Why We’re Voting None of the Above

No, we most assuredly will not be voting for Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat in the upcoming election.

We are irrevocably and unapologetically on the increasingly risky public record ridiculing and resisting Clinton and trying to stir up all the proper public outrage that awful woman deserves, and have been since way back when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was bragging about his friendship with her and generously contributing to her campaigns and phony-baloney “family foundation” and inviting her to his latest wedding and telling his constant interviewers that she was a “terrific woman” who was doing a “great job” as Secretary of State. We have steadfastly stood in opposition to the bossy collectivist clap-trap of her increasingly crazy party since even further back when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was testifying before Congress about the “awful” economic policies of President Ronald Reagan, and assuring his constant interviewers that he sided with the Democrats on most issues, and come November we still won’t be voting even for that Democratic and liberal but otherwise good guy we’ve known since childhood who is now somehow our state House Representative.

For the first time ever we won’t be voting for the presumptive Republican nominee at the top of the ticket, though, and thus we stand accused of somehow siding with that awful Clinton woman and the rest of her nearly-as-awful party. The charge sometimes come from people we much respect, although most frequently from people we have no use for at all, but in either case we will freely acknowledge that any vote not cast for Clinton’s most likely challenger does indeed afford her some infinitesimal advantage. Any vote for her most likely challenger is a vote for presumptive Republican nominee and erstwhile Clinton pal Donald J. Trump, however, and we hope that our most respectable critics at least will respect our reasons for never casting such a vote.

There are the policy matters, of course, even if they have largely been ignored in the ten-month-long tumult regarding Trump’s latest “Tweet,” but at this point none really make the odious Clinton any more palatable than Trump. On healthcare the presumptive Republican nominee has spoken kindly of the Canadian and British single-payer and completely socialized systems, and promises that Trumpcare will be so much better than Obamacare because he’s a frequently bankrupt but otherwise successful businessman who always makes great deals, and the presumptive Democratic nominee at least gave us a decade or so of reprieve from government-run health care because of of her neophyte political ineptitude.

Alas, for the first time in our adult lives at this point we can’t believe the presumptive Republican nominee on anything at all, which is why we won’t be voting for him even if it gives some infinitesimal contribution to the election of such an admittedly equally awful person as his former wedding guest Hillary Clinton and benefactor, even at the risk of being accused of being “establishment.” Call us old-fashioned, which we relish at this point in the godawful modern age, but in something in our Republican-in-name-only-at-this-godforsaken-point souls finds that a self-described billionaire real-estate-and-gambling-and-strip-club-and-professional-wrestling-and-scam-university-and-reality-show mogul who trades in his wives every ten years for a newer model and mocks the handicapped and dodges the draft and denigrates the bravery of men who voluntarily served in the military and endure wartime captivity and regards women as “fat slobs” or “pieces of ass” and judges their human worth accordingly and accuses an already vanquished opponent’s father of being in on the Kennedy assassination on the basis of his buddy at the National Enquirer’s baseless accounts, or countless other outrages that we’ve taken time out from criticizing Clinton’s countless outrages to note, we simply cannot justify ever voting for such a man.

Nor does Trump much seem to want our vote. He spent Tuesday alleging the soon-to-be-vanquished-foe Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was in on the John F. Kennedy assassination, the sort of embarrassing crackpot theory you’d expect to find in The National Enquirer, which was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s source for the story,and expressing his utter contempt for all

>We’ll give due respect to any voter who votes for Trump on the excuse that he’s only voting against Clinton, who we heartedly agreed is at least every bit at sleazy and probably even more wrong on any issue what that the presumptive Republican nominee says he’s against at the moment, but we’d remind him that he’s also voting for Donald J. Trump. He’s voting for a man with no fixed political principles or apparent moral compass, who has never once in his much-ballyhooed life ever demonstrated an iota of concern for anyone but himself, and mocked those who have made far greater sacrifices for their or had sacrifices imposed upon them by the luck of life, and gloated about all the married babes he’s bagged and the business associates he’s screwed over and the politicians he’s bought off, and boasts about his penis size to compensate for the stubby fingers he’s obviously been feeling inadequate about for the past many years, and we don’t care to make constant excuses for it the next four years or so, and the fact that his most likely opponent is at least just as godawful doesn’t change the fact that you voted for this utterly vile human being.

Maybe this is the world we inhabit, and unhappy choices have to be made, but we choose not to have any part of it. There are still some promising Republicans down-ticket, at least here in Kansas, where Trump got his lying and phony orange ass kicked, and Clinton lost to that self-described socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders who at least believes his nose, and we’ll show up always to pick the best of the Republican crop, and we’ll hope for the best, and we damn sure won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton or any of those other Democrats, but we’ll take care not to vote for anybody just as awful.

