flawless campaign organization and deserved to win the delegates he did.

Point five, for Nolte, was “fuzzy math.” This is something that is easy to be a Monday-morning Quarterback about, but throughout the process, there was no reason to believe that Trump would gain support, unless you made the most negative assessment of Republican voter intelligence (which I, and others, probably should have made). And yes, I would happily have had a convention which anointed someone who did not even run (someone like Paul Ryan) because he could have defeated Clinton without turning the GOP into a fascist party and when the masses are wrong, they need to be corrected.

Nolte next disparages having Mitt Romney be the face of #NeverTrump. While I understand Nolte’s point that Romney has no constituency left, I do believe that he has shown more principle and resolve than the numerous figures who should have been leading it- Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, and others could have led the movement but either embraced Trump or have slunk back into the shadows for the cowardly reason of abiding by a pointless “pledge.” We pleaded with Ben Sasse to take up the torch, but he refused. It is sad, however, that I now respect Lindsey Graham, Romney, and George Pataki more than Rubio and the others who are “voting for the nominee.” Times like these require hard, courageous choices and it is Romney and the other “RINOs” who made the tough, courageous choice not to endorse a fascist. Rubio’s support of Trump is far more important to me than the “Gang of Eight” effort. I thought with the Gang of Eight, Rubio was a courageous, visionary politician, but by endorsing Trump, he will buckle when the chips are down. Say what you want about Romney, but I respect him so much more now than I did in 2012 when I was knocking on doors on his behalf. I just wish he would launch an independent bid.
Nolte is right in his seventh point that a big problem for #NeverTrump was being against Trump, without being for someone. That is certainly the case after Rubio and Kasich dropped (at least in my case), but as Nolte can see, no one is stepping up to the plate and offering a real alternative to Clinton and Trump. And for what it’s worth, the GOP’s entire election strategy is getting people to oppose Hillary, rather than promoting Trump as being worthy of the Oval Office.  By the way, I was willing to vote for Cruz, but it is ridiculous to think he would have any shot of defeating Clinton. Running up the score in Nebraska would not have helped him win Virginia, Florida, or Ohio. Further regarding Cruz, Nolte is way off-track by claiming that associating with #NeverTrump somehow “tarnished his outsider brand.” The only chance Cruz had was to unite the 60% of Republicans who did not support Trump, but his own record of burning bridges with everyone he ever worked with destroyed that chance.

Lastly, Nolte assumes that the “evil” of Clinton will erode #NeverTrump down to nothing and that we will all vote for Trump in the end. He could not be more wrong. I oppose Trump for reasons that transcend ideology and take on essentially moral dimensions. The presidency is not an office for a novice politician, nor is it an office for someone temperamental, thin-skinned, uninformed, unprincipled, untrustworthy, or unserious.  Trump is all of these things, Clinton is only unprincipled and untrustworthy.  Yes, I disagree with Clinton on most positions, but at least we know what her true positions actually are and we know that she will not provoke international incidents if someone insults her (to the contrary, Clinton is far better respected, internationally, than Trump is). Republicans can actually oppose her (ie: The Hamilton Rule) and I believe she will be more pragmatic, ultimately, than Obama was and will foster better relationships with Congress. Trump, on the other hand, is a clueless wildcard who could well end up being to Clinton’s left on most issues as president and has no redeeming features.  He has gotten as far as he has by grandstanding and faking his way successfully enough to fool his gullible followers, but that will not work if he actually wins in November.  The average day in a president’s life does not involve making speeches about building a wall, it is about making decisions most Americans will never learn about and are probably too technical for Trump to even bother caring about right now.  Trump wants power without responsibilities, but the presidency is ultimately about overwhelming responsibilities without power (in many cases). Clinton understands this, and that is why I think she will be a far better president than Trump, even if I disagree with her on policy issues. Ultimately, however, the choices both parties have made have forced the American public to decide who will be the least-bad president. Clinton is the devil we know, but Trump is the unpredictable devil unworthy of being president.
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The great stories of history and literature almost always lionize those who made the right decision, especially when the odds were stacked against them.  Those who chose to make the lonely and difficult decision to go against the crowd when the crowd was wrong are remembered far more favorably than those who sacrificed their principles for an ephemeral gain (be it power, money, whatever). We salute Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill for steadfastly opposing Hitler even after the fall of France when Hitler looked invincible and deplore Marshall Petain for agreeing to be Hitler’s puppet out of expediency. We honor the patriots of the American Revolution and detest the Tories who remained loyal to the Crown. We have all but deified Abraham Lincoln and have all but forgotten Stephen Douglas, James Buchanan, George McClellan, and others who either supported slavery or hid behind the easy position of “popular sovereignty” over the issue. The 300 Spartans are immortalized forever because they did not surrender to Xerxes in the face of overwhelming odds.  I believe we are currently in such a situation.  Those of us who do not give in to Trump will be remembered for standing on principles (even the most basic principle that the president should not be a maniac), while Republicans embracing Trump will be remembered among history’s chumps.  From the first days of school, we have always been taught to not go with the crowd when they are doing something wrong or stupid, but that is exactly what spineless Republican politicians are doing- they are sacrificing their principles and consciences in a vain attempt to gain power or to be seen as deferring to “the will of the people.”  Some, certainly, will be vilified more heavily than others depending on the timing and fervor of their support (so Chris Christie endorsing Trump while he could still be defeated will make him more of a villain than, say, Marco Rubio mumbling about “keeping his word”), but it is people like Mitt Romney and Bill Kristol who will be the heroes for not backing down for the sake of power. Donald Trump poses an existential threat to this country the likes of which we have not seen before. Between his ignorance on policy, fascistic tendencies, and hardly-veiled disregard for the Constitution and the supremacy of law, the fallback excuses of “party loyalty,” “stopping Hillary,” and “saving the Supreme Court” are lamentable strawmen that abysmally fail to justify supporting Trump. Those who choose to support Trump will never be able to run from it and will be regarded in history as spineless cowards, hypocrites, or worse, and justifiably so. For the sake of the republic, Trump must be stopped and Republicans who embrace him (however reluctantly) have chosen the easy path of destruction over the narrow path of courage.  I, however, will not. Even if I am the last conservative opposing Trump, I will never stop opposing him and thus will keep #NeverTrump alive as long as I have breath in my body.