Why I voted for Evan McMullin and not Donald Trump

I’m a lifelong conservative who has voted Republican as long as I can remember. Growing up, I watched President Reagan swing Georgia from a state where a Republican couldn’t get elected dogcatcher to a state that was almost totally red. A defining moment of my political life was when I saw President Reagan live at a campaign rally in Atlanta. I started listening to Rush Limbaugh on talk radio in the 1990s and have been writing my conservative Christian blog since 2007.

This makes it all the more surprising for people when they find out that I’m not voting for Donald Trump. In fact, I voted early last week and cast my ballot for Evan McMullin, the independent conservative.

Why I voted for McMullin and why I didn’t vote for Trump are closely intertwined. The bottom line for me is that I don’t believe that either Trump or Hillary should be president. In fact, I don’t believe that either Trump or Hillary should be allowed anywhere near the White House. Not even on a tour group.

People say that if I don’t want Hillary to be president, I should support Donald Trump. The truth is that I oppose Trump for many of the same reasons that I oppose Hillary Clinton. The two candidates are evenly matched in many areas. Trump and Hillary both have deep character flaws. Both are chronic liars. Both are dishonest. Both are corrupt.

I had always said that I would vote Republican as long as the party supported my beliefs and values. Under Donald Trump, it no longer does.

Hillary’s corruption is well known, but when I looked into Trump’s background, I found a seemingly endless list of scandals even before the revelation of his sexual harassment problem. Not paying workers, using eminent domain to take the homes of less wealthy and connected Americans, and openly bragging about bribing elected officials are only the icing on the cake. His unsatisfied clients say Trump was literally a con man who stole tens of thousands of dollars from hardworking real estate investors through Trump University and then allegedly paid off state attorneys general like Pam Bondi in Florida to cover his tracks.

I’ve been told that Trump’s corruption is less damning because he was in the private sector or that the amounts of money involved were less than the Clinton Foundation payoffs. In truth, corruption is a matter of the heart. If Trump would steal from a guy who has to max out his credit card to pay Trump University tuition, why would he not steal from the taxpayers of the United States or use his position to line his own pockets?

If Christian conservatives like me put aside our ethical problems with Trump to defeat Hillary, what have we won? Trump is a New York liberal who, until he started planning to run for president, held traditional liberal views. Even while running as a Republican he has advocated universal government healthcare and raising the minimum wage, supported federal money for Planned Parenthood, and has even adopted Democrat positions on gun control. You would be hard pressed to find any of Donald Trump’s positions which involve shrinking government or making it less powerful. If we elect Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, we will only have succeeded in electing a different liberal.

Trump is even worse than Hillary on some issues. Trump bragged that his trade policy was “very similar” to that of Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders. An analysis of Trump’s tariffs and rejection of trade deals found that they would probably cause a recession that might cost as many as 5 million American jobs.

He is no less of an isolationist when it comes to military alliances. He has threatened not to defend NATO allies and called NATO itself “obsolete,” even as Vladimir Putin’s forces carve off pieces of the Ukraine. Trump has said that he is open to proliferation of nuclear weapons and threatened to withdraw American troops from South Korea and Japan where they have stabilized East Asia for the past 60 years.

It was not being too strong that caused the last world war, it was being too deferential to expansionist dictatorships. This is a problem for Trump as well. Trump seems to have a fascination with dictators, but his admiration for Vladimir Putin is particularly troubling, from their bromance last fall to the growing body of evidence that Russia is interfering with the election in a way that benefits Trump. Russia’s investment in Trump may have already paid off. This year’s Republican Party platform dropped a proposal to arm Ukraine against the Russian invaders. The change reportedly came from the Trump campaign. Trump also seems ready to yield America’s role in the Middle East to Russia.

I can find no evidence that Trump is the America-loving conservative that he claims to be. There seems to be no Emmaus road moment that he can point to that led him to change his mind on so many issues. I can find no evidence that he is anything other than an actor playing a role. He is a liberal playing a conservative and occasionally he lapses into his true beliefs or cynically changes positions where he sees a potential benefit.

The character problems, liberal ideology and erratic behavior are red flags that warn about Trump’s lack of judgment. Just as Hillary Clinton’s use of an unapproved private email server and solicitation of donations in exchange for access while Secretary of State are disqualifying, Trump’s many scandals are a warning to voters that he is not to be trusted either.

