If you’re a Republican elector, you’ve by now received literally thousands of requests for you to vote for someone other than Donald Trump for President. Many of those requests have been uncivil—and nearly all ask you to betray your party by installing Hillary Clinton as the nation’s 45th president.
This is not one of those requests.
In fact, what I’m suggesting you do on Monday is go in the opposite direction.
What I’m asking you to do is to honor genuine conservative principles and vote for the presidential ticket more than half of U.S. Republicans would almost certainly prefer to the current one, given what’s happened over the past month.
The ticket here proposed—Pence-Ryan—maintains and indeed doubles down on core conservative principles, while eliminating from the political scene an unstable figure who appears to have no commitment to conservatism. Pence-Ryan is a ticket which will be exponentially better at turning core conservative values into public policy. Why? Because it won’t be plagued for the next four years by myriad scandals, constant talk of treason and impeachment, and a terrifying volatility.
It’s true what people on both sides of the political aisle have been saying: the Electoral College was designed by the Founders to keep from the White House anyone who is (a) emotionally unstable, (b) a purveyor of (per Alexander Hamilton) “low intrigue and the little arts of popularity,” (c) beset by deeply troubling conflicts of interest abroad, or (d) prone to behaving in a manner that raises legitimate concerns about his relationship to foreign powers hostile to the United States.
All of these disqualifiers can be applied to Donald Trump.
None can be applied to either Mike Pence or Paul Ryan.
It’s also true that the Founders intended you to not merely rubber-stamp the results of a general election, but first decide whether a candidate fails to exhibit the basic qualifications for the office—something nearly all Democrats, and many Republicans, now believe. Note that even a majority of the voters who voted for Donald Trump say he is dishonest, not a good role model, and has an unpresidential temperament.
We never saw such polls with Bob Dole, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. Nor certainly with either George H.W. Bush or his son.
What was true during all those elections is still true today, however: putting country before party is the eternal hallmark of a patriot. Those prior elections saw no calls for electors to vote differently from their states because none of those prior candidates exhibited even one of the four disqualifying traits Donald Trump does.
But none of this—though I believe every bit of it with all my heart—is why I’m asking you to do something many of you already wish to do: vote for a Pence-Ryan ticket on Monday.
No—I’m encouraging you to vote for a Pence-Ryan ticket because those two men share your principles and in the month since the election Donald Trump has transformed from the candidate you voted for into someone who (a) now appears to have deceived his way to the nomination, and (b) clearly will not be able to effectively govern this nation.
Here are 10 things Donald Trump said to get your vote that we now know—from listening to the man’s own words since November 8th—were outright lies.
(1) He promised to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her crimes. Now he’s reneged on that promise and says that not only will he not prosecute her, but in fact believes she and Bill Clinton are both good people.
(2) He said Obama was one of our worst presidents, and critiqued repeatedly his personality and temperament. Now he talks to Obama regularly on the phone and says he’s tremendously fond of him on a personal level. He’s also commended the achievements of the Obama presidency, despite most of his voters feeling strongly that no such achievements can be found, let alone lauded.
(3) He said during the campaign that his voters were peaceful patriots, now he publicly says at rallies that these same voters—that means you, and the people you care about—were in fact “vicious and violent.”
(4) He said he would fully repeal Obamacare, and now says he’ll keep many of its provisions.
(5) He said he believed in “draining the swamp”—meaning, reforming Washington by fundamentally changing its power structure—and now calls that phrase a stupid slogan that he never wanted to use and can’t believe was effective. And he’s doubled down on that new view of things by appointing a gaggle of Goldman Sachs executives to his prospective Cabinet. This isn’t what America voted for, and it’s especially not what Trump voters voted for.
(6) He said climate change was a hoax; now he says that global warming is in part a manmade phenomenon.
(7) He said he supported enhanced interrogation techniques and “far worse” in order to get information from suspected terrorists. Now he says he’s come around to the view that “torture” doesn’t work.
(8) He said he’d deport more than ten million illegal immigrants. Now he says he’ll only deport a small fraction of these.
(9) He said that he would appoint federal judges who would overturn gay marriage; now he calls gay marriage “settled law” and says his position on it is irrelevant because it’s here to stay.
(10) Finally, and most importantly, he said he opposed so-called “free trade” agreements like NAFTA and TPP because they’ve cost untold thousands of Americans their good-paying jobs. But his entire economic team supports those agreements, and now even conservative radio hosts are saying that Trump will shortly “pivot” toward a strong support for both NAFTA and TPP. This is an unforgivable betrayal of working men and women.
