Perspective: Should Catholics (or Anybody Else) Vote for Trump?

From CatholicVote. And no, do not tune out if you are not Catholic. There are points here that any Protestant, atheist, Jew, Orthodox Christian or anybody else should find compelling.

CV cannot remain on the sidelines any longer.

As Iowans prepare to cast the first votes in the 2016 nomination process, we owe you our thoughts. While we are not officially endorsing a candidate at this time, we believe it is important to share some critical thoughts on the race, or at least on one candidate in particular.

As Catholics, we are called to participate in the democratic process. The Church does not endorse candidates for public office. That job rests with us, the laity. No candidate is perfect, and no simple checklist is sufficient. Prudence is a necessity. Some candidates ought to be disqualified from receiving the support of a Catholic voter. Others must be weighed in light of the moral principles given to us by our Church.

We have asked for your feedback on multiple occasions. Thousands of CV members have written. We’ve read them all. In addition we follow the daily news, analysis, polling, and have crafted our strategy for 2016.

And so today we begin with the elephant in the room.

Should Catholics support Donald Trump? No.

We have sifted through the most popular arguments in defense of Trump and listed them below along with our own take. Here they are:

1. “Trump is a leader we can trust”

While we share much of the frustration over the failure of the GOP to make significant progress, we are reminded of Republicans’ once oft-quoted criticism of President Bill Clinton: character matters.

Donald J. Trump left his first wife and married his mistress, only to leave her a few years later for another mistress. Reportedly he left his second wife by leaking the news to a NY newspaper and left the headline on the bed for his wife to find. In his book, The Art of the Deal, Trump bragged about having sex with many women, including some who were married. He has appeared on the cover of Playboy Magazine with a model wearing only his tuxedo jacket. He has mocked the disability of a NY Times reporter. He belittled John McCain for being a prisoner of war. His casino in Atlantic City was the first in the country to open up a strip club. His Twitter account is a running barrage of insults, lies, and personal attacks on anyone who disagrees with him. And did we mention he famously cheats at golf? Now who does that remind you of?

Now ask yourself: does this man have the character becoming of the President of the United States?

2. “Trump can’t be bought because he is rich!”

Trump is a salesmen, and salesmen don’t buy, they sell. So he won’t be “bought.” Instead he will sell out everyone and anyone when it benefits him, as he has his entire career. He was a liberal democrat, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-universal health care, pro-government bailouts, and a financial backer and friend of Hillary Clinton until he decided to run as a Republican last summer. He is the definition of an opportunist with no guiding principles.

3. “Trump is a leader who will get things done”

Trump markets himself as an effective leader who will get things done simply by making “smart deals.” He refuses to explain precisely how he intends to deliver results, and more often than not, promises to use force or work around or outside the law. Such a leader mirrors what we currently see in the White House. It would be incredibly harmful to our system of government, which is limited by our Constitution — even if we like the policy outcome. We must be a nation of laws. For Trump, it is all about power. For a Christian, the presidency should be about service.

4. “Trump is a successful businessman who will make great deals”

If you believe the headlines, you would assume everything Donald Trump touches turns to gold. Not so. Trump has only demonstrated an ability to make deals that benefit him personally. Four times he bailed on his own casinos to shield himself from their impending bankruptcies. And then there is Trump Magazine, Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks/Steakhouse, Trump Vodka, and most famously Trump University, to name only a few — all bankrupt or closed, and massive failures. “Losers” as Trump is fond of saying.

He has constantly cozied up to big government to trample the little guy, either by abusing private property rights, or selling out small contractors and vendors, many of whom lost their life savings. Just ask elderly widow Vera Coking, whom Trump attempted to displace via eminent domain laws to make way for a limousine parking lot for his New Jersey casino — the same casino he put into bankruptcy. Vera stood tall against the politically-connected billionaire Trump for years in court, enduring his practice of belittling personal attacks. She eventually won and called Trump a “maggot, a cockroach, and a crumb.”

