An Open Letter to Donald Trump Supporters

By John Zmirak Published on October 26, 2015

I get why you’re excited about Donald Trump. Like you, I find the prevailing political culture in Washington almost hopelessly corrupt, and I’m outraged at how the Republican establishment keeps trying to push through immigration amnesty without real border security. Like many of you, I consider immigration the most decisive issue that faces us today: Demography is destiny. Flooding our country with poor, less-educated people who will likely skew pro-choice, pro-welfare state and pro-Democrat at the voting booth for decades to come is not just political but national suicide. We are turning our country, state by state (see California) into the kind of poorly governed, statist quagmire that immigrants are understandably fleeing.

Like Trump, I think that the unique greatness of America is not a brute fact of nature, like the Grand Canyon, but something delicate and magnificent, like an heirloom grandfather clock. We have been reckless and careless, and the system just might break down, in our own time or in our children’s. And because of America’s specialness, that would be a tragedy of unthinkable proportions, like the fall of Rome.

I have stood in your shoes. I have supported “insurgent” conservative candidates in the past: I turned out for Pat Buchanan in 1992. In 1995, I joined insurgent Mike Foster in Louisiana — who was still a pro-gun, pro-life Democrat. I pitched his campaign manager the bumper sticker: “Arm the Unborn!” and was promptly hired as Foster’s press secretary. I helped arrange Foster’s cross-endorsement with Pat Buchanan, who carried Louisiana. I was elected an alternate delegate for Buchanan at the GOP convention. I backed Ron Paul in 2008, and Rick Santorum in 2012. I’m the furthest thing from an establishment Republican.

Because I care deeply about the same issues as most Trump voters, I want to ask you to consider whether he is really the GOP candidate most likely to faithfully execute the policies he is promising.

The challenges facing our next conservative president are daunting. On immigration, for instance, securing the border, preventing employers from exploiting illegal workers, and tracking all visitors to the U.S. who (like many of the 9/11 hijackers) overstay their visas — these are all crucial policy reforms. And they make fine campaign talking points. But getting them through Congress will be hard, between all the Democrats dependent on ethnic activists, and those Republicans in tight with the big business/cheap labor lobby. The battle to secure our immigration future will be a long and painful slog through hostile territory, with immense pressure put on the president and individual lawmakers, whom he will have to reach out to and bravely lead.

Is Trump really the man for this job? Even very recently he supported immigration amnesty, criticizing Mitt Romney (!) for taking too tough a line on illegal immigrants.

And this is just one of many issues on which we need our next president to take an unwavering, principled stance. We need to restrict the powers of the U.S. Supreme Court and return the legislative power to those the Constitution gave it to: the people’s duly elected legislators. We must overturn Roe v. Wade and restore legal protection to the most vulnerable Americans. But Trump was publicly “very pro-choice” for most of his career. And even after his politically necessary pro-life “conversion,” Trump let slip his anything-but-conservative preference for Supreme Court justice — his left-wing, judicial activist sister who supports even partial birth abortion.

We also need a president who will roll back the disaster that is Obamacare, but Trump until very recently supported a government takeover of our health system — and even in the first debate couldn’t help himself from praising socialized medicine in other countries. If he can’t even make it through an evening debate without wavering on the issue, how is he going to stand firm for the many months it will take to salvage healthcare from the clutches of Leviathan? Don’t mistake bluntness and brashness for principled commitment.

We also need a president who will stop the federal government’s abusive use of “eminent domain,” the seizure of  private property in pursuit of crony capitalist deals between big business and big government. Here, again, Trump’s history is far from reassuring. In his own business endeavors, as Robert Verbruggen put it, “The man has a track record of using the government as a hired thug to take other people’s property.” Verbruggen continued:

A decade and a half ago, it was fresh on everyone’s mind that Donald Trump is one of the leading users of this form of state-sanctioned thievery. It was all over the news. In perhaps the most-remembered example, John Stossel got the toupéed one to sputter about how, if he wasn’t allowed to steal an elderly widow’s house to expand an Atlantic City casino, the government would get less tax money, and seniors like her would get less “this and that.”

Add to this Trump’s well-documented and longstanding chumminess with Democrats such as Al Sharpton and Bill Clinton. (It seems likely that Clinton urged Trump into the race against his wife. Ever wonder why?)

In the light of all these cold, hard facts, it is our duty as faithful citizens to ask whether Trump is really the principled leader who will stand against massive pressure, defend America’s founding ideals and preserve our sovereignty. Or will he turn to the voters shortly after his inauguration and tell them that “some really fabulous people, best in the business” have convinced him of the wisdom of open-arms amnesty, socialized medicine or any of the other leftist policies that he quite recently supported? I ask you, with all respect for your patriotic instincts and your willingness to buck the establishment, to take such questions seriously.

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