Finding Bright Spots for Conservatives in the Results

I’ll be honest—when I planned this post, before the election, it was with the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be the next president. I expected it to be much like the exercise I did after the 2012 election, combing through down-ballot races and finding the odd conservative who survived the Democratic tidal wave to fight another day.

Today’s reality, of course, is much different. Donald Trump will be the 45^th President. Throughout the election, I stated many times that I didn’t believe that Trump was truly a conservative, and was in fact just another New York liberal like Hillary Clinton. Some of the things he said seemed without any real conviction, as if he were simply sweet-talking conservatives into voting for him; other times, he didn’t even bother pretending to hold conservative convictions.

But on the other hand, Mike Pence will now be the Vice President, likely to take an active role in the administration, and his conservative credentials are largely unquestioned. And some of the speculation about Trump’s future Cabinet, if true, is equally encouraging. Rick Perry? Sam Brownback? An honest effort to eliminate the Department of Education? Far better than many dared hope. And if Trump actually sticks by his list of potential Supreme Court justices, even better.

But the bottom line is that we simply won’t know for certain whether Trump’s election is good or bad for America until January 20^th, and probably for some time after that. Word is that an Obamacare repeal bill is being readied for the next Congress as I write this, one that could finally become law; as with everything else about the incoming administration, the attitude for now should be cautious optimism. Sounds good, but we’ll believe it when we see it.

Even aside from the presidential race, however, there are plenty of successes for conservatives from Tuesday night. Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Pat Toomey, and Ron Johnson, all fairly reliable conservatives to one degree or another, will return to the Senate, and by being in the majority their clout will only be increased. In the House, only one member of the Freedom Caucus, Scott Garrett, lost reelection. Another vulnerable member, Rod Blum of Iowa, won reelection, and several other conservative candidates won House seats for the first time. They will all join another Republican House majority in the 115^th Congress, as in the Senate increasing the possibilities of what they can accomplish.

In the gubernatorial races, the most conservative governor up for reelection, Pat McCrory of North Carolina, is still stuck in limbo as the margin between he and his Democratic opponent is only a few thousand votes, and a recount seems likely. Meanwhile, Republicans will succeed Democratic officeholders in Missouri, New Hampshire, and Vermont—not necessarily stalwart conservatives, but without a doubt more conservative than both their opponents and the governors they will replace. Republicans will also take control of state legislative chambers in Iowa, Kentucky, and Minnesota, further expanding an already dominant GOP majority in state governments.

So overall, Tuesday was a surprisingly good night. Whether the good news fully extends to the presidential level remains to be seen.

Do You Remember This?

If there is a single defining moment of this election season in my mind, it is from the first day of the Republican National Convention in July, when conservative delegates joined together to demand a simple roll call vote on the rules package—and the RNC and the Trump campaign joined together to shut them down.

Remember that?

Paul Manafort, the principal organizer of those strongman tactics, may be long gone from the campaign, but his style suited Trump’s own tendencies perfectly. The incident itself received some mainstream attention—although far less than it should have—but it illustrated a potential Trumpian future, with Trump in control of the country and the party.

It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again—if Trump loses, his influence over the party will be that much easier to purge, and the movement might yet be saved. But if he wins, he will be the effective leader of the party for at least the next four years. By that point, the damage may be irreversible.

The country, of course, would fair even worse. Trump would trade limited government and constitutional principles for his own brand of lawless executive actions, in effect no different from Barack Obama. A platform of ignoring the Constitution and separation of powers outright would become bipartisan.

What happened at the RNC in July offers a possible glimpse of the country and the Republican Party of the future, under a Donald Trump administration. A silencing of dissent, of all Trump’s critics, and a gutting of the First Amendment, which Trump has already overtly hinted at through his repeated promises to loosen requirements for libel suits. As President, he will have more tools at his disposal than merely late-night Twitter rants.

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Donald Trump’s America.

