How Dare Democrats Act Like Democrats

“There Is Such a Thing as Too Far Left. But Where Do You Draw the Line? ” — Ramesh Ponnuru, New York Times, 6/28/19

“Dems, Please Don’t Drive Me Away” — David Brooks, New York Times, 6/27/19

We could never in a million years vote for Donald Trump. But what should we, as prominent, generic conservatives who write serious opinion pieces for the New York Times, do instead?

Perhaps, if we assert that the Democratic Party is veering off the rails and becoming socialist, they’ll become a mild-mannered, center-right party that we can vote for without holding our nose. Perhaps, if we pretend they’ve shifted as far left as our Trumpian counterparts on the alt-right, we’ll be able to make those sensitive, consensus-seeking softies slouch back to where they belong.

Some of the candidates are all in for socialist things like universal health care. The prospect of Medicare for All truly makes our skin crawl. Don’t they understand we see the widespread lack of treatment for cancer and chronic disease as an efficient way of culling the herd? Those poor saps in the middle and southern parts of the country, and their deaths of despair, simply prove that those communities should be left to die. And truly, isn’t that DNA we should be glad to eliminate? It’s just a shame those weaklings usually die after they reproduce. Frankly, if we could encourage more of those folks to move to states like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska, and huge swaths of Texas, we could shorten their lifespans even more. This will have a measurable reduction to the long term costs of Social Security and Medicare. Their loss of life is our gain, and those Democratic fools could get in the way.

It may seem crazy, but we can remember a day when Democratic politicians touted their A-ratings from the NRA. Admittedly, that was before the rash of school shootings animated their base. Not so long ago, there were Democrats who promised not to take away our AR-15s. Why won’t they promise to do the same again? The shortened lives of a few primary schoolers is nothing compared to the anguish we’ll feel if our Glocks aren’t tucked under our pillows every night, and if we feel disrespected.

And about their abortion policies. Don’t the Dems realize that male pro-life voters, like ourselves, struggle to embrace women’s autonomy? We may find it appalling that some of our conservative opinion brethren call for the deaths of women who abort, but that’s really a matter of style, not substance. The baby-killing-abortion policies Democrats espouse, we swear, are promoting the right to infanticide. How are we, serious conservatives, supposed to not vote for the rapist in the White House. At least he gets infanticide right.

And now, there’s a Jamaican-Indian woman gaining attention and eliciting support. We have always tsk-tsked about the birther allegations regarding Obama — they were so crude and so crass. At the time, we preferred a more subtle tack, where we used Obama’s heritage as a lens through which to challenge his American-ness and his commitment to American Exceptionalism. Kamala Harris offers a similar opportunity. Sure, she worked as a prosecutor and attended Howard University, but to all those who want to suggest she’s inauthentically black, we propose reminding them of her Canadian youth, and then exposing her elitism. Her father was a Stanford professor, for crying out loud, and her mother got a Ph.D. at the tender age of 25. And as much as we would like to embrace a fellow member of the coastal elite with a tough, pugilistic style, she supports Medicare for All, and that’s one step too close to Canadian-style health care. And besides, to vote for Harris has a whiff of identity politics, and that’s just not our style.

So, we are torn. The Democrats are, well, Democrats. They decry putting children in cages and letting sick people be beggared by chemotherapy. They call us hypocrites. They lack skepticism about climate change. How can they expect us to swallow our immense pride (and their nonsensical beliefs), and vote for their candidate, even though we know that Trump is basically a lizard, or perhaps a shambolic Inspector Clouseau? His chest-thumping and the possibility of an ill-considered war with Iran are not things that keep us awake at night. Likewise, his lying. And really, despite those myriad rape and assault allegations, we respect Trump’s choice of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. Those shrill women howling about rapes and assaults are just bullies, and we are all in favor of putting bullies in their place.

When 2020 comes, we’ll probably do what we’ve done every year, which is vote for every Republican on the ticket. Except for the Presidency, of course, because we’re men of our word. Then, we’ll vote for whoever the Libertarians are fielding, because truly, just because we’re Never-Trumpers, it doesn’t mean we want a socialist to win.