In fact, almost everything about both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seems to resonate as a warning against making them president. I cannot think of two people that I believe are less equipped to handle presidential authority and responsibility than the Terrible Two.

Some argue that Trump would surround himself with good people who would keep him in line. I think the reverse is true. One need only watch Mike Pence’s debate performance to see the corrupting influence of Trump on the Republican Party. Pence made excuses for Donald Trump and transparently denied that Trump said things that everyone has seen him say on video. What would four years with Trump as leader of the GOP do to the America’s conservative party?

Just when I was considering voting for Gary Johnson as protest or even not voting at all since Johnson showed himself to be a nut, Evan McMullin announced his candidacy.

After watching several interviews of McMullin, I boarded the “Evan Express.” McMullin is essentially a traditional Republican. He is a pro-life, free trade, strong defense, small government conservative. After working for the Republicans in the House of Representatives as a policy advisor, McMullin knows his stuff. He seems to be more knowledgeable than any other candidate, including Hillary Clinton. It is unfortunate that he was not included in the debates.

What really sold me on McMullin was not his policy chops though. What sold me on McMullin was simply the fact that, in a race dominated by two people who are, to use Hillary’s word, deplorable, he was an honest, decent man. He is the sort of person who tries to bring people together, rather than drive wedges between demographics to glom onto a few more votes.

I know that McMullin is a long shot. On the other hand, McMullin’s odds of becoming president are far greater than the odds of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becoming a president that I can be proud of. Given the choice between sacrificing my beliefs to elect an untrustworthy, liberal Republican who I believe would be a disaster for the country or supporting a candidate that who shares my beliefs, I decided to vote my conscience.

David Thornton is a contributor to The Resurgent

Democrats may regain Senate majority

US Capitol (Diliff/Wikimedia)

A month ago, the GOP seemed to be the odds-on favorite to retain control of the Senate. With the tumultuous month of October behind us, the odds seem to have shifted slightly to favor the Democrats regaining control.

The Democrats have a structural advantage due to the fact that they are defending only 10 seats while Republicans are defending 24. Only one Democratic seat, the Nevada seat of the retiring Harry Reid, was considered at risk. A total of eight Republican seats, many in blue or purple states, are threatened. Many of these at-risk seats were won in the Tea Party wave election of 2010. Wave elections often allow weak candidates to win who cannot retain their seat when political conditions return to normal.

FiveThirtyEight puts the chances that the Democrats will win the Senate at over 60 percent. A recent blog post noted that four of the eight most hotly contested races have seen major shifts. Three races have shifted toward the Republicans and one toward the Democrats. Indiana, New Hampshire and Wisconsin have moved slightly toward the Republicans while Pennsylvania now favors the Democratic challenger.

Here are summaries on the battleground Senate races for Republican seats:

·         In Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio’s lead over Democrat Patrick Murphy has tightened slightly, but Rubio is still the clear favorite.

·         In Illinois, Sen. Mark Kirk’s seat is all but lost. Rep. Tammy Duckworth’s lead has widened to 13 points in the Real Clear Politics average after Kirk made an embarrassing comment about Duckworth’s heritage.

·         In Indiana, a race previously considered a Democrat lock, Rep. Todd Young (R) was tied with former Senator Evan Bayh (D) in a recent poll. FiveThirtyEight’s models show Young’s chances of taking the seat surging from 30 percent to 45 percent. The seat is currently held by Republican Dan Coats, who is retiring.

·         In Missouri, Sen. Roy Blunt is in a tossup race with Secretary of State Jason Kander. FiveThirtyEight gives the race as a 55 percent chance of going to the Democrats, a slight improvement for Blunt.

·         In New Hampshire, Sen. Kelly Ayotte seems to be maintaining a margin-of-error lead over Gov. Maggie Hassan. FiveThirtyEight has downgraded Hassan’s chances of winning the seat from 67 to 56 percent. The race is still a tossup, but with slightly better odds for Ayotte.

·         In North Carolina, Sen. Richard Burr’s race with state Rep. Deborah Ross is still a tossup. FiveThirtyEight puts Ross’s chances of taking the seat at 34 percent, down nine percent from two weeks ago.