#FreeTheDelegates Is Looking Pretty Good Right Now

Remember, at the Republican National Convention in July, how there was a movement to allow convention delegates to vote their conscience and nominate someone other than Donald Trump for President? Remember how proponents of the rule change warned that Trump was unelectable, that his nomination would hand the Presidency to Hillary Clinton, that more scandals were undoubtedly awaiting the light of day, and that he could sink Republican majorities in Congress, along with public perception of the GOP for years to come? How important it was to unite the party by having an open process and giving the duly elected delegates a say in determining the nominee?

And remember how the RNC, controlled by the Trump campaign, shut down that movement, denied even a simple request for a roll call vote on the rules, and attempted to forcibly silence all those pushing to free the delegates?

Fast forward to today, when the ranks of those calling on Trump to exit the race continue to swell, and now include everyone from the staunchest conservatives to members of leadership, from Mike Lee and Carly Fiorina to John Thune and Lisa Murkowski, and beyond. Dozens of Republican members of Congress have announced they will not vote for Trump and called on him to exit the race, in just the forty-eight hours following the release of the latest Trump tape.

If only someone had warned the RNC months ago that this would happen. If only there had been some way for the party to drop Trump back in July, then there would be a new nominee firmly in place by now, instead of dealing with this chaos a month before Election Day.

The RNC could have taken the pain and intraparty chaos in July, or in October. By default, they chose the latter, and now they are suffering the consequences.

Put simply: You were warned.

November Outlook (Part 2): The Senate

This is part two of a three-part series examining the 2016 Congessional and gubernatorial elections. For Part 1, go here.

With the 2016 election likely to preserve the status quo in the House, most attention on Congressional races has been focused on the Senate side. There control for either party come 2017 is much less assured, with Republicans defending many more seats than Democrats—but also doing an exceptional job of keeping electoral disaster contained to the presidential ticket.

There are thirty-four Senate races this year, but only about ten are generally seen as competitive. Of those, all but one are seats currently held by Republicans. In Nevada, Republican nominee Rep. Joe Heck has been statistically tied with Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in the last several polls, and if he were to win the seat of retiring Harry Reid it would be a tremendous symbolic victory, as well as going a long way toward retaining control of the Senate.

Despite Donald Trump’s abysmal polling in many swing states, Republican Senate candidates are generally keeping their races close. Rob Portman looks increasingly likely to win in Ohio, with the DSCC cancelling ad buys. Kelly Ayotte is staying even with Democrat Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, even though Clinton is leading Trump by double digits in the state. Marco Rubio’s reentry in the Senate race in Florida makes it more likely that seat will stay red as well, and Pat Toomey as a small lead over his Democratic challenger in Pennsylvania.

There are five Senate races that would be keeping me awake at night if I were a Republican strategist: North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. In Illinois, Sen. Mark Kirk looks like a goner against a top Democratic recruit in a blue state, even after disavowing Trump, but the attempt to keep that seat red was always going to be an uphill battle. And in Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson has been a strong voice for conservative principles, but again, running in a blue-leaning state in a presidential year, with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket and former Senator Russ Feingold as an opponent, Johnson would have struggled even had he run on a voting record as moderate as Kirk’s. Both Johnson and Kirk seem likely to lose in November.

The three races that could truly decide control of the Senate, and also depend on Trump’s performance to a large degree, are North Carolina, Arizona, and Missouri. None were seen as likely to be competitive in 2014, but all three states demonstrate how much can change in two years. John McCain’s race in Arizona has been getting a lot of attention, but even though Roy Blunt in Missouri and Richard Burr in North Carolina haven’t received much attention yet from the national media, both the polls and a general sense on the ground among members of both parties point to close races in the final two months of the campaign.

From a conservative standpoint, it wouldn’t be a great loss if either McCain, Burr, or Blunt lost. None have exactly been known to stand for principle, all are considered members of the Republican establishment, and all rolled over and accepted Donald Trump early on in the primary process when there was still a chance at denying him the nomination. The only honest argument that could made for hoping for their reelections would be that their victories would dramatically increase the chances of a Republican Senate majority in 2017, a majority that could be important in checking the power of President Hillary Clinton.

