Trump Is Not the Republican Party.

NOTE: The following is a sample chapter of my upcoming book Dictators and Capitulators: A Conservative's Guide to Surviving the Age of Trump. There is no release date yet. But this is a work in progress, and may not represent the finished product.

  

      While the Democrats would have you simultaneously believe that Trump is not a conservative and that Trump’s “Trumped up/Trickle Down” is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan’s policies, the fact of the matter is that they were only right with the first half of their portrait of this mad man. Obama made an impassioned plea to Conservatives during the Democratic National Convention to disaffected Republicans that, “...we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward.  But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican – and it sure wasn’t conservative. “-1.  This surprised me, since Obama has spent the last eight years ruthlessly demonizing us, yet, in that speech Obama acknowledged a simple truth-He knows what Conservatism is, and is not… and he basically, indirectly, admitted to demonizing us these last eight years. But in acknowledging that Trump isn’t one of us, Obama and the Democratic Party then defeat their own message that Trump is simultaneously, “Trumped up/Trickle Down Economics,” as Hillary Clinton would phrase it during her first debate with Trump.  Since these two ideas contradict, only one can be true.

   The reason it is important to understand this contradiction the Democratic Party tried to sell us is because they will be trying, for the rest of forever, to tie Donald Trump as an albatross around the necks of the Conservative movement. Believe me, two hundred years from now, Trump will still be a bogey man that Democrats warn their children will come for them in the night if they don’t go spend hours hounding gamers on YouTube for supposedly being sexist against women. The fact is, however, that Conservatives do not deserve this, as most rational conservatives actually fought hard against Donald Trump.

   “But Daniel,” you say, “Trump was supported by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, Franklin Graham, Sarah Palin, Eric Bolling and Rush Limbaugh!” True. Though I will cut Rush some slack. He made clear Trump was a friend of his, but also was completely willing to flat out state Trump was no conservative. -2  While all of the aforementioned would spend the election cycle trying to shame Conservatives who stood their ground, Rush should at least be give something of a pass, since his only objective was beating Hillary Clinton, a noble aspiration if there ever was one. He, at least, didn’t lie to his audience about who Trump was. Unlike Hannity, who lied day in and day out to prop Trump up as something he never was, and will never, ever be.  Although, Rush didn’t go nearly as far in critiquing Trump as he could have.

   But for every Sean Hannity, there was a Glenn Beck, for every Laura Ingram a Dana Loesch, for every Franklin Graham, a Senator Mike Lee, and so on. Other voices against Trump included Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavin, and Mark Levin. The latter two agreed to vote for Trump, but only to stop Hillary, and both made clear they disavow and refuse to answer for anything stupid Trump might say.

   Donald Trump was a divisive figure in the Republican Party. While the majority of us were indeed angry, a small but vocal minority of us latched onto Trump as a vessel to carry that anger. How, or why, I never fully understood. People would often attribute to him positions he never took, and things he never said. Any time you would try to put forward Trump’s actual positions, or even quote him, you were accused of being a secret commie Clinton supporter, or worse.

   There can be no denial that Trump was also attractive to white supremacists, who came out of hiding to support his candidacy. Dubbing themselves, “the Alt-Right,” because Conservatism had allegedly failed, and they would carve out a new way, a new right. Trolling everyone who was not on the Trump Train, while taking over sites like www.breitbart.com, and turning countless message boards on the Internet hostile, the Alt Right made Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and every other social media experience a living, breathing nightmare. We will go deeper into the Alt-Right later on in this book. But needless to say, that while they were a small minority of a minority of people supporting Trump, their antics may have done lasting damage to the Republican Party brand, a brand that has still not recovered from the damage done during the Bush years by a corrupt congress and a president who refused to stand up for our principals.

   But what can never be said, in truth, is that Trump is representative of the larger Conservative movement or the Republican Party at large. Trump was an aberration, a fluke, an accident. Trump was the result of two major problems the GOP has got to move quickly to correct so that this does not happen again. First, the deep divides within the GOP. And second, open primaries, which allow meddlesome Democrats to have a voice in our nominee selection.

   To the first point, we will be addressing each faction individually later in this book, as we did its predecessor. Each faction has a role in the divides which keep us apart. As a long time voice in the wilderness screaming at the top of my lungs for party unity, I can attest that no faction is innocent. It’s time to stop the purges, it’s time to stop the name-calling, and it’s time to start listening. In short, if the establishment doesn’t want to advocate for Conservative policy anymore, they need to say so, and they need to make clear what it is they do want. If they do want Conservative policy, they need to make clear how they will lead us there. The grass roots, in the meantime, must find better candidates to challenge the establishment and needs to start moderating their tone. Yes, I admit I am an imperfect practitioner of that policy, but people who are civil with me out the gate find me very diplomatic and reasonable. We must all learn to be diplomatic and reasonable. We, the grass roots, must also find better banner carriers for our message, as the average person has no idea what Conservatism is, why we’re a better path forward than Progressivism, and what our end game is. Our message has been further polluted by the support the average person has seen of Donald Trump, who stands as a sharp contrast to what we profess to believe. Try talking to an average person, you will see.

