Making the Sale
A plan for Trump to woo conservatives like me
DONALD Trump doesn’t need my endorsement to become the GOP nominee. In fact, he doesn’t need anyone’s endorsement.
Trump has locked up the nomination after — video-game style — defeating 16 different challengers. He needs the approval of talking heads like me like he needs another set of golf clubs.
Then again, it never hurts to have more than one set of clubs. So to get me on the Trump train — and I suspect many like me: lifelong GOPers, the conservative chattering class and veterans of the Reagan administration — Trump has a very low bar to cross, but cross it he must.
And he’s already part of the way there. The first thing he should do is name his first Supreme Court nominee, and do so in such a way that there is no wiggle room short of naked and personal breach. The list of 11 possible nominees he released last week is a great start — though jarring for having excluded Senator Mike Lee and former Solicitor General Paul Clement.
But the reaction from conservative legal minds was, essentially: This is a great list — but how can we trust Donald Trump to stick with those names on this list?
To alleviate these concerns, Trump should simply pick one from his list, say Judge William Pryor, and appear beside him, announcing that Pryor’s name will be sent to the Senate as Justice Scalia’s replacement in January, and ask Judge Pryor or some other specific nominee to announce that the appointment had been offered and accepted, contingent of course upon a Trump win and the advice and consent of the Senate.
That sort of specificity would be a game-changer for most judicial conservatives not yet on Team Trump: A living, breathing nominee. Specificity is the crucial step to building credibility.
Another step would be a detailed plan on the Navy’s expansion and the rebuilding of the nuclear triad — our weapons-delivery systems. There are think tanks and experts of unquestioned stature who can lay out such plans and from which Trump can claim a plan full of benchmarks and commitments. Thus would the national-security hawks be given a level path to the Trump train, one much preferred to the inevitable decline of a second Clinton presidency.
Finally, Trump should release his 2015 or his 2014 tax returns. Democrats will cripple his campaign on this issue if a return is not forthcoming.
Democrats have ample ammunition to attack Trump on other grounds, but not releasing that which has been released by every other candidate for decades breaks with an important tradition and, for me at least, a commitment Mr. Trump made to me on air.
I take such promises seriously. It matters to me if I have been misled. I don’t think I’m alone on this score. A promise made and rescinded is a red flag about every other promise.
These specific steps would also help differentiate Trump from his Democratic opponent.
We know Hillary Clinton. We especially know what she will do to the US Supreme Court with even one confirmed appointee who shares even a portion of her views. Out the window goes Hobby Lobby and the interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that decision upheld. Along with it goes Citizens United, and then the two crucial gun rights cases of Heller and McDonald.
Scores of other decisions — limiting affirmative action or cabining the president’s authority to unilaterally suspend immigration law — will be reversed. State-sponsored limits on abortion-on-demand would be swept away by a single successful Clinton nomination.
Clinton has also demonstrated no understanding of the need to rebuild the American military more than decimated by President Obama. Most serious students of naval power argue for a minimum expansion of the America fleet to 320-plus ships. A more robust and necessary ship count would be around 350 after another decade, along with refurbishment of the nuclear deterrent that is present in the aging triad. Clinton has outlined no plan to lay down the hulls or raise up the procurement budget for land-, sea- or air-based nuclear weapons.
And Clinton is known to, to put it charitably, dissemble. Whether indictments follow the revelations about her “home brew” server won’t be known for a while, but we already know — from sources as non-partisan and impeccable as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morell — that she damaged national security by her selfinterested fetish for secrecy.
Her long history of disdain for candor and her attachment to privilege — the fact of the “Two Rules Clintons,” one set for them, one for everyone else — is beyond the reach of a serious challenge on the merits.
America deserves better than Clinton. Trump should use bright colors and specific commitments to show recalcitrant conservatives that he is that alternative.