True Conservatives should dispense with the Trump/Pence con

The headline read Mike Pence has Something to prove.  WND editor Joseph Farah’s commentary was all about how Mike Pence reversed his support for the Indiana law meant to assure that the State of Indiana would protect the unalienable rights of religious conscience undeniably included among those the U.S. Constitution’s 1^st, 9^th and 14^th Amendments are all of them plainly intended to secure. Approved by the State’s legislature, the bill became law over Pence’s signature. But, as Mr. Farah aptly describes it,

…after signing the bill and singing its praises, Pence did an about-face—rewriting the law to render it meaningless, toothless, neutered, if you will…His convictions did not last even one tough news cycle.  It was a shocking betrayal.

Pence caved to the demands of the elitist faction’s libertine moral culture. which promotes a creed that demands the ritual murder of innocent human offspring in order to please their idols of selfish hedonism.   Thanks mainly to blatantly anti-Constitutional abuses of Judicial power, especially at the Federal level, the fanatics of this cult are seeking to pervert the course of justice into a way to force the rest of us to praise their idols and participate in their rituals. Moreover, we are being asked to pay for the privilege—in literal terms, when our tax dollars are used to defray the cost of their forms and places of worship; and in terms of conscience and our own religious integrity, when we are forced to sacrifice time, labor and the fruits of our skill or learning to adorn or implement their practices.

Donald Trump’s record amply demonstrates a lifelong and boastful commitment to this libertine cult. His decision to choose Mike Pence as his running mate is all about trying to overcome the objections of conscientiously principled conservatives, who sanely doubt that Mr. Trump has repented of this commitment.

Their doubts derive from Donald Trump’s oft repeated rejection of the need for repentance; and from unrepentant behavior, like his sly support for the forced abandonment of sexual propriety in our public toilet facilities; his plainly anti-Constitutional insistence that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell opinion, asserting the specious “right” of homosexuals to marry, is “the law of the land”; his telling failure to support the integrity of champions of God-endowed right, like Alabama’s Chief justice Roy Moore;  and his unfavorably contrasting preference for judges like former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor.

Pryor’s prosecution of Chief Justice Moore in 2003 aided a radically leftist organization’s previous (and presently reiterated) persecution of the Chief Justice on the ludicrous charge that his conscientious actions violated judicial ethics.  Yet, as Chief Justice of Alabama his staunch refusal to enforce as law any abridgment of the privileges and immunities of citizens of United States in Alabama is required by the U.S. Constitution’s 14^th Amendment.

Like so much else in his record, words and actions Donald Trump’s praise for a Judge like William Pryor as one he is likely to nominate for the U.S. Supreme Court, belies one of the key points his supporters make as they try to prove that he is no longer an adherent of the Clinton/Obama faction, even though, in the not very distant past, he regularly consorted with them, supported them, and touted them as his personal and political role friends.

With this in mind, the problem with Trump’s choice of Pence is not what Pence has to prove about himself.  It’s what the selection of Pence emphatically fails to prove about Trump. Moreover, rather than confirming the conservative image Trump has projected during his present campaign, the selection is consistent with the likely possibility that that image is false: an expedient fabrication.  Behind the curtain, this Wizard of Angry Applause is not at all what he pretends to be.

But I know that many Trump supporters don’t care that much about the issues of conscientious principle that Mr. Farah holds against Pence.  They will dismiss his concerns with the thought what ‘s important is his stance on trade or immigration. But they must already be hearing what even such an early, vocal, and deeply self-interested Trump shill as Anne Coulter is lamenting:  Mike Pence has been a staunch support of the betrayals of America’s international economic interests Mr. Trump has lately made it his hallmark loudly to excoriate (such as NAFTA and the TPP).  Pence has also promoted amnesty for illegal immigrants in various disguises.

Add this to Pence’s betrayal of conscience, and you understand why, in prospect, Anne Coulter greeted the selection of Pence a “combo-platter of disaster.”  However, people like Coulter are unlikely to assist voters they themselves helped Trump to dupe during the nominating process. I doubt they seriously want voters to think through the further possible implications of Trump’s Pence ploy.  That might lead them to consider the very likely possibility that Trump is still acting as an agent of the Clinton/Obama Democrats.

If he is, the Pence choice is a stroke of strategic genius.  Despite his decisive betrayal of conscience, Pence can be sold to casually informed voters (i.e., the ones who know only what they hear from campaign ads interspersed among their non-political entertainment fodder) as a pro-life moral conservative (for purposes of praise or blame, depending on which side produces the ad.)  But word of his cowardly lack of principle will be seeded, like a debilitating but not fatal virus, among better informed voters (the ones usually more likely to turn out at the polls). They will come to see Pence for what he is, window dressing that reeks of betrayals to come.  Not a few of them, refusing to be played for fools, will reject the Trump/Pence storyboard.

Meanwhile, respecting Trump’s most salient rhetorical weapons, word of Pence’s consistent commitment to positions on trade and immigration that belie Trump’s sledgehammer rhetoric will spread like a cloud of politically deadly gas.  Ingested by people Trump has thus far successfully taken in, they will show symptoms of confusion and outrage, weakening their political resolve.  Not a few will see it (I think correctly) as proof that Trump’s campaign is a ploy, with Pence positioned to be either a) a focal point for political malaise in the GOP base that hands victory to Hilary Clinton; or b) If the Trump/Pence ticket wins, an effective token, working behind the scenes to assure the GOP quislings, whom Trump pretends to hate, that they will get the compromised results Trump’s elitist faction colleagues demand. As President (of the U.S. Senate) Mike Pence will be ideally positioned to follow his proven inclination to orchestrate success for the anti-American sell-outs Trump’s tragically gullible conservative supporters love to hate.

Either way, for sincere conservatives like me the Pence choice confirms the likelihood that Trump’s candidacy is just a new, and not that different version of the betrayals in which the GOP’s quisling leadership has routinely engaged, after every election victory the GOP’s conservative voters have allowed them to win in recent years.  Trump’s long con advances the anti-conservative, anti-Constitutional, anti-American elitist faction agenda either way.  This, as I’ve said all along, is the reason for his presidential bid.  And it’s the reason true conserves should dispense with the Trump/Pence con.