Well, I’ve narrowed it down
Here’s a question for myself this morning as I wrestle with this problem of a paucity of principled presidential prospects: would a candidate with as much baggage as Hillary Clinton is carrying (and I’m not talking pantsuits) even have been nominated to represent the Democratic Party without help from the “highest-ups” and if she was a he? I don’t think so. Certainly Joe Biden would have been a safer, stronger candidate, and the highly complimentary and video “endorsement” they gave him at the Democratic convention left no doubt in my mind that the committee was preparing a backup plan in the event that enough of Clinton’s baggage spills out before the election. Maybe if he had been willing to declare himself female.
As many of us in the electorate are shaking our heads in disbelief as we consider that in a country with so much talent, wisdom, and achievement we settled on these two as our candidates for president, we are realizing that qualifications and character are no longer requirements for the highest office in the land. Our eyes are opening to the depth of corruption in our own government that accounts for the deception behind much of what is presented as untainted, transparent, honest reality. And to the honest reality that many of those who have taken on the responsibility of reporting on the government are in reality dishonest, murky, and tainted themselves.
I began this public thinking-out-loud last week in a real quandary about how or even whether to exercise my right to vote for our nation’s leader next month. But all along I’ve been very close to certain that I will not vote for Clinton. My heretofore (that’s one of the things I love about blogging…I get to use words like heretofore)…my heretofore reticence to make a firm determination has largely been because of my chronic indecisiveness desire to be completely fair and open-minded (also the strikethrough). But I have now arrived at and am embracing certainty that I cannot and will not vote for Hillary.
Hillary Clinton is not trustworthy. She has no qualms about lying for self-protection, and her calculated self-projection as the one who “goes high when they go low” and the morally-entitled representative of a nation that “is great because we are good” only accentuates her duplicity. But as unqualified as that makes her in my view, I am more so in opposition to her potential presidency because of her policies.
Hillary Clinton is arguably the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever. I realize folks on the left cry foul when you call them pro-abortion instead of pro-choice…nobody likes abortion, they say. But Clinton’s passionate support for the procedure under any circumstances and for its primary supplier Planned Parenthood makes her head cheerleader for baby killing. And a Clinton presidency would mean our tax dollars would be helping fund the killing of innocents and any new Supreme Court justices nominated would have a pledge to protect the barbarity on their resume.
Hillary Clinton says she supports religious freedom, as long as it’s confined to where a person goes to weekly worship. But if the “free exercise thereof” conflicts with the perceived rights of those in the LGBT community, guess which right gets trampled on.
Hillary Clinton does not properly understand and appreciate the threat we face from Islamic jihadist ideology, refusing to acknowledge the connection between Islam’s founding, its history over the centuries, its scriptural mandates, and the terrorist acts being conducted all over the world. There will be more attacks in this country no matter who wins the election, but they will be greater in number and scope under Clinton because of her immigration policies and willful blindness to the danger associated with some in the name of perhaps the only religion she actively works to protect the rights of.
There’s more, and most of that is simply the Democratic Party platform, which I intend to address next time.
Her policies make her extremely undesirable as president, in my opinion, and even dangerous, for unborn babies in particular but also for the rest of us. I said that’s my primary reason for rejecting her, but with each passing day come more revelations of the unsavoriness of her character and back alley dealings, raising the level of my secondary reason to on par with my first. Pardon me ma’am, but your slip is showing…and your toiletries, medications, favorite pumps, and multiple pantsuits (does she even own a slip?).
Maybe I should start looking into Joe Biden’s policies.
Related links:
https://stream.org/the-many-reasons-we-cannot-trust-hillary-clinton/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438911/hillary-clinton-opposes-religious-liberty
Good post, Caroline. I agree with you completely about Clinton. But I also feel Trump is unelectable as well. The ONLY plus for Trump in my mind is he states that he is anti-abortion although this seems to be pandering to his supporters rather than because of any personal moral convictions (he doesn’t have any). I don’t want either one in the White House and, yes, it’s very sad that this is the best this country can do. The Republican party needs to take a long, hard look at itself after this and figure out what went wrong and what it needs to do to right itself. With the Democrats fielding such an unpopular candidate as Hillary, the Republicans had this thing won before it even started. So who wins their primary? Trump!!! The Tea Party and Rush Limbaugh/Fox News-extremism derailed the Republican party. Too bad.
