On Wednesday, writing for The Washington Post, conservative columnist Max Boot outlined the stakes of the election in November — and why principled moderate conservatives turned off by Trump should unhesitatingly vote for former Vice President Joe Biden.
"Trump’s failures have made us the world capital of the coronavirus, with more than three times as many deaths in New York City (pop. 8.3 million) as in all of Germany (pop. 83 million)," wrote Boot. "Having dodged responsibility for fighting the coronavirus (“I don’t take responsibility at all”), Trump now claims dictatorial powers to determine when social distancing ends. If he wins another term, he is likely to put not only a lot of Americans but also American democracy itself into the ICU."
"If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were the Democratic nominee, the choice would be a difficult one," continued Boot. "I would still have voted for Sanders, but a lot of my fellow former Republicans wouldn’t have. Now that Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, the choice is easy."
"Trump would like to depict the election as border security vs. open borders, capitalism vs. socialism, prosperity vs. economic ruin," wrote Boot. "But that will be hard to do now that the economy is already ruined and the Democratic nominee is no socialist. Biden’s pending nomination brings the real choice into stark relief: competence vs. incompetence, facts vs. conspiracy theories, moderation vs. extremism, inclusion vs. division, empathy vs. narcissism. Biden warned of the coronavirus danger when Trump ignored it, and now, unlike Trump, he has a plan for the recovery. Biden was vice president when the nation recovered from its last recession; he can lead our comeback from our present nightmare."
Boot argued that the next step needs to be conservative elder statesmen coming out and throwing their support to Biden. "I have in mind former president George W. Bush and former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle; former governors such as Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Mark Sanford and John Kasich; former senators such as Bob Corker, Norm Coleman, Jeff Flake, Mark Kirk and Rick Santorum; former Senate majority leaders Bill Frist and Bob Dole; and former House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan. Also former Cabinet members such as secretaries of state James A. Baker III, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger; defense secretary Robert Gates; national security adviser Stephen Hadley; treasury secretaries Paul O’Neill and Henry Paulson; homeland security secretaries Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge; and attorneys general John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales."
Many of these conservatives, Boot noted, did not vote for Hillary Clinton. "This time around, Republicans who are bothered by Trump’s appalling misconduct have no excuse: They need to actively support the Democratic nominee. Voting for a third-party candidate such as Justin Amash won’t cut it. The election is a binary choice. If you don’t back Biden, you’re backing Trump."
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