·         In Ohio, Sen. Rob Portman’s seat seems to be reliably Republican. Portman holds a double-digit advantage over Gov. Ted Strickland.

·         In Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey has trailed Katie McGinty in nine straight polls. The race is still close, with McGinty leading by an average of less than four points, but FiveThirtyEight has moved the race from a tossup to a 73 percent chance of a Democratic victory.

·         In Wisconsin, Sen. Ron Johnson’s chances are still not good. Former Democrat Sen. Russ Feingold has consistently led the race. FiveThirtyEight says that the race has moved slightly in Johnson’s favor, but Feingold still has a 90 percent chance of retaking the seat.

The sole Democratic battleground seat is Nevada. This race is a tossup between Rep. Joe Heck (R) and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. Heck holds a slight advantage in the RCP average of polls, but FiveThirtyEight gives Cortez Masto almost a 60 percent chance of winning.

The current balance of power in the Senate is 54 Republicans to 46 Democrats (including independents). The Democrats need a net pickup of four seats to split control of the Senate or five seats to take a majority. In the case of a 50-50 split among the two parties, the incoming vice president can cast the deciding vote.

At this point, Democrats look likely to retain Harry Reid’s Nevada seat as well as pick up Republican seats in Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These four seats would be enough to split the Senate evenly with the Republicans.

The fifth seat, to give the majority to the Democrats, will likely come from either Missouri, New Hampshire or North Carolina. All three races are tossups and FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats the edge in both Missouri and New Hampshire.

Regardless of whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump wins the presidency, it has been viewed as critical for Republicans to hold the Senate. The Senate has the role of confirming judges and Supreme Court justices as well as confirming treaties. Any bills from the House’s Republican majority, which is likely safe, must go through the Senate before they are signed into law by the president.

The most recent round of polling gives little hope of preserving the Republican Senate majority. As Republican Senate hopes fade, so do hopes of everything from keeping liberal justices off of the Supreme Court to repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Attacks on Evan McMullin escalate

After Evan McMullin’s sudden surge in Utah, the Trump campaign is taking him seriously and attacks are mounting. The situation in the deep red state was serious enough that Mike Pence made a late-in-the-campaign visit to Beehive State in an attempt to shore up hemorrhaging support in the wake of three disastrous debates and Trump’s sexual harassment scandal.

The first attack came from Lou Dobbs who tweeted that McMullin was “nothing but a Globalist, Romney and Mormon Mafia Tool.” McMullin responded on CNN a few days later saying, “A hallmark of Donald Trump's campaign has been to attack people based on their race and religion and all of this and so it's not a surprise to me at all.” McMullin supporters on Twitter started a tweetstorm of jokes about the bizarre insult.

The attacks continued over the weekend when Trump lashed out at McMullin and Bill Kristol in an interview on Fox News. “I love the people of Utah. I have great relationships in Utah," Trump said. "But you have a guy named Bill Kristol who's called it wrong for two years. He's a loser. He's called me wrong. He's called everything wrong. He's called the wars wrong. Everything he does is wrong. He gets his puppet to go and run in Utah.”

Trump continued, “The guy [McMullin] takes votes away from me. You know, we're going to win Utah. But he takes votes away from me, this man who I never heard of....   Now, if for some reason we lose Utah that could have a very devastating impact on the overall.” Utah has six electoral votes.

McMullin responded in Trumpian fashion: With a tweet. The independent candidate posted, “@realDonaldTrump, Yes you’ve never heard of me because while you were harassing women at beauty pageants, I was fighting terrorists abroad.” McMullin is a 10-year veteran of the CIA where he served as a clandestine agent in the Middle East. Donald Trump received student and medical deferments that exempted him from the draft, but told Howard Stern that not contracting a sexually transmitted disease was his “personal Vietnam” and made him feel like a “great and very brave soldier.”

McMullin added another tweet attacking Trump on substance. “@realDonaldTrump, you're an authoritarian, life-long liberal who disrespects life, liberty, & equality. We can't trust you on justices.” The Trump campaign did not respond to the tweet.