Of course, seeing how successful that majority has been in stopping liberal excesses under a lame-duck Barack Obama, and how eager all three have been in the past to compromise conservative principles, that argument quickly becomes less convincing.

Overall, then, the Senate in 2017 will likely be little changed from the Senate today. I personally don’t believe McCain, Burr, or Blunt will actually lose (as things currently stand), but one or all of them could be in for a long, agonizing night in November.

As far as whether Republicans in general will keep the Senate, it’s basically a coin flip at this stage—although again, a Republican Senate in 2017 would be almost identical in composition to the one today, which has consistently failed to fight Obama on just about anything.

The only non-incumbent conservative to win a Senate primary this year was Darryl Glenn in Colorado, who the incumbent Democrat currently leads by a wide margin. Coupled with Ron Johnson’s likely defeat, about the only bright spots to be seen on the Senate map are in Florida, where Rubio thankfully changed his mind about reelection and will continue to be a semi-reliable conservative voice in Congress; Kentucky, where Rand Paul is virtually guaranteed another term; and Utah and Texas, where, barring some sudden resignation, both Mike Lee and Ted Cruz will continue to be two of the clearest voices for conservatism in decades.

As with the House, 2016 will likely shape up to be a largely status-quo election, although with Cruz, Lee, Rubio, and Paul in the Senate, it’s obvious that the status quo could be a lot worse.

I Was Wrong. And Ted Cruz Is Officially The Most Courageous Politician Ever.

A couple weeks ago I wrote that I expected Ted Cruz to eventually give Trump some kind of tepid, “he’s better than her” endorsement, similar to what Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have already done. The pressure would become so great, I predicted, and the stakes for Cruz’s political future so high, that either at the convention itself or soon after he would be forced to support the party nominee.

I forgot that you don’t force Ted Cruz to do anything. And I’m proud to be so wrong, and to be a member of the Party of Cruz.

Last night, in case you missed it, Cruz gave an impassioned primetime speech at the convention on freedom and the importance of the Constitution. An epic defense of conservative values, but what caught everyone’s attention—and started the Trumpkins booing—was toward the end, when Cruz told voters to “stand and speak and vote your conscience, vote for candidates…who you trust to defend our freedom, and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

The full video is below, including Donald Trump himself appearing in the audience at the end.

As you can tell, encouraging voters to “vote their conscience” didn’t sit well with Trump loyalists, who recognized the phrase as code for opposing Trump—similar to the proposed “conscience clause” rule change from earlier in the week, which would have unbound the delegates and on which Cruz had refused to comment.

Ted Cruz is incredibly brilliant, but anyone other than the most dim-witted of Trump cultists would have known going the full implication of using the dreaded c-word. He knew the reaction in the convention hall would be riotous, but he decided to make a stand. He knew that the delegates were deeply divided between Trump and Cruz loyalists, and that the crowd’s reaction would be equally divided, but he also knew that in such scenario the best course of action was to tell the truth, stand for principle, and leave everything on the field.

It’s worth watching again what Cruz said about Trump on the last day of his primary campaign.

And lest people think the pressure will cause him to crack, Cruz is doubling down today.

I said last week, regarding Mike Lee’s principled stand in favor of unbinding the delegates, that I had never been more proud of a politician. Ted Cruz’s speech last night doesn’t diminish Lee’s bravery in any way, but by going on stage before a crowd of Trump loyalists, refusing to kneel before the Dear Leader even in the face of jeers and boos, and instead taking a lone stand for principle, honesty, and self-respect, Cruz just did the most courageous thing I’ve ever seen in politics.

By Avoiding A Roll Call Vote, The RNC Has Made Things Worse for Themselves

First things first: watch this video right now.

