#NeverTrump could set a regrettable precedent

After having earlier supported Ben Carson (until his ignorance about foreign policy was exposed), then Scott Walker (until his campaign imploded and he withdrew) and Marco Rubio (until his campaign imploded and strategic voting required a different choice), I cast my vote in the Missouri Primary for Ted Cruz. He was the best chance to stop Donald Trump, and he would have made an excellent president. I don’t like Trump. I still haven’t resolved for whom I am voting in November.

However, the budding movement to change the convention rules after the fact in order to deny Trump the nomination he won with the votes of legitimate (albeit misguided) primary voters and caucus attendees is the wrong thing to do. Yes, I realize that younger generations believe that the ends justify the means, but they’re wrong.

There are two major reasons the convention’s #NeverTrump movement must fail. First, and most obviously, it would make the likely Democrat landslide this November even worse.The erstwhile reliably Republican voters who won’t vote Trump but who would return to fold for virtually any other nominee will be outnumbered by the millions of Trump supporters who would abandon the GOP. If you deny Trump’s supporters what they won fair and square, they’ll bolt. And while most #NeverTrumpers will nevertheless vote for the rest of the Republican ticket, most of the cheated Trumpkins will not. That would lead to a Democratic senate (perhaps even with a filibuster-proof majority) and a Democratic House. Such a scenario would empower the Democrats to pass their entire left-wing wish list into law, whether constitutional or not. A filibuster-proof senate would be primed to confirm the most leftist justices imaginable, who would immediately bless the new administration’s blatant overreach and be young enough to plague society for a generation. Such a court would regard the Constitution as an archaic, unbinding relic, replaced instead by a moving “living, breathing” standard of “public policy.” No overreaching action by either Congress or the president would be unlawful, as long as it was consistent with the public policy desired by the Democratic Party. It would not be beyond such a court to rule portions of the Constitution itself unconstitutional.

A Trump-led electoral bloodbath would not lose 14 senate seats to create the filibuster-proof senate. A “dump Trump” nominee would.

But the second reason risks even more dire consequences. Denying Trump the nomination he has already won (or even an unsuccessful coup attempt) would set a dangerous precedent, by Republicans no less, for Democrats to use as an excuse to impose their own will. There is a plausible theory (which I am not yet prepared to accept) that Trump will win in a landslide, powered by blue-collar former Democrats and foreshadowed by the unforeseen success of the Brexit referendum in Great Britain. Establishment Democrats, especially President Obama, are so obsessed with the perceived evil of Trump (or any Republican who would trespass on the presidency to which their nominee is “entitled”), that they will do anything – anything – to prevent it from happening. If the voting public goes off script and delivers an inconvenient Election Day surprise, cue the contrived violent protesters to provide the pretense for lame duck President Obama to declare martial law, and put the “proper” people in charge. If the Republicans can entertain the idea (even if unsuccessful) of reversing the results of their nominating process, reversing an election with martial law would be a piece of cake. So would end the American republic as we know it.

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