http://patrickborchers.blogspot.com/2016/10/put-fork-in-trump.html?spref=twSunday, October 9, 2016
Put a Fork in TrumpPatrick Borchers
He's done. I know his political obituary has been written 100 times prematurely, but this one is different.
The bellwether, the canary in the coal mine, or whatever metaphor you like, is Nebraska's Senator Deb Fischer pulling her endorsement and saying she plans to write in Trump's running mate Mike Pence for President. Nebraska's junior Senator Ben Sasse hung doggedly to his #neverTrump position and says he'll do the same thing (actually he said it before she did).
Fischer stuck by Trump saying that he was her party's nominee no matter how imperfect she might be. Now she's had enough.
This one is different because his unguarded comments from 2005 provide the perfect thread to tie together his rants against women from Megyn Kelly to a former Miss Universe.
His defense/apology has been that Bill Clinton did worse and that anyone who "really knows him" knows that this is not the way he is and it was "locker room" talk. The attempted pushback on his various rants against women has been that in reality he is respectful of women, they have been promoted through his businesses, etc.
But the problem is that the 2005 tape is the best look yet into whom he really is. A lot of the commentary has been about his vulgar comments about being entitled to grab women by their genitalia, with the subtext that they should feel fortunate to be in such a position. But note the other part discussing his efforts to have a sexual encounter with a married woman while his third wife was pregnant with their child.
Now comes a tape of an interview that he did with "shock jock" Howard Stern in which Stern refers to Trump's oldest daughter as a fine "piece of ass" to which Trump replies approvingly. This is the same daughter he said he "would be dating her if she weren't my daughter." The same daughter that in a portion of his appearance on a daytime show hosted by a doctor he remarked how much he likes kissing her. (It got edited out.)
I'm no candidate for sainthood and try not to judge the sex lives of others. But even for one who has as much of a "live and let live" attitude on these matters as do I, this is hard to countenance.
I had hung tenuously to the idea that I'd vote for Trump because Mrs. Clinton has plenty of baggage herself and she and I share relatively few policy positions. I'm not voting for either one of them. I know the rebuttal -- by not voting for Trump you're helping Mrs. Clinton win. I know that. But Trump is going to lose, and lose badly, and I don't want it only my conscience that I ever voted for him (I voted for Rubio in Nebraska's primary, though it was essentially over by then). And it's hard to argue with political conservative P.J. O'Rourke's observation "better a mangy cat than a rabid dog."
Though it's the very definition of "existential bad faith" I won't vote for either even though I know I'm leaving the door ajar for the mangy cat.
The truth is that Trump is not a Republican except as defined by his current party registration. There's no reason to think that he wants to make the federal government smaller (or even keep it from growing further) and there's every reason to think that his current professed stand against abortion is a flag of convenience given his past support of every barbaric abortion practice known.
He is one month from being the greatest pariah to the Republican Party in recent history. The Republican voters in early states who made him the nominee were incredibly foolish. The GOP had at the ready fresh faces with enough political experience to make them plausible candidates who would almost surely be polling far better than Trump is (to say nothing of where Trump will be in the polls now being taken after these latest revelations).
But what about the Supreme Court? Surely Trump would appoint more conservative Justices than Mrs. Clinton. Maybe, though recall in one of those unguarded moments early on he said his sister -- a militantly pro-abortion federal judge -- would make a spectacular Supreme Court Justice.
But given that Trump isn't going to win, the best thing that Republicans can do is to put their shoulders to the wheel to hold the Senate and the House. The Senate is the more important of the two because of its role in confirming appointments (including those to the Supreme Court), but unfortunately will be much harder to hold, given that the GOP has only a 52-48 margin and is defending 24 of 34 seats, including six in states that Obama carried twice. Unfortunately, the sinking Trump ship is likely to pull a few Senators in close races underwater.
Every moment of effort and dollar donated to the doomed Trump campaign is effort and money that could be devoted to congressional races.
The only breath of a chance that Trump has would be if he were to promise not to take the oath of office and allow Pence to be President. There's no practical way to replace him on the ballot given that early voting has started and state ballot access laws. But Trump won't do it and even if he said it few would believe him.
I know this is going to make many of my conservative friends unhappy. But Trump is no conservative. He's not for anything except Donald Trump. I hoped that he would actually run a disciplined campaign in the general election that he eschewed in the primaries, but if anything he has become more erratic and unhinged.
I'm not telling you that you can't vote for him. I'm just telling you that I won't.