Then things got really nasty. Over Halloween weekend, McMullin was the target of robocalls in the new battleground state of Utah. Salt Lake City’s KUTV describes the call by William Johnson, a self-described “white nationalist” which attacks McMullin’s mother, a lesbian who is married to another woman, and alleges that McMullin, who is single, is a “closeted homosexual.”

Spoiler alert: Evan McMullin is not gay. Louise Mensch of Heat Street wrote of her earlier conversation with McMullin prior to an August interview. McMullin told her that “his greatest aspiration is to be a husband and a father.” Part of the reason that he left the CIA was his desire to one day be married and have a family, something that would be difficult for a CIA operative.

As to his mother, McMullin talked about her in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune on Oct. 26. “I believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage. It is an important part of my faith,” McMullin said. “My mother has a different view. That is OK. I love her very much.”

McMullin told CNN that the robocall was not a surprise. “This is exactly the narrative, the approach the Donald Trump campaign has had. So it didn't even surprise when I heard news of the robocall, I just thought of course this is more of the same.”

The Trump campaign had quickly denied involvement in the robocall. Sean Spicer, the RNC communications director, said, “The call was disgusting. It's reprehensible and it was appropriately denounced by the campaign.” Spicer continued, “But for him to then turn it back on them is almost as reprehensible. We live in a country of over 300-plus million people. Not everybody who supports Donald Trump, not everyone who supports Hilary Clinton, are exactly the kind of people that you want as supporters.” Spicer was denounced in turn for calling McMullin’s response to the insults “reprehensible.”

Then a remarkable thing happened. William Johnson, who is a Trump delegate, did something that Donald Trump hasn’t done. He issued a heartfelt apology and stopped the calls. “I am truly sorry,” he told the LA Times. “I am sorry for the mean-spirited message and I humbly retract its contents.”

Finally, Pax Dickinson, founder and CTO of Wesearchr, a pro-Trump website tweeted, “America hasn’t boasted a popular movement favoring genocide of Mormons for well over a century but @EvanMcMullin is working to change that.” Another tweet threatened a “Mormoncaust” if McMullin “succeeds and throws the election to Hillary.”

As another Twitter user replied, “This does not strike me as the argument that will finally win over Mormons for Trump.”

The disdain for McMullin and Mormons shown by Trump and his supporters has undoubtedly helped fuel the McMullin campaign. When Trump complained about “this character that's running all over the state … going from coffee shop to coffee shop,” McMullin’s reply shed light on Trump’s problem.

“The funny thing is a lot of people in Utah are Mormons,” McMullin said on Politico, “they don't drink coffee. So, we've done zero campaigning in coffee shops. If Donald Trump were truly interested in the state and in the voters, he might know a thing or two about that.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Hillary Clinton is being hammered in the final days before the election. The news of renewed interest in the FBI probe of her handling of classified information shook the campaign last week. Now comes a new report that FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation thought that they had enough information to warrant more aggressive measures, but were allegedly told to “stand down” by the Justice Department.

The Wall St. Journal reports that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation began as a result of the book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” by Peter Schweizer. The investigation began in the summer of 2015 and is ongoing.

Citing multiple sources from several different agencies, the Journal reports that there was a conflict between the FBI and the Department of Justice over the strength of the case.  The investigation into whether Clinton Foundation donors received favorable treatment from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was perceived as weak by the upper levels of the FBI and DOJ, but investigators believed that there were promising leads that they were not allowed to follow.

The discovery of a trove of emails on a computer belonging to Anthony Wiener, the husband of Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, may have revealed some of the limits placed on FBI investigators. Politico reported that the agents had never asked Clinton staffers for their personal email devices and may have even lacked subpoena power.

Much of the debate stemmed from secret recordings of a suspect in a public corruption case. In a recorded conversation, the suspect, whose identity was not disclosed, discussed alleged deals made by the Clintons. The investigators could not corroborate the details of the deals, but wanted to investigate further. Prosecutors disagreed. The Justice Department felt that the information was hearsay and too weak to warrant a more aggressive investigation.

The FBI agents and the DOJ became more frustrated with each other as the investigators continued to try to pursue the case. The FBI pushed for more leeway while DOJ officials were irritated by the failure of the FBI to act discreetly and follow instructions. In February, the DOJ allegedly told FBI investigators to “stand down” according to the Journal sources.