5. “Trump will end illegal immigration”

Trump has pledged to build a massive wall on our southern border and to make Mexico pay for it. Meanwhile he has promised to deport 11 million+ illegals, without explaining how, then plans to allow them all back in legally according to criteria he has yet to fully explain.

We agree illegal immigration is a problem that must be solved. Trump’s solution is delusional, strikes us as xenophobic — and truthfully, will never happen. If anything, Trump’s demagoguery on immigration showcases the emptiness of many of his promises. As President Obama has learned, American presidents don’t dictate laws. The Senate and House would have to pass any change of this magnitude, and such a solution has little to no chance of being approved. Border security and immigration enforcement are realistic fixes. Rounding up 11 million+ people and sending them back to Mexico is not practical or realistic, let alone humane. Those who rightfully want to solve the problem of illegal immigration deserve more than crowd pleasing platitudes. And it’s certainly worth noting that Donald Trump criticized Mitt Romney for being too harsh on immigration back in 2012. This is just another issue where Donald Trump had a very recent and rather convenient conversion.

Several other presidential candidates have outlined more realistic policies to deal with problem. And that’s what real leaders do. They outline solutions and build consensus. Hyperbole and demagoguery are tools of salesmen (see above) out for your money or your vote. Trump’s lack of detail reminds us of another famous politician who proclaimed: “we have to pass the bill before you can see what’s in it.”

6. “Trump will fight the Establishment!”

This defense of Trump is somewhat rich, given the irony that Trump himself has boasted of playing the game, paying off politicians and enriching himself from the very system he now purports to reform. Case in point: in the past week a growing number of so-called “establishment Republicans” have warmed to supporting Trump, people like Bob Dole and Trent Lott — including establishment Republicans in Iowa like Gov. Terry Branstad. Why? Because they believe, rightly in our view, that Trump doesn’t have any principles at the end of the day. He’s someone who will wheel and deal — and you and I will be stuck with the bill.

Electing Donald Trump would send the pro-life movement back to the 1990s, when the Republican Party wanted to run away from defending the unborn. In fact, Trump recommended his own sister, Maryanne Trump Berry, for the Supreme Court. She’s the federal judge who overturned New Jersey’s ban on grisly partial-birth abortions. The next President may choose as many as three or more new justices. Trump’s suggestion of his pro-abortion sister as an example ought to worry anyone who cares about the Court. And let’s not forget he once said Oprah would make a great Vice President. Enough said.

7. “Trump is one of us”

Trump’s political conversions have all happened at very convenient times. As recently as 2000, Trump was firmly “pro-choice,” even refusing to oppose partial birth abortion! He was in favor of gay civil unions. He is open, even now, to subsidizing abortion giant Planned Parenthood with our tax dollars. He considers gay marriage a settled issue and has offered no plan to protect religious freedom. He is pro-universal health care, supported the stimulus package and government bailouts, supported gun control and a host of radical positions. Trump is like many Democrats we know. He is a political opportunist.

Conclusion

Trump is right about something — it is time for a change. We do need to shake things up and make America great again. And his awakening of working class voters who are often sidelined by terrible policy and poor leadership is a lesson every Republican must take seriously or they will lose in November.

But the power to change does not require a fear mongering business mogul, appealing to our worst fears instead of our best hopes.

With other good candidates in the race, we encourage our members to look beyond Trump.

This is an historic opportunity to win back the White House with someone we can be proud to have as President.

Iowa, New Hampshire… we’re looking to you to lead the way.

As of this writing, Iowa has put a dent in the notion of Trump inevitability, with Trump having been beaten by Cruz and having barely edged out Rubio.

Big Bold Leader

Big Baby

Affirmative Action Debate in Madison Tomorrow Night

These two fellows are heavyweights, and this debate should be excellent. We expect to be there.

Campus Debate: Howard Dean vs. Liz Cheney

Note Update Below.

