Question for Never Trump Republicans..........

[Indy Texas]

Platform wise I think being against Free trade and increased immigration is insane. But that is not the deal breaker with the Donald. Policy is secondary, he himself is not qualified to be commander in chief. He lacks the experience, intelligence, character, and gravitas to be our envoy to the world.

I do not understand how anyone can look past this. A person whose life achievements are: two failed marriages, owning a bunch of hotels and golf courses, and producing a trash TV show is simply not qualified to be president. It wouldn't matter if I agreed with him on every issue.

If you're for free trade and increased immigration, there is already a party out there for you - it's called the Democratic Party.

Whether or not there are merits to it, a sizeable portion of American voters do not like free trade or increased immigration, so it's not shocking that a political party would ultimately give an audience to those people.

I think the Republicans are basically damned either way as far as immigration is concerned. They say they need to champion immigration reform so they can win over Hispanic voters, but the reality is that that's going to do nothing to help them in that department. Hispanics who are already here legally and were probably born here are not going to vote for a party that is so antithetical to their economic interests and personal views. Being a pro-immigration party is just going to piss off a sizeable chunk of the GOP's white voter base. Being an anti-immigration party at least allows them to maintain the coalition they have.

A case could be made that the GOP is now just a depraved perpetual-motion rage machine with an "anti-establishment wing" that stokes the fury of the white working class and an "establishment wing" that pursues economic policies that make those voters worse off and more receptive to the anti-establishment wing.

We're talking about the same Democratic Party whose Congressional caucus literally blocked TPP (against overwhelming GOP support) and just had both of its primary candidates arguing about who was more anti-trade, right?

You do realize that supporting free trade does not mean supporting any and all free trade agreements, no?

[RINO Tom]

Platform wise I think being against Free trade and increased immigration is insane. But that is not the deal breaker with the Donald. Policy is secondary, he himself is not qualified to be commander in chief. He lacks the experience, intelligence, character, and gravitas to be our envoy to the world.

I do not understand how anyone can look past this. A person whose life achievements are: two failed marriages, owning a bunch of hotels and golf courses, and producing a trash TV show is simply not qualified to be president. It wouldn't matter if I agreed with him on every issue.

If you're for free trade and increased immigration, there is already a party out there for you - it's called the Democratic Party.

Whether or not there are merits to it, a sizeable portion of American voters do not like free trade or increased immigration, so it's not shocking that a political party would ultimately give an audience to those people.

I think the Republicans are basically damned either way as far as immigration is concerned. They say they need to champion immigration reform so they can win over Hispanic voters, but the reality is that that's going to do nothing to help them in that department. Hispanics who are already here legally and were probably born here are not going to vote for a party that is so antithetical to their economic interests and personal views. Being a pro-immigration party is just going to piss off a sizeable chunk of the GOP's white voter base. Being an anti-immigration party at least allows them to maintain the coalition they have.

A case could be made that the GOP is now just a depraved perpetual-motion rage machine with an "anti-establishment wing" that stokes the fury of the white working class and an "establishment wing" that pursues economic policies that make those voters worse off and more receptive to the anti-establishment wing.

We're talking about the same Democratic Party whose Congressional caucus literally blocked TPP (against overwhelming GOP support) and just had both of its primary candidates arguing about who was more anti-trade, right?

You do realize that supporting free trade does not mean supporting any and all free trade agreements, no?

Sure, but that describes Trump a lot more than the Democratic Congressional caucus, which hasn't supported ANY free trade agreements with majority support in the last two decades...

You said that if you're for free trade, there's already a party for you and that's the Democrats.  That.  Is.  Not.  True.

The GOP is still, by far and by any stretch of the imagination, objectively more in support of free trade in its voting than the Democratic Party.  The GOP caucus has literally gone to comically pathetic lengths to oppose anything Obama says or does, but they still gave a very large majority of their votes in favor of TPP while Obama's own party effectively blocked it.  You're really reaching if you're coming up with a narrative where the GOP is less in favor of free trade than the Democratic Party, even in Trump vs. Hillary.  $100 says Hillary's VP is less supportive of free trade than Mike Pence, and Hillary is AT LEAST (currently) as protectionist as Trump.

[Mr. Jew]

#NEVERTRUMP is about following your conscience and standing up to Priebus and Trump and saying this is not what the Republican party is or should be. Telling people to ignore the negatives and think about the positives doesn't stop it because such people have already decided that the negatives outweigh the positives.

It doesn't matter if calling everyone insulting names means nothing, or if the wall or the Muslim ban will never pass congress. That doesn't change the fact that Trump is a hot-tempered, racist, anti-first amendment individual who does not respect the constitution and is radically unqualified to be president. We can either stand up and vote him and his ideas down now, or vote for him and risk several decades worth of Trump like nominees that we're forced to vote for if there is no moderate D or L running.

Haha don't make me laugh bro.  Your entire party has been about those things since about five minutes after Grant left office.  Do not pretend otherwise.

[Mr. Jew]

#NeverTrump Republicans should just become Democrats. The reason Trump won the nomination is because most Republican voters agree with the things he says.

Even when Trump loses in November, it's not like those Trump voters are going back into the closet. They're empowered now. They'll nominate Trump again in 2020, or someone like him. The days of McCain/Romney-type nominees are over.

Yes, the disconnect is quite amazing isn't it?

[RINO Tom]

#NEVERTRUMP is about following your conscience and standing up to Priebus and Trump and saying this is not what the Republican party is or should be. Telling people to ignore the negatives and think about the positives doesn't stop it because such people have already decided that the negatives outweigh the positives.

