It is one thing to recognise that no political vehicle is perfect, it is quite another to reject someone who goes most of the way with you because he doesn’t have everything you want. Donald Trump has no political history, no past set of political judgements to assess him against, and there is no certainty how he will act in any particular set of circumstances. But I don’t worry about renegotiating trade arrangements, I am not worried that he will start some war by accident and it never crosses my mind that me will renege on his stated aim to close the American border and restrict immigration. He is also more likely than anyone to take on the most dangerous issue of our time which is the jihadist rampage across the West.

Meanwhile, we have Niall Ferguson in a particularly vacuous article titled, Paranoid Republidents for Trump. You would think that given his previous concerns about immigration, he might at least lean towards Trump for President. If he believes any of what he has written here, he is instead among the shallowest of our current commentators on Trump’s run for the president who has no idea how to achieve anything he says he wishes to see achieved. He is, by the way, Mr Aayan Hirsi Ali and this is what he has to say:

Trump’s acceptance speech was a ghastly masterclass in what Richard Hofstadter more than 50 years ago called “The paranoid style in American politics.” As Hofstadter summarized it, the paranoid view was that “the old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; [and] the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots.”

The paranoid worldview verged on the religious: “The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms. . . . He is always manning the barricades of civilization. . . . Like religious millennialists, he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days.” Yet even as he denounces the corrupt, cosmopolitan elite, the political paranoiac is implicitly expressing a kind of attraction. He hates intellectuals, yet he provides extensive footnotes.

This — including the footnotes, 282 of which the Trump campaign supplied on Friday — is about all you need to know about Trump’s acceptance speech. It was all here, beginning with the conspiracy theory. “America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers,” yelled Trump, “that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics. . . . No longer can we rely on those elites in media, and politics, who will say anything to keep a rigged system in place.”

“Big business, elite media, and major donors” were backing Hillary Clinton, Trump declared, “because they have total control over everything she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings.” As a result, “corruption has reached a level like never before.”

For me, adjusting for the typical rhetorical flourishes that are the basics of political discourse, there is nothing there that seems exaggerated. But if you cannot see how dangerous a Clinton presidency would be, even if you think of her as the lesser of two evils, then your ability to make sound political judgements is running on empty.

Found at Five Feet of Fury which even has a link to this.

Just follow Trump’s twitter feed. Devastating criticisms of Hillary at every turn. Her supporters must have protective shields of the toughest steel and as impervious to logic and reality as a March hare.

Malcolm was of the opinion that, given his own personal estimate that he was more likely to win the coming election, he therefore had a right and a duty to depose a sitting Prime Minister. The only question in his mind, as he articulated his rationale, was to ensure a Coalition victory at the coming election. Values? Political morality? Vision and direction? None were part of his stated objectives, although for the rest of us, his transparently far-to-the-left-of-centre views were his genuine motivation. He would become PM and bring about all of those great centralising ideas that have worked so well everywhere they have been tried. How successful his electoral strategy has been is there for anyone to see.

Which brings me to this posting by LQC three days before the Presidential election in 2012. We don’t vote in Australia for the American president, by that stage the die was certainly almost cast, but as you can see, the biggest flaw in Romney was that he was not going to win:

I have grave misgivings about a Romney presidency. While I am in full agreement with Steve Kates and most Catallaxy readers about the appalling Obama presidency, I fear that Romney is the most protectionist Republican candidate in history. Perhaps even the most protectionist presidential candidate in history. His pronouncements have been exclusively about an insular US, fear of China, and “protecting jobs”. Where is the vision for an open economy? In truth Romney is a died in the wool mercantalist.

A Romney administration promises cuts in Government spending – which I applaud – but probably a less efficient tax system. Most fundamentally, a Romney administration would put up the shutters and move to a ‘self sufficient’ United States. That would be a disaster for the US and a disaster for the world.

Anyone who has read my musings will recognise a pretty conservative and right-wing leaning. But I have a lexicographical preference for free trade and a free market.

I fear that Romney will make the US market less free than he would inherit from Obama. Perhaps the BBC poll that Steve cites [that only 6% of Australians would vote for Romney] is right for the wrong reasons: supporting Obama because he is less bad than the alternative?

From Steve’s perspective it is probably fortunate I don’t get to vote. But can anyone – please – give me one reason to vote for Romney rather than against Obama? In my recent post I wrote

Obama does not deserve a second term

That is true, but does Romney deserve a first term? I suspect not.

