Republican Contortionists for Hillary!

The gymnastic moves by #NeverTrump Republicans to justify their support for Hillary Clinton would make the Cirque du Soleil cast proud. The latest comes from David Frum, the talented writer and former Bush administration speechwriter who comes from a prominent Canadian lineage. This is his argument for Clinton in The Atlantic:

“But she is a patriot. She will uphold the sovereignty and independence of the United States. She will defend allies. She will execute the laws with reasonable impartiality. She may bend some rules for her own and her supporters’ advantage. She will not outright defy legality altogether. Above all, she can govern herself; the first indispensable qualification for governing others.”

As these examples show, the NeverTrumpers in the GOP would have done better to avoid trying to defend Hillary’s character.

No part of this is true. In fact, every one of these claims is demonstrably false.

“She is a patriot”? She refused to comply with laws on electronic communications — laws designed to protect the national security of the United States — because those laws would inconvenience her personally. And then, when she was challenged about doing so, she simply lied. For months now, she’s been stonewalling the justice system because she considers herself above the laws of this country. Meanwhile, we will never know how much secret information China and Russia stole because of her selfishness.

“She will uphold the sovereignty and independence of the United States”? This is utter nonsense that Hillary herself would barely bother to defend. She and her husband created a globalized system that undermines our national sovereignty and takes away our independence. She will approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and any other trade agreement she can ram through Congress — no matter how much of our sovereignty we lose.

“She will defend allies”? You’ve got to be kidding. The Clinton machine has done more to empower China — and thereby hurt our allies in the Pacific — than any other force in American politics. She was part of an Obama administration that turned its back on our traditional allies — such as Britain — and desperately sought to “reset” relations with Russia.

Her globalization agenda has been disastrous for almost every country in the West, and has contributed directly to the instability that is undermining both Europe and the United States.

“She will execute the laws with reasonable impartiality”? Really? The same woman who has spent decades denouncing her critics as members of a vast, right-wing conspiracy? The same woman who has spent the last week trying to smear FBI Director James Comey? The woman who intends to pack the courts with partisan hacks who will do whatever she wants? That Hillary? Give me a break.

No one — not even Hillary’s own base — truly believes that she will treat her political enemies as anything other than a malignant force to be punished, if not destroyed.

“She may bend some rules for her own and her supporters’ advantage.” This is the understatement of a very long political year.

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“She will not outright defy legality altogether”? We could ask the FBI about this claim, but they are too busy investigating her. Of course, it’s not easy for them, as she is currently in the process of attempting to ruin the head of the FBI, and turn that once-proud agency into yet another rubber stamp for her political whims.

“Above all, she can govern herself”? Everything we’ve discussed so far is certainly fiction, but this final claim is not even good fiction. From the beginning of Hillary’s career, her fatal flaw — something that even her own supporters recognize as problematic — is that she puts her own personal cares ahead of anything else. Her rage is legendary. Her efforts to get more and more money have put her chance at the presidency at risk. She regularly treats the press with venom, and is known to have one of the longest and angriest memories in American political history. Again, her whole campaign is in trouble because she could not — or would not — force herself to comply with the usual procedures for dealing with classified information.

As these examples show, the NeverTrumpers in the GOP would have done better to avoid trying to defend Hillary’s character, and to admit — honestly and openly — that they are closer to Hillary Clinton on the big issues of globalization and war than they are to the Republican base. At least such arguments would be coherent and plausible — we know that the Clintons and Bushes have worked together on these issues for years. But efforts to insist that Hillary Clinton is somehow less dangerous to conservative voters than Donald Trump — much less that she is more committed to preserving our independence and our republican form of government — are simply not credible. And after the election is over, Republican voters are going to remember who told them the truth — and who did not.