What are Republicans who recognize that Trump would be a disaster as President supposed to do? Some will outwardly support him, while hoping that he loses and perhaps working quietly to undermine him if it appears he might win. But that means tacitly supporting Hillary Clinton. Some will, for political or even possibly principled reasons, find it impossible to endorse Trump. Does that mean openly supporting Clinton? The day Clinton wins election, Trump becomes irrelevant, and the job of the Republican media machine will be to maximally vilify her, as they have been doing, and as they did to her husband and to Obama. How will it feel then to be a prominent Republican who endorsed Hillary? How can you function in the party? If you are a donor, you will be welcomed back, because money is always greeted with warm hugs, but if you are a politician, an operative, a pundit? If Hillary wins, the dangers of Trump will never be realized and therefore never be proven to those who don’t want to see them. It will be possible retrospectively to pretend those dangers were never real, as there is no possibility of otherwise being proven.
Jonah Goldberg, discussed by Booman in a recent post, is a case in point. He doesn’t want to endorse Trump, because he doesn’t want that hanging around his neck later. But endorsing Clinton would be worse for him, particularly if Clinton wins, as that endorsement will never become irrelevant while she sits in the Oval Office. You notice Colin Powell has remained a non-entity on the right since endorsing Obama.
His way out would be to endorse the Libertarian ticket, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. Here is a recent ad of theirs, currently making the rounds on social media:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQv_6GXVbDw
Unlike almost all third party candidates in history, and unlike Donald Trump, these men are former governors and therefore both qualified for the Presidency by conventional standards. Their platform conserves the pro-wealth, pro-business core of the Republican platform, which Trump does not, entirely, and which is what the Republican elite really cares about. It does mean cutting the religious right and the militarists loose, but neither of those are pulling much weight in the Trump campaign either, and the consequences are limited since these men are not likely to take office and that would not be the point of endorsing them.
If Hillary Clinton takes office, the Republicans are facing the prospect of 16 consecutive years of a Democratic Presidency, something that has not happened since Roosevelt/Truman. It will leave the Supreme Court with a center-left majority impossible to surmount for decades. And this will happen while the Republicans are in disarray, trying to reassemble their ideology, party, and coalition from the smashing Trump has provided. Many of them will want to roll the dice on an alternative.
And Johnson/Weld don’t have to win. They only have to carry a few states, enough to deny either candidate an electoral majority. That throws the election to the House. Each state in the House gets one vote, which will actually increase the Republican majority. The House is nutty enough to choose Trump. Impossible to imagine they choose Clinton. And if they fail to decide, I believe it would go to Ryan by default (hat tip N1chlas for pointing this out), which is an outcome most of them and certainly the Republican establishment would prefer anyway.
What could Johnson/Weld achieve with real money behind them and with the media covering them and taking them seriously, which would happen if they found support among the Republican elite? They are both apparently popular in their homes states. If Weld took Massachusetts, that would be a huge blow to Clinton. There are also swing states with Libertarian leanings, like Colorado and Wisconsin. It could only take a few to deny Clinton an electoral majority.
The pot vote could be a minor factor. Clinton will find it hard to give in on this, even though she probably smoked along with Bill, back in the day. Hippy-punching is instinctive for her. The Libertarian Party has been pro-legalization, no ifs, ands, or buts, all the way back to the 70s and has never wavered. If all you care about is pot legalization, they have earned your vote. However, there are bigger issues, and I think most of the pro-pot voters will see that and will see as well that at this point they are winning, and Clinton is not going to spend that much political capital opposing them, just as Obama did not. Still pot may be good for a few percent at the margin.
One more point. Clinton is already going heavily negative on Trump and rightly so. Trump will go heavily negative on her as well, because that’s all he knows how t do. In a two-person race, this is zero-sum. But if Johnson gets any traction at all, having the two major candidates do their best to make one another toxic can only help him.
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