The Journal reports that Robert Capers, the US Attorney for Brooklyn, was at the center of the brouhaha. Sources say that Capers told both sides what they wanted to hear, which exacerbated tensions. At one point, Capers allegedly told DOJ officials that the FBI “won’t let it go,” prompting a call to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Aug. 12. In the call, an unnamed senior DOJ official complained that the FBI was not following instructions on the case. McCabe allegedly asked, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” The DOJ official answered, “Of course not.”

Regardless of whether the case was truly too weak to pursue or the Justice Department was actively running interference to protect the Clintons, the result is the same. Both the DOJ and the FBI have egg on their face and the reputation of their agencies have been tarnished. Rather than having the problems of the Clinton Foundation aired a year before the election, Mrs. Clinton’s once-assured victory may be fading with yet another October surprise.

Originally published on The Resurgent

FBI never asked for email devices from Hillary staffers

The FBI’s on-again-off-again investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information has shaken the presidential race. Now new revelations are coming out about the way that the investigation was handled last spring that shed light on how the normally efficient FBI could have missed 650,000 emails on a computer belonging to the husband of Secretary Clinton’s closest aide.

According to a report in Politico, the FBI never asked for devices used by staffers when Clinton was Secretary of State. The report, based on an anonymous source, said that while agents did try to obtain the computers that were part of Clinton’s private server as well as laptops where Clinton received and reviewed emails, they never made an effort to gather the smartphones and computers that were used by staffers in her State Department office.

“No one was asked for devices by the FBI,” Politico quoted the source, who is familiar with the investigation.

There had been speculation as to why the Huma Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, never turned the computer containing the emails over to the FBI. There had been speculation that Abedin had withheld the computer. Politico reported earlier that Abedin claimed to be unaware of how the emails came to be on her husband’s computer and now it seems that the FBI may have never asked to examine the computer. The email trove was found in a separate investigation of former congressman Anthony Weiner who was allegedly sexting a 15-year-old girl.

Republicans are asking how the FBI could have made such an obvious error. “The more we learn about the FBI’s initial investigation into Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server, the more questions we have about the thoroughness of the investigation and the administration’s conclusion to not prosecute her for mishandling classified information,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told Politico.

One possible answer is that there was interference in the investigation. The Wall St. Journal reported last week that a PAC associated with Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.) gave more than $600,000 in donations and support to the Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe. Jill McCabe is the wife of Andrew McCabe, then an associate deputy director of the FBI. After the McCabe campaign ended in defeat, Andrew McCabe was promoted to deputy director where he an oversight role in the Clinton investigation.

The Wall St. Journal also reported that the FBI had found the new emails in early October and that agents had notified Mr. McCabe, who instructed agents on the two investigations to get together to determine whether the emails were relevant to the Clinton investigation. A decision was made to let the Weiner investigators proceed with their examination of the laptop’s metadata. McCabe apparently did not inform Director Comey at the time.

According to the Journal report, the Department of Justice refused to authorize aggressive investigation techniques such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews or a grand jury. Opinions differ on whether the resistance from the Justice Department was due to lack of compelling evidence presented by the FBI or whether it was present from the beginning of the investigation.

McCabe seems to have been caught in the middle. The Journal article reports a call on Aug. 12 from a “senior Justice Department official” who was unhappy that agents were still pursuing the investigation of the Clinton Foundation in the middle of the campaign. McCabe’s defenders say he asked, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” and was answered, “Of course not.”

Opinions differ on whether the call was simply trying to make sure that the FBI remained neutral in the election as longstanding policy dictated, was based on the prosecutor’s opinion that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict or was a move to protect Clinton. Some sources told the Journal that McCabe ordered the investigators to continue with the nonaggressive investigation. Others said that field agents were told to “stand down” based on orders from McCabe.

Whatever the reason, the FBI’s failure to mount a full investigation last year led directly to the Director Comey’s October surprise for the Clinton campaign last week. If Clinton used influence within the Department of Justice to stymie investigators, the sudden reappearance of the FBI investigation may be poetic justice.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Hillary's email scandal will affect the election, but probably not as much as you think

Last Friday, FBI Director James Comey dropped a bomb in the middle of the presidential election. Comey’s revelation that the FBI had found additional emails that might be pertinent to investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information turned the campaign on its ear. The big question is how the Comey bombshell will affect the outcome of the election.

