Richard Viguerie: #NeverTrump Is Becoming More Irrelevant

On Dec. 9, 2015, when I endorsed Ted Cruz for president I said, “Conservatives and Republicans are often not the same. However, they definitely have one thing in common: They desperately want to win the White House in 2016. For Democrats this election is important, but for Republicans and conservatives 2016 is not just crucial to the survival of this country and constitutional liberty—it is the ball game.”

In the 10 months since I made that statement, the picture has gotten bleaker than it was back then. I still think Ted Cruz is the best candidate conservatives had in the race, but he is unfortunately not the candidate who won a majority of the delegates—that distinction goes to Donald Trump—and it is to Trump that right-of-center voters will have to look if our country and constitutional liberty are to survive.

And make no mistake, this election is about the survival of the country Donald Trump has promised to make great again. Obama, Hillary Clinton and their far-left allies have increased the tempo of their assaults on constitutional liberty and the external threats to our national security and domestic tranquility have grown ever greater.

Why then, in the face of the indisputable threats facing our country, would mature men and women who purport to be leaders of the Republican Party and the conservative movement do anything that strengthens Hillary Clinton, that gives her even one more vote?

I find it very strange that many of the same individuals who decry Donald Trump’s deviations from conservative orthodoxy were quick to try to explain away the Romney family’s support for Planned Parenthood and other decidedly anti-conservative organizations and institutions.

And I find it stranger still that many of the Republicans and alleged conservatives who huddle over their smartphones tweeting outrage over Trump’s kneecapping of his various primary opponents were on strict radio silence when Romney did much the same thing to Newt Gingrich.

If you are angry and think Trump can’t be trusted or that he won’t fulfill his promises I say grow up and get in the real world—no politician, including Ronald Reagan the greatest president of my life time, fulfills 100 percent of their campaign promises. 

The question is not will Trump bat 1000? It is will Trump try to undo the damage eight years of Obama and a feckless GOP Congress have inflicted upon America? And the undoubted answer to that is yes.

And in this dangerous environment I can think of nothing that is more disrespectful of the dire situation facing our country than the idea lately propounded by Bill Kristol that some obscure writer for National Journal has a legitimate claim to enter the presidential contest because Donald Trump is not a conservative—this is nothing more than a fraternity house prank, and a demeaning one at that.

For those who say they are #NeverTrump because “Donald Trump is not a conservative” on this and that issue I’m curious as to what version of conservatism they subscribe to—the George W. Bush version that says Islam is a religion of peace and led us into an apparently endless and inconclusive war in the Middle East, or the Donald Trump version that says defeat radical Islam wherever we find it?

Or maybe it is the Paul Ryan version of conservatism that says we should fund Obama’s extraconstitutional amnesty for illegal aliens, the Planned Parent Industry of Death and a grotesque list of crony government raids on the taxpayers for things like “green energy” and bailouts of Puerto Rico?

The fact of the matter is that when one examines the views of many of the Republican and allegedly conservative #NeverTrump holdouts they are a lot closer to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the D.C. elite than they are to the views of the millions of country class citizens who turned-out to support Donald Trump.

Many #NeverTrump adherents seem to reject even a conversation about the threat of radical Islam. They are all about the econometric model of open borders that is supported by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and far-left racial interest groups, and they have no interest in cutting spending or limited government, because government power is how they enforce their elitist views on the rest of us.

If this is standing for conservative principles I must have missed a turn in the road between the day in 1961 when I was hired as Executive Secretary of Young Americans for Freedom and today’s debate over whether or not the congressional Republican leaders who presided over an 80-plus percent increase in a national debt that now stands at over $19 trillion should get their hands dirty by endorsing Donald Trump.

The news media and D.C.’s elite pundits like to dance around the facts with euphemisms like “spoiler,” but it is time for those Republicans and conservatives who say they are #NeverTrump to come clean; to look in the mirror and repeat this list:

• I’m OK with Hillary Clinton appointing three or four Supreme Court appointments.
• I’m OK with Hillary Clinton appointing hundreds of Federal Court judges.
• I’m OK with Hillary Clinton stripping me of my Second Amendment rights.
• I’m OK with Hillary Clinton using the power of the IRS and other federal agencies to terminate my First Amendment rights and the First Amendment rights of other Conservatives.
• I’m OK with Hillary Clinton expanding Obama’s open borders and unlimited immigration policies.
• And I’m OK with the Hillary Clinton deciding the outer limits of my freedom of conscience and whether or not I can worship as God and raise my children as my conscience dictates.

I say to anyone who claims to be a #NeverTrump conservative, look in the mirror and read that list, and if this is you, then be honest and admit that you prefer Hillary Clinton in the White House and why. Then drop the charade and have the guts to defend your choice to advance Hillary Clinton’s campaign and take ownership of the destruction of liberty and constitutional government that her election will surely bring. {eoa}

Richard Viguerie transformed American politics in the 1960s and ’70s by pioneering the use of direct mail fundraising in the political and ideological spheres. He used computerized direct mail fundraising to help build the conservative movement, which then elected Ronald Reagan as the first conservative president of the modern era. As the “Funding Father of the conservative movement,” Viguerie motivated millions of Americans to participate in politics for the first time, greatly expanding the base of active citizenship. He is our era’s equivalent of Tom Paine, using a direct mail letter rather than a pamphlet to deliver his call to arms.

This article was originally published at conservativehq.com. Used with permission.