The conservative commentator David French:
There are few things in life more frustrating than watching your friends become victims before your very eyes and being powerless to stop it.
The Kentucky church my wife and I frequented early in our marriage was one of the best churches I’ve ever attended. Never before or since have I seen such zeal for the Gospel or such a desire to reach the most desperate and vulnerable members of society.
It wasn’t a wealthy church. I was the only lawyer in the congregation, and there was only one doctor. Many people struggled to make ends meet. Sadly, that rendered them vulnerable to scams, and when a diet-pill pyramid scheme started racing through the congregation, I was aghast. People were spending money they didn’t have to join networks and create “down lines,” firmly believing that economic salvation was at hand. The sales pitch was slick, but the pills scarcely disguised the pyramid. One presenter even said, “You can get rich without even selling any pills.”
I’d worked on consumer fraud cases before, and I thought that I could help stop the madness. I went to the presentations, I researched the materials, and then I started talking to friends.
Some listened, but most got mad and a few got furious. To this day, those are some of the most painful conversations I’ve ever had, and I realize now why:
My friends were hearing two voices.
One of them was speaking authoritatively about numbers and dollars and selling hope.
The other was speaking with the same degree of assurance about numbers and dollars but was instead trying to extinguish hope.
I never stood a chance.
Yes, voters have a responsibility to exercise good judgment. But the greatest responsibility lies with the con artist and his knowing enablers. Trump — like Obama before him — is selling hope. But that hope is a false hope, and all those “establishment” figures who scorn the alleged “moral preening” of Never Trump know it. They’re aware of the pyramid scheme, and they choose to further it anyway, like the minions who circulate to cheap hotels across the land, pitching scams in meeting rooms. They’re co-conspirators. No one likes to be told they’re wrong. But it is, in fact, wrong to support Trump, and when I see a member of the GOP establishment selling the Trump brand, I’m transported back to Kentucky, watching a huckster exploit people I love.
For the full context, you can read the whole thing here.
Update: Note that French is mainly talking about Trump support among the GOP Establishment. He undoubtedly thinks it’s wrong for anyone to vote for Trump. I’d qualify this a little and say that though I disagree with those who will vote for Trump, I understand the reasoning of some.
The best thing I’ve read on Trump support by evangelicals, which captures my sentiments precisely, is this piece by David Bahnsen. Here’s a lengthy excerpt:
There are three categories of Trump supporters on the right. . . .
First, there are the people who were early adopters, those who actually jumped on his bandwagon well before there was any remote reason to do so. They are his apologists. They either ignore or shrug off his comments on McCain/POW record, his mocking a disabled person, and his inability to so much as name a major player in the global terrorist Jihad. On the low brow, pedestrian punditry level, they include Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter. There are others too. The rather lengthy list here includes a lot of people I didn’t care for before the election, and I certainly have no use for them now. I suspect for them, Trump had them the second he said “Mexican immigrants are rapists” – illegal immigration is their one-trick pony. And Trump “tapped into something” with them (perhaps the worst and most brainless cliché to have come out of the 2016 election).
Then there is category two Trump supporters, and this is the list that has by far caused me the most grief the last eight months. It is a list that has forced hours of soul-searching upon me, and frankly created an entirely new formulation of who I respect in conservative leadership. These are the people that well before Trump had sewn up the nomination, well before we were stuck with the “Trump or Hillary” dilemma, as a pure result of seeing him as a front-runner, not only threw in the towel and began to cozy up to him, but began a totally unforgivable process of rationalizing his perverse behavior and reconciling his ideological heresies through unrelenting gymnastics that still do not make any sense whatsoever. This list is massive, and I mean truly massive. I actually have a list. I am not kidding. It has many, many public figures on it, and it has caused me to lose immense respect for people you all know, and people you do not know. This list is not populated with people that “Trump tapped into.” It is not filled with people who “saw the light on the plight of the white middle class in rural and rust belt America.” It certainly is not filled with people who realized that “Trump alone can defeat ISIS.” It is filled rather with people who, I firmly believe, lacked the courage of their own convictions. It is a sad list, for it is people who absolutely should have known better. From Mark Steyn to Newt Gingrich to Ben Carson to Bill Bennett, and just innumerable others I can’t bear to list by name, this is the list that enabled Trump. And it has been painful to watch.
The third category is . . . the “look, Trump was not my guy, but I now have to support him because he’s certainly better than Hillary” camp. I strongly suspect the bulk of you reading right now are in this camp. Few category 1 and category 2 Trumpkins read my writings, and the sentiment embedded in category 3 is entirely understandable.
However, before I can present my response to this camp and discuss the “what now” of the U.S. Presidential election, I want to split category 3 up into two groups.
I will call the first “category 3a”, and they are those who were not enablers of Trump but now are prepared to support him to stop Hillary, but in doing so, have decided to actually defend much of the indefensible about him.
Category 3b is, in my estimation, more benign. It essentially is the group of people who really find Trump nauseating, and while they may hope he surprises them in a positive way, they are disheartened that he is the candidate, but simply cannot stomach the thought of a Hillary Presidency.
In other words, category 3a are those lying to themselves and others because they hate Hillary so much; category 3b are those who are telling the truth, and simply dealing with a painful electoral reality.
My response to 3a is this: Please join category 3b. It is not necessary to sell your soul to go to the “stop Hillary” level of thinking, and you lose all credibility when you accompany your “stop Hillary” thinking with a retroactive defense of that which is indefensible. Trump has not “tapped into something” on minimum wage, trade deals, ISIS, law and order, or how bold it is to insult disabled people and mock POW’s. His warm and fuzzy comments about Vladimar Putin and Saddam Hussein are not cute, and they actually reflect the intellect of a total dunce. He is a fine marketer and he has tremendous enablers in the press, but that does not mean it is “Reaganite” to have absolutely no policy depth (or employed policy advisors). It’s frankly shameful. It will likely cost him the election against the second most unpopular person in America. But you can go to category 3b without the corrosive sell-out actions of category 3a, so please resist that temptation.
Bahnsen then goes on to address category 3b supporters. It’s worth a read.
