According to Roger Kimball,
Both are utterly unfit to be president of the United States. They are equally bad, though in different ways. Trump, not yet having access to the levers of power, has so far shown himself to be personally and professionally disreputable. Hillary, first as the appendage, latterly as the prop of her once-charismatic husband, has been a boil on the countenance of the public for decades. Either would be a disaster for the country.
I grant that Trump and Hillary are bad in different ways, but how does Kimball know that they are equally bad? By what process of calculation or reasoning did he arrive at this assertion? As it stands, Kimball's claim is a gratuitous assertion and the Latin maxim applies: Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. A bare assertion is adequately met with a bare counter-assertion. But I will do better and give seven reasons why Hillary is worse. I conclude that if one is a conservative, and if Trump and Hillary are the nominees of their respective parties, then one ought to vote for Trump. This is obviously consistent with holding, as I do hold, that the nominations of Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders would offer the voters a better choice, and in a two-fold sense: a starker choice ideologically speaking, and a choice between two basically decent people. By the way, it is astonishes me that there are blind partisans who think that the moral character of a candidate is irrelevant to his fitness for office. But I suppose that is what makes blind partisans blind.
A. Trump might appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court. But we KNOW that Hillary won't. This reason by itself ought to incline one to take a stand against the leftist candidate. I don't need to explain to my astute readers how important the composition of SCOTUS is. The composition of SCOTUS 'trumps' in long-term importance the identity of POTUS, if you will excuse the pun (and even if you won't.)
B. It is a very good bet that Trump will put a severe dent in the influx of illegal aliens across the southern border. But we KNOW that Hillary will do nothing to stem the illegal tide. If anything she'll encourage it because in her cynical eyes they are 'undocumented Democrats.' The strategy of the Left is to alter the demographics of the USA in such a way that conservatives are permanently rendered politically ineffective.
You will have noticed by now how liberals routinely suppress the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants by speaking of immigrants or 'migrants' without qualification. Michael Dukakis -- remember him? -- recently went on about how Trump's ancestors came from Germany. Right, but they immigrated legally. So how is that relevant to the topic of illegal immigration? Here again we see another example of liberal mendacity. Dukakis, De Blasio, and the usual suspects misrepresent their opponents as wanting a stoppage of all immigration. They are lying.
C. A third thing Trump might very well do is stop the outrage of sanctuary cities. But we KNOW Hillary won't. By the way, what do sanctuary cities provide sanctuary from? The rule of law.
D. A fourth thing Trump can be expected to do is enforce civil order and free speech rights in the face of such disorderly elements as the members of Black Lives Matter. These liars and thugs have targeted the police and are actively working to undermine the rule of law. They disrupt speakers. One even disrupted a speech by Bernie Sanders! Hillary is in bed with them. She repeats all the leftist lies about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, 'mass incarceration,' 'white privilege,' and so on. And what is most despicable is that she does it cynically for her own personal advantage.
When I floated this reason earlier, a reader objected:
If there is one thing that Trump is not doing and not showing any interest in whatsoever, it’s enforcing civil order, and he isn’t much for free speech either. (Except, obviously, when he is the beneficiary.) On the first point, Trump talks about the good old days when protesters would get roughed up, talked about wishing he could punch someone in the face, ever so slyly suggests that his followers will riot if the GOP denies him the nomination at the convention, has offered to pay the legal bills of a follower who cold-cocked a protester, and his conduct in the dispute between Michelle Fields and his chief of staff is rather poor as well. As for free speech, he’s a well-chronicled disaster.
I disagree thoroughly with my reader's first point. The single most important issue respecting the question of civil order is control of the nation's borders. Hillary will do nothing on this issue except lie about it. Trump may do something about it. See (B) above. This clinches the matter for me. My reader strains at a gnat while swallowing a camel when he brings up Trump's threatening remarks. Ask yourself: which is worse, Trump's words or the repeated and well-orchestrated leftist disruptions of conservative events? Words or actual physical violence?
As for my reader's second point, here he is on solid ground.
E. A fifth thing Trump might do is defend religious liberties. We KNOW that Hillary won't. Never forget that the Left is anti-religion and has been since 1789. Part of the reason for this is that the Left is totalitarian: it can brook no competitors to State power. This is why it must destroy belief in God and in the family. The god of the leftist is the State, the apparatchiki of the latter being the State's 'priesthood.'
F. A sixth thing Trump might do is defend Second Amendment rights. We KNOW that Hillary won't. She is a mendacious 'stealth ideologue' who won't admit that she is for Aussie-style confiscation, but that is what the liberty-basher and Constitution-trasher is for. She realizes that guns in the hands of citizens are a check on her leftist totalitarianism.
G. And then came Brussells. A seventh thing Trump might do is take serious and 'meaningful' steps against Islamic terrorism. We KNOW that Hillary won't.
Add these reasons together and you have a strong cumulative-case argument for the preferrability of Trump over Hillary should it come to such a contest.
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