What's a Conservative to Do?

One of the difficulties confronting conservative voters in recent and upcoming elections is that given a choice between a man whose personal character is deeply flawed but whose policies are better for the country and the world than those of his opponent and an opposing candidate whose personal character is perhaps better but whose policies are deplorable, who do you vote for?

If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024 and any of the potential Democrat candidates being talked about today win the Democrat Party's nomination, we'll be confronted with just such a choice.

There are those on the right, people I admire and whose opinion I respect, who argue that Donald Trump should not get a conservative's vote no matter who he's running against, but their arguments simply fail to convince me.

Take Russell Moore for example. Moore is Public Theologian at Christianity Today magazine and Director of Christianity Today’s Public Theology Project. In talking about how Trump voters would defend their support for a man of such profound moral defects he stated:

The argument that they [Trump supporters] would use is that there had to be a disruptive figure who would be willing to do whatever it took to appoint the sorts of people who would hand down the Dobbs case. I don’t buy that argument for a number of reasons. And one of them, the author of the Dobbs case is a George W. Bush appointee.

I don’t think that you would have had largely any different decision from a Jeb Bush court or Marco Rubio court, a Ted Cruz court, than you would have with a Donald Trump court, especially given the way that attention is so carefully paid now on both the right and the left to court appointments.

So I don’t think that Donald Trump uniquely was going to make judicial appointments that someone else wouldn’t have made.

I also think that one has to look not only at the final result in this case but what is the cost of hitching the pro-life movement to a figure such as this.

Now again, I think people can make arguments in various ways, but that is deeply concerning to me. I don’t think you can have, long term, a pro-life ethic without a concern for vulnerability, a concern for women, character. I mean, I think all of those things matter.

There are at least three things wrong with this: First, the author of the Dobbs opinion is just one Justice among nine. There's a majority of Justices on the Court who support the Dobbs decision precisely because Donald Trump appointed three conservatives.

Second, it's not at all clear that Jeb Bush, et al. would've appointed Justices similar in philosophy to those who decided Dobbs. There's every reason to think they would've appointed Justices similar to Chief Justice John Roberts who actually dissented from the majority in Dobbs, and who was also appointed by George Bush.

Third, even if those Republicans Moore mentions would've selected Constitutionally-minded jurists to serve on the Court, it's surely doubtful that had any of the other Republican candidates won the nomination in 2016 that they would've defeated Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Finally, Moore's last paragraph is just incomprehensible. A "long-term pro-life ethic" does indeed require people of character, but neither Hillary Clinton nor Joe Biden are known for their moral rectitude and neither of them would do anything to protect the unborn, so I can't figure out what Moore's talking about in that sentence.

Is he saying that pro-lifers shouldn't want Roe overturned until it can be done by Justices appointed by a morally upright president and that if it's overturned by Justices appointed by a moral reprobate that there can't be a viable long-trerm pro-life ethic?

David French who writes for The Dispatch holds sentiments similar to those of Moore. He doesn't think much of the argument that one must vote for the "lesser of two evils." He writes:

But here’s an argument that was morally serious, especially in both general elections — if one candidate is going to win, shouldn’t you vote for the one you believe in good faith will do the least harm to the nation, even if that person has profound flaws?

This was the “lesser evil” or “hold your nose and vote” position. There are people I respect who made this choice both times, and they did so without once rationalizing Donald Trump’s lies or minimizing his sins.

French's response to this argument is that voting for the lesser of two evils eventually corrupts you. You ultimately turn the lesser evil into no evil at all.

So, what should we do? Vote for the greater evil? That seems absurd. Should we not vote at all? That may well amount to the same as voting for the greater evil. French doesn't really help us with this problem. He simply insists that to vote for Trump, even if he's the lesser evil, will corrupt us all.

This completely ignores the corruption of our culture that's occurring under Biden and which is only slowed by a Supreme Court that was picked by Trump.

French is dismayed by Trump's lies, but are they any worse than Biden's whose record for mendacity is extraordinary. He's also dismayed by Trump's sexual reputation, but Biden was credibly accused of sexual assault by his staffer Tara Reade when he was a senator and also accused by his wife Jill's first husband of having an affair with Jill while they were both still married to their first spouses.

Both accusations came to nothing because Joe and Jill denied it and a complaisant media hushed it up.

French is concerned about Trump's corrupting influence, but he says nothing about the corruption of the Bidens, the influence peddling and the nefarious doings of Hunter from which the father has profited.

Personally, I agree that we need good men in government, but if the choice is between two less than good men we must perforce hold our noses and vote for the "lesser evil." In fact, isn't that what many Biden voters thought they were doing?

I hope Trump doesn't run in 2024, and if he does I won't vote for him in the primary, but if, notwithstanding, he gets the nomination and is running against someone like Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg I will certainly vote for him in November.