From an e-mail from Young Americans for Freedom:

Former DNC chairman and Presidential candidate Dr. Howard Dean will be debating Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and former State Department official. The topic: the Role of Government in a Free Society. This event will be moderated by Kent Wainscott from WISN 12 News in the Weasler Auditorium at 7 p.m. on October 30th.

You can register for tickets (they cost nothing) here.

The Young Americans for Freedom is a conservative organization which has scheduled a debate featuring both a very prominent conservative speaker, and an equally prominent liberal speaker.

Kudos to them for that.

[Update]

Hurricane Sandy Delays the Great Debate at Marquette University

Liz Cheney and Howard Dean debate moved to Thursday

Milwaukee – As Hurricane Sandy dumps inches of rain and strong winds on the east coast, a debate scheduled for Tuesday is postponed. The daughter of a former Vice President and a former DNC Chairman will take on the issues in a debate sponsored by the Young Americans for Freedom - Marquette University on Thursday, November 1st at 7:00 pm instead. Liz Cheney and Howard Dean will jab over the “Role of Government in a Free Society.”

Hurricane Sandy has grounded almost all air traffic to and from the Nation’s capital making it impossible for the policy heavyweights to make their scheduled joint appearance.

A venue change has also been made to Marquette’s Marquette Hall Room 300 located at 1217 W. Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee.

The event is free and open to the public; however, printed tickets are required. Tickets can be reserved at www.yafmarquette.com. Parking is available in the Wells Street Structure located at the corner of 13th Street and Wells.

For attendees with reserved tickets, those tickets are still valid and notifications have been sent.

[Further Update]

The location has been moved to the Alumni Memorial Union, particularly the Ballrooms upstairs.

Academic Gadfly Mike Adams to Speak at Marquette Thursday Night

In the best academic tradition, the Marquette College Republicans tried to set up a debate on the abortion issue, asking one of the most famous abortion supporters in the nation, Marquette’s own Dan Maguire, and gadfly columnist and conservative academic Mike Adams to represent the opposing sides.

But when Maguire found out that he was going to debate Adams, he backed out.

Maguire claimed he refused to debate because Adams is not a theologian, although Maguire has debated non-theologians before.

So Adams will be speaking about abortion this Thursday night (March 1).

The program is titled “A Matter of Life and Death,” and will be held in the AMU Ballrooms at 7:00 p.m.

Adams is a very gifted polemicist, and a gutsy fellow who seems to very much enjoy being a conservative immersed in the liberal slough that is academia. We expect it to be a very interesting talk.

Daniel Maguire Backs Out of Campus Abortion Debate

When the College Republicans contemplated having a debate on abortion, they asked us for the name of “any faculty that is very strongly pro-choice who would be willing to participant in our event” we obviously thought of Dan Maguire, who is not merely pro-abortion, but incessantly and outspokenly so.

It speaks extremely well of the College Republicans that their first impulse was to have a debate, such that students could listen to both sides.

Margaret Gervase, of the College Republicans, lined up Maguire, and then sent him an e-mail to confirm the arrangements.

From: Gervase, Margaret
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:20 PM
To: Maguire, Daniel
Subject: Debate

Hi Dr Maguire,

I just want to touch bases and make sure we’re on the same page for the debate on March 1st. It’s coming up fast and we are very excited to be hosting the event! Your opponent will be Dr. Mike Adams from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. The debate will be a 20-20-10-10 format; each opponent will get twenty minutes to present their argument and ten minutes for a rebuttal followed by a question/answer wrap-up. Please let me know if you will need a room for preparation beforehand and I will see what I can do to get one adjacent to the ballrooms. Also let me know if you will be needing anything else! Thank you again for offering to do this, we really appreciate it and look forward to it!