Donald Trump was quick to capitalize on Comey’s letter to Congress, calling it the “biggest political scandal since Watergate” according to USA Today. For her part, the Clinton campaign says the emails are nothing new and that voters have already made up their minds about her use of a private server while Secretary of State. The truth is that the revived scandal will almost certainly benefit Donald Trump, but probably by less than you think.

The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton’s image is unlikely to go much lower. Both candidates are historically unpopular. Even though Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable rating has been deep in negative territory for the entire campaign, Donald Trump’s has consistently been worse. People know them both and dislike them both.

Trump has alienated large swaths of the electorate over the past year. Those voters are unlikely to rally to his banner in the wake of renewed questions about Hillary’s emails. After campaigning for a wall on the Mexican border and deportation of illegal immigrants, a recent NBC News/Wall St. Journal poll found Trump 50 points behind Hillary with Hispanic voters, who make up a large share of voters in many swing states. After weeks of accusations of sexual misconduct, Clinton led Trump by 10 points among women according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week. Trump led by only two points among Republican women. Other recent polling found Trump with only four percent support among black voters and 21 percent among millennials. Perhaps with the exception of Republican women, few of these voters are likely to switch to Trump.

In the same way that many Trump supporters refused to believe the allegations against Donald Trump, many hardcore Clinton supporters and Democrats will simply refuse to accept the revelation of an additional trove of emails or rationalize it away. As Trump supporters argued against the credibility of Trump’s accusers, Clinton supporters will argue that the email scandal is almost two years old and has already been considered by voters after Director Comey’s July announcement that Clinton’s private server was careless, but not criminal.

Essentially, most people have made up their minds that the other candidate is worse than whatever problems their own candidate might have. According to Real Clear Politics, about 85 to 90 percent of the electorate has consistently supported either Trump or Hillary regardless of scandals or bad news of the day. Third party candidates account for another five to 10 percent. That leaves only about five percent of voters who are undecided and perhaps another five percent whose support for their candidate is soft enough to change. This means that the impact of the email scandal will be felt among a tiny sliver of the electorate.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found that two-thirds of likely voters said that the investigation makes no difference in their support for Clinton. One-third said that it made them less likely to support Clinton, but nearly 70 percent of these voters already leaned Republican. This leaves about 10 percent of voters who are less likely to support Clinton and who weren’t already unlikely to vote for her.

The timing of the scandal also works against Donald Trump. For maximum effectiveness in the campaign, the Comey letter would have come several weeks earlier. In some states, early voting had already been going on for weeks. Reports on early voting show that Democrats were overrepresented in early voting in battleground states. These votes were locked in before Comey’s announcement. The fact that these voters cannot now change their vote or stay home works in Hillary’s favor.

Aside from swinging a few voters, there are possible additional benefits for Trump from the scandal. First, it could dampen enthusiasm among Democrats and cause some to stay home. Even with a high unfavorable rating, FiveThirtyEight noted last week that a majority of Clinton voters are voting for Hillary rather than against Trump. Even if new questions about her competence as commander-in-chief don’t push voters to Trump or third party candidates such as Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, some might find themselves busy with other activities on Election Day.

The reminder of Clinton’s failings as Secretary of State is also likely to help motivate the Republican base. An ABC News poll released on Oct. 31 shows a surge in Republican support for Donald Trump. The poll, which was taken during the period in which Comey notified Congress, shows Trump at 89 percent support among Republicans, up from a low of 82 percent. The upswing of support from undecided Republicans accounts for much of the tightening in the polls.

The final caveat is that national polls are misleading at this stage of the election. There are 51 separate elections rather than a single national vote. While many swing states are close and the email scandal may tip some of them to Donald Trump, the Electoral College still heavily favors Hillary Clinton. Clinton would have to lose virtually every contested state (Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio plus a blue state such as Pennsylvania or Wisconsin to lose the Electoral College. At this point, such a sweep by Donald Trump seems unlikely.

