Hillary Clinton’s lack of candor and transparency make her unfit for the presidency.A candidate’s sincerely held religious faith is important.Staunch opposition to abortion and to funding Planned Parenthood is a red line for conservatives.The debt is a threat to our prosperity.Entitlement expansion must be stemmed so as to prevent bankrupting the system.Traditional marriage must be defended.
In short, much of what conservatives — especially tea partyers, Freedom Caucus rabble-rousers, holier-than-thou outfits such as the American Conservative Union and Heritage Action, values voters, etc. — have been arguing for years and using to club Democrats and insufficiently rabid Republicans does not matter any longer. The next time a pro-gay-marriage, big-spending Republican comes along, on what basis will the amen chorus on the right have to oppose him or her? When we hear from the Republican National Committee that Clinton is dishonest and nontransparent, go ahead and laugh. And let’s consider that the mere declaration of opposition to abortion, no matter how insincere and recent, will suffice with gullible evangelical voters.
You don’t have to be inflexible on any of these topics to appreciate that Donald Trump has eviscerated the standards by which many on the right assessed candidates. (Poor Jeb Bush. All he did was favor traditional conservative positions for years on end, only to be called a squish by the talk radio crowd, which now genuflects to Trump.)
Trump does not want to shrink government — he wants to expand it by creating an enormous bureaucracy to track down and deport illegal immigrants, micromanage trade and regulate where American companies can hire people. He gets stumped whenever asked what programs or departments he would eliminate.
Trump does not want to get rid of government-run healthcare; he wants to, I guess, rename it but cover “everyone.” (No complaints now, Republicans, about runaway costs of Obamacare or about centralized health care.)
Look on the bright side. For years, Republican opportunists have preyed upon fellow Republicans for insufficient reverence for conservative ideals and for “betraying” conservatives. Now there are no ideals to betray! In one fell swoop, Trump has made legions of conservative activists into hypocrites and eviscerated the power of groups as far-flung as FreedomWorks, the Family Research Council and National Right to Life. Social conservatives no longer need be courted if someone who is thrice-married, vulgar, pro-gay and pro-transgender rights, and a donor to Planned Parenthood can become the face of the GOP. What, then, was the reason for the right’s anger at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former House speaker John Boehner? They were ideologues compared with Trump.
Many conservatives, Right Turn included, who found the all-or-nothing style of politics personified by people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to be counterproductive and unrealistic, need not worry about conservative intransigence, I guess. Nevertheless, when a party stands for nothing and sacrifices intellectual honesty to the whims of an authoritarian egomaniac for the sake of winning the White House, you have to question what “winning” means. Trump enacting Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) agenda does not seem like much of a victory. Oh, and if he cares so little for conservative ideas now, imagine what he’d be like if he got elected.