This is just shameful. We’ve seen the Left use similar tactics for years, attempting to shut down debate, silencing their critics, and declaring the issue to be settled, but this is the most vivid display imaginable of the leadership of the Republican Party, in conjunction with the Trump campaign, attempting to forcibly silence all dissent. According to multiple reports from both media outlets and delegates on the floor of the convention, the secretary of the convention was actually in hiding, surrounded by armed guards, for some time during the lead up to the voice vote, in an effort to prevent the necessary petitions from being submitted before the deadline.

Once the petitions had been submitted, the leadership of the party and staffers from the Trump campaign were actively pulling delegates from the floor and attempting to coerce or outright threaten delegates to remove their names from the petitions. Additional signatures were then ruled invalid, finally bringing the number of delegates who supported holding a roll call vote below the necessary threshold.

Again, this is all according to both multiple news reports and delegates on the floor of the convention. I won’t speculate on the convenience of having just enough signatures invalidated to ensure that a roll call vote would not occur.

The whole reason the Trump campaign wanted to avoid a roll call vote on the rules was to avoid the embarrassment of having a significant number of delegates, perhaps upwards of six hundred according to some sources, vote to unbind themselves and thus signal a lack of “unity”. But by rejecting an honest vote and cutting off all debate entirely, the strategy backfired.

There may never have been enough votes to reject the proposed rules package. If opponents of the package had fallen short in a roll call vote, the story would have been entirely about that failure. Now, the story is about the near-riot on the convention floor, party leadership turning off the microphone of a sitting U.S. Senator, and the unwillingness of that same party leadership to listen to any dissenting views. A roll call vote would have allowed delegates to air their grievances, have a healthy discussion, and in the end brought the party together.

Now both delegates and conservative voters are more disgusted and enraged than ever, the likelihood of additional turmoil at the convention has increased, and the false narrative of party unity has been shattered. It has become clear that true unity is impossible when encouraged at gunpoint.

Hopefully the delegates will continue to remind both Donald Trump and Reince Priebus of that fact on the convention floor, especially during the officially nominating vote later today. As long as the principled members of the convention haven’t all already walked out, that is.

What's At Stake This Week, and What Can Be Done

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the next few days will collectively be some of the most pivotal moments in recent American history. Delegates to the Republican National Convention will make the final decision on whether to hand the keys of the party over to Donald Trump, and the future of the party, the conservative movement, and ultimately the country will hinge on the outcome.

If Trump becomes the official nominee, racism and corruption will have won out in the Party of Lincoln and Reagan, and all Republicans who willingly follow Trump will have shown themselves to be hypocrites of the worst degree, supporting a man who embodies everything they claim to stand against merely because he is not Hillary Clinton. Trump as the nominee will shift the Republican Party to the left, perhaps permanently, while at the same time discrediting conservatism in the mind of a large segment of voters due to the popular misconception of him as an entity of the Right.

Meanwhile, the available data still points to an historic loss to Clinton in the general election (notwithstanding the Quinnipiac poll from last week, which appears to be an outlier.) Swing states like Iowa, Nevada, and Colorado are moving permanently out of reach for Trump, while Utah, Arizona, and Georgia are coming into play. A Clinton victory, which also likely ensures a Democratic Senate and possibly a Democratic House, will see a surge of liberal bills being pushed through Congress and the loss of the Supreme Court for at least a generation. The disappointment of the most recent Court term will be nothing compared to the decisions of a Court with a majority of Obama and Clinton appointees.

And if Trump somehow defeats Clinton? He would demean the office of President, lower our stature on the world stage even further, pursue unconstitutional actions rivaling those of Barack Obama, and likely champion many liberal policies not noticeably different from those embraced by Clinton. Under either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, the country would suffer.

But the delegates in Cleveland will have the power to avert this future. There will be one last chance to prevent both a Clinton and Trump presidency. And if the delegates take this path, reject Trump, and throw their support behind a true conservative who can beat Hillary Clinton in November, the trajectory of American history will be changed once again.

