The Harvard Republican Club refuses to endorse Donald Trump.
It’s not easy to be an “out” Republican at Harvard — I know because I was one — or, frankly, at any “elite” university.
So when I criticize the Harvard Republican Club’s “anti-endorsement” of Donald Trump yesterday, I do so with both fondness and sympathy. As conservatives at Harvard, they are fighting the good fight in a place in which it is difficult but important to do so. If history is a guide, some of them will go on to be conservative luminaries. But they are also very young, many of them still teenagers, with, generally speaking, limited experience of the world and limited responsibilities in it. Our modern cult of youth and hyper-achievement has told them that they are special snowflakes, but the reality is that vast majority of them, for all of their promise, aren’t yet full adults, with an adult understanding of the world.
And that’s why I have to tell them, as the kids say these days: “Check your privilege.”
Jobs like the ones they will have aren’t put at risk by our trade policies (whether you approve of them or not). Harvard Republicans will likely experience the best parts of multiculturalism, as I do in pleasant, highly educated, and highly diverse Palo Alto, California. They are probably not going to be living in working-class areas where social cohesion may go down because of the Democrats’ immigration policies. Living in affluent areas, their lives and safety are not likely to be threatened because Hillary Clinton is pandering to Black Lives Matter and undermining our police. They aren’t even, for the most part, going to fight in the wars that Trump, wisely or unwisely, seems less eager to engage in than Hillary Clinton. But a lot of Trump supporters will be.
Having said, that, there’s a lot to agree with in their caustic assessment of Trump. It’s somewhat unlikely that I’ll vote for him, and even less likely I’d endorse his candidacy. Many other writers at National Review Online have made the case against Trump well enough, so I don’t need to add to it here. But a few elements in their reasoning in particular struck me as off the mark.
“Trump lies in a manner more brazen and shameless than anything politics has ever seen.”
Permit me to observe to these 18 to 21-year-olds, if you really think that is true, you just haven’t seen that much politics. In fact, you weren’t old enough to experience the Clinton administration, which is particularly relevant to this election. The Clintons made lying an art form. The Clintons are simply better liars than Trump. If you want shameless, just look at Hillary’s discussion of her e-mail server.
The Harvard Republicans also inform us that Trump
“Hopes to divide us by race, by class, and by religion, instilling enough fear and anxiety to propel himself to the White House.”
I could have said the same thing about our current president, who does so under media adulation because the press loves him and hates the people he attacks. I’d almost say that it’s definitional to being a sophisticated conservative that one can see through the media spin and understand that this president, contrary to rhetoric, has done more to divide Americans than any other in recent memory. Current polls on issues such as race relations bear that out. Trump is absolutely divisive, but he isn’t the first candidate to divide us — he’s just chosen a cleavage and style that’s not popular with the arbiters in our culture.
#share#Finally, the Harvard Republicans tell us that
“Donald Trump is a threat to the survival of the Republic.”
First, after decades of unconstitutional actions by Democrats (aided and abetted at times by too many Republicans), the Republic is already in the intensive-care ward. Even if you accept their premise, Trump would simply be killing off a very sick patient. While Trump has certainly said some very alarming things, he’d be hard-pressed to exceed the lawless defiance of his predecessor. Just because the liberal media doesn’t call Barack Obama out on it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
The young Harvardians’ statement got predictable approval from liberals, but it feels too much like it was written with liberals in mind.
But most concerningly, there is no mention of the tradeoffs of going #NeverTrump. Liberals are Santa Claus — they want to give everything to everyone. Conservatives understand that everything has a cost. There are a lot of awful things we’ll suffer under four years of Hillary Clinton’s rule if only because of the thousands of corrupt Democratic operatives that will staff her administration. Those costs need to be mentioned, acknowledged, and even grieved for in any decision to not endorse Trump.
The Harvard Republicans make no critique of Hillary Clinton (an awful person who would be a disastrous president) or her disastrous liberal policies, and only parenthetically and incompletely acknowledge the legitimate frustrations of GOP voters (who have been lied to continuously by the party establishment for years) — in other words, there’s no reflective analysis of how the GOP got into such dire straits. This is a failing shared by too many #NeverTrumpers who seem to think that Trump is some unique Cthulhu-like monster magically and irrationally summoned from the depths.
The young Harvardians’ statement got predictable approval from liberals, but it feels too much like it was written with liberals in mind — to show them that Harvard Republicans aren’t the “bad” type of Republican. But if you want to create real conservative change, you must abandon the desire for liberal approval. It’s not a pleasant journey at times, especially if you live and work in a very liberal environment as these students do. While there is a lot of this piece that rings true to me, it lacks that full context and it only acknowledges some of what’s at play.
#related#Those of us who are not yet #NeverTrump don’t have any illusions about who Donald Trump is: It’s just that we don’t have any illusions about who Hillary Clinton is either.
I respect a lot of Trump opponents and critics who have made real sacrifices: Politicians like Ben Sasse and Ted Cruz who have risked future electoral chances, the NRO writers and editors, too numerous to name, who have put their livelihoods on the line to oppose Trump, and many others as well.
Harvard Republicans, still in the warm embrace of scholastic life, without bills to pay and livelihoods to maintain, just aren’t yet playing for those sorts of stakes.