Dakota Beacon

The 2016 presidential election presents two candidates commonly viewed as flawed. One candidate apparently has a huge advantage over the other.

One candidate is an outsider, anti-establishment, non-elitist who handily beat seventeen professional politicians during the primary season. He has never held elected office. The establishment felt so outraged and threatened that some of their leadership vowed not only to not support their nominee; they publicly stated they would support the nominee of the opposite party instead.

The other candidate is a slick insider professional politician who has been in government for over forty years. In spite of her many scandals, and because of her liberalism, she is the darling of the mainstream media, Hollywood and the left in general. Many foreign leaders bought influence hoping that she will win the White House.

This election boils down to a relatively easy choice. If people are content with the past eight years of political ineptness harming the economy, national security and America’s standing in the world and wishes to continue along this path, then Hillary Clinton is the clear choice. If people see the government of the past eight years moving in the wrong direction, then Donald Trump is the choice. Since pollsters tell us the race is close, the option to sit out this election could easily result in a Clinton presidency.

Keep in mind that the mainstream media very much favors Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Trump is treated with hostility. Editorial boards decide what the public will see and how they will see it. In their biased view they favor Clinton.

The candidates’ position on a few issues may well indicate how they would perform in office.

-- Border Security: Clinton opposes any security fence across America’s southern border. Trump would control the flow of illegal border crossers with a wall supplemented with additional security personnel permitted to fully perform their duties under the law.

-- US Supreme Court: Clinton indicated she would appoint justices with the same liberal orientation as four of the eight sitting justices. Trump has provided a list of eleven possible nominees with the same constitutionalist thinking as former Justice Antonin Scalia. Trump’s potential picks have been vetted by The Federalist Society.

-- VP Running Mate: People are known by the company they keep and with whom they choose to surround themselves. Clinton chose Tim Kaine. His leftist record indicates he is more liberal than Bernie Sanders. His voting record in the US Senate shows he was more liberal than both Senators Obama and Clinton. Trump chose Indiana governor Mike Pence as a running mate. As governor Pence reduced taxes and cut regulations. Trump and Pence are supported by Franklin Graham, Newt Gingrich, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee.

-- Terrorism: Clinton openly advocates a 500 percent increase in Syrian refugees. How these people would be vetted she doesn’t say – probably because they cannot be vetted. She has also stated that she does not believe any refugees to be a threat or a burden. Trump advocates a temporary halt to all Muslim immigration until such time as potential terrorist infiltrators embedded with legitimate refugees can be sorted out. He further advocates enforcing the laws already in place to cull out those who should not be admitted by law.

-- Jobs and Taxes: Clinton calls for a $10 trillion tax increase (“tax the rich”) over ten years. This is an anti-growth plan that would hit most businesses hard as they struggle to remain solvent. Her plan would shed 300,000 jobs. Trump would cut taxes by $12 trillion stimulating business growth resulting in higher employment and an expanded tax base from which a modest tax rate would raise far more revenue than tax hikes alone ever could.

Viewing issues from Clinton’s liberal perspective has produced more entitlements, bigger government, more victims, more political correctness and ultimately more problems.

Viewing issues from a standard Republican perspective has resulted in continued spending to the detriment of American interests, inability to recognize real problems, ineffective leadership and appeasement with the left.

Trump is neither a Democrat nor a standard Republican; he is neither a liberal nor a conservative. He has been identified by some as a pragmatist – a goal-oriented person who is focused on solving problems. He sees a problem and understands it must be fixed.

The choice is not difficult. One candidate is a scandal-ridden, ambitious elitist under FBI investigation and engaged in the politics of personal enrichment through her use of public office. The other is an outsider, not a professional politician and who would not be beholden to special interests, outspoken, not politically correct, a very successful problem-solving businessman who connects with people and who truly has a heart for America.

And -- he is neither driven by nor intimidated by the mainstream media.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)