Half a Loaf is Better than No Bread
Part of an ongoing conversation with DemosthenesVW on the wisdom and practicality of backing Donald Trump:
Sir, you make several trenchant and thoughtful points in arguing that Mr. Trump is an unknown, may prove unreliable, and has proven either a foe of conservatism or a fair-weather friend in the past.
I will certainly consider them: unless Trump wins the nomination, in which case my preference for another and better candidate will matter as little as my preferences for other and better candidates than McCain, Dole, and Romney.
But there is a main and telling point I would like you to address, and it is a more personal point. It is a point of boiling-point anger in me.
Ever since I started voting Republican rather than Libertarian, I have been asked by so-called moderates and so-called practical men to vote for unsuitable candidates who did not support my principles I hold most dear on the grounds that our bad candidate was better than the Democrat worse candidate. I accepted those grounds as valid. I voted as asked for establishment chumps and we got Clinton and Obama.
Now, when the shoe is on the other foot, and instead of a crony-capitalist like McCain or a will-do-nothing-about-abortion like Dole, or a pro-socialized-medicine-guy like Romney, and it is the turn of the moderates to hold their nose and vote for the most electable candidate, suddenly now and only now principles matter?
Suddenly a lack of interest in the abortion question or a willingness to go to war without a declaration of war or a desire for protectionist antifreetrade policies which were enough for the moderates to ask me to cast my vote for George W Bush, are now and only now suddenly deal breakers that will make the moderates stay home or vote Third Party?
The hypocrisy of the moderates is galling. I can and would support Ted Cruz with great enthusiasm if he wins the nomination, because, while he is a weaker weapon against the greater target, as I said in my original post, he is the stronger weapon against the lesser target, and we would have, Thanks be to God, a principled conservative in the White House, the first since Reagan.
On the other hand, if Cruz does not win the nomination now, let him run again in four years, or eight. I like him and would vote for him.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
