I will note as well that I grant the label Liberal to anyone still capable of calling evil evil, and am quite willing to negotiate/debate policy specifics. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with government programs to relieve poverty. My contention is simply that they always fail–relative to what would have been possible–that they always make things worse in the long run, and that the same work can be done better in other ways.
But I am open to counter-arguments. My willingness to listen is in my view what makes me a Liberal, and on the other side, the willingness to make those arguments, without demonizing and hating me simply for disagreeing with that day’s propaganda, is what would characterize a genuinely Liberal opponent.
Conquest was the British version of a Democrat for many years, and in that time he showed the evils of the Soviet regime. He was forced by the regressive march of his party to the Left to transition to ardent support for Margaret Thatcher, without changing his fundamental beliefs all that much.
In the same vein, I would suggest that Donald Trump might not have all the traits we would like to see, but he is a damn sight better than anyone who will be running against him.
It occurs to me that given that attacks on Trump frequently backfire, option B might be backing anyone but him, which in this case would most notably be Ben Carson. I like Ben Carson, and view him as trustworthy. I just don’t know if he will make it through the meat-grinder.
Our politics is owned by a left wing radical elite, who make speaking common sense virtually impossible. They need to be bitch-slapped back to 1917, and forced to begin telling the truth to keep their jobs.