This year is an
important year for Latter-day Saint voters, the large majority of whom have
been solid Republicans for decades. But the Republican Party is not the party
it was even three years ago. It has become the Party of Trump, and the
Republican Congress has prostrated itself before this disturbing human being.
Some Church members may rationalize that putting up with Trump’s offensive
words and behavior is simply the price you have to pay to get conservative judges
and tax cuts. But voting for Republican House and Senate candidates is a vote
for individuals who will enable Trump rather than hold him accountable. It is a
vote for everything Latter-day Saints should be morally opposed to.
Consider these
words from Peter Wehner, a conservative who served as an adviser to President
George W. Bush: “I think the fundamental interpretative fact of the Trump presidency—and
I think that this Saudi example [Trump’s support of the Saudi regime in the
murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi] is only one manifestation of it—is this
is a person (Trump) who is fundamentally amoral and immoral. He is a man
without human empathy or without human sympathy, and in many respects a man
without conscience; and I think what you’ve seen over the last several days is
a person who’s reacting that way.”
Wehner continued,
“And I think that we’ve seen that lack of human empathy and conscience in
almost every arena of the Trump presidency. It explains the cruelty, it
explains the policy at the border, separating kids from (parents), it explains
the pathological lies, it explains the fact that he’s a man without loyalty—and
I think this is just the latest arena in which we’re seeing this ugly drama
play itself out.”
If any Democratic
president had enriched himself through the office of the presidency, had
offended our allies while cozying up to brutal dictators, had called the press
the enemy of the people, had lied constantly to promote a political agenda, had
been credibly accused of both sexual assault and adultery, had refused to
release his tax returns, had been accused in an in-depth news investigation of
tax evasion and fraud, or any of a hundred other Trump offenses, the Republican
Congress would have been launching dozens of investigations. And Latter-day
Saint voters would have demanded action from their elected representatives. But
what do we hear from Congress? Silence. And what do we hear from LDS
Republicans? Excuses and rationalization. Morality has been replaced by an ethic of winning at all costs.
But let’s look at
what the Party of Trump has become. It is now the party of hate. It is the
party of manufactured anger. It is the party of lies. It is the party of
bigotry and racism and misogyny. It is the party that defends accused sexual predators and dismisses victims. It is the party of voter suppression. It is
the party of polluters and shameless corruption. It is the party of empty
ideology and vacant values. If you vote for Republican Senate and House
candidates, you are voting for a party that has no answers for our troubled
health-care system, that offers tax cuts to the wealthy in the midst an
economic expansion, that threatens to cut benefits to the elderly, the sick,
the poor, and the disabled. You are voting for a party that will not investigate
even the most egregious offenses of the most corrupt president this country has
ever seen, a party that has tried to undermine the legitimate independent investigation of Robert Mueller, a fellow Republican. In short, the GOP has become a moral quagmire.
If you are
disgusted with the Party of Trump, you cannot just sit this election out.
Turning your head and trying to ignore the corruption is the same as voting for it to continue. In this election, if you are a moral Latter-day Saint, you have
an obligation to vote for Democratic candidates. The only way to wrench the
Republican Party away from Trump and his loyalists is to deal them such a
complete and embarrassing defeat that it destroys the Cult of Trump. This is a
problem you cannot solve by being loyal to the GOP. The Republican Party cannot
cure itself of this horrific malady, this cancer at its core.
Conservative Washington
Post columnist Max Boot, who has left the Republican Party because of what I
just outlined, described Republicans who refuse to see what their party has
become: “They act, these political ostriches, as if this were still the party
of Ronald Reagan and John McCain rather than of Steve Bannon and Stephen
Miller—and therefore they cling to the illusion that supporting Republican
candidates will advance their avowed views. Wrong. The current GOP still has a
few resemblances to the party of old—it still cuts taxes and supports
conservative judges. But a vote for the GOP in November is also a vote for
egregious obstruction of justice, rampant conflicts of interest, the
demonization of minorities, the debasement of political discourse, the
alienation of America’s allies, the end of free trade and the appeasement of
dictators.”
Boot concluded: “That
is why I join [George] Will and other principled conservatives, both current
and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in
November. Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must first be
destroyed before it can be rebuilt.”
