By Chris CovertRantburg.com
I won't vote for Trump because of his "bombastic style."
I won't vote if Trump becomes the Republican nominee.
I won't vote unless Cruz becomes the candidate.
Have you heard that recently? I know I have often, by folks I would consider far more erudite than myself.
From my own perspective, let me start out by saying that, considering the list of writers and pundits who combined their talents into one tight, lovable ball of garbage, you get the idea that no matter who leads the next group that goes to Washington D.C, individual rights under the Constitution will be ever more and ever further diminished. Despite the past 85 years of ever expanding government and offers of more from both sides, this group seems convinced that the idea of anyone other than Trump becoming president is a clear call for conservative principles in the selection of a presidential candidate.
Worse than that, the collection of writers are considered to be among the most intelligent, insightful beings on the right. Yet they have missed the point of opposing the evil that the left represents so completely, you have to wonder if they don't quietly question the provenance of their very paychecks and compensation.
This opposition comes from a magazine that hounded a distinguished conservative writer from their ranks for something he said as a quip, a bad habit that was carefully nursed from birth and now has morphed into electoral political opposition. I have been told that the solution to objectionable speech is more speech, but with the crowd at National Review, the solution to objectionable speech is to depose whoever said whatever they don't like.
The people at National Review don't want to hear it. They just want their way. They sound just like their opposition, silver spoons, juice boxes and all. This ain't no way to run a movement.
Conservatism didn't lose in 2008 and 2012 exclusively. It has been an ongoing, steady beat of brutal beatings, first at the hands of a hostile press establishment, then at the hands of social media egged on by the providers of the technology, and finally, the end goal and the golden dream of fascists everywhere, at the hands and offices of government itself. High technology delivered the means of mass destruction, but it took the government to deliver the actual blow.
There is no need to oppose Trump, or Cruz, or Bush. The left now can use the government itself to kill advocacy groups, destroy their opponents and destroy free speech, a final goal so complete, I am truly surprised that this government under Barak Obama has not been considered more than just a few runaway bureaucrats.
So, when a brash, wealthy, New York liberal, private businessman starts talking about all the obvious, but unspoken ills that have been visited on people, by people who love government and all the power that is associated with that love, using the raw power of government, the obvious answer is to say you won't support him? There seems to be a disconnect here, but it is all visited to one side. The left doesn't have any problems now that the government can be used to destroy whatever is left of Constitutional rights, all on the Holy Altar of tax collecting, all neatly endorsed by the United State Supreme Court, you know, the "Rule of Law", the entity that until recently conservatives have supported unflinchingly and without reservation.
You can kiss the Heller decision goodbye, all because the courts have seen to it that no matter what, resources gets transferred to government and to bureaucrats, and to hell what the Constitution says, or even means. Think it won't happen? It is happening now with the gun permits. Just wait until a challenge comes which juxtaposes Heller against the government's absolute and inviolable right, as granted by the courts, to tax and to spend. Guess which will go and which will stay?
What will the writers at National Review say when thousands of people get their gun permits stripped from them for failing to pay their heath care tax, or from a retroactive change in the tax laws, and this after 10 or 20 years of bragging about their "right" to carry a concealed firearm as granted by a then benevolent government?
And with the group at National Review in the ten or so years that that will happen, their only opposition being to the way, and the manner in which their rights have been taken from them; Nothing said about the ills; Only about the way those ills have come.
For a long time I have heard about how this election will overturn Washington, we will sweep this evil, or that evil from Washington DC. On and on and on, and all the time the power, size and scope of government has increased steadily, ever more encroaching on individuals rights and lives. So when Donald Trump says he will make America great again, I can easily assume I can start counting my dollar bills, lovingly and admiringly, because I will never see them again. They will be like children who are all grown up, ready to go out into the world and be used to further destroy my fundamental rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and all those who threaten it, like an ever expanding government.
It brings a tear to my eye. Really.
That is what Donald Trump will lead to. And the main basis of opposition from the writers at National Review?
The Donald said something they didn't like.
Chris Covert writes for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com and on Twitter