The mean girls in the #NeverTrump movement want to shame people into not supporting Trump, saying things like "well then you can't call yourself a conservative". But what other choice do we have? I'm fully aware that Trump isn't that conservative and that he is embarrassing (the latest fake spokesman thing surely isn't helping my view of him) but there are just no viable options other than voting for him. Let's go down the last, shall we?:
An independent conservative candidate: There has been talk of getting someone like Ben Sasse, John Kasich or even Mitt Romney to run as an independent. This is such a pipedream. Just the whole process of getting on the ballot is quite daunting and may torpedo this selection before we even get to November. The Texas deadline was May 9th so that state already is completely off the table and more will be too, especially the candidate is someone like Ben Sasse, who is not well known nationally. Plus, the most this candidate is likely to get is 10-20% of the vote. 26% of the population is Republican (vs. 29% being Democrat and around 42% Independent) so even if 40% of Republicans bail on the party, we are talking about 10% of the general electorate. Maybe add in some upset Independents and Democrats and maybe you can get to 20%, maybe. And to get those votes, this candidate has to be very centrist politically with only marginally conservative beliefs. But then what have you achieved? That's probably not enough to win any states as Perot got 19% in 1992 and had zero electoral votes. You'll just have torpedoed the Republican candidate and creating massive animosity among GOP voters.
Vote Libertarian: I'm a libertarian and I can tell you this is a complete non-starter. Big "L" Libertarians are nuts. You think Rand or Ron Paul is out there? Try hanging out at a Libertarian convention. They are not for the mass market in any way shape or form. Gary Johnson thinks that Jewish bakers should be forced by the government to bake swastika cakes for Nazi customers (which by the way isn't very libertarian. For the real libertarian view, read this) and Austin Petersen, who is actively courting Ted Cruz supporters, thinks we should go back to the circa 1800 policy of using privateers for our military operations (Petersen also doesn't have as much in common with conservatives as he is saying he does). Gary Johnson got about 1% of the vote in 2012 in an election between Obama and Mitt Romney, where lots of conservatives stayed home. Why would he or the 35 year old Petersen do much better? Could they get to 3%? Sure. But who cares?
Stay Home: One of the #NeverTrumpers said that he wants to stay home so that he can tell his kids he stood by his #NeverTrump pledge. The are two problems with this, first, they probably aren't going to care. Second, if they do care they might ask why you didn't take a stand against Hillary. Hillary is a corrupt (90% of donations to the Clinton Foundation don't go to charity!) horrible person who will continue the destruction of the United States from within. All those horrible Obama policies will be continued (did you see the latest? Apparently you should call convicted criminals "justice involved individuals". 1984 here we come!). Trump is probably lying about the wall and lots of other things he said he will do, but even if there is just a 10% chance that he is a real conservative, isn't that better than doing something to help someone who has a 0% chance of being a conservative? This is a woman who lied to the families of the Benghazi victims, telling them it was the fault of the guy who made a YouTube video instead of blaming the terrorists themselves (the guy who made the video was sent to jail and now lives in a homeless shelter).
Yes Donald Trump is quite far from perfect. But he really is the only choice we have. What exactly is the downside? If he loses, the aura of "winning" will be gone and he won't be a problem in 2020. If he wins, even in a worse case scenario he will still be more conservative than Hillary. And there is a good chance he will be more of a doctrinaire Republican than people think (I'm pretty sure his advisors will be Republicans). People worry about him being erratic but the more erratic he is, the less he can achieve thanks to our system of checks and balances. He will have to be consistent and someone other politicians can depend upon in order to get their support to get any legislation through. I think the worst case scenario for the 2016 election would be that Trump loses thanks to his chances being sabotaged due to the actions of other Republicans. This will make him and his voters bitter enough that he will run again in 2020 and this time really wage war on conservatives, which would cost us more than another election.
