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Reflections of an Anti-Trump GOP Delegate

Melanie Sturm | @ThinkAgainUSA Read Comments - 22
Publish Date: 
Sat, 11/05/2016

 

It’s been a rough last few months, and I’m not just referring to the alarming presidential contest between the two most egomaniacal, morally-compromised and disliked candidates in electoral history. 

 

Perhaps it’s divine intervention that I’ve been intermittently away from my column to care for, mourn and deal with the affairs of my Mom, who passed away before I attended the Republican National Convention as a Colorado delegate.

 

A staunch critic of GOP elites, I ran to be a delegate (at my Mom’s urging) because I wanted to help select a presidential nominee who’d unite the “Party of Lincoln” around its bedrock principle – the democratic self-government of a free people.

 

My pre-convention column argued for allowing delegates to vote their conscience – for Donald Trump or whomever – yielding the strongest nominee to oppose Clinton whose Espionage Act violations and cover-up make her the most brazenly dishonest presidential candidate since Nixon. Her election would advance the banana-republic notion that the powerful are above the law.

 

The column elicited severe rebukes, the most scolding from Trump supporters. While Clinton backers played the “liar” card, Trumpsters told me to Think Again, grow up and get over my “high falutin ideals.” I was called airhead, globalist and RINO, and my columns were bashed for being “so formulaic they’re almost unreadable.”

 

In Cleveland, I was among the troublemakers who protested the RNC’s Mao-like suppression of dissent regarding the party rules, which had produced the weakest presidential nominee in modern GOP history. I left dispirited, feeling like a Republican in name only. Now with Election Day nearing, my swing state’s mail-in ballot awaits my vote for president, the most gut wrenching of my life.

 

As expected, the election has been an ugly slugfest punctuated by predictable surprises – leaks about Trump’s taxes and the 11-year-old video of his grotesque predatory boasting, and WikiLeaks disclosures revealing Clinton Inc. corruption. The biggest shocker is that each party nominated the one candidate the other could beat.

 

Meanwhile, a real electoral bombshell hit: Obamacare premiums are skyrocketing nationwide as consumers, providers and more insurers desert the law that’s hurting those who can least afford it. It’s a debacle foreseen by critics, though not their media “fact-checkers.”  

 

In steamrolling his signature policy reform, President Obama relied on “the stupidity of the American voter,” as Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber notoriously boasted, getting away with false claims including: premiums would decline; illegal immigrants wouldn’t get subsidies; not one dime will be added to the deficit; and “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”

 

In an illuminating New York Times interview, White House aid Ben Rhodes (whose brother is President of CBS News) boasted similarly, describing the manipulative tactics used to sell Obama/Clinton foreign policies, including the unpopular Iran nuclear deal, which guarantees the mullahs will eventually get their nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

 

Describing the White House spin machine, Rhodes bragged, “We created an echo chamber” of “prominent Washington reporters and columnists” to “carry our message effectively…saying things that validated what we had given them to say.” Hence, “warmonger” was the smear assigned to Iran deal critics.

 

Here’s the undemocratic playbook used to short-circuit the honest debate on which national consensus depends: make false claims, spin the media, co-opt the bureaucracy to evade laws/break rules, stonewall investigations, smear adversaries, and label self-inflicted controversies “phony scandals” until the truth becomes any story that sticks.  

 

Consequently, no one’s ever held accountable for the resulting wreckage: unaffordable health insurance, dying vets, terrorist attacks, sanctuary city tragedies, IRS harassment, and murdered U.S. diplomats and border guards. Not surprisingly, only 19 percent of Americans say they trust the government most of the time, down from 73 percent in 1958, according to Pew Research Center.

 

That’s because Washington is so politicized, even institutions charged with equal enforcement of laws have been sullied. Dueling media accounts of the FBI probes into Clinton’s national security-imperiling violations and the Clinton Foundation’s pay-for-play practices reflect the smoldering rift between disgruntled FBI agents and their higher-ups at the Bureau and Justice Department.

 

Filmmaker Michael Moore described Trump as a Molotov cocktail thrown at the self-dealing ruling-class system. Clinton, who preaches redistribution of wealth while living like a monarch off her public office, personifies the politically corrupt status quo. Worse then her sense of entitlement and lying is her quarter-century of behaving as if laws are for the little people, not the echo chamber’s aristocracy.

 

Unfortunately, inside the echo chamber the aristocrats can’t hear the Molotov cocktail-hurling legions outside. Though I shudder at the thought of President Trump, and worry about his authoritarian inclinations, I’m rooting for the little people to burn down the chamber. 

 

Think Again – At the risk of sounding formulaic, might the introduction of an aggressive pathogen like Trump provoke a healthy antibody reaction, helping restore the checks and balances necessary for the democratic self-government of a free people?


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I proudly cast my vote a

I proudly cast my vote a couple of weeks ago for Trump. Did I say proudly? Yes, but not because I am proud of Trump as a candidate or even person. But while he has character flaws specific to him, she has flaws that, together with what Obama has done, have already infected our democracy. If she is elected, the patient (us) will only get worse and may even die. Alarmist? Many don't think so. You lay out the case yourself in several paragraphs.

