But it is what has happened in the past decade or so that has caused me to become a Democrat. I simply cannot support the Republican position on:
• global warming (denying the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community),
• health care (refusing to join the rest of the civilized world in considering health care a right, not a privilege),
• gun control (refusing even to ban military-style assault weapons, to prevent people on the terrorist watch list from easily getting guns, and to close the gun show loophole),
• education (at least in Utah that means underpaying teachers and overcrowding classrooms),
• taxes (let’s keep cutting taxes on those who have made off like bandits in today’s rigged economy and claim falsely that the U.S. is overtaxed—we are in fact taxed less than every OECD country except Mexico, Chile, and South Korea),
• military spending and war-mongering (we spend more than the next 12 countries combined, but that is not enough for those who want to funnel even more money into the military-industrial complex and pursue wars that make things worse, not better),
• middle-class jobs (the GOP may give lip-service to this issue, but their policies and actions indicate they really are concerned only with the infamous job-creators [conservative code for the wealthy, whether they create jobs or not]),
• pollution (repeatedly threatening to gut EPA regulations that keep our air and water clean).

Well, that’s the short list. The GOP is in deep trouble because Trump has exposed the fact that a large segment of Republican voters don’t care at all about their precious (and illogical) conservative ideology. They have been fed the invective of hatred, anger, paranoia, and bigotry for so long now that they think government is the enemy and that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and needs a crude-talking strongman to “fix” things. They can’t come out of the echo chamber long enough to see what is really happening outside the cocoon of Fox News and conservative talk radio.

Sure, the Democrats are not perfect, but they are at least connected to reality and the issues that actually do matter. Bernie Sanders was so successful not because he was a deranged lunatic but because he was saying things that needed to be said—and everybody knew it.

I’m not sure the GOP will survive Trump, partly because he is the direct result of where they have been heading for some time now. He is not an aberration. He is simply amplifying the message the GOP has been sending out for some time now. He just came faster and louder than they anticipated. That he does not have a coherent stance on any issue is indicative of the larger party, which has been living in fantasyland for a long time now.

I mean, how can you take a party seriously that preaches small government and low taxes and balanced budgets, all the while understanding that the retirement of the Baby Boomers means that Medicare and Social Security must expand, not contract. And the Republicans also want to increase military spending. These three items comprise the bulk of our federal budget. The rest is pocket change in comparison. So conservative dogma simply doesn’t add up. The embrace of contradictory objectives is an indication of irrational thinking, perhaps even mental illness. And don’t think Paul Ryan is any more sane than Donald Trump. His proposals also don’t add up.

So, what will Mormons do when the GOP disintegrates? Good question. It would probably be a good idea to get educated on the issues, though, and to bone up on arithmetic.

You’re not convincing me, and I’m still not going to get into that debate on this thread. If you really want to talk about it, comment on Difficult Run or even use the contact form there and send me a message directly.

Andrew, saying that conservatives are stronger anti-Trump than anti-Obama just seems wrong. But I do think it undeniable that if one is a more traditional Reagan style conservative that Trump is a much bigger threat long term than Obama or even Clinton is. If Trump wins he’s not only a short term threat to the country on constitutional grounds due to his temperment. It’s very conceivable that he transforms the Republican party into something radically different. Heck, that’s a danger even if he loses.

JT, the Trump forces is very good at demonizing others. They’ll then reach out to them and be unable to understand why they’ve burned their bridges. This is true of Breitbart in general. Trump and Breitbart act the way they do and then are flummoxed that people are upset. (I’d say this applies to Cruz too)

Respectfully, I have friends that I served with in the military that are literally buried in the ground, so the rape analogy really isn’t over the top to me. I’ve almost been one of those guys myself several times. These aren’t subtle topics. And just last night I got word from my neighbors that a dead body was dumped about a mile from our house and gang/drug activity is increasing in the area. I live in the country on a large piece of property. My neighbors all have large acre lots. So when I say dumped a mile away that literally means dead body on next door neighbors property.