Maggie Gervase

But Gervase got back the following response from Maguire:

From: Maguire, Daniel
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 1:43 PM
To: Gervase, Margaret
Subject: RE: Debate

Maggie,

I just looked up Dr. Mike Adams and found he is a psychology-criminology professor. I am a theologian presenting theological arguments. I would not try to debate Dr. Adams in psychology/criminology since it is not my field. Similarly he would not want to debate me in theology since he is not a theologians and could not argue a theological position with professional competence. We would be skew lines.

So when you find a theologian who wants to debate me, as was done at Notre Dame, get back in touch.

Dan Maguire

Maguire, in other words, has finked out.

His demand that he will only debate a theologian is a bit odd, since the audience would consist mostly of Marquette students, few of whom would be theology majors. Rather, the debaters would have to make cogent arguments (theological or otherwise) that undergraduates would find compelling.

Is Maguire admitting that he’s not up to that?

His insistence that he will debate only theologians is odd, given that we, over the last couple of decades, have been on two panels with Maguire. One, in the 1990s, was on the death penalty. Two people (us included) debated on the pro-death penalty side, and Maguire (along with another faculty member) were on the anti-death penalty side.

Just a few years ago, we and Maguire were (with several other people) on a panel on health care. It was not explicitly a debate, but panelists were chosen based on opposing perspectives on government run-health care.

Maguire has no special expertise in criminal justice nor in health care, but he was willing to appear.

Adams is a gifted polemicist, and extremely popular with the students he teaches.

Are none of the pro-abortion liberals at Marquette willing to take him on? It seems we will find out.

Could it be that people who have lived too long in a left / liberal / politically correct cocoon (as most college faculty have) simply lack the self-confidence to mix it up with somebody who doesn’t buy the assumptions of their culture?

Oxford Was a Hoot!

We posted here that we were going to Oxford to debate the death penalty at the Oxford Union.

We are back, caught up on sleep and other pressing things, and finally getting around to report on the event.

First, there is no way that trans-Atlantic travel can be anything but an ordeal. One can’t sleep on the plane, and we took the bus to Chicago O’Hare, flew to Dublin, and then connected to a flight to Heathrow airport and then took a bus to Oxford. It was about 18 hours, arriving in Oxford about 1:00 p.m., with our body telling us it was 7:00 a.m. and we had not slept.

We stayed in Queens College, one of several colleges at Oxford. The building was charming and old looking on the outside, but the insides had been gutted and rebuilt as a pretty typical college dorm. But a pretty high class dorm, with oak floors.

Food was bland. We tried ordering things that would always be tasty here, like a panini or chicken pesto pasta. It seems it is possible to make both of those things in a bland style.

On the evening of the debate members of the Oxford Union, some guests and all the debaters had dinner before the debate. We toasted the Queen (your humble blogger rather likes Queen Elizabeth II, and was happy to do this) and before the meal a prayer was said in Latin.

The Debate

Our debate partner supporting the death penalty was one Peter Hitchens, a columnist for the Sunday Mail, and rather a conservative curmudgeon. He’s a charming guy, and a good debater, well-travelled and well informed on lots of things.

On the other side was Barbara Becnel, identified as “author, activist and film producer who was a close friend of Crips street gang founder Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams.” Williams, who brutally murdered four Asians with shotgun blasts a point-blank range, was executed in 2005.

The other debater on the anti-death penalty side, Lord Ken MacDonald, was unable to make it and was replaced by activist Julian Knowles.

All the debaters made pretty much the standard points. We stressed that the best, most recent studies in the U.S. show a deterrent effect of capital punishment, and that claims by death penalty opponents of a very large number of “innocent” people who have been put on death row are grossly inflated.

Knowles played the race card big time, saying that the people who are executed will always be those unpopular to society, and even compared the execution of murderers to the burning of witches!

Hitchens discussed the rising murder rate in the U.K., and countered Knowles’ playing of the race card by pointing out that Williams had killed Asians, whom he referred to as “Budda heads.”

Becnel simply insisted that he client was innocent, and gave a few anecdotal accounts of actions on the part of prosecutors that she viewed a racist.