So in light of all the above—and all that I’ve left out that you already know—what obligation do you have to a man who lied so capriciously on his way to an Electoral College victory? To a man who lied to you, your friends, and a nation hungry for courageous action in Washington, not more of the same gridlock and cynical, fat-cat politics? And what obligation do you have to Trump when the man himself has now admitted his lies—indeed, seemingly with some pride that he got away with them?
The answer is nothing.
You have no obligation to such a man.
And you’ll only do a service to all those who voted for him who already feel betrayed by him when you vote instead for Mike Pence, the other half of the Trump-Pence ticket. It’s the side that never lied to you and yours—a man who holds sincere beliefs and has been battling for core conservative principles his entire political career. Unlike Donald Trump, Mike Pence has never been pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, or in favor of government-run universal healthcare.
A vote for a Pence-Ryan ticket is a vote for the integrity of your party and a vote for the security of your nation. It’s the best of both worlds for a nation that deserves exactly that.
Indeed, voting for a Pence-Ryan ticket sends the very same message 63 million Americans thought they were sending when they voted for Trump in the first place: that it’s time for an end to lying politicians.
And a lying politician is what Trump has revealed himself to be—by his own admission.
But in addition to having been proven a liar, Trump also has shown himself to be incapable of governing effectively—and this too is a situation of his own making, and not one any Trump voter could have anticipated.
But we must be concrete about this last claim—your vote is too important for it to be otherwise—so here are five things Trump has done since Election Day that guarantee his presidency will be a failed presidency, and that none of what you and other Trump voters hoped he would be able to do in office will be possible.
(1) He has refused to properly divest himself of any of his business interests, ensuring that his presidency will be plagued by silly scandals that could have been easily avoided. Indeed, this is another of Trump’s lies: he promised to hold a press conference about divesting himself of his domestic and foreign business interests prior to the Electoral College vote, and now he’s postponed that announcement indefinitely. Democrats in Congress are already drawing up bills regarding presidential conflicts of interest which, if Trump runs afoul of any of their provisions, could lead to the issuance of articles of impeachment. Put aside for a moment how nonsensical such bills might seem to you and to many—the reality is, this is a preview of the nonsense we’re going to see in Washington for the next four years and on our television and computer screens daily. And it’s all because a businessman with billions of dollars in the bank won’t just go ahead and create a blind trust—a trust which, not for nothing, would make him even more billions—and instead insists on having his kids run the family business. Why is he allowing personal and family vanity to get in the way of the nation’s business and an effective presidency?
(2) He has revealed himself to be a friend of Russia’s murderous strongman, Vladimir Putin, in a way no American could have anticipated and no patriot can condone. After the election, Reuters revealed that the Trump campaign had been in constant contact with Russia during the election, and of course we know that Trump himself has (a) praised Putin as a great leader and someone who he admires enormously, and (b) requested on national television that Russian hackers interrupt our election however they see fit. Whatever one’s political views, this is unacceptable rhetoric and behavior. And it will lead to four years of hearings in Washington whose core query will be the following: does Donald Trump owe any allegiances to Russia, because of business ties or otherwise, that we don’t know about? Is he planning to act in America’s best interest or, at least on occasion, do the bidding of Vladimir Putin? Certainly, many Americans already feel deeply embarrassed that our leader publicly fawns over a foreign dictator—a man who leads a nation now deeply hostile to America.
(3) He has revealed himself to be something other than what his voters had hoped for in matters of foreign policy—that is, he is not, as had been hoped, someone who, having little foreign policy experience himself, will instead rely on the best minds in America to set America’s agenda abroad. That hasn’t happened; rather, Trump has set the dangerous precedent of using “Twitter diplomacy”—a madcap strategy predicated on early-morning tweets littered with misspellings and intemperate language. In acting this way, he’s not listening to either his advisers or the generals he says will be in his Cabinet. Instead, he’s engaging with the rest of the world based on his own, moment-to-moment whims. This is dangerous. No matter what any American believes America’s role in the world should be—or how any particular international dispute should be handled—none of us think foreign policy should be conducted via internet flame wars.
The result of this sort of recklessness could be another bloody foreign war in which our sons and daughters fight and die honorably but to no discernible purpose or achievement. For the sake of our men and women in uniform, we must not allow a man into the White House who would put them in harm’s way because of his own vanity and inability to use social media responsibly. He isn’t even in the White House yet, and he’s already prompted an international conflict with China—a nuclear power we do not wish to meet on the field of battle because such a conflict could leave millions of soldiers and civilians dead worldwide.
(4) Even if one thinks the Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, and the National Endowment of the Arts should be scrapped entirely, one wants people in charge of those departments who can draw down on their budgets in an orderly, responsible, and intelligent way. Dismantling a federal department is—ironically—something that must be done slowly and methodically, lest it end up hurting its counterpart departments in the fifty states and all those who are served by such departments.