If you want to get into specifics I’m happy to, but the TLDR point is that the open borders policies are having very real negative consequences in my neck of the woods. Schools are a disaster. Hospitals are closing all throughout rural TX. Crime is on the rise. Taxes are going up to pay for the social burden. In what way is my “rape” analogy over the top, exactly? I’m afraid to send my kids to public school despite paying about $10k/year in taxes to the local school system. Bodies are getting dumped just down the road from my house. Drug deals are going down in front of my house. I can go on and on with this.

I am a rape victim! And you’re the guy in some other unaffected part of the country who just doesn’t care. “ohs well, not my problem”

Even just with respect to the church it’s a burden. There are a lot of illegals in the church locally and we expend a lot of resources on them, time and money. And frankly local church policy, which is dictated from on high of course, serves to aid and abet. It’s maddening.

And again no disrespect, but without specifics, I’m going to assume your issues with Trump are the same superficial issues that 90% of other people have. Perhaps you’re the one guy that has legitimately good disagreements with Trump, meaning reasons that aren’t hypocritical, but I highly doubt that. Virtually all complaints with Trump are about “how” something was said rather than “what” was actually said. If you’re saying your complaint with Trump is purely about policy, for example you are pro-open-borders and pro-amnesty and he’s not. Ok, that’s a real issues-based complaint. But my reaction is to point out that you’re not a conservative and never have been. On this particular issue, you’re a liberal, you’re a democrat. So don’t insult us republicans by acting like we’re the problem, we’re not, you are. You’re the one that’s been lying to us the whole time, disingenuously acting like you want to secure the border when really you never had any intention of doing so. Either that or you’ve been fooling yourself to think that the base of the party ever wanted open borders.

A bit of a side topic, but that’s a major problem in the GOP. There are a lot of people who go along with the party line rather than manning up and telling the group how they really feel. Having a team-spirit and going with the party is one thing, but lying about where you stand on issues is another. I’m cool with working together, but we should be totally honest about our positions on different things. I’m willing to compromise on certain things.

Like the Todd Akin debacle. See, it turns out that while the party line is highly pro-life and seemingly obsessed with abortion, most of the voters don’t actually care that much. I remember seeing a stat that something like 80% of republicans are cool with abortion in cases of rape for example. And I’m one of those. I’m happy to go along with the group on this issue though. If the group wants to be anti-abortion, I’m cool with that, but truth be told it’s not a hill I’m willing to die on. I’ll vote for the pro-life candidate if it gets the border secured and the debt issues property addressed, etc. I really don’t care about abortion though as a standalone issue.

A lot of republicans do this same thing with the border. For decades now they’ve been talking the talk, acting like they want to secure the border, but it’s just a big fat lie. And now those chickens are coming home to roost. While guys like McCain and Flake and Romney don’t actually want to secure the border, they’ve been lying to the base about it for years and years acting like they do. Now we’ve got a candidate who is no-joke serious about securing the border and people are peeing all over themselves. And within the LDS world, all those liberal Mormons that whined about the church getting involved in politics with prop8, etc., are suddenly giddy with joy that the church is joining the fight to help Hillary win as they sit back and watch the GOP eat itself.

Mormons were just one more group (2% of voters) in a long list of groups that supported Proposition 8 in California

Exactly. People who go looking for scapegoats are hardly the type to let common sense or facts get in the way. The narrative that is already being built is that Mormons are traitors. I don’t know if the narrative will ever get really big or not, but the fact that Utah just isn’t that influential of a state in the grand scheme of things certainly won’t make a difference to that outcome one way or the other.

As I’ve said on Facebook, the folks who support Hillary claim that if I don’t support her, I’m supporting Trump. The folks who support Trump claim that if I don’t support him, I’m supporting Hillary. And the Gary Johnson folks make basically the same argument. If that logic, which you’re repeating here, were actually true, if I chose not tp vote I would somehow magically be casting three votes! Amazing! So no, I don’t buy your argument. Perhaps I’ll write a post about the silly things people say and believe about voting, but not today. Today, I’m just going to mention that your argument doesn’t even faze me, and that in particular the over-the-top rape analogy doesn’t exactly add to your credibility.