Barring another October surprise, it seems likely that Director Comey’s shocking announcement will have only a marginal effect on the election. It may help to shore up states like Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Texas by energizing Republican support and could possibly push Florida, North Carolina and Ohio into the Trump column. The final result of the Electoral College is unlikely to change, however.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Death of a political party

The deep schism in the Republican Party has given rise to speculation that the GOP is finished. While it is certain that the Republican Party is deeply wounded, it is premature to say that is dead. As conservatives and Republicans contemplate their future, it may be helpful to remember how the Republican Party was born from the death of the Whig Party.

The Whigs were formed in 1834 to oppose what many saw as the authoritarian tendencies of Andrew Jackson. They took their name from the British anti-royalist party and stood against the Democrats led by the man they derisively called “King Andrew.” Like the later Republicans, the Whigs were derided as a rich man’s party by their opponents.

The Whigs had a 20 year run as a successful party. Politico noted that their decline began with the election of an outsider candidate, Zachary Taylor. Many Whigs felt that Taylor did not share their beliefs and that the party had embraced Taylor’s personality as a hero of the Mexican War rather nominating a candidate who shared their values. Horace Greeley, the famous founder of the New York Tribune, said that the party was “at once triumphant and undone” as it elected a man who was a “Whig in name only.” Once in office, Taylor, who had run on his personality since the Whigs did not even write a platform that year, soon began to anger party loyalists.

The election of Taylor deepened a rift between Northern and Southern Whigs over the issue of slavery. After his death in 1850, his vice president, Millard Fillmore, passed several pro-slavery laws with the Compromise of 1850. As the party became more pro-slavery, Northerners began to leave. In 1852, the Whig candidate carried only four states, losing in a landslide to Democrat Franklin Pierce.

It was the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that finally killed the Whigs and led to the creation of the Republican Party. A March 20, 1854 meeting of opponents to the act is generally considered the birth of the Republican Party according to History.com. Two years later, in 1856, the Republicans fielded their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont. By that point, the Whigs were nonexistent. Four years later, the Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president.

There are several lessons to be learned from the demise of the Whigs. The Republican Party was the result of a coalition of anti-slavery activists. The Republicans focused on that issue and swayed enough voters with their argument that they won the election of 1860. Republicans knew what they believed and fought for it. They focused on what was important and kept their eyes on the prize.

Though not part of the campaign, the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858 established a logical and moral basis for the party’s existence. Lincoln was able to eloquently argue the evils of slavery and the impracticality of having a nation that was split between slave and free states. The debates not only helped to cement the regional factions of the new Republican Party, they also established Lincoln as a powerful intellect and a popular and persuasive speaker.

Conversely, the Whigs didn’t know what they stood for any longer. The party had no platform or statement of principle to rally around. The party that had opposed the Mexican War nominated a war hero and Taylor’s nonpartisan stances alienated Whigs rather than attracting voters from other parties. A successful political party must preserve its base while persuading unaffiliated moderate and independent voters at the same time. The Whigs won independent voters at the cost of splitting their base.

Winning elections is not the only reason a party exists. The Whig party won the election of 1848, but lost its soul in the process. Winning the election with a candidate that did not share their principles doomed the party in the long run. There is little point in winning an election if the end result is not to move the country in the direction that the party believes is best.

Finally, if the Republican Party does die, it doesn’t mean that conservatism dies with it. There will be opposition to Hillary and the Democrats even that if that opposition is does not fall under the Republican label. Millions of conservatives will not cease to exist if the Republican Party dies. They will reorganize and rally under a new banner.

One new conservative banner is the one being hoisted by Evan McMullin. McMullin said in the Washington Times, “In the long term, we're building a new conservative movement we think is badly needed in this country. The party needs to be more welcoming to people that don't look like me, people of different races and religions.”

If the Republican Party does go the way of the Whigs, there will be a period of confusion and rebuilding, but the party that emerges may be stronger than what came before. The Whigs lasted for 20 years. The Republicans have lasted for more than 150 and have produced some of the greatest presidents in American history. Abraham Lincoln, generally acknowledged to be among the top presidents, emerged when the party was only four years old.

In the nearly 250 years of the American republic, many political parties have come and gone. There were political factions before the Democrats and the Republicans and there will be new parties that one day take their place. Political parties come and go, but principles never die. 

Originally published on The Resurgent