   To the second point, any Republican looking to advance primaries, instead of strengthening caucuses, should be run out of town. I’m sorry, but those advocating open primaries, or more primaries, are advocating for the suicide of the Republican party. Trump lost in most closed primary states, and almost all caucus states. In other words, Trump only won states with open primaries. When he did lose in the caucus and closed primary states, he was quick to complain that the system was “rigged” by the establishment. But the dirty little secret of caucus states, and to a lesser extent closed primary states, is that the “establishment” is the grass roots activists who volunteer their time and effort to make the party function. When the actual Republicans were able to have a clear and resound voice, we loudly said, “no,” to Donald Trump. In Utah, by Seventy Percent.

   But extrapolating from that point is the grand total results, which should, in a logical and rational world, put a nail in the coffin of the idea of Trump representing the GOP and Conservatism at large. Trump did not win the nomination of the party by a majority. Not even close. Prior to Cruz and Kasich dropping out, Trump’s total percentage of the vote was only in the high 30s. But let’s skip all that math because the end result of the primary gives us the most telling look at his support. Factoring in that Trump had several states after Indiana where he had no challengers, Trump never passed the 50+1% support threshold needed for a defined majority. Again, Trump never had majority support among the party.

   Let me provide you with some numbers. Since Wikipedia offers the numbers most favorable to Donald Trump, granting him a larger vote total than I can find anywhere else, and since I know Trump supporters prefer only sources favorable to Trump, we will go ahead and break my rule about not using Wikipedia this one time only. According to Wikipedia 31 million people voted in the Republican Primary. That is out of 320 million people in America. That is about ten percent of the population. Of those 31 million people, or for our purposes, let's use the grand total: 31,183,841, 14,015,993 voted for Trump (about thirteen million according to the more reliable Real Clear Politics, but who’s counting?), 17,023,394 voted against Trump, meaning Trump won with an exact voting percentage of less than 45% of the vote.  Trump actually broke two records for a primary, most votes for, and also most votes against.-3 It is worth repeating over and over and over again that more people voted against him than for him, by large majorities. 

   That means, for the Trump supporter who was boasting that they were the “will of the people,” or even more arrogantly referring to themselves as “we the people,” their candidate never had majority support. Trump supporters were only ever a plurality. They are alone in the universe. They are not a majority. They are not "we the people." And if they had been willing to listen, the fact that they were going to lose the general would not have been a surprise. They only have themselves to blame. I'm sorry, I'm not sorry. They cost us an important election. They blew it by responding to a radical leftist by nominating a radical leftist. No one will miss Pepe the Frog and the Alt-Right. But it’s more important to point out that this means that the Democratic SJW Left’s attempts, present and future, to tie Donald Trump to our movement will be being done so disingenuously.

   This, of course, does not include the efforts of #NeverTrump to #FreeTheDelegates at Convention. The movement was designed to promote the idea that, since Trump did not have majority support, the Delegates should be unbound to vote their conscious. The hope was that they would drop Trump at Convention, and allow a better nominee, perhaps Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, to claim the nomination instead. However, the establishment squashed those efforts mercilessly. More on that in a later chapter, but it is important to bring up now to drive the point home, most Republicans did not support, nor did we want Donald J. Trump. He is not now, nor was he ever one of us. We went through great pains to stop him, but in the end failed to coalesce around someone who could pull together the 50+1 majority support needed to stop him. 

   To ensure that the Democrats do not get to brand all of us as Trumpeters for millennia to come, you have an obligation to speak out against Donald Trump starting now. But more than that, you need to call out his leftist policies, his progressive tendencies, and yes, even his blatant misogyny and racism. The evidence of Trump’s archaic early 20^th Century Progressive views toward women and minorities is overwhelming. Trump is as disgustingly misogynist and racist as Woodrow Wilson and Lindon B Johnson ever were, and we should not hesitate to call that out.

   Remember that the Democrats write the history books. They rule media and academia with an iron fist. You will be the voices calling out their lies, or no one will. You are not Trump. You are not responsible for Trump. But if you don’t let the world know that, no one will.

-1) Obama Makes His Anti-Trump Pitch… to Conservatives and Republicans, Jim Geraghty, National Review, 7/28/16. www.nationalreview.com
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/438451/obama-makes-his-anti-trump-pitch-conservatives-and-republicans Accessed 10/10/16.

-2) Rush Limbaugh's big concession: 'Are you admitting Trump is not a conservative? Damn right I am!' Oliver Darcy, Business Insider, 9/16/16. www.businessinsider.com, Read More: http://www.businessinsider.com/rush-limbaugh-donald-trump-not-conservative-2016-9 Accessed 10/10/16

-3) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/08/donald-trump-got-the-most-votes-in-gop-primary-history-a-historic-number-of-people-voted-against-him-too/

I apologize for the improper citation of item 3. It won't format correctly for this blog. 

Republican 2016 Primary Election Popular Vote totals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/republican_vote_count.html

Note: In calculating the vote totals, I went with the numbers more favorable to Trump, but also included the smaller candidates who did win votes, whose totals were not listed by RCP.