There’s no telling how that might result in such an unpredictable year, and all sorts of well-respected Republicans are speculating on whether it’s best the inevitable disaster looming ahead be blamed on the Republicans who nominated Trump and somehow got him elected or on Clinton and such Republicans-in-name-only-all-of-a-sudden such who gave some infinitesimal advantage to that awful Clinton woman and allowed her surely disastrous range. In this crazy election year we dare not offer any prediction about how it might turn out, but in any case we want to at least content ourselves that we didn’t vote for any of it, no matter how that might have led to us voting for it.

In any case, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee doesn’t seem to care much what we think, which we’re sure is a large part of his appeal to all the Republican party’s Johhny-come-latelies who weren’t in. In his characteristically un-gracious victory speech upon coming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee he gloated about all the party regulars who had once dared to criticize him but now were eager to kiss his ring, and for once we have to agree with the contempt he expressed for such cowards. We’ll not be among them, and won’t give a damn if this earns his respect or a respite from lawsuits or Internal Revenue Service Audits or anything else might threaten for saying such mean and nasty things about him. He proudly boasts, as he always proudly boasts, that he can win without that significant portion of us who have always voted Republican but are no longer welcome in the party, so his so-loyal-he-could-shoot-someone supporters shouldn’t have much to worry about our one meager one vote, and can be assured that while we might waste it on some third party candidate that is committed to conservative principles and basic human decencies at least we won’t waste it on Hillary.

— Bud Norman

The Pinkest Republican

Yes, that actually was the front-runner for the Republican party’s presidential nomination shouting about how “Bush lied, people died” and praising the good works of Planned Parenthood and sneering at unnamed big fat cat donors during last Saturday’s debate. The same day’s death of Justice Antonin Scalia and all the resulting politics got most of the conservative media attention, which is appropriate, but it surely is also worth noting that the once-Grand Old Party is threatening to go Code Pink.

Not even self-described socialist and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the abortion-loving foe of big fat cat donors and all-around far-left-wing kook who is currently the front-runner for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, bothers with that “Bush lied, people died” nonsense anymore. Perhaps that’s because he’d rather not let his opponent, former First Lady and Senator and Secretary and long-presumed First Woman President of the United States Hillary Clinton, off the hook for voting in favor of the war as Senator, even if he’s willing to let her off the hook for facilitating a premature withdrawal from a pacified Iraq as Secretary of State, which is the smart way to play a Democratic primary, but we’ll give him some begrudging credit for avoiding that losing argument. To hear it shouted so loudly at a Republican debate, though, and by the front-runner, at that, is something hard to explain.

Even if you’re not satisfied by the sarin-tipped rockets and other chemical weapons that were found in Iraq, or discount the many plausible accounts of more weapons being shipped to Syria, and conveniently forget the many other persuasive casus belli offered for the Iraq war, and assume that an absence of more widely publicized evidence is evidence of absence, an allegation that any president knowingly lied to the American people about non-existent weapons of mass destruction to launch a war for still unstated reasons carries a burden a proof. One would have to explain why such a diabolical president would launch a war on a pretext he knew would be exposed, or why such a diabolical president wouldn’t plant some evidence to cover his crime, which shouldn’t have been too hard after recruiting the intelligence agencies of every American ally in Europe and the Middle East to bolster his made-up claims, not to mention getting all those inspectors from the United Nations to say they had their own suspicions about what was going on in Iraq, and we’d like to think it’s still hard to make that case to a majority of Republican primary voters.

Especially in South Carolina, a state where the Republican primary includes many proud veterans of the Iraq War and a lot of people who still prefer the president that is being accused of treason to the one that is being left off the hook for squandering the victory those proud veterans won. Especially when you’re Donald J. Trump, a foul-mouthed real-estate-and-gambling-and-reality-television mogul and proud adulterer and good friend of the Clintons and you’re shouting about all the good works that Planned Parenthood does, and a lot of stout South Carolina Christians are voting in the state’s primary and they’re not likely to be reassured his boast that “I drink my little win, have my little cracker” and is therefore good with God. They might like the part about fat cat donors, which as always plays well everywhere, the implied free speech concerns notwithstanding, but the fact that Trump also routinely boasts about being a fat cat donor himself might undercut that message once he goes up against Sanders.

Which makes us doubt the explanation that Trump is once again making a brilliant maneuver. Even one of the putatively conservative right-wing talk radio hosts was speculating that Trump figures he’s already got the Republican nomination wrapped up and is already positioning himself to appeal to the general electorate, which is apparently so boiling angry that it’s hell-bent on one conspiracy-theorizing kook or another, and our once-reliable host didn’t seem to mind the possibility that our kook might even be kooky enough to put California and New York into play. Even if Bush is still more unpopular than even Obama we’re not sure that the Republicans could ever win a most kookiest candidate contest against the Democrats, and try as we might we can’t see Trump winning over any of those basement-dwelling Sanders kids or Hillary’s abortion-loving old ladies or those Code Pink commies, but in any case we’d rather play another game with a conservative candidate against whatever left-wing or far-left-wing candidates the Democrats wind up with. Trump might find a few disaffected Democrats in the open-primary state of South Carolina who are only Democrats because their Confederate great-great-grandpappies were, and with the anti-Trump field still split too many ways they might be enough to give him another victory to boast about, but starting the play-offs before the regular season is over is always a risky strategy.

