John Bolton has been in the news this week, commenting on the indictment against former President Donald Trump. Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and former U.S. national security adviser to Trump, said on CNN that the charges set forth in the indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg were "even weaker" than he feared they would be.
To be clear, Bolton isn't saying that because he has a burning desire to see Trump convicted and imprisoned. Instead, Bolton's real fear is that charges that are transparently weak, swiftly dismissed, or easily defeated in court will give "rocket fuel" to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. Bolton described himself on CNN as "someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination." He has called Trump "cancer on the Republican Party," and he worries that a swift victory will vindicate Trump's claim that the indictment is just a political "witch hunt" (which it is) and rally even more Americans to Trump's campaign.
Bolton is apparently still considering a run for president himself.
That Bolton can say that with a straight face is iron-clad evidence of how many Republicans in what's become known as the "GOPe" ("GOP establishment") still don't get it.
Republican Party Never-Trumpers like John Bolton continues to tell themselves that Donald Trump has hypnotized tens of millions of conservative Americans, who would happily vote for some 1990s-era GOP candidate if they could just be pulled out of Trump's magnetic orbit.
My very dear Mr. Bolton: (a) you're wrong, and (b) that ship has sailed.
Until Trump ran broadside into the Republican establishment, right-leaning Americans had bought what GOP candidates were selling for decades. But Trump ripped the cover off the fetid D.C. "swamp," revealing a deep state populated by Uniparty Republicans and Democrats working in their own self-interest -- the interests of the American people be damned. In so doing, Trump has rallied not only millions of conservative Republicans to his cause but working-class Democrats, minorities, and no small number of libertarians and traditional liberals as well.
Since no one has broken the bad news to Mr. Bolton, I shall do it: We will not vote for you. Or any "Republican" like you. We will not vote for you because we now see through you.
We will not vote for "forever wars," launched on false or fraudulent pretexts for the benefit of multibillion-dollar defense contractors; wars that produce no victories but take the lives of our bravest and most selfless young people just the same.
We will not vote for arrogant and hypocritical "nation-building" aspirations so often used as excuses for those wars and for the countless deaths of innocent people in foreign countries where those endless wars take place; we are tired of politicians and policies that create reasons for people in those countries to despise us.
We are tired of the false promises made by feckless American politicians to those fighting for freedom in regions legitimately dominated by tyrants and terrorists, only to abandon those brave souls to their enemies later.
We are tired of Republicans who will not enforce our immigration laws because big corporations want the cheap labor that undermines the wages of American workers -- particularly the working poor. We are tired of policies that make Americans pay for the crimes, the consequences, and the incarceration of foreigners who commit crimes on American soil. We are tired of the kowtowing to China, the abandonment of our southern border to drug cartels, and the flood of fentanyl that is killing us by the tens of thousands every year.
We are tired of "treaties," "conventions," and "trade agreements" that benefit other countries and U.S. companies who offshore their production at the expense of American workers and American consumers.
We are tired of Republicans who will not insist upon getting the homeless off the streets, who will not fight for treating substance abuse and mental illness; for penalizing criminals and protecting innocent citizens.
We are tired of Republican candidates who run firebrand campaigns only to be elected, lose the courage of their convictions, and call it "bipartisanship."
We are tired of Republicans who cave on the most critical social issues of our day every time Leftists in the media, academia, or Hollywood calls them racists, bigots, haters, transphobes, or other nasty names.
We are tired of Republicans who will not fight for election integrity, private property rights, religious freedom, local governance, personal autonomy (and that means medical autonomy in health care decisions), individual responsibility, parents' rights, the nuclear family, the protection of children, rigor in schools and accountability for teachers and administrators.
We are tired of Republicans who make namby-pamby statements about Democrat "narratives" but won't fight for the truth.
We are tired of Republicans who are willing to work with the socialists, the statists, the globalists, and the enviro fascists, and who are just as certain as those egotists that ordinary Americans cannot run their businesses, their families, and their lives.
We are tired of Republicans who don't know what the United States Constitution says and who lack the intestinal fortitude to defend it and the people for whom it was written.
We have seen no indication that you will fight for the things we care about, Mr. Bolton. So we will not vote for you just because you hide your sins and failings more gracefully than Trump does his.
The same goes for all the other like-minded, so-called conservative politicians whose primary claim to fame is that they're "not Trump."
If that's all you've got, we will not vote for any of you.
To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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