If I were voting, it would be for a write-in candidate. But it doesn’t really matter, as I still think Obama will win with around 332 electoral votes against Romney’s 206. When the GOP chose Romney, they voted for an Obama victory.

His standard is whether someone can be elected. And in that same vein he asks me to apologise for traducing his fine reputation based on his certainty that Hillary will win, which at least with Trump is by no means a certainty. As he now writes:

By the way Steve, I would appreciate an apology if Clinton is elected. I’ve said on both occasions that the GOP candidate would never be elected and you keep calling me a fool.

As for the rest of you: I have never said I liked Obama or Clinton. Quite the contrary.

Both Romney and Trump are unelectable. Romney would have made a good president. Trump would be a disgrace and disaster.

It is certainly new to hear from LQC what a good president Romney would have been. And just who might that candidate have been in 2012 who would have won instead? And it is ludicrous to think that Rubio – his choice this time – would not have been crushed by the Clinton machine. Last time, at least, he didn’t say vote for Obama. This time he does say vote for Hillary.

No one has to tell me what a dangerous choice Trump is or that he is less than evens to win given the media’s role in the US. But to prefer Hillary shows you are no conservative and puts you on the left.

I have seen LQC and Sinclair in the same room. In fact, although no one else will here remember, LQC’s nonsensical political views were also on display on Catallaxy during the election in 2012 when he was into a full frontal anti-Romney assault. Given Obama being Obama, of which by then we had already seen four years, and the choices we have now, anti-Romney sounds so utterly beyond idiocy that you would think that anyone who get it that wrong would just shut up.

The problems with Trump has never been in doubt. He is a property developer without a well-developed expertise in many of the political issues of our time. He has a bombastic personality and little relevant historical knowledge (although he is miles ahead of Obama). But having watched him over the past year, there is no doubt that unlike anyone else in the American political establishment, he understands what the issues are and what needs to be fixed. If it turns out he won’t be able to achieve what he says, I will be disappointed, but not sorry that he was my choice since there was no one else on the Republican side who offered to do what he has said he will try to do. And now that we are down to him and Hillary, the choice of Hillary is to choose evil and the almost immediate decay and destruction of the American Republic. Four supreme court picks and an open border naturialisation policy will mean no Republican ever becomes president again. Out past 2020, the nature of the US becomes almost unimaginable.

But Trump has genuine strengths, of which a will to have his own way is going to be extremely useful. He has also run a large organisation, so is in a similar situation to army commanders who have become president. He is not going to be as bad as Woodrow Wilson who was merely an academic and who had run nothing in his life other than a university (OK – he was governor of NJ for about a year before running for president).

You look at that story above. These are the forces that have been let loose because of Obama and Hillary. According to The Daily Mail, Grinning Obama JOKES during statement on Munich carnage as he shifts gears to say he’ll miss daughter Malia when she leaves the nest for college. There are fools everywhere, and there may be just enough of them in the US to make Hillary president. But they are the same kind of fools who made Obama president for the last eight years so there are plenty of them about.

I haven’t had the time to listen but will get to it tonight. His opponents will be the Democrats, of course, but also this: ROUND UP: MEDIA MOCKING OF REPUBLICANS INTENSIFIES…. But whatever happens between now and then, it will be the head-to-head debates between Trump and Clinton that will settle the issue. But let me just link to this, an article by Peter Wales at Quadrant Online, which captures what ought to be known. Here is a quote, but it far from the most important.

Finally, “He’s not a conservative!” Yes, he is. There is not a single Trump policy position that does not fit under the very wide umbrella of freedom-loving, free-market conservatism. It is certainly possible to disagree about some aspect of social policy, or trade, for example. But any position taken in these discussions is a long way from large government socialism. At best, #nevertrump can claim that Trump’s opinions now are not what they were twenty years ago. No intelligent person’s opinions are what they were twenty years ago. Values clarify as one gets older. Practical experience and knowledge of the world is gained. The world changes, problems and issues change, and ways of dealing with them change. There would be much more reason for concern if Trump’s opinions had not changed with changing times.

That there is virtually no public support for Trump across Australia is a sad fact because if not Trump, then Hillary.

You won’t find it anywhere else. American cornpone at its finest. Mike Pence accepts the nomination for Vice President. As he says, “conservative principles work every time you put them into practice”. And he does mention border protection. Not with full conviction but it is there.