With our current national nightmare concluding in just a few days, many are holding their breath in worried anticipation that an even worse nightmare is about to begin. Sadly, the late hours of November 8 may very well find me in agreement that a new national nightmare is imminent. Unlike many, if not most, however, I believe that whatever nightmare is looming, it will be short-lived and may very well give way to a new and improved conservative movement. Strangely, my optimism is a product of Donald Trump.
At the onset, let me be very clear—by no stretch of the imagination am I looking forward to either a Hillary presidency or a Trump presidency. And I remain staunchly #NeverTrump. Regardless of who emerges from the slough of electoral despair, I foresee being tempted to keep my eyes covered during the next four years. If I do, I promise to occasionally peek out from between my fingers to see what the more courageous of my conservative brothers and sisters are up to. I’m counting on them to lay the necessary groundwork for the coming resurgence of conservative principles and recommitment to the Constitution.
The seeds for that resurgence have always been there, lying dormant under the GOP surface. Unwittingly, Donald Trump has churned up so much Republican soil that those conservative seeds are already beginning to sprout. Only time will tell if they bear fruit, but I believe that the odds look fairly good.
Reaching back deep into the GOP primary, many believe that this election season has revealed a fracture in the Republican Party. For months now, Trump supporters and those in the #NeverTrump crowd have hurled vitriol and invectives back and forth. It’s easy to see why some are predicting the demise of the Grand Old Party. For me, the intervarsity squabble reveals a desire to protect the integrity of the conservative movement.
Things would be so much easier for everyone involved if conservatives would all just fall in line and conform to the company’s talking points. Thankfully, conservatives desire to stand true on principles, which has helped to create the climate of division that characterizes the 2016 presidential election.
Further, and possibly more importantly, many of the Republicans who are planning on voting for Donald Trump next week are planning to do so with their noses firmly plugged and with a deep sense of regret about what might have been. Many who disagree with my #NeverTrump position agree with my assessment of Trump’s lack of competency and virtue. Outside of the shrill voices of the alt-right, very few conservatives who are planning on voting for Trump are attempting to put lipstick on their pig. And that’s the way they see it—Donald Trump is most definitely a pig, but he’s their pig and they’d rather have their pig in power than the other side’s pig.
And make no mistake, the other side has nominated a pig, too. The main difference is that the other side has almost uniformly fallen all over themselves in attempts to gussy up their pig.
In contrast with the Republicans, Democrats have unveiled their naked lust for power at the expense of even the pretense of integrity. And by “Democrats,” I don’t just mean those who want to call Washington, D.C. home. I also mean those who live in our neighborhoods, shop alongside of us, and engage us in conversations on our social media sites—the “Democrats on the street,” so to speak.
It’s next to impossible to deny that Hillary Clinton is one of the most corrupt candidates for POTUS ever. The Hillary campaign colluded with the DNC to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders, for goodness’ sake! That blatant dishonesty, however, hasn’t stopped hordes of Bernie supporters from rolling their sleeves up and jumping in to help circle the tax-payer funded wagons around Hillary Clinton. Maybe they’re hoping to get a third house out of the deal, too.
That wagon circling has been made necessary by the continued release of emails. A steady stream of sordid details about the inner workings of the Hillary campaign and the Clintons in general has been roiling the general public for months now. Well, the general public minus Democrats. As opposed to the Republicans who recoil in disgust at each new revelation of Trump’s pigginess, the Democrats have collectively stuck their heads in the mud while attempting to loudly mumble through dirt-filled mouths, “Nothing to see here!”
Except there is something to see here. And Democrats should be ashamed at their almost uniform dismissal of Hillary’s transgressions. Starting with the revelation that she is incapable of handling classified information (and that’s being generous towards her motives). It should end with the potential that Democrats have nominated a person to the presidency who is currently under a criminal investigation. But it hasn’t and it won’t end there because as has become increasingly obvious, things like integrity, selflessness, and basic morality are not high on the list of qualifications that liberals think about when choosing a president.
Thankfully, there has been a dissenter here or there, most notably John Kass at the Chicago Tribune. But the John Kasses of the Democratic Party world are so few and so far between as to only serve to highlight how quickly, wholeheartedly, and almost universally the Democrats have sold their souls to be a part of history made by an individual who personifies moral turpitude.
Thankfully, many Republicans continue to retain their integrity even as they prepare to vote for one of the two worst candidates for president in American history. Over and over, I see an acknowledgment of Trump’s vileness even while calling for people to embrace the “lesser of two evils” arguments. Democrats, however, can’t embrace that argument because they refuse to acknowledge that their candidate is evil. For me, the fight for and over integrity within the conservative movement bodes well for not only the future of conservatism, but also for the future of this country.
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