Dakota Beacon

On the first day of the national GOP convention of 2016, the major topic before the delegates is whether they should be allowed to “vote their conscience”.  It is difficult to believe that a party which has billed itself as the defender of the Constitution should be attempting to require delegates to vote for a pre-approved candidate or platform. 

The excuse is that the presumed nominee and pick of the current establishment is Donald Trump.  He is so toxic that for myriad reasons delegates are balking.  His deficiencies as a standard bearer for the “party of Lincoln” have been discussed here before so we needn’t go into his character or past.  Or even his flexible present.    We have those reasons – they are understood.  Some find them insufficient to deny the man the highest office in the land at a critical time in world history, but others cannot, in good conscience, condone this.  His so-called “majority” in primaries was won largely against a large field on non-Trump candidates.  He has had a plurality – not a majority – in primaries.  This has also been discussed here – Sue Maxwell has discussed it at length.  The concern for some is his likely disastrous effect on the races down-ticket, where the GOP could very easily lose the House and Senate on his non-existent coattails.  All of these are sound reasons for disputing the nomination of Trump at the convention and allowing an honest vote of these delegates based on their own experience, morals, conscience and practicality or whatever so moves them.

Instead we have the usual machinery going into overdrive.  We have computers and communication “down”.  Sound familiar?  We have the committee whips holding late, late, late night sessions and denying the grassroots delegates opportunity to see them and debate them.  We see the same strong-arm jackboot tactics we saw in 2012 and previous years.  And this time they are dressing it all up as the “voice of the people”.  We have a total moral sellout in the (probably) VP nominee, Mike Pence.  He is supposed to be the sugar coating for this.  Well, Mike Huckabee was once thought of as a conservative as well.  We have no shortage of flexible “conservatives”.

So the showdown is now between “Never Trump” and the Trump thugs.  We will soon know how it will pan out.  In case you are thinking that these delegates are “betraying” anyone, the Never Trump people have never posed as “pro-Trump” in order to become delegates as far as we know.  However, I can tell you that I have spoken directly with one delegate who shall for now remain nameless, who told me that he said he was pro-Cruz just in order to get to be a delegate, but his intention from the get-go was to support Trump.  So time will tell.  Those who support Trump now may not know in the end whether they would have found Trump to be the deep-dyed liberal Democrat he has been for 70 years now as President because it is unlikely he will be elected if he is the nominee.  We had an opportunity in 2016 to support a strong, principled conservative and win with such a candidate – there were several who qualified and one who really stood out – but instead we find ourselves railroaded by a consortium of people who have probably never voted in a primary before and the old party hacks to foist off on us one of their own again.  Politics, as Charles Dudley Warner once said, makes strange bedfellows.  Strange indeed. 

If I were you I’d support in every way possible the First Amendment.  At the very least, if I were a delegate under duress to support a liberal Democrat for nomination at the top of a Republican presidential ticket I would certainly abstain from that crime.