The Surest Way To Run Herr Trumpf Out Of Politics Permanently: Nominate Bernie

Peter Wehner is another regular NY Times in-house rightist who represents the pretty-much universally reviled GOP neocon establishment. He had staff jobs with Reagan and in each of the failed Bush presidencies. Predictably, he's backing the Jebster this time around and a few days the Times allowed him to attack Herr Trumpf in a blistering OpEd, Why I Will Never Vote For Donald Trump. He's never missed voting and he's always voted for the Republican nominees and he's certainly not going to vote for Hillary if, as most Republicans are certain, she wins the Democratic nomination. "If Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton were the Republican and Democratic nominees," he wrote, "I would prefer to vote for a responsible third-party alternative; absent that option, I would simply not cast a ballot for president. A lot of Republicans, I suspect, would do the same."

There are many reasons to abstain from voting for Mr. Trump if he is nominated, starting with the fact that he would be the most unqualified president in American history. Every one of our 44 presidents has had either government or military experience before being sworn in. Mr. Trump, a real estate mogul and former reality-television star, hasn’t served a day in public office or the armed forces.

During the course of this campaign he has repeatedly revealed his ignorance on basic matters of national interest-- the three ways the United States is capable of firing nuclear weapons (by land, sea and air), the difference between the Quds Force in Iran and the Kurds to their west, North Korea’s nuclear tests, the causes of autism, the effects of his tax plan on the deficit and much besides.

Mr. Trump has no desire to acquaint himself with most issues, let alone master them. He has admitted that he doesn’t prepare for debates or study briefing books; he believes such things get in the way of a good performance. No major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness.

It is little surprise, then, that many of Mr. Trump’s most celebrated pronouncements and promises-- to quickly and “humanely” expel 11 million illegal immigrants, to force Mexico to pay for the wall he will build on our southern border, to defeat the Islamic State “very quickly” while as a bonus taking its oil, to bar Muslims from immigrating to the United States-- are nativistic pipe dreams and public relations stunts.

Even more disqualifying is Mr. Trump’s temperament. He is erratic, inconsistent and unprincipled. He possesses a streak of crudity and cruelty that manifested itself in how he physically mocked a Times journalist with a disability, ridiculed Senator John McCain for being a P.O.W., made a reference to “blood” intended to degrade a female journalist and compared one of his opponents to a child molester.

Mr. Trump’s legendary narcissism would be comical were it not dangerous in someone seeking the nation’s highest office-- as he demonstrated when he showered praise on the brutal, anti-American president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, responding to Mr. Putin’s expression of admiration for Mr. Trump.

“It is always a great honor,” Mr. Trump said last month, “to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”

Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.

For Republicans, there is an additional reason not to vote for Mr. Trump. His nomination would pose a profound threat to the Republican Party and conservatism, in ways that Hillary Clinton never could. For while Mrs. Clinton could inflict a defeat on the Republican Party, she could not redefine it. But Mr. Trump, if he were the Republican nominee, would.

Mr. Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects, but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the Republican standard-bearer. The nominee, after all, is the leader of the party; he gives it shape and definition. If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one. Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.

...Trump is precisely the kind of man our system of government was designed to avoid, the type of leader our founders feared-- a demagogic figure who does not view himself as part of our constitutional system but rather as an alternative to it.

I understand that it often happens that those of us in politics don’t get the nominee we want, yet we nevertheless unify behind the candidate who wins our party’s nomination. If those who don’t get their way pick up their marbles and go home, party politics doesn’t work. That has always been my view, until now. Donald Trump has altered the political equation because he has altered the moral equation. For this lifelong Republican, at least, he is beyond the pale. Party loyalty has limits... [M]any Republicans will find themselves in a situation they once thought unimaginable: refusing to support the nominee of their party because it is the best thing that they can do for their party and their country.

He didn't take up the question of whether or not he'd vote for Bernie in a Trumpf/Bernie match-up. Polls show that many Republicans would, although probably not Republicans as overtly partisan as Wehner. But there are some in the GOP trying to figure out what to make of Bernie. Murdoch's gutter press has already started a vicious McCarthyite smear campaign against him. The Australian fascist's paper blared "[H]e's not even a socialist. He’s a communist." Coming soon to a Fox News anchor near you.

Over the weekend Reince Priebus, head of the RNC, was on the John Gibson Show claiming he'd rather see his party go up against Hillary than Bernie. The GOP has spent millions of dollars and decades trying to define her as some kind of a demon and that's part of their religion. "The deal with Hillary is she is stuck in a ditch and people are lining behind her like drones, at least as of recently," he said. "And now they’re looking at these numbers; they’re not moving, she’s not liked, and people are saying, 'well now what are we gonna do?' So they’re looking around her and they’re looking at Bernie Sanders, who’s now ahead of her in New Hampshire and tied with her in Iowa, and they’re kind of stuck. It’s a tough call, but I guess I would take Hillary. Although, I do think the sort of wild, socialistic, liberal Bernie Sanders would be fairly easy to beat as well."

False flag operation by Reince? Who knows, although virtually every general election poll at this point shows Bernie doing better against each and every Republican than Hillary does-- and beating each one of them. In fact, NBC News reported yesterday that their newest poll shows Bernie beating Herr Trumpf 54-39%, while Clinton only beats him 51-41%. [Despite Bernie's 15 point lead of Trumpf, Herr claimed in an interview last week that "beating him ultimately would be easier than beating her."] And those national numbers were born out last week by a poll of New Hampshire registered voters as well:

In either of these NBC models, though, the Democrats would win back the Senate. But in the Hillary-Trumpf contest, we would still be stuck with a relatively strong GOP House majority led by Paul Ryan. In the Bernie-Trumpf contest, the Democrats come tantalizingly close to actually winning back the House, despite the asinine comments too the contrary by congenital House-seat-loser Steve Israel. Speaking of which, this Blue America ActBlue page is for Bernie and for congressional candidates who have endorsed him and are running on his issues. None of these are Steve Israel-type DINO candidates.