Our best guess is that Trump really believes that “Bush lied, people died” nonsense, and he really believes that if he’d been president the terror attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon never would have happened and that nothing bad will ever happen if he is the president, and he even believes all that “birther” stuff about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and President Barack Obama and all the other weird conspiracies he talks about with the lunatic Alex Jones’ on the “Infowars” show that he visits, and that he’s the kind of guy who responds to the kind of criticism that he got in that debate by spouting off baseless allegations of treason at a more honorable man than himself and yelling “liar” at people more honest than himself. At least he fights, his enchanted supporters will always insist.

It seems to be working, we glumly admit, but we even more glumly wonder what he’s fighting for. If beating a self-described socialist and full blown kook or a thoroughly corrupt and incompetent felon requires shouting “Bush lied, people died” and ignoring the lessons of Obama’s withdrawal and indirectly funding all the not-so-wonderful stuff Planned Parenthood does and jettisoning the First Amendment to deal with all those fat cat donors not named Donald J. Trump, then we’re not all sure it’s worth doing.

— Bud Norman

Of Sleeping Dogs and WMD

The late Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction are back in the news, and they’re proving an embarrassment to both sides of the debate about the Iraq War.

Readers of a certain age will recall that the WMD, as they were popularly known, were one of 23 casus belli cited in the congressional resolution authorizing the war in Iraq but the only one that anyone seemed to notice. When the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq failed to provide the press with large stockpiles of newly-made WMD to photograph the critics of the war started chanting “Bush lied, thousands died” and public opinion began to turn against the effort. President George W. Bush had always taken care to truthfully state only that our intelligence agencies and those of several of our allies had suggested a high probability of a WMD program, even someone so reputedly stupid would have been unlikely to launch a war on a basis he knew would be disproved, the lack of proof of the WMD did not prove their non-existence, there were sporadic reports of the chemical weapons that Hussein had indisputably used against in the past and credible theories that the weapons had been shipped to Syria during the debates in congress and the United Nations, several Democrats including both Senators who wound up serving as President Obama’s Secretaries of State also found the intelligence reports dating back to the Clinton administration credible, and there were still those other 22 writs that had been widely ignored, but such arguments neither fit on a bumper sticker nor rhymed and were not enough to persuade a war-weary public.

The missing WMD and that “Bush lied, thousands died” line became such cherished beliefs of the establishment media and the rest of the left that it was noteworthy that such a established paper as The New York reported last week that “American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells, or aviation bombs … ” The report was quick to add that the weapons were “remnants of long-abandoned programs, built in close collaboration with the West,” and “the discoveries of these chemical weapons did not support the government’s invasion rationale,” but that didn’t stop the war’s supporters from claiming long-awaited vindication. The Times spends most of its article explaining the toll those weapons have taken on American soldiers, and it is hard to reconcile that with its claims that they posed no threat to civilians. If taken at face value the facts laid out in the story also show that Hussein was not in compliance with his treaty obligations regarding weapons of mass destruction, and suggest that he retained his old willingness to use anything at hand against his enemies. As much as they hate to cite The New York Times as a source, the war hawks have found a weapon there to use against the “Bush lied” calumny.

Which raises the infuriating question of why the Bush administration didn’t avail itself of the evidence to defend its arduous efforts in Iraq while public opinion was turning against the war. Conservative suspicions naturally turn to political adviser Karl Rove, who has long been a leading figure in the demonology of the left and has lately assumed the same role for the right, and over at The Daily Beat the usually reliable reporter Eli Lake provides quotes from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and some unnamed “insiders” to bolster the case. Rove reportedly felt that that the public had already concluded no significant WMD were in Iraq, t and by 2005 was telling Santorum to “Let these sleeping dogs lie; we have lost that fight so better not to remind anyone of it.” The strategy was not without some merit, given that that the shrillness of the opposition was likely to drown out any claims of WMD and a hostile press was not going to offer any help, but given the continued decline in support for the war and the drubbings that the Republicans took in the ’06 and ’08 elections it doesn’t look good in retrospect. The Lake article has provided the more strident right-wing talk radio hosts with material for further rants against Rove, and in this case he seems to deserve it.

Rove wasn’t the president, though, and the ultimate responsibility for the decision rests with his boss. Perhaps he had his own reasons for declining to publicize the discovery of the WMD, and perhaps they had to do with military considerations that he considered more important than his own political standing, but we’ll have to await some long-off history book to learn what those reasons might be. Those history books will likely be full of facts that will change the public’s understanding of the war, and they’ll surely record that “Bush lied” and “blood for oil” and all the other bumper sticker slogans proved false, and they might just conclude that Bush’s invasion was a bad idea and Obama’s premature an even worse one, but until then no will get to enjoy any vindication.

— Bud Norman