First and foremost, the delegates need to vote down the rules package approved in committee last week. Doing this, even if there is no minority report to rally behind, will send a clear signal that delegates still wish to unbind themselves and be able to vote for a nominee without violating their consciences.

Failing that, as many delegates as possible need to abstain during voting on the party’s nominee, or walk out of the convention outright, or do anything else possible to disrupt the coronation of Emperor Trump. They need to vote against Mike Pence, who used to be a solid conservative but is now yet another Trump puppet, for the VP nomination. They need to do everything in their power to make their objections heard, and make it clear that they will not be silenced.

After the Rules Committee vote on Thursday, the likelihood of denying Trump the nomination is almost zero. Everyone who sympathizes with the #NeverTrump movement needs to be clear-eyed about that fact. Most delegates will be unwilling to oppose the presumptive nominee so absolutely. But if enough are willing to stand against the tide, they can at least make a bold statement of principle, show the country that not all Republicans stand behind Trump and his innumerable flaws, and begin to set the stage for a conservative revival in the GOP.

All it takes now is for the delegates to find the courage to follow Mike Lee’s example and stand up for the principles they pay homage to. They hold the future of the country in their hands.

I've Never Been Prouder of a Politician

Last night the Rules Committee voted down several proposed amendments that would have explicitly unbound the convention delegates. It looks as though there will not be enough votes for supporters of unbinding to even issue a minority report, which would guarantee a vote on the convention floor. They have until Monday to get twenty-eight votes for such a report—last night only twenty-one members of the committee supported a conscience clause amendment.

But one of those twenty-one deserves special attention and praise.

Before the committee met, Mike Lee was keeping his powder dry, being noncommittal when asked how he planned to vote on the proposed rule changes. But once inside Lee held nothing back, giving an impassioned speech in favor of the amendments, an opposing formally binding the delegates, saying that “we have to remember that it’s important for our presidential nominees to win at two levels—first to win at the primary level, and then to win over the delegates…this angst, as we’re going to see in a few days, isn’t going to go away just because we paper over it with rules.”

But that wasn’t all. He appeared to be actively whipping votes throughout the evening, repeatedly conferring with conscience clause proponent Kendal Unruh. He was at the microphone to speak on another unbinding amendment when pro-Trumpers on the committee abruptly moved to end debate, leading the senator to shout “No!” And after departing the meeting, he doubled down on his support of freeing the delegates and allowing them to vote for someone other than Trump.

It’s hard to overstate the political risk Lee took, and the depth of the courage he showed, by so vocally endorsing the effort. During the primary, and in the immediate aftermath—when many top Republicans hesitated to embrace Trump—Lee’s opposition wasn’t nearly as extraordinary. But now he stands in the company of a select few who continue to refuse to bow before the Orange Golden Calf. Only last week was Senator Jeff Flake warned that if he didn’t endorse Trump soon, “when [he] needs something for Arizona, he ain’t gonna get it…if Donald Trump wins for president.”

But Mike Lee’s courage is exceptional even among those other senators expressing opposition to Trump. He alone sat on the Rules Committee, the body with the best chance of stopping Trump’s nomination, and endured enormous pressure from the Trump campaign and RNC to merely go along with the tide. “The unbinding amendment is doomed,” he was likely told. “Just go along with the rest of us. Unite! It will be so much simpler for you.”

But, as he often does in the Senate, Mike Lee stood with only a few trustworthy fellow conservatives against the might of the Establishment. Unlike in so many of those previous battles, the Republican base will not be united behind him now. Roughly half of the GOP has been lured into worshipping at the Altar of Trump, and will forever scorn Senator Lee for his role in the resistance. In the future many Republican voters will remember this above all else, and dedicate themselves to his political defeat on the basis of that committee meeting alone.

But as always, Mike Lee chose not the easy path, but the path that was morally right. It may be one of the bravest political acts in recent memory. For that, he deserves conservatives’ unending gratitude.