Have you been using this online platform to speak out against all these people, and their problems, or just Trump?

I started blogging originally in 2006 at a now-defunct personal blog, and my primary target was President Obama. I’ve maintained a group blog (Difficult Run) since 2012 where we primarily blog about economics and politics, and I’ve argued for and against many policies (more often than politicians) there as well. The only reason I posted this political post at Times and Seasons was because the primary subject was actually Mormons in America.

But hey, no worries, so long as you don’t feel icky in the presence of a guy with tattoos. Whatever makes you feel good.

You had it right earlier when you talked about reluctance to “compromise [our] principles.” The tattoo analogy–while not as over-the-top as the rape analogy–is just as ineffectual. The problems that I and many other Republicans have with Trump are not superficial or cosmetic. You might not agree with that, but–if you’re so interested in unity–you might want to at least acknowledge it.

I’m not going to get into what I consider those problems to be. I didn’t write this post primarily to attack Trump. If you want to have that debate, check out Difficult Run. Here are the posts my co-bloggers and I have written about him recently: http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/?s=trump I’m not going to have that debate here, however. It’s just not what this post is (primarily) about.

As for Utah getting the blame for a Trump loss, it’ll just be one more state in a long list of states that Trump needed to win to even come close to having a shot at victory.

Mormons were just one more group (2% of voters) in a long list of groups that supported Proposition 8 in California . . . . It won’t stop another Fred Karger from writing the narrative on who to blame for the loss.

Nathaniel, as for saying you don’t support Hillary, give me a break. I’m sorry buddy but it simply doesn’t work that way. You can’t hide behind some moral high ground to excuse the plain consequence of your actions. “It’s not my fault she was raped, it’s the rapists fault.” Yeah, true, but you just stood there and did nothing. I’ll agree that you aren’t the rapist, but you are something…

For all their treachery, one thing I’ll say about the democrats is they are unified. Just like the conservatives they have a lot of competing interests, but at the end of the day they band together for a common cause: beating republicans. While they may have different reasons for their thievery, at the end of the day they agree, you’re getting robbed. The republicans on the other hand are this fractured bunch of whiners, a bunch of perpetual losers who cannot win because they’re always too busy fighting other republicans.

For goodness sakes, a lot of so-called conservatives are putting up more resistance to Trump than they ever have Obama or any democrat! I realize you aren’t really a political commentator, and I haven’t read enough of your blog posts over the years to know what you have or haven’t said in the past, but have you ever posted articles talking smack about Obama? Or Hillary? Or the namby pampy Republicans that are letting them get away with murder? Or McCain? Or Romney? Have you been using this online platform to speak out against all these people, and their problems, or just Trump?

And my point here is not to call you out specifically, but I’m really just speaking to an overall pattern. You are certainly free to support whoever you want. If the Romney/McCain-style Republican is your brand of politician, good for you. I’m just letting you know what the rest of us see… for the past several decades we, as in we the base of the GOP, have been supporting the squishy candidates we’ve been given. In other words, we’ve been going along with “your” people. And where’s it gotten us?

We want to try something new… but instead of supporting the team, the prudish Mormons are turning up their noses are the sight of our cage fighter because, gasp, horror of horrors, he’s got some tattoos! No no, that would somehow compromise their principles. Never mind the fact that our virtual cage fight is really an epic battle over the literal enslavement of humankind. But hey, no worries, so long as you don’t feel icky in the presence of a guy with tattoos. Whatever makes you feel good.

The Libertarian factor should be discussed since Gary and the Utah Libertarian Party has been reaching out significantly to the Saints and the Utah population in general; one only has to read many of the various articles and editorials about this in the Deseret News, and one especially should better highlight the libertarian undercurrent among the LDS flock in politics.

There is no question that Gary Johnson will play a far more larger & greater role in this presidential election then Evan McMullin will; for one, Evan entered into the race too late, and there is no question that Evan’s views and beliefs mirror that of a typical neoconservative like Jeb Bush or John McCain -instead of being a sincere principled conservative and supporter of our U.S. Constitution.