Dear Rush Limbaugh, I am not going to be insulted into voting for Trump or Hillary

Ben Howe has a long piece in response to an item Rush Limbaugh read and embraced on his show yesterday.
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It is sad to see that Rush has taken the route of cheerleading Donald Trump, all the way to the point of completely contradicting himself, lying to his listeners about it, and now, taking aim at the very principled conservatives that were the core of his audience for decades and agreeing with the author of a widely read article that Never Trumpers are "The Washington Generals."

And there's even a term used for the conservative Never Trumpers. He calls them "the Washington Generals." I wonder where he got that? That happens to be my term for our side. Specifically, the Republicans in Congress. I think I named them the Washington Generals, happy to be on the field, happy to wear the uniform, but supposed to lose and happy to do so.

This was what he did on yesterday's show as Caleb Howe pointed out in a post this morning.

The widely read article he is quoting came from Claremont.org and is titled The Flight 93 Election.

From the article.
2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.
The metaphor is crap, obviously. The article itself isn't bad other than that it is a phony baloney plastic banana good-time rock-n-roll straw man. Hell, it's the Burning Man of straw men.
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There is much more.  As I said it is a long piece but it is worth reading.

I have never used the term #NeverTrump to describe myself.  I don't like him and calling me a traitor or someone on the Washington Generals is not going to insult me into eating the crap sandwich that is the Trump candidacy.  I am not going to be persuaded to eat that sandwich by Sean Hannity blaming me for Trump losing.  Trump has only himself to blame for turning off voters.

As I see it the only way for Trump to persuade reluctant voters is demonstrate more intellectual maturity than he has to date.  His name calling and insulting nicknames for opponents is for the intellectual lazy among his followers and shows his low regard for voters and his opponents.

In recent days he has made some moves that have helped him.  His trip to Mexico showed he could at least meet a foreign leader without tripping over his tongue.  I think his outreach to blacks was a good move that has scared Democrats like nothing else he has done in this campaign.  Since he started doing that instead of attacking other Republicans, he has moved up in the polls.  There is a slim chance if he does more of those things he might have a chance of winning enough votes.

I am not buying the Flight 93 analogy.  I am a firm believer in the screw-up theory of change elections.  The GOP won in 2010 and 2014 because the Democrats pushed Obama's liberal agenda and the voters did not like it.  In other words, the Democrats screwed up.  Obama won in 2008 because financial crisis was perceived as Bush's fault and he and the GOP failed to put the blame where it belonged on Democrat housing and banking policies.  Romney lost, in large part in 2012, because he was the imperfect messenger for repealing Obama's Obamacare screw-up.
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In the 2016 race, it appears that both of the major parties have nominees superbly suited for creating new screw-ups that will turn the voters against which ever one of them happens to win.  That is why I do not buy the pessimistic notion that it is the end of American civilization as we know it if Hillary wins.  She has been a screw-up at most of the things she has done and her next ones would be the seed of Democrat rejection in future elections.  In fact, her email screw-up may keep her from winning anyway.

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