Petition to Block Trump at Convention

09 May, 2016 by Dave Blount

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There is only one chance left to avoid severe, long-term damage to the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and the country as a whole. The toxic and preposterous candidacy of Donald Trump must be stopped at the Republican Convention. RedState is circulating a petition calling for this politically difficult yet necessary step that makes a good introduction to the #NeverTrump case. Highlights:

→ Donald Trump has demonstrated an appalling lack of honor, integrity, decency, honesty, civility and respect for his primary opponents and members of their families throughout the course of his campaign,

→ Donald Trump continues to demonstrate a juvenile level of ignorance on the Constitution, the separation of powers, the duties and functions of the various branches and divisions of American government and basic issues of foreign and domestic policy,

→ Donald Trump’s personal history is one of excess, vice, and moral turpitude, including cheating on his spouses and sleeping with the spouses of others,

→ Donald Trump continues to engage in rhetoric that is both vulgar in language and often encouraging of his supporters to respond to provocation with violence,

→ Donald Trump has deliberately courted and encouraged the active support of white supremacists, segregationists, 9/11 ‘Truthers’, ‘Birthers’ and other fringe elements and hate groups,

→ The continued presence and participation of these fringe elements and hate groups in support of Donald Trump, with his encouragement, will leave an indelible taint on the reputation of the Republican Party for decades to come,

→ The use of similar vulgar, insulting, misogynistic and disrespectful language, crude attacks on person and family, and the deliberate peddling of disproven falsehoods and conspiracy theories and other such reprehensible behavior by Donald Trump against the Democratic candidate will, unlike during the primaries, be aggressively challenged and condemned for public consumption by liberal members of the mainstream media,

→ Every single Republican in the country will be put in the untenable decision of having to defend the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump, or be forced to disassociate their campaign from the top of the Republican ticket,

→ Donald Trump is rightly viewed very unfavorably by every major demographic, including a majority of Republicans, such that he is behind the Democratic candidate by two digits in the nationwide polls and in the polls of every swing state, and, in addition, has rendered the Democrats competitive up and down the ballot even in heavily Republican states, including the key state of Texas, and states as solidly Republican as Utah,

→ Only 6% of General Election voters split their tickets; the presence of Donald Trump at the top of the ticket for the Republican Party risks the wholesale destruction of the party’s strength down the ballot at all levels of government, in every state across the nation…

To sum up,

→ Donald Trump is, by any criteria, manifestly unfit to be President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of its Armed Forces.

As noted in the petition, nominating rules and bylaws are not a suicide pact. They can be altered at will. Delegates are not automatons but representatives, who have a duty to exercise their best judgment.

Leonardo da Vinci observed that “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” Already resisting Trump and his followers requires more courage than some can muster. But if you think it’s hard now, try doing it while some Corey Lewandowski type is ripping out your fingernails in a basement cell. Trump has said repeatedly that he would order Americans to torture suspected enemies.

If Trump is not stopped at the convention, the best possible scenario is that he will lose in November, but down-ballot losses will not be so catastrophic as to prevent the GOP from putting up resistance to Shrillary’s agenda. In the unlikely but terrifying event that he wins in November, the best possible scenario will be that he is impeached before he can cause a depression, nuclear war, or irrevocable damage to our system of limited government.

Impeachment would be a fitting end to this tragic farce, considering that the last time we had a Republican president, Trump demanded he be impeached in the name of the insane Code Pink ideology that Trump continues to espouse.

Trump’s own impeachment would be on the far more solid grounds of incompetence, unfit temperament, and unsoundness of mind. The political damage caused by Nixon’s collapse would be insignificant by comparison. But by the time Trumpism gets that far, only fascists will be unwilling to pay any price to end it.