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If it smells bad, it’s bad

Donald Trump wasn’t my candidate. Lacking a political or social track record appealing to my values, he was going to be enjoyed for having mixed it up with the corrupt political establishment.

But then Ted Cruz began behaving in ways inconsistent with my values, too, and I began second guessing my loyalty to his campaign.

American voters across the country have increasingly complained about voterless primaries run by insiders. Actual voters, public opinion, have been shunted aside in Colorado, Wyoming, Indiana, and elsewhere.

We are then lectured about “the rules,” and how if people want to win, they need to play by the rules.

Well, in Georgia there were no rules. It was Lord of the Flies, anarchy, where voter sentiment was tossed out and insiders voted themselves into delegate roles inconsistent with the actual vote outcome.

Rules? The rules here are meaningless. They change with the wind. They’re open to interpretation. They apparently don’t mean much at the end of the Election Day, and across America actual voters are complaining that something smells bad. They’re saying they are being disenfranchised.

If our voters say it smells bad, then it’s bad.

On Facebook some people I know and respect assert that Trump is “whining” about losing, that he’s disorganized, that he doesn’t care about or want to learn the various state rules. That he doesn’t want to play by the rules.

Problem with this thinking is, Trump is merely giving voice to the hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens feeling shut out from their political process. When our fellow citizens express these concerns, we must listen. When they say they’re being ripped off by insiders playing by rules that are by their nature fast and loose, we should listen.

When voting fails, the fabric of society is tearing.

Real conservatives are principled. First and above all else, conservatives follow our Constitution and the basic, essential principles devolving from it. Like one citizen, one vote as the basis of our republic.

People who say they don’t care about these claims, who say they don’t care about Trump or his supporters, are really saying they just want to win and they don’t care how they do that.  And that right there is as unprincipled as it gets.

Cruz’s character is being tested here. In my sad opinion, this candidate I donated to, campaigned for, lined up endorsements for in Pennsylvania, is demonstrating poor character. He should be disavowing the voterless primaries he has “won,” as well as the delegates he has “turned,” despite the will of the voters who created those delegates in the first place.

No question, Cruz better represented my values early on. But now, his actions say that my perception of his values was wrong. And thus, I’m not voting for that, or him. I’m voting for the voters and their voice, their best advocate, Donald Trump.

2 Comments

  • Apr 25th 201620:04
    by Akiva

    Ahh Josh. How disappointed I am to see that you are voting for Donald Trump. But more than disappointed, I must admit a degree of confusion. On the one hand you say that “real conservatives are principled. First and above all else, conservatives follow our Constitution and the basic, essential principles devolving from it.”
    In other words – “The rules.”
    We may not like the rules. We may not agree with the rules or their outcome. Nevertheless, they are “the rules.” They apply to the Constitution (doesn’t the Supreme court interpret the meaning or intent of the Constitution or legislation?), the IRS (or is taking each and every deduction which our knowledgeable accountant gets for us, not playing “fast and loose” with the rules?), or the rules of the National Political Organization and each of the State organizations. In this case, we may not like the rules that each State Committee uses or how they interpret them, but they are the rules. Without rules we do have, as you suggest, “Lord of the Flies, anarchy.”
    In many cases, States run “open primaries”. How is this not “disenfranchising” the people who have worked – as you and I have – for years to promote a Party and a political agenda? People can become “instant whatevers” and with enough momentum select a candidate to represent a Party, who is the antithesis of everything the Party stands for or has stood for. It’s even possible, in a perfect storm situation for enough people to put in a candidate that they know their candidate will have no trouble beating, or as we have both seen on the local level, write in a candidate from the other party, so that there is no contest in the general election.
    I am not suggesting that Donald Trump is such a Trojan Horse, although I believe a good case can be made for that suggestion.
    What I am saying is, whether we like the rules or not, Ted Cruz is and has been playing by the rules. In this instance, he and his organization appear to be more sophisticated that Donald Trumps’. They understood or researched “the rules”, and applied them to their advantage. Mr. Trump did not. In fact he waited so long in his campaign to do many things – hire speech writers; learn to use a teleprompter; get people who were familiar with the electorate; tec. He also didn’t learn the “rules, until it was too late.
    The American people are not being disenfranchised. They have the opportunity to express themselves in the General Election, and if they feel that the Party “did them wrong”, they are welcome to vote for another candidate, and make the Party pay for its errors. I hope they don’t, because I believe that would be a disaster for our country.
    Two more things:
    If we are talking about people being disenfranchised – “one citizen, one vote”, what about the millions of people who voted for the other 16 people that were running? Where is their voice? Don’t they count? If you add their numbers up, Mr. Trump doesn’t have a majority of the sentiment of the people.
    I don’t like Mr. Trump. I don’t like him because in all the months that I have been listening to him, other than “building the wall” which Mexico is going to pay for, I have yet to hear anything substantive from him. He is going to make things great. How? He is going to bring jobs back from China and overseas. How? I, quite frankly, have had my fill of “you have to vote for it, before we can tell you what it is.” That’s how we got ObamaCare. I don’t want any more of that.
    There are rules in the Party that I don’t like either. But they are the rules. I hope you will re-consider before you vote tomorrow. I believe that Ted Cruz is the principled Conservative that we are both looking for, and what our Party and Country desperately needs.

    • May 5th 201617:05
      by Josh

      Thank you for your comment, Mark. I agree with you that Ted Cruz was the conservative standard bearer, and he had my money and my vote til the end, but most voters do not want a lawyer and a bunch of political insiders telling them that “rules” make their votes unnecessary, which is what happened in many late primaries. It was spitting in the eye of the principle of one citizen, one vote. The “rules” were vague and meaningless, changing with the wind, changing with who was in what room at a given moment. How a candidate can win 50% of the primary vote but end up with 10% of the delegates is like Russia, or China, or some other fake country. The appearance of vote stealing was terrible. A real conservative would never have allowed himself to be caught up in something like that, and yet Cruz trumpeted his voterless “wins” as some sort of vindication. Like millions of other Americans, including a lot of former Cruz supporters, his behavior in the last primaries really upset me and caused me to turn my back on him. Cruz shot himself in the foot. Does this make Trump great? No. I still don’t know all of what Trump stands for, but what I do know is good enough: A) He is an American, B) He loves America, C) He is willing to fight for the basics that make America great. Cruz stood for all the right policies, but he did not seem like a fighter, nor did he seem to be an American who above and beyond all else, protects the concept of One Citizen, One Vote.

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