It's a tragedy that she is even still in the race. Had the FBI and DOJ not been infected, she might have been forced out of the race and we wouldn't be faced with the two choices we have.

And authoritarian tendencies? Can it get much worse than what Obama has done and she threatens to do with executive orders? Under a President Clinton will the FBI/DOJ slowly slip ever more close to becoming a Gestapo? What about the IRS?

Just as or even maybe more important, what she proposes to do, the policies she will follow, will keep us on the road to ruin. Keep the people happy with giveaways just like in Venezuela. How is that working out?

Bottom line and cold reality--we have a choice between a flawed personal character and a charlatan who has corrupted our system and wants even more control to continue the same. A vote for anybody but Trump is a vote for her with perilous consequences for our democracy.

So, yes, whole holding my nose, I proudly voted for Trump in the hopes of keeping her out and hoping to stop the slide into banana republic territory.

"Obamacare is such a big deal

"Obamacare is such a big deal for you? Give me a freakin break."

This may not come natural to you (it typically doesn't to Dems) but consider the possibility that Melanie is not voting on what's "such a big deal for [her]" but on what's such a big deal for the country.

Obamacare is indeed a big deal for the country. A big and bad deal.

I'm so sorry to hear about

I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. This must have been a very tough year for you.

I could make this a long note but I think I'll simplify it to this:

Trump was not my choice but I have (very) gradually become an enthusiastic supporter. Similar to your characterization, I have referred to us as storming the Bastille, and to Nov. 8 as Bastille Day.

On a recent long flight, I started to read Malcolm Gladwell's 2013 book, "David and Goliath," which is specifically about why underdogs so often win. He makes the point, in so many words, that the system can only be changed by someone from outside it. He also shows that an underdog's approach can't be evaluated with conventional metrics, but usually is, which causes the Estabishment to underestimate it, misread how to fight it, and ultimately to lose.

I have lost patience with those whose first priority is to preserve the party, who argue that we can survive four years of Hillary and then fix things. I'm not convinced that's true, and many people like me will suffer unnecessarily in that process. I'm 65. In the foreseeable future, my husband and I will both be on Medicare, and will be subject to the cuts necessitated by the raiding of it to fund Obamacare, and the potential -- already in law -- that federal bureaucrats will decide we are not worth treating. My husband has had, in the last few years, 5 unique cancers, 2 recurrences, and 2 near-fatal bouts of pneumonia. He's the picture of health right now, but what if someone else decided whether he was worth taxpayer money to save?

My son is serving his 7th deployment. At retirement in a few years, he will leave with physical injuries that will require care Democrats cannot be counted on to provide.

The party and conservatism will survive Trump, and his policies are consistent with mine. He has grown in this role, going from the reality-show persona that encourages and exploits crude behavior, into a person I have come to believe takes this enormous responsibility very seriously. I'm in.

My two cents.

Trump the pathogenic solution

Trump the pathogenic solution to the present corruption in Washington. Yes, that's the way I see it. I like to compare this barbarian to Attila the Hun, whose European invasion was the inevitable remedy for the corruption of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, the sick "Washington Establishment," that web of self-serving back-scratchers, includes the Republicans as well. Then there's the media, little better than a liberal choir. For the connected, the pickin's have been too good for too long. Any fool can see that the fix has been in for Hillary. God help us, we just might need the barbarian.

I understand your struggle

I understand your struggle with the Presidential nominees. I think the majority of Americans concur.

I've decided I'll vote crude over corrupt any day of the week if those are my only choices. Check out Trevor Loudon's "Enemies Within" and you'll understand what I mean.

No choice. We must believe

No choice. We must believe Trump will be that Molotov cocktail on both sides
of our political establishment. Both sides Republican and Democrats!

Boy I wish I could write with

Boy I wish I could write with the style and grace of you Melanie! I am sorry for the loss of your Mom.

You have encapsulated my sentiments as closely as any I have read. Thank you

Much too subtle for me.

Much too subtle for me.

So instead of (if Clinton

So instead of (if Clinton wins) regrouping as a party and finding, promoting and electing great conservative leaders, lets just put an educated, unread world class jack ass who has no earthly clue what he is doing and is entirely incompetent in the White House to shake things up? See what happens?

What me worry? That's your suggestion for thinking again? Who cares about Russian imperialism, markets collapsing, white supremacists, etc..You're now the anarchist from high atop Red Mountain? Obamacare is such a big deal for you? Give me a freakin break.

What tripe!!! If you have to

What tripe!!! If you have to agonize over your vote for DJT, keep it to yourself!!! If, after comparing DJT to Ma Cinton, you have to apologize for your DJT vote, keep it to yourself! If you choose to climb onto a cross and crucify yourself, keep it to yourself!

I will vote for DJT for many reasons, one being that he is NOT Hillary Clinton!!!

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