Don't Blame Never Trump

No doubt Trump supporters will want to blame the Never Trump crowd if Hillary gets elected.

No.  I have little doubt some Never Trumpers will quietly check the box next to his name with the other hand firmly over their noses.   Yes, Hillary is that bad.  But that may not be enough.

If Trump loses to the most vulnerable and disliked Democratic candidate in history, there are three places to lay the blame.

First is Trump himself.  


He started a campaign appealing to middle American white males primarily by stressing some key day to day issues: immigration, the economy, trade, jobs going overseas.

But Trump's biggest draw was that all kinds of folks on the right side of the political spectrum have lost all trust in Washington and feel deceived by any and every politician of either party.

So Trump had a place - a legitimate one.  He was not Washington.  He was the business guru who could be no-nonsense and get the job done.  And he found an enthusiastic base of support.

But Trump has made it ludicrously obvious that he has no clue how to appeal to anyone outside that base.  One wonders if he even has any desire to appeal to anyone else.

He infuriated his primary opponents and their supporters (both of whom he would later need) by childish ridicule, categorizing them in terms sometimes unflattering, sometimes obscene.   As a slash and burn strategy it largely worked.   His opponents, when they weren't battling each other had to battle the perception that Trump had created.

In doing so the campaign veered away from the very issues Trump had brought into focus.  More importantly, his manner, not merely crass and abrasive, but sometimes cruel and execrable, ensured that an important percentage of the Republican base would never support him.  His unfavorable ratings among the rest of the populace dwarfed his actual support base.

Once nominated, the issues lost all focus.  He, in fact, started taking multiple sides on every issue.  The people he needed most to win over not only did not trust his character, the people Trump needed did not trust his shifting policy positions. 

And when the "never Trump" movement started to gain steam, instead of reaching out to win their trust, to quell the anger and try to regain support, Trump and his alt-right minions simply attacked - viciously - anyone who hesitated to get on board, driving them further away.  More ridicule, baseless charges, twitter eruptions.

Over and over, Trump has done something right enough to begin to gain some support from those who desperately want to defeat Hillary, and then over and over again he immediately pushes them away with some stupid tweet, outrageous statement or another confusing shift in policy.  Bottom line, nobody but his die-hard base trusts him, even though many will vote for him rather than Hillary.

Very simply, he has done more to turn people away than win them over.  He, more than anyone else, will be to blame.


Second, we can also blame the Republican establishment.   Yes, their inability to hold to their own campaign promises and oppose the bankrupting policies of the current administration made Trump's rise possible.

But here's the real problem.   Washington is all about "vetting".  Party leaders typically grill candidates for most any major government role on the minutest detail of their public, political and personal history.  Supreme court appointees, for example, have their entire lives scrutinized carefully before they are ever nominated, much less confirmed.

The question is, did anybody in the Party leadership do any vetting of Trump whatsoever?   Obviously they did not.  The time to deal with Trump's sexual improprieties, ego, tax questions, financial ups and downs and uncontrollable mouth should have been prior to the convention.  Is there no one in the entire party who could not have honestly and frankly said to Trump "this stuff will come out and it will hurt not only you, but the party and the country.  You should step aside lest we get slaughtered in November."  (Which is not to say Trump would have listened.)

There was a legitimate chance to fix this in the primaries and before the convention.   All indications are the major party leadership quietly ignored the impending PR disaster that is Donald Trump.  They did nothing, said little and in the end followed the pied piper, even adopting some of his slash and burn tactics against the reluctant.  A house divided is what is left.


But finally, the blame has to go to the primary voters who bought into this con job.  

It is not the Never Trump folks who failed to see that the lack of character, the lack of substance on the issues, the inability to articulate policies or vision, and his reprehensible treatment of most anyone who dared point any of those things spelled doom.

It is not the Never Trumpers who ignored the massive negative approval ratings of nearly two-thirds of the population.

It is not the never Trump folks who failed to take a sober look at the electoral map and see the obvious - that Trump had an insurmountable challenge to win electoral votes.

Instead, the Trump supporters let anger at the many flaws of the establishment candidates blind them to every one of Trump's many and sometimes far worse flaws.  They were blind to reality itself.  Had conservative Trump supporters, particularly Christian conservatives, used a shred of actual judgment and jumped off the Trump wagon at the early signs of trouble during the Primaries, we might have had any one of a dozen  candidates who would at least be able to point to Hillary's monumental lawlessness instead of dominating every news cycle with yet another personal scandal of his own.

Hillary should have been decimated by her own scandals and should have been crushed on the issues in all three debates.  Instead conservatives who should have known better, endorsed and defended probably the worst major political candidate in history.  As a result, the campaign for the highest office in the land was almost entirely about whose scandals got more media attention and the very issues the Trump supporters claim to care about got shoved to the corner.

Trump was a gamble to begin with, but a gamble with enormous character flaws, an uncontrollable mouth, and no desire or ability to win over millions of folks who would gladly support someone other than Hillary is just indefensible.

Want to blame somebody if your "winningest-winner" loses?

Blame yourselves.