Doug Smith: Author, Historian and lead contributor to Free State Patriot
Donald Trump is a flawed candidate. Ted Cruz is a flawed candidate. But I’m not waiting for a perfect candidate. I’m ok with flawed. I am flawed. (Don’t let my wife read this!) I just want him to do a better job than the current POTUS. That is not a very high bar.
Trump and Cruz both bring a lot to the discussion, and address anger of the electorate and the fight against the decline of the country.
So I am not happy at NRO and the GOP throwing darts at Trump, and, to a lesser extent, Cruz, the number 1 and 2 candidates for our party; one in the name of Ideological purity and the other in the interest of status quo. Come on! No Republican candidate should have to run against both the Democrats and the GOP.
So how about we stop shooting at our wounded and think of reasons to vote for the next flawed POTUS.
Let’s throw the darts at Liberal Democrat policies. Let’s blast radicals and criminals who want to rule over us. (Not govern, Rule!)
NRO and the GOP leadership maintain it risky to believe what Trump says. Yet is it less risky to believe Mitch McConnell? John Boehner? Paul Ryan? Bush 41? Bush 43?
Has Mitch “repealed Obamacare, root and branch “, as he promised, or raced with Boehner to surrender to Obama’s every whim?
George HW Bush said, ” Read my Lips: No new taxes. “ Followed by, I’m in, I can deal with Ted Kennedy, thanks for the votes, but you’re screwed.”
Dubya said “I am a compassionate Conservative.” That translated to only 12 vetoes in 8 years, and huge increases in entitlement spending.
McConnell, Boehner, Bush 41, Bush 43 were all flawed Republicans.
I first pulled the lever for Republican Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter. Reagan was a great, though flawed, President. I have consistently voted since then, for flawed GOP candidates. Sometimes I had to hold my nose, as when voting for John McCain, then wolfing down the Alka-Seltzers.
I have been pretty consistently lied to and betrayed by the GOP who ostensibly shares and will fight for my values for a long time. We had a brief shining moment with the Gingrich insurgency’s Contract with America, followed by increasingly blatant lies from my own party. That’s right, it was mine. I voted, I sent money, I worked to see Republicans elected. I saw a GOP takeover of my home state, WV’s legislature, for the 1st time in 80 years.
And for what? Could Obama have done any better with Democrats in control? The fact that a lifelong Republican can ponder that question speaks volumes to the flaws in the GOP.
Perhaps it is a bit Nihilistic to support Trump, a flawed candidate, hoping that his words will be more true than the GOP has been, that he will act on the ” Plague on both your houses” feeling, and, emulating Jesus with the money changers, tear down some comfortable crooks in the most second most corrupt crime family in history, The US Congress. (The Clinton Foundation, of course, is number one, with the Gambinos just behind.)
I recall William F Buckley’s Dictum to support the most conservative candidate who can viably hope to be elected.
We did not do that with Bob Dole. Or John McCain. Or Mitt Romney. Or even George W Bush. That gave us several losses and liberal Presidents. And one big government Progressive Republican. (That is what compassionate conservative apparently means.)
So, what does that leave us? We have a number of flawed people running for President. One of these flawed candidates is going to be the next POTUS.
We can easily look around and know we don’t need 4 more years of Liberalism.
Here’s to our flawed candidates.
Free State Patriot 
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