Signed,
Former-Republican now Independent
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Caroline, apologies in advance for what is likely to be another drive-by (lots of work again this week…between Tribe games).
It says a lot about this election that you were even remotely entertaining the idea of Clinton, given her stance on abortion. What a mess this has been!
I certainly don’t think you should vote for her, but I did want to point out something: You question whether she would be the nominee if she weren’t a woman, given her supposedly shady “baggage.” I think you have it backward: I don’t think she would have suffered under these accusations if she weren’t a woman.
There’s this powerful and long-running narrative that she’s a crook and, to quote a meme currently showing up directly above this blog post on my Facebook feed, “everyone knows it.” And yet, the reality is that time and again she has been exonerated of any wrongdoing, or at least any serious wrongdoing. (And it’s worth pointing out that the things that she really did wrong, like using personal email for classified info, have been done time and time again by men in similar situations but utterly ignored.)
But, one might ask, why does she keep getting accused of these things? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? The problem is that the people whose job it is to discern these things have concluded that there is, in fact, no fire — so one must ask where the smoke is coming from? It seems to me more likely that it comes from an entrenched, overwhelmingly male establishment uncomfortable with the idea of a strong, opinionated woman.
Whatever the reasons for the long-running smear campaign, The alternative is to presume that she is a stone-cold Machiavellian genius who somehow managed to dance and dodge her way through 30-ish years of accusations without getting caught. (Ironically, pretty much exactly what people praise her opponent for most.) Or to presume a vast political conspiracy of absurd scale and longevity.
Neither of those strikes me as particularly likely.
With love,
-joe
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Thank you for always commenting with respect and congeniality, Joe. Yes, just when we thought this election couldn’t get any crazier, I came out as actually considering voting Democrat! 🙂
I don’t know what you’re reading, but I’ve seen enough evidence to convince me that Clinton is highly deceptive and unprincipled. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not getting all my news about her from Facebook links claiming to have evidence of another really bad thing she did that I’ll never believe.
And I have no specific evidence of and am not claiming as true that President Obama and the DNC aided and supported Hillary for the Democratic nomination partly because she’s a woman (other than the revelation that they were working to sink Sanders). It just “strikes me as particularly likely.”
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I tend to think — though others have pooh-poohed this idea — that the Democratic Establishment felt that the nomination was owed to Hillary Clinton, for whatever various reasons: her long years of commitment to the party, the fact of her gender, her dynastic connection to her spouse — and that her nomination has been all but foreordained for eight years, perhaps even the fruit of a backroom political deal made during in 2008 when Obama was eventually nominated. Not to espouse conspiracy theories — I just think don’t think there was ever any question that she would be the Democratic nominee.
With that understanding, I’ve been saying for years that the Republicans had this one in the bag, provided they could put up anyone halfway decent, that wasn’t worse than Hillary Clinton. And how could they possibly come up with someone worse than Hillary Clinton?
I’m eating those words.
I think you’re exactly right about the term “pro-abortion.” “Pro-choice” is an empty euphemism, like talking about “states’ rights” with regard to the South in the American Civil War. The only “states’ right” anybody cared enough about to fight for was slavery, and the only “choice” anyone today cares about is the choice to have an abortion. “Pro-choice” proponents defend the right to make that choice, even the morality of that choice; even recently, under the present Democratic ticket, promoting it as a positive good. “Pro-abortion” has never been a more appropriate label.
By the same token, I accept that the label “anti-abortion” is appropriate for many conservative candidates — in many cases (like the present candidate) much more appropriate than “pro-life.” Even if he is “anti-abortion” (which is doubtful), he is certainly not “pro-life” in any meaningful sense. Conservatives who ardently support and promote the death penalty and the unrestricted proliferation of guns, and who oppose programs to help the poor or welcome refugees, have a lot to answer for before they legitimately call themselves “pro-life” in my book.
Hope I’m not stepping on any toes. 🙂
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