Hate the title - but pretty well sums up why I have been leery of Trump from the get-go
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/04/28/absolute-must-read-night/Really, the only reason I am writing this post is to call your attention to this excellent Twitter rant by former RedState Contributor (from back in the prehistoric days) Jay Cost. Jay hits on the key thing that many Trump supporters seem not to realize about the #NeverTrump movement – that it really has very little to do with ideology.
We are willing to accept some ideological flexibility: we accepted it from McCain, Romney, Bush, Dole, and so on. The problem is not that Donald Trump is insufficiently conservative for us (although we would definitely prefer if he were more conservative). The problem is that he is manifestly unfit for the office as a human being.
It’s his personality traits – traits that are visible at a first, lazy glance – that make us recoil in horror at the idea of Donald Trump actually occupying the office of the Presidency. It’s his laziness when it comes to learning about the details of the job he wants to hold. It’s his pathological insecurity and vanity (which are two sides of the same coin) which would make him a dangerously erratic commander-in-chief of the armed forces. It’s his repeated egregious failures in character assessment which would make him a terrible person to put in charge of staffing the executive department. It’s his demonstrated willingness to abuse power for the sake of his own petty vengeances – which is horrifying to contemplate for someone who desires the office of the Presidency.
Before we get to the fact that Trump has no ideological core (and what core he does have is mostly liberal), we cannot get past the fact that if you spend five minutes listening to him, it becomes really, really obvious that he belongs nowhere near the office. Kind of the same way that you can tell after about five minutes of listening to Gary Busey that he would be a terrible CEO of a multinational corporation, or that Billy Crystal would be a terrible center for the San Antonio Spurs. You don’t have to actually see either of them attempting those tasks to know that if they tried, it would result in instantaneous disaster.
And it’s also why #NeverTrump folks hold in such contempt most Trump voters – in particular those who occupy positions of public trust: it’s because, in the case of Trump, it’s really obvious. I’ll be honest with you, I had serious questions about John McCain’s fitness for office after watching his disastrous behavior during the financial meltdown crisis (culminating in his fake canceling of a Presidential debate, which he took back in about 24 hours). But reasonable people could believe, if they squinted really hard, that McCain could do it. Hell, there was a time when we were willing to believe (thanks to careful handling) that Sarah Palin could handle the job, too.
There’s just no such room for reasonable disagreement where Trump is concerned. It doesn’t take a world champion poker player or some savant at judging people to realize that the guy cannot do the job without causing serious damage to the country. It’s not even a close call. And everyone who doesn’t see that – and, more importantly, state it loud and clear – deserves to have their judgment questioned from now until all eternity.
Well stated, Mr. Cost.