It doesn't matter if calling everyone insulting names means nothing, or if the wall or the Muslim ban will never pass congress. That doesn't change the fact that Trump is a hot-tempered, racist, anti-first amendment individual who does not respect the constitution and is radically unqualified to be president. We can either stand up and vote him and his ideas down now, or vote for him and risk several decades worth of Trump like nominees that we're forced to vote for if there is no moderate D or L running.

Haha don't make me laugh bro.  Your entire party has been about those things since about five minutes after Grant left office.  Do not pretend otherwise.

More like 1854.  Both parties have tended to ridicule those who aren't voting for them.

1864 election billboard of Republicans depicting Irish draft protestors as monkeys comes to mind.

[Clark Kent]

..........Will it be worth it to put up with a Trump Presidency for 4 years in exchange for having a conservative Supreme Court and for having Republican friendly legislation passed?

Part of the reason that I am #NeverTrump is because I know that won't happen.

Also Drumph is a rapist and a Nazi.

[Gustaf]

I'm not a Republican, but I side with them more often than Democrats.

I'm voting Hillary this November.

Trump is far more dangerous, and anyone who cannot see this is incredibly blind and ignorant.

Or, perhaps, you are blinded by your hatred of his style and not thinking straight about substance.

Trump's campaign has no substance.

What does the highlighted sentence really mean?  Does it mean that there's an absence of wonkishness on the part of the candidate?

Trump's campaign has LOTS of substance; substance that scares the excrement out of GOP Establishment types.  He has proposed (A) a more critical approach to Free Trade agreements, (B) a retreat from the Neocon interventionism and Nation Building in foreign policy, (C) actual enforcement of our immigration laws, (D) refocusing immigration policy to where its primary focus is the interests of the American citizenry, and (E) a reassessment of our foreign entanglements to determine if they are in the best interests of America (beginning with NATO).  These are issue positions that are not only what differentiate Trump from the Democrats; they are issues that differentiate Trump from a large bloc of Republicans as well.

Trump's campaign has the look and feel of a hostile takeover of the GOP's Presidential Nominating apparatus, and it is, but it came about through free, fair elections, and it happened because the rest of the GOP candidates had serious disagreements on some, or all, of the issues mentioned above with the other GOP candidates.  These voters didn't want a party where the name of the game was "Who's the REAL conservative?".  They wanted a party that used government to address THEIR issues and problems, not "less government, less regulation, more freedom".  The GOP had a deaf ear to all of this for years, and they got caught flat-footed by Trump.  Too bad for them.  But to say that Trump's campaign "lacks substance" is ridiculous.  Trump's campaign has more substance than any campaign in recent memory, and it has had (and will continue to have) profound policy implications for the National GOP in the future.

I don't think you understand what substance means. It doesn't mean screaming "immigration, boo, hiss", "NATO, boo, hiss" and so on.

Whenever Trump gets asked on what he will actually do, even in fairly broad terms there is...no substance. Take your points B and E for instance. What does Trump want to do? Well, he was for the Iraq war, now he pretends to be against it. He wants to give Syria to ISIS one minute, he wants a ground invasion the next minute, he wants to nuke them the 3rd minute and he wants to declare war on them the 4th minute. What, substantively, does he want? He wants to abolish NATO but he also wants to use it against ISIS.

Or take immigration. We all know he isn't actually going to build a wall or deport 11 million people because that is ridiculous and unfeasible. So what does he want? We do not know.

See, Trump just raves about things and spouts nonsense. Idiots (like you I suppose) fall for that because they don't understand how any issues work. And he's good at duping these people. But in reality he has no idea how to deal with anything.

See, it is different when people stake out ideological directions without detail. But Trump isn't really doing that. He's just throwing tantrums. Of course it'd be nice for Americans if they could enjoy all the perks of being a global super power without having to field an army. It'd be nice to eat a ton of candy and not get a tummy ache too. But you can't actually do that.

Trump's position is based on the idea that you can wave a magic wand and get all you want, no problem. And the only reason no one waves the wand is that "corrupt establishment" is being "stupid". Whenever pressed he has no idea how to accomplish the things he wants, which is why he just talks platitudes about things being great and big.

He's nothing but nonsense.

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

He can still be overturned. Expect a floor fight. Even Pence as a running mate isn't assured. I want to see what Cruz pulls. If he pulls something I'll side with him over Trumpbots.

[Erc]

He can still be overturned. Expect a floor fight. Even Pence as a running mate isn't assured. I want to see what Cruz pulls. If he pulls something I'll side with him over Trumpbots.

Such speculations today passed into the realm of the counterfactual.

Barring one of the candidates dying (or deciding to drop out???) before November, it's Trump vs. Clinton.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

..........Will it be worth it to put up with a Trump Presidency for 4 years in exchange for having a conservative Supreme Court and for having Republican friendly legislation passed?

No.  Ignoring the fact that the premise of having a conservative Supreme Court would be a result of a Trump presidency is certainly not a sure thing, at some point Republicans need to start putting the good of the country before the party.  A Trump presidency will do irreparable harm, and this idea that "The more sane candidate lost in the primary, so now we have a duty to support the crazy Republican who is the nominee" is how the Tea Party largely came to have the influence it has today.

Trump in the White House will mean that the country has placed its stamp of approval on xenophobia, bigotry, and fear as the drivers of our public policy, and that is something that won't be undone for decades.  If it means that we have to sacrifice conservatism on the Supreme Court to avoid that, then so be it.