ARSENIC AND CYANIDE

The danger is greater today than it was in July of 1863 that government “of the people, by the people, for the people” may perish from the earth.

I’ve survived a long battle with cancer to find my country afflicted by twin deadly cancers.  The election of either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump spells doom for the constitutional republic for which – during my service in the Marine Corps and Army Special Forces — I was willing to lay down my life.

Even if he weren’t a liberal Democrat, a con man, a boor, and an ignoramus on public policy, I’d never vote for Trump because he’s the antithesis of everything my parents taught me a good man should be.

Trump lies constantly. A good man’s word is his bond, my parents said.

Trump is a shameless braggart. A good man lets his deeds speak for him.

Trump demeans and degrades women.  A good man protects women and kids.

Trump is a Cry Bully who dishes it out constantly, but can’t take it.  His idea of “debate” is hurling insults and making threats. He blames others for his own failings. A good man owns up to his mistakes, learns from them, my parents said.

A good man serves in uniform when his country is at war, my Dad said.  (Mom wasn’t too keen on this maxim.)  Trump dodged the draft, compared his sleeping around with bimbos to fighting in Vietnam.

Hillary Clinton is even worse.  If they weren’t the presumptive nominees of their parties, neither Hillary nor The Donald could get a security clearance.

In their desperation to stop her, some conservatives refuse to recognize how little difference there is between the political views of Hillary and Trump, and none whatsoever in their (lack of) ethics.  Arsenic is as deadly a poison as cyanide.  I don’t plan to take either.

A fish rots from the head.  So does a society.  That Democrat “leaders” would back Hillary, and Republican “leaders” yield so easily to the hostile takeover of their party by Hillary’s friend Trump indicates how selfish, clueless and corrupt our ruling class has become.

Our ruling class is bipartisan. GOP “leaders” in Washington have been unwilling to confront the unconstitutional excesses of President Obama.  That’s reason enough to despise them.  But their sins pale before the crimes of the Democrats.

“Nearly everyone who voted for Trump, and absolutely everyone who voted for Cruz, voted against the Establishment,” Rod Martin wrote in the HFR last week. “Together, we wiped it out.”

That’s nonsense.  Trump’s campaign is effectively run by creepy Washington lobbyists like those he’s denounced on the stump.  His finance chairman is a former partner in Goldman Sachs and money manager for George Soros who  (like Trump himself) has made 80 percent of his political contributions to Democrats.  Trump is as much a part of the liberal ruling class as Hillary is.

Trumpkins may have destroyed the Republican Party.  Frightfully disappointing as the GOP has been, crippling the one impediment to abuses of power by Democrats is no way to curb a corrupt ruling class.  You can’t make the GOP more conservative by nominating a liberal Democrat for president.

Nor can you make Republicans more popular by turning off young people, offending women and minorities.  I’m agnostic in the debate over whether Hillary would be a worse president than Trump, or vice versa, because I consider it academic.  Trump is headed for the worst electoral college thrashing of any Republican since Barry Goldwater.

Rod Martin cited several recent polls that indicate the race is tightening.  They’re a blip that soon will recede.  Trump is the most deeply unpopular major party nominee in American history.

He soon will become more so.  Now that the weakest possible opponent for Hillary is the presumptive GOP nominee, the Lying Swine have stopped treating Trump with kid gloves, started to report the truth about him.

The Trump University fraud trial begins the same day as the Republican convention.  The Donald’s refusal to disclose his tax returns is a time bomb all but certain to explode.

Hillary wants to make Trump the “issue.” This Washington Post story and his response to it indicate Trump is playing into her hands.

Hillary will have much more money to spend than Trump.  Because most GOP money men have closed their wallets to him, Trump is likely to take federal matching funds.

Expect him to use them to repay himself for “loans” he made to his campaign.  It will be a reprise of his various cons, in which his investors take a bath, but he walks away with his pockets full.

Hillary is as awful a candidate as she is a person.  Had the GOP nominated an actual Republican, there could have been a GOP landslide in the fall.

Those who invoke party loyalty to induce conservatives to support Trump show themselves to be lacking in judgment and character.

The purpose of political parties is to win elections, not philosophical debates.  But when a party abandons such principles as it professes – as Republicans have by nominating Trump — it no longer has a claim on the loyalty of those who joined because of those principles.

I was proud to belong to the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. I won’t remain in a party headed by Donald Trump.

The Founding Fathers didn’t like parties – James Madison called them “factions” – hoped they wouldn’t form here.  But until now, the two party system has been a source of stability and moderation within and between the parties.

That’s because it takes a fairly broad coalition to win a majority of the vote, and because it is typically voters in the middle who decide close elections.

Now that both Democrats and Republicans have nominated lying leftist crooks, moderation and stability are gone.

President Hillary will represent the interests only of those who cross her palm with the most silver.  Ukases from the new leftist majority on the Supreme Court will effectively repeal the Bill of Rights.  The borders will be thrown open.  The rape of the middle class will accelerate.  A Dark Age looms.

But through the thickening gloom, a light shines in Fremont, Nebraska.  It may yet be possible to save America.  About this, more next week.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.