Our prospective Secretary of Education has no graduate degree and no experience in education administration whatsoever. She’s a billionaire activist with no business running (or even dismantling) a massive and complex bureaucracy. Rick Perry, our prospective Secretary of Energy, is even less qualified for his position—something Republicans nationwide have long recognized, given that they’ve never voted for him for president in any appreciate numbers. This may be because he was a terrible college student who barely graduated from university, let alone studied beyond college in the area he’ll now be expected to know better than anyone. At best, he’s a charismatic oil man; the problem is, the Department of Energy deals with so many issues that have nothing to do with oil and gas that his experience in these areas will only aid him in 10 percent of what he has to do at the DoE. Ben Carson? He’s a very nice and very intelligent man—and an excellent surgeon—who nevertheless has himself said he has no business running a federal department. Andrew Puzder currently runs a national chain of burger joints that uses salacious, tacky ads to sell low-quality meat; how he qualifies as a viable Secretary of Labor even conservative Republicans don’t know. Sylvester Stallone running the NEA? Even those who would’ve liked to have seen the NEA shut down yesterday consider that likely appointment an embarrassing confusion of Hollywood and the serious business of governance.
America will be cleaning up the messes of these unqualified Cabinet appointments for years—maybe even decades. Why endorse a Cabinet whose incompetence will not only paralyze public policy but embarrass the conservative worldview that holds these departments deserving of restructuring or elimination? When Carson flounders at HUD for a year and is then removed, will it not make his conservative values look somehow slapdash rather than noble? Meanwhile, a Pence-Ryan ticket could be relied upon to select cabinet members based upon their demonstrated competence—not, as is the case with Trump, their past flattery of the candidate himself.
(5) Finally, Trump will not be able to govern effectively because his emotional instability and volatile behavior has sown an instability in our culture that will lead to persistent civil unrest.
To be clear, I am in no way here condoning that civil unrest—merely noting that conservative voters want an administration that is effective at achieving its policy goals. So a president who’s constantly stoking distracting side-battles is the worst possible choice for the Republican Party specifically and movement conservatives generally. It’s all well and good for us as Americans to point fingers at one another when protests flare up across the nation and every government action is met with a flurry of acrimony and drama, but isn’t the purpose of voting for a candidate having them do things while in office—not merely put out unnecessary fire after unnecessary fire?
Democrats may not like Mike Pence and Paul Ryan—indeed, on policy grounds they may even detest them—but we’ve had no evidence over the past couple years that Democratic opposition to Speaker Ryan is violent or distracting or destabilizing, and the same can be said for the even more conservative Mike Pence, now Governor of Indiana. But we’ve all seen—and certainly you, as Trump voters, have seen—that Trump destabilizes the nation in a way that doesn’t feel productive. In fact, it’s more like a reality show. The problem is, America isn’t a reality show—and conservative voters want to see courageous action in Washington, not a low-budget play in which neither the players nor the audience are ever properly satisfied. Moreover, the more turmoil we experience here at home, the weaker we look abroad: one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that we don’t wish to be embarrassed in the eyes of the world.
And yet it seems, right now, that that’s Donald Trump’s core skill-set.
I hope you will seriously consider the above points. I hope you will ask yourself whether anything I’ve said above is untrue or unfair or, simply, what we’re all thinking right now—both Democrats and Republicans—as patriotic Americans.
The one difference between you and other American patriots, however, is that you can marshal your belief in the Founders’ vision of America, your belief in genuine conservative principles rather than cheap stagecraft, and your abiding love of country to give this nation a ticket the Republican Party will love and that the nation can accept.
And, while we’re at it, a ticket the world will admire and can rely upon to lead on a global scale.
So ignore all those uncivil emails asking you to overturn the election of a Republican in favor of the election of a Democrat.
Move, instead, in the opposite direction: respecting the half of the Republican presidential ticket that is actually Republican and conservative (Mike Pence), while adding to that ticket a man regarded as the most principled conservative in Washington (Paul Ryan). Let’s put Donald Trump behind us and go back to being a nation in which principled conservatives do battle with principled progressives in a spirited—but fundamentally civil and honorable—way.
With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, a Pence-Ryan ticket will be able to achieve exponentially more of what Trump voters thought they were getting when they voted for Trump than Trump himself could ever deliver.
I suspect that, in your heart, you believe this too.
And you’re absolutely right.
On Monday, you have a chance to give voice to that truth in a way every one of our Founding Fathers would honor and admire.
So thank you for all your service to our nation, and may God bless the United States of America.