For too many, a vanity project at best; a personal vendetta at worst

*****************************************************************************

After 3 1/2 years of Donald Trump in the White House, this page has come to the realization that any adjective, adverb or expletive cannot aptly summon the portrait of who he is as well as the word “Trump.” It takes notoriety to have your name become a descriptive word, and not for the positive. But that’s what the current President has done.

Hopes of him mellowing with the job have been largely dashed although he has shown some signs of not being as rambunctious as in his first days.

Such cannot be said about the Never Trumpers, a varied group of (some nominally) Republican pilgrims who oppose him; many out of honest conviction, some because it is fashionable, a handful to get an unobtainable approval from the media and the left wing, and worst, a few out of personal vendettas.

The latest exhibition was at the Democrat National Convention last month in which 2 of several Republicans spoke out against Mr. Trump: former Ohio governor John Kasich and former Planet Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman.

Both come from different backgrounds with Mr. Kasich hailing from blue collar beginnings while Ms. Whitman was born into money.

Yet both proclaim to be concerned about the citizenry in general and the worker in particular. 

Former Ohio Governor John Kasich and former Planet Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman are two Never Trumpers who put their personal feelings for the President above the good of the citizenry

*****************************************************************************

Which makes their endorsement of Joe Biden over Donald Trump all the more discomfiting.

Ms. Whitman is the stuffy old money ilk that seems a natural to dislike anyone like Trump whose demeanor would threaten the soufflé in the oven. The term for her at least used to be Country Club Republican. Hence, she’s motivated by facile conviction and the fashion of gratuitously denouncing Trump to look virtuous.

Mr. Kasich, however, led a state that has a tremendous amount of blue-collar workers. These workers, as U.S. Department of Labor statistics point out, took it on the chops during the high tax/regulation Obama years, which Mr. Biden would bring back but on steroids.

Yet such reality did not deter him from endorsing Mr. Biden over Trump whose policies in the last 3 1/2 years have clearly been better for the middle class.

A large part of it can be explained by Trump’s attack on him and criticizing, believe it or not, his table manners during the 2016 Republican primaries. Only Trump could do this.

Yet throwing the citizenry under the bus just because he was inappropriately insulted by a serial insulter does not display the sanctimonious plateau that Mr. Kasich wants people to think he inhabits.

One must wonder if Kasich, Whitman and their Never Trump cabal will sleep at night should Biden win.

Just as John Kerry rhetorically asked a congressional committee “How do you ask a man to be the last to die in Vietnam?”,  what does Kasich and Whitman tell workers who are struggling to make ends meet because a President Biden has taken us back to the wage stagnation and job insecurity of Barack Obama’s wealth redistribution economy? “Feel good about yourselves because we have an honorable president whose policies may be financially destroying you but at least he’s not Trump!”?

The truth is Kasich, Whitman and many high-profile Never Trumpers will never feel the pain of Biden’s bad policies; they have the luxury to be pious at other people’s expense: a Liberal trait.

Mr. Kasich should move on to his MSNBC talk show that seems inevitable and Ms. Whitman should stay cloistered at her estate without trying to mislead people into voting for Biden as “a person who can work with everyone” when in reality the only people he will work with will be his fellow Democrats, many of whom have radical ideas about socializing much of the economy and society.

Despite being a lifelong Conservative Republican who voted for Mr. Trump last election but emotionally left the parking lot asking “how did it come down to this?”, this writer doesn’t like Trump but will saddle up with the Silent Majority posse and vote for him.

And then be glad to never have to vote for him again.

-I.M. Windee