Andrew Weinstein is CEO of Ridgeback Communications. He was director of media relations for the Dole/Kemp presidential campaign and was deputy press secretary to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He is on Twitter: @techflack.
1. We are Americans first and foremost, not Republicans. Voting for Mr. Trump as a duty of party membership misunderstands the proper role of a political party. Parties exist to represent the interests of their members, not to issue diktats on how to vote, particularly over a candidate anathema to the members’ core beliefs. A vote is a decision of individual conscience. A vote for president should be determined by judgment of a candidate’s emotional, intellectual, and professional fitness to hold the nation’s highest office. Questions have been raised about Mrs. Clinton’s character and actions, but she has proven herself qualified on all three of these points.
2. Donald Trump is neither a conservative nor a Republican. Look at the policy records of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell who is the Republican. Mr. Trump has supported a range of liberal Democratic positions, and he has not adequately explained his reversal on his long-standing positions on universal health care and Second Amendment rights, nor his shifts on abortion. Now that his primary rivals are gone, Mr. Trump’s conservatism-of-convenience is being replaced by more liberal stances on potential tax increases and a minimum-wage hike.
3. Presidential respect for the Constitution is critical. Throughout this campaign, Mr. Trump has shown ignorance of and disregard for our nation’s Charters of Freedom. He has questioned the media’s First Amendment rights, claimed power to order the military to break the law, asserted a presidential prerogative to expand the death penalty through executive order, and proposed targeting religious minorities and birthright citizens through databases and deportation, respectively. To “preserve, protect and defend” our Constitution, a president must also understand it.
4. There is no viable third option. Politics is the art of the possible, and the possibilities in this contest are Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump. This year’s primaries have been dominated by a “Fight Club” electorate, voters who want to blow up the system rather than work within it, but experience matters in a chief executive. As distasteful as a President Hillary Clinton would be to many, the republic will survive four more years with a liberal in the White House, particularly if that liberal president is blocked by a GOP House and Senate filibuster. Mr. Trump, however, is a threat on a different order of magnitude.
Here is the most important part:
5. The best way to save the GOP is a Clinton victory. A Trump win could create an institutional bond between the GOP and the racist demagoguery and proposals Mr. Trump has espoused while simultaneously abandoning the party’s positive messages of inclusion, growth, prosperity, and individual liberty. If Republicans rally behind Mr. Trump, the White House is likely to be lost for a generation. Voting for Mrs. Clinton, however, would signal that Republicans will not sacrifice the soul of their party on the altar of an angry authoritarian. A one-time vote for Mrs. Clinton is not an endorsement of her as a person or politician. It is a statement that she is the lesser of two evils in a contest in which her opponent threatens the Republican Party and the country.
A Clinton win also gives the Republican Party its best opportunity for redemption: running against her in 2020. She is the weakest Democratic candidate in a generation, and breaking the Trump fever in 2016 would give the GOP a chance to elect a credible, experienced, charismatic, and positive conservative just four years from now.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/0...llary-clinton/