Neither Becnel nor Knowles seemed to know that blacks are underrepresented on death row in the U.S. This is apparently the result of the fact that most murders by blacks occur in the central cities of metropolitan areas, where black juries are less likely to impose the death penalty, and where District Attorneys are likely to be heavily burdened and unwilling to expend the extra resources needed to get a sentence of death.

As Hitchens had warned would happen, our side lost the vote at the end, 97 to 54. The audience, of course, was not judging on debate points but simply saying which side they agreed with at the end. Of course, with virtually no exceptions, the side they agreed with at the end was the side they came in agreeing with.

It was a great experience, in the world’s classic debate venue.

Marquette Warrior in Oxford to Debate the Death Penalty

Here is the event.

As you can imagine, it’s quite an experience to be in Oxford.

Among other things I’ve noticed: in any university town people jaywalk.

But jaywalking in the UK can be dangerous for an American, who is used to looking to the left at first when crossing the street, and then to the right. Probably a few Americans have been killed because the Brits drive on the wrong side of the road.

Should We End All Immigration? Debate Coming Up

An announcement via e-mail:

“Should We End All Immigration? Legal and Illegal?”

WHO: A debate between author Mark Krikorian and Marquette Law Professor Ed A. Fallone sponsored by The Federalist Society

WHEN: Tuesday, November 18, 2008; 12:00 noon (we will begin serving lunch a few minutes before)

WHERE: AMU, Room 157 (directly across from the post office)

FREE LUNCH FROM EINSTEIN’S BAGELS

Mark Krikorian is the author of a controversial new book, “The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal.” In it he argues that today’s immigrants aren’t too different from a century ago, but we are, in ways both good and bad, but ultimately in ways that mark us as a mature, grown-up society. And these changes mean that mass immigration of any kind is now a problem for our modern society in a way that it wasn’t in the past, and so we need to end it. Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. You can learn more about the book here.

You can also read a Q&A he did on the book for National Review Online here: here.

Ed A. Fallone is an Associate Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School where he teaches immigration law. He has published numerous articles on immigration and is a frequent speaker on the topic. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Assistance program which represents immigrants and citizens with immigration-related issues. More information may be found here.

We have a couple of things to say about this.

First, we have long been an advocate of controlling the borders, but allowing a high level of legal immigration. So we apparently differ with Krikorian on the latter point. But Krikorian appears to be much more than a simple-minded nativist, and his arguments deserve to be considered.

Second, we have to again note The Federalist Society arranges balanced debates with capable advocates on both sides. That’s very different from what normally happens on a university campus.

Democrats, Scared of Fox, Will “Debate” on Gay Channel

From Jeff Jacoby:

The Democratic presidential candidates have agreed to another televised debate, this one focusing on issues related to homosexuality. The sponsors are the Human Rights Campaign, a gay activist lobby, and Logo, a gay-themed cable channel, which will broadcast the event live from Los Angeles on Aug. 9. Human Rights Campaign chairman Joe Solmonese will moderate, along with lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge.

They can call it a “debate,” but it will undoubtedly be a pander-palooza, with each candidate trying to outdo the others in pledging fealty to the gay-left agenda. Well, why not -- if I were a Democratic candidate, I’d also grab the chance for some face time before a friendly audience. Indeed, if I were a Republican candidate, I’d take part -- why pass up the free publicity and a chance to be seen and heard?

These are the same Democrats, of course, who refuse to debate on the Fox News Channel because they object to its political agenda. So be it. But what does it say about their priorities that they gladly court Logo’s niche viewers, yet snub the far larger mainstream audience that watches Fox?

The reason, of course, is simple. The Democratic candidates might have to face some tough questions from Fox.

Still, in spite of the fact that the Fox audience skews conservative, it’s way more mainstream than the audience of a gay and lesbian channel.

Choosing a friendly venue is nothing new in politics, but it’s revealing that the Democrats “friendly venue” is such a marginal one.

Chickens

John